Arma 3 Engine - What would have been a better option and what can we learn?

[squirrel0311 16]

So lately I’ve been reading a lot about how the Arma 3 engine is so out dated and that’s why it can’t do this and that, so on and so forth...so now I’d like to know …

What engine should BIS have used to create Arma 3 in order to give players what they want?

Also, what would be the best method of finding the best suited game engine when it’s finally time for Arma 4?

Here’s just a small list of what I’ve seen people asking for lately...

Realistic:

Graphics

Physics

Lighting

Models

Textures

Animations

Movements – (Inertia and what not…I guess)

Open world Terrain – (Air, sea, land, and under water.)

Accurate Collision detection

Accurate Hit registration

Completely destructible and interactive environment- (Moveable, breakable, burnable furniture in every building and outside. (Couches, chairs, tv’s, beds, cabinets, radios, pictures, pots, boxes, signs, and AI)

Realistic damage - (People, vehicles, buildings, animals.)

Realistic and customizable AI both human and animal

Realistic and customizable weather

Utilizes multi-core processors and crossfire

Better server architecture to ensure high frame rate

Accurate ballistics, weapons functions, and characteristics.

Ability to shoot out of any vehicle

Ability load inside a vehicle and be transported without having to take an assigned seat. (I know BF2 had this capability… The pilot could drop the ramp on the Ch-53, players would walk in, close the ramp and fly away. The people inside would all slide to the back but they would be alive.)

Complete and easy to use MODability and customization – (Make your own various factions, units, uniforms, weapons, vehicles, buildings – Change this feature, leave that feature on but turn this part off… take this out and do this instead.)

The ability to handle massive amounts of players, bullets flying, vehicles moving, buildings getting destroyed, fires burning, weather changing, and AI all doing different things at once while still keeping a high frame rate but also not making the game seem too gamey and Call of Dutyish?? O_o

[Pac Man 10]

People have seriously been asking for better graphics? LOL, that's new to me, but I wouldn't put it past some... The main gripes I've noticed are about the new medical system or lack thereof rather, inertia, weapon rest, and utilizing hardware better. Most of what you've listed is already in the game aswell =P

Edited September 29, 2013 by Pac Man

[TSAndrey 1]

Here’s just a small list of what I’ve seen people asking for lately...

Realistic:

Graphics

Physics

Lighting

Models

Textures

Animations

Movements – (Inertia and what not…I guess)

Open world Terrain – (Air, sea, land, and under water.)

Wait what? All of the things you mentioned are already in the game. The only downside to A3 graphics are mid-range textures.

Completely destructible and interactive environment- (Moveable, breakable, burnable furniture in every building and outside. (Couches, chairs, tv’s, beds, cabinets, radios, pictures, pots, boxes, signs, and AI)

You really expect that? No other game has that!

[Pac Man 10]

Complete and easy to use MODability and customization – (Make your own various factions, units, uniforms, weapons, vehicles, buildings – Change this feature, leave that feature on but turn this part off… take this out and do this instead.)

I don't think modding in any form is ever going to be deemed as "easy" by your average mission / addon designer. And we already can make our own factions, weapons, uniforms and vehicles etc =P

[squirrel0311 16]

People have seriously been asking for better graphics? LOL, that's new to me, but I wouldn't put it past some... The main gripes I've noticed are about the new medical system or lack thereof rather, inertia, weapon rest, and utilizing hardware better. Most of what you've listed is already in the game aswell =P

Wait what? All of the things you mentioned are already in the game.

No no no. Not necessarily that they're crying for better graphics too, just that with it being a new game, they expect it to have better graphics, physics and all that junk. I know a lot of the stuff is in the game. This is aimed more towards the "Oh Arma 3 is just a big steaming pile of crap! The engine is old and can't even do the most basic of things. It's not even worth my money, I guess I'll have to wait for a different game.", crowd.

I'm just curious to hear what engine they think will give them everything that the arma 3 engine has and more or if they just love finding things to complain about. I do kind of feel that some things could be done better with other engines but then you'd lose other features I bet. For instance, I'm curious to know how the Forgelight engine used on Planet Side 2 would have worked out. There are some aspects I bet it would excel at but others such as... modability... I bet would suffer drastically.

But also I'd like to hear from people with experience and knowledge on the process or what they think would be the best process for choosing an engine to build a game.

Edited September 29, 2013 by Squirrel0311

[calin_banc 19]

There isn't one option to accommodate for all that you need. It needs to be build for each specific game (if we talk here about more complex ones, not just simple pew-pew), and if you wanna go all the way ArmA style, a collection of different technologies needs to be brought together.

You can have Euphoria for animation which is a great system that allows truly dynamic animation for the characters that react accordingly to the outside factors. In Max Payne 3, Max would make one or two steps in the direction you were moving instead of just stopping plus the interactions between him and the environment on the slow motion dives are quite good. GTA, SWTFU and RDR prove even more that is nice technology, far superior to the simple rag dolls that we have today.

Talking about the ocean, Cry Engine and the next Assassin's Creed Engine are very good, the second one probably the best so far. The footage shown lately with a pirate ship navigating and fighting in opens seas are breathtaking plus the way the surrounding vegetation on land reacts to wind is is also impressive - somewhere in the lines of Crysis 3 grass.

PhysiX would be great IF it wasn't a locked tech. Still, in Metro 2033 at least, there were multiple body armor parts that would react to outside factors like bullets or explosions. Eventually they would fall down, but acted as a very convincing body armor - you would need to aim for a clear head shot if you wanted to drop a NPC with a single bullet or else the helmet would deflect it or an exposed body part.

Destruction from Battlefield is more like a pre baked physics engine rather than a dynamic one. Walls and pretty much everything that you could destroy would break apart in the same manner, ie: the same part of the wall of a building will collapse based on the damage he took. I think the only dynamic destruction was in Red Faction with Geo-Mode.

Fire propagation and physics on plants and tress was done in Far Cry 2.

Beam NG would hurt as well.

AI... well, long talk. Being an infantry based game above all, it's quite irritating to see how artificial they appear to be. Probably being moved to the GPU will allow a greater number of them being simulated real time and who knows, maybe even an entire civilian population - at a basic level of course.

Graphics are good as they are. Yeah, you have some not to good looking shadows and texture (not only the middle distance ones, but more as well), terrain lacking in geometry at times, plus some more. However, this can all be addressed in time, probably whit much ease than the above.

[xendance 3]

Before anyone even mentions Cry Engine 3, know that it doesn't support as big terrains as ArmA 3 engine. You get floating point errors quite easily if you aren't near the world origin.

[maturin 12]

99.5% percent of people who post anything about RV are haven't the foggiest idea what they're talking about. It's like a conspiracy theory for complainers. I've thought about dubbing them (not just in an ArmA context) the engine sluts, but that might get me banned,

[PuFu 4600]

99.5% percent of people who post anything about RV are haven't the foggiest idea what they're talking about. It's like a conspiracy theory for complainers. I've thought about dubbing them (not just in an ArmA context) the engine sluts, but that might get me banned,

you get my vote for the best post of the day (so far anyways)

[headswe 17]

99.5% percent of people who post anything about RV are haven't the foggiest idea what they're talking about. It's like a conspiracy theory for complainers

This so much.

[calin_banc 19]

99.5% percent of people who post anything about RV are haven't the foggiest idea what they're talking about. It's like a conspiracy theory for complainers. I've thought about dubbing them (not just in an ArmA context) the engine sluts, but that might get me banned,

Just sitting behind a wall of "it's big, no one does at this scale" won't help either. ;)

[mercenar1e 10]

UNIGINE seems like a great fit for ARMA. Compared to the other engines like Crysis it should be cheaper to license as well

[clydefrog 3]

Well the best solution would obviously be that they develop their own again wouldn't it, not rely on some other company's engine. But I am aware doing something like that would take a huge amount of time and cost millions.

[hellfire257 3]

99.5% percent of people who post anything about RV are haven't the foggiest idea what they're talking about. It's like a conspiracy theory for complainers. I've thought about dubbing them (not just in an ArmA context) the engine sluts, but that might get me banned,

Ha, this so much! :D

Whenever I see a post moaning about RV I just roll my eyes. Remember all the debates about CryEngine? Those were the days!

[chrisb 196]

What it does, it does really well.

They're pushing it and so far they're succeeding, I would want more done in the way of AI, but its gone a little too MP orientated for that to happen, maybe always has been.

I make missions in the Editor, that's where the game is really, I would be quite happy to just have that and nothing else, scrap the rest and put all that power into the editor, keep me happy, although most of the power is already in there anyway, seems to me.

[mercenar1e 10]

Before anyone even mentions Cry Engine 3, know that it doesn't support as big terrains as ArmA 3 engine. You get floating point errors quite easily if you aren't near the world origin.

Bigger isn't always better. The problem here is that ARMA has no direct competition.. The closest that comes to mind is DCS World and soon War Thunder but both are so far off. I think competition would benefit us greatly

[calin_banc 19]

Well, Dean Hall said a game panel recently, that if battlefield would offer modding tolls, ArmA would be pretty much done. Not sure if that would actually happen, tough you never know.

[PuFu 4600]

Well, Dean Hall said a game panel recently, that if battlefield would offer modding tolls, ArmA would be pretty much done. Not sure if that would actually happen, tough you never know.

BF is not a direct competitor. Maybe at some point in time PR on CE (although CE doesn't support the size of Arma). Doubt that EA will make available mod tools for frostbyte (afaik you can't even license the engine), mainly becaus etheir bussines plan is to sell the game then at least 4-5 DLCs in 1 year until the next iteration. But you'll never know

[mercenar1e 10]

Well, Dean Hall said a game panel recently, that if battlefield would offer modding tolls, ArmA would be pretty much done. Not sure if that would actually happen, tough you never know.

Arma would be done because the modders wouldn't have time to fix the game for BI

[clydefrog 3]

project reality for BF3/4

shame it will never happen

I don't think it's ever had the mission making abilities for the community Arma does though which is pretty much what Arma lives off.

Edited September 29, 2013 by clydefrog

[strangere 2]

99.5% percent of people who post anything about RV are haven't the foggiest idea what they're talking about. It's like a conspiracy theory for complainers. I've thought about dubbing them (not just in an ArmA context) the engine sluts, but that might get me banned,

+1

Anyway i'm going to post here something that Rocket posted on Reddit:

"Essentially the concept of "engine" is just that, a concept. Physically speaking if you have access to the source - it's just a program. As a programmer, what can you do with a program? Theoretically, you can do anything, right?

The limitation is time. Both the resource used to generate functionality, and CPU time (frames) to deliver the functionality. I could write a program today that models the movement of every electron in the universe, but it would take forever to write and because it must run based on the system it's modelling - it would be (much) slower than realtime.

It's kind of semantics, because the practical implementation of the above suggests that when facing engine limitations, it's impractical to change them. But suggesting that it is impossible is absolutely false."

[Deadfast 43]

Ability load inside a vehicle and be transported without having to take an assigned seat. (I know BF2 had this capability… The pilot could drop the ramp on the Ch-53, players would walk in, close the ramp and fly away. The people inside would all slide to the back but they would be alive.)

This isn't true. If the helicopter went any faster than extremely slow everyone would die.

[ProfTournesol 956]

Well, Dean Hall said a game panel recently, that if battlefield would offer modding tolls, ArmA would be pretty much done. Not sure if that would actually happen, tough you never know.

As "ArmA's saviour", he thinks he knows what could kill it. Funny.

Edited September 29, 2013 by ProfTournesol

[Maio 293]

Well, Dean Hall said a game panel recently, that if battlefield would offer modding tolls, ArmA would be pretty much done. Not sure if that would actually happen, tough you never know.

I don't see that happening. BF caters to the adversarial crowd while Arma offers a wider range of MP possibilities. A second point could be made regarding game pace and playable area. Arma gives the players the possibility to take it slow over large terrain, while BF is pretty much "in your face" action. Even if EA goes soft and releases mod tools and modders create game types and associated maps that force the player to dial it down a notch, Arma could still co-exist peacefully with the BF series.

On the engine:

I like the RV engine for what it is, as it meets all my gameplay needs. I also like to be optimistic and see the absence of a certain engine feature as simply a lack of manpower at a certain time and not an engine limitation.

[clydefrog 3]

As has been discussed a lot on here though, it seems like there are limitations when it comes to e.g. the hardware interaction side of it, and surely that will be what eventually makes it an obsolete engine.

Edited September 29, 2013 by clydefrog