Buildings devoid of life....

[bad benson 1733]

why is everyone so ignorant about some of the original arguments. go into arma 3 and count the shutters on the windows and all the unneeded doors inside buildings (talk about getting stuck), and then tell me we just reached the poly limit. besides, those proxies could easily only be in the very first lod. the performance argument is nonsense. it's a matter of priorities of the modellers. as i said before, the houses have a lot of obsolete stuff on them that even hinders gameplay (shutters'n'doors).

as for AI paths. everyone who says AI can get stuck on furniture doesn't have a clue how it works. AI can walk through walls and doors because they have no real collision with buildings. it's that way since ages. that's the reason why no one ever in the history of arma saw AI getting stuck on an object inside a house. everyone who says otherwise is ignorant or lying. in fact it's the opposite. anyone remember craigs zombies walking straight through houses? or even arma 3 AI falling through walls when their turn radius for walking tight stairs was to wide? *sigh*

Sealife. just go write that script and see how the game runs for you. if you want to keep your 15-35 fps you should really prefer some proxies instead of more mission objects.

again guys. go look at arma 3 houses and tell me that all the resources are used in a reasonable way and that clean wiped 100% empty rooms with fucking doors to get stuck on everywhere are really the most reasonable solution.

i understand that some people feel the need to counter bitch. but this was not an aggressive whining thread to begin with. people just think they need to explain what the reasons are (without any knowledge of them) while telling others they can't possibly know the reasons. it's a bit ridiculous.

yes BI can fuck up sometimes and not everything they do is always the best most reasonable thing to do. i know it's hard to believe but just listen to the mighty Mikero rant for a bit and you'll know what i mean.

yes furniture is less important to some people. that's ok.

but the whole trying to debate it away is not working so well to be honest.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Bad Benson

[.kju 3239]

if it should not be a discussion, the thread should be in the scripting forums and not in the general forum

its not about AI getting stuck.. its about slow movement and being even more useless in buildings

why are you everywhere seeing whine? there were a couple of good posts giving context, information and arguments pro and contra

[bad benson 1733]

well kju. i know you know what you are talking about but your list just got smaller :p

1. Performance - not really true

2. Effort - it's just not much

3. Priorities

4. AI - not true at all

5. Movement -maybe

now it's edit: misunderstood

1. Movement

2. Priorities

i agree that BI might have had some thoughts behind their "decision" (eventhough i still think it's just another case of "oops we gotta release"). i just don't agree that the list of arguments presented is very good. i can agree on movement as a general feel but seeing how in the past most indoor objects were lined up on the wall i'm tending more towards "nope, doesn't really matter". i mean you can easily place stuff in places where no one will ever get stuck on it. it's that easy.

why are you everywhere seeing whine? there were a couple of good posts giving context, information and arguments pro and contra

what i mean is the generic reactions and arguments of some people. not you. i wasn't talking about the thread in its entirety.

its about slow movement and being even more useless in buildings

how does a closet on the wall make AI slower? as i said. AI pretty much ignore stuff indoors. and how would it make them more useless? care to elaborate?

if anything BI's focus on making almost everything enterable shows how unbalanced their priorities are. AI sucks indoors since forever. and there's in general not that much indoor combat in arma. so why bother making everything enterable if you can't make it look good? sure the "devs can't win". i agree. but they can certainly make it harder for themselves. same goes for Alits' size in general. who needs all those empty plains? wasted resources if you ask me.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Bad Benson

[dmarkwick 261]

How can someone say furnitures are just eye candy? They are not! Its about the believable world

Not necessary to play the game, therefore eyecandy.

[Sealife 22]

as for AI paths. everyone who says AI can get stuck on furniture doesn't have a clue how it works. AI can walk through walls and doors because they have no real collision with buildings. it's that way since ages.

Furniture was as you say ingored and wasnt configged thus missing config error , it should have been cfgnonai and probably was in the end IDK , however now it is furniture base inherit from Physx so its a propper entity with a config and not a non configged proxy as it was previously .

[m1lkm8n 410]

Not necessary to play the game, therefore eyecandy.

By those standards neither is the sun, moon and stars. ;)

[bad benson 1733]

Furniture was as you say ingored and wasnt configged thus missing config error , it should have been cfgnonai and probably was in the end IDK , however now it is furniture base inherit from Physx so its a propper entity with a config and not a non configged proxy as it was previously .

i'm not questioning your mad skills. but it's just that simple: AI walk on a set path indoors no matter what. once they are in indoor mode they will just go through stuff. sad but true. maybe that changed a bit (i doubt it) but in any case furniture proxies would have no impact on AI whatsoever. sure a real object would be nice but it's not possible because of the size of arma. i myself naively thought we could push over anything when i first heard about physX in arma.

i personally would already be happy with some garbage and dirt and one single object per room like a commode.

just ANYTHING so it at least looks like a used sniper spot and not a cleaned house ready to be looked at by its future owners. it's all way too sterile. furniture is a wide term in this case. just stuff on walls like paintings or some jackets hanging there. maybe a single shoe. stuff that breaks the clean surface. it could be much less than OA to have an impact. but i see. maybe some people just hate the idea or are germophobes and like those perfectly empty houses.

this is a good example:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tZpSEt6A1Vw/Ty9wIjujSSI/AAAAAAAAHfU/WcjA9bxo1-Y/s1600/Color+Kyle+photo.jpg

check out the small things on the floor and the clock on the wall. and the bed ofc ;) also the curtain. these are small details together with the dirt on the floor that turn a wiped perfectly empty room into a scene.

[.kju 3239]

The later two can be used for navigation; also they act as a light source (NVG blend or at least some illumination during the night).

The sun is to determine the daytime and due to the blinding effect has significant tactical impact as well.

Performance is still valid, why should it now? Additional sections are the most important aspect, followed by VRAM use as said before.

It is effort - you may argue it is limited, yet thats not the point.

How can you argue furniture has no impact on AI - obviously it has in various ways.

AI as a player is meant to get to building positions as quickly as possible (most notable windows),

and to traverse to buildings as quickly as possible and with least turns possible to avoid exposure.

[m1lkm8n 410]

I cant believe this is still being debated. Maybe if they stopped "windows me'ing the rv engine" a lot of these issues that are still prevalent today would be eliminated and furniture wouldn't cause such a drain on the system and we could all live in peace.

Edited October 20, 2013 by M1lkm8n

[fumanwho 10]

I cant believe this is still being debated. Maybe if they stopped "windows me'ing the rv engine" a lot of these issues that are still prevalent today would be eliminated and furniture wouldn't cause such a drain on the system and we could all live in peace.

One minute its easy fix for 3d modelers to do in 15 mins. Now you are saying its a performance issue. Do you understand that you have made two contradicting arguments? There wont be peace until people stop throwing around baseless accusations. Look at the armour thread.

[GilgaMesh 10]

Not necessary to play the game, therefore eyecandy.

Ahahah oh my god...what a bad attitude.

Seriously guys. It's just about "would you like to have furniture ingame?" how can you say no? I don't understand. Sorry. The fact that have them would bring much work to do it's not MINE or YOUR business. That's the developers job.

I don't care about how many problems these things would bring ingame, for sure that means these problems will need to get fixed at some point. And honestly I'm not even worried about "when" but "IF" things will ever get fixed.

Oh, even Grass it's useless, and belive me grass is a frame rate killer.

Edited October 20, 2013 by GilgaMesh

[bad benson 1733]

How can you argue furniture has no impact on AI - obviously it has in various ways. AI as a player is meant to get to building positions as quickly as possible (most notable windows),

and to traverse to buildings as quickly as possible and with least turns possible to avoid exposure.

what are these obvious ways of impact on AI? please explain.

you know how AI pathfinding works in arma, do you? (pretty sure you do) there are literally rails for them. and they will follow them like a train without a driver. and never ever in the history of arma was a piece of furniture in the way of AI. you are also just assuming that rooms would be filled up with obstacles which is nonsense. there's certainly a good way of doing it. it's called being a 3d artist/level designer.

look at these and tell me you wouldn't have to be a moron to get stuck on them (sorry if i cause anyone eye cancer :o):

http://i.cubeupload.com/C5djBF.jpg

http://i.cubeupload.com/ozufCS.jpg

http://i.cubeupload.com/2AJmxx.jpg

http://i.cubeupload.com/QxRm3T.jpg

http://i.cubeupload.com/BcKbOJ.jpg

performance does matter of course. my argument is that resources are used badly. you can ask any experienced modeller about that and he will tell you the same. if there's still an interior to model you won't waste sections, polies or UV space or whatever for outside details like lanterns, ventilation boxes or useless indoor doors (go check out the actual arma 3 houses). but you could also just leave the interior entirely empty :rolleyes: it's just bad resource management. my argument isn't to just add onto needed resources but to use resources for the important stuff to make stuff look real and finished. you could simple remove all shutters and use the texture space for simple commodes and closets. it's just a (bad) decision to use them for shutters, lanterns (on house walls) and ventilation boxes (or whatever the term).

you are just saying it's not possible because of performance. i simply don't believe that.

[GilgaMesh 10]

performance does matter of course. my argument is that resources are used badly. you can ask any experienced modeller about that and he will tell you the same. if there's still an interior to model you won't waste sections, polies or UV space or whatever for outside details like lanterns, ventilation boxes or useless indoor doors (go check out the actual arma 3 houses). but you could also just leave the interior entirely empty :rolleyes: it's just bad resource management. my argument isn't to just add onto needed resources but to use resources for the important stuff to make stuff look real and finished. you could simple remove all shutters and use the texture space for simple commodes and closets. it's just a (bad) decision to use them for shutters, lanterns (on house walls) and ventilation boxes (or whatever the term).

you are just saying it's not possible because of performance. i simply don't believe that.

Also because we are talking about very basic (meh, a simple table it's about 50 vertecis) models. How much impact would that seriously bring? Sure , the scale would be huge because of the size of the maps, but meh, as I sed before I like to play 1000 m view distance having detailed envioriment instead of 3000 with an empty and dead space.

[m1lkm8n 410]

One minute its easy fix for 3d modelers to do in 15 mins. Now you are saying its a performance issue. Do you understand that you have made two contradicting arguments? There wont be peace until people stop throwing around baseless accusations. Look at the armour thread.

you cant see past the furniture anymore...I was talking about other problems people are saying the furniture causes..adding it is easy. now calm yourself..unless your on bis payroll I don't see why your getting so upset

[Sealife 22]

i'm not questioning your mad skills. but it's just that simple: AI walk on a set path indoors no matter what. once they are in indoor mode they will just go through stuff. sad but true. maybe that changed a bit (i doubt it) but in any case furniture proxies would have no impact on AI whatsoever. sure a real object would be nice but it's not possible because of the size of arma. i myself naively thought we could push over anything when i first heard about physX in arma.

things have changed unfortunately and they keep continuing the walk anim in the same spot due to the geo lod, i have tried it with the current models , by setpos the physx and by proxying via a p3d with nothing but a proxy and cfgnonai .

i fully understand your frustration and i agree , however i am only here to offer a meet BIS halfway until they get there full team back from all other projects they operate in these days (punZ) , i think after November 5th we will see major update from dayz and then maybe the animation people and the terrain people will return , i know a lot ofpeople see thing with rosey glasses and shout seperate teams , but we only have to see the interviews this week to understand BIS are putting a business case for the current progress on what we rightly term simple fixes , configs and well this case here .

I will be back about Mid november and see if iam so wrong i should bury my head forever , until then i believe what i have seen and read and thats all i can formulate my opinion on

[fumanwho 10]

you cant see past the furniture anymore...I was talking about other problems people are saying the furniture causes..adding it is easy. now calm yourself..unless your on bis payroll I don't see why your getting so upset

If you can torture people as well you can torture logic. I know a camp in cuba that would give you a job.

[bad benson 1733]

Seriously guys. It's just about "would you like to have furniture ingame?" how can you say no? I don't understand. Sorry. The fact that have them would bring much work to do it's not MINE or YOUR business. That's the developers job.

perfect attitude. what's with all the pseudo dev answers? it's certainly not impossible so stop acting like it is.

it's about balance. just read the latest dev interview about terrain design. you can have huge villages with totally unconvincing perfectly clean and empty houses or you can thin the village out and make them slightly smaller and use the resources for more detailed houses. OR you could use unneeded/even hindering details inside the models for other stuff. it's a choice. i'm still searching for the official PvP game mode or the new indoor AI capabilities that justify those cluttered huge villages. what's the point if they feel dead and empty? lots of those interiors are unused anyways. same goes with underwater terrain. have lots of plains and waste resource on sheer size of terrain but have empty and boring underwater or balance better and have an even distribution of detail.

EDIT:

days (punZ)

genius!

Edited October 20, 2013 by Bad Benson

[katipo66 94]

So change everything to accommodate furnished buildings, great.. They create almost the perfect map for large scale warfare such as required for a game of this magnitude but hey let's change it so we can furnish all the rooms and play cod indoors, in the context of this game it would make no sense to do.

It's not like I'm even caring, if they can have them as an option without loss of performance then great, but it's gotta be believable as the out door aspect of the map, a table chair and couch in every house is not going to cut it, even if you had different variations it's still going to look the same with each house having 2-4 bits of furniture, for what end?

I'd prefer they gave the ability to create different unique firing positions from buildings, the ability to knock holes through walls etc, things that would enhance on gameplay, or more importantly armored interiors.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Katipo66

[bad benson 1733]

So change everything

where did i say that? i made a general statement about even distribution of detail. nice twist of words...

i gave an example how to do it on just the model level several times.

in the context of this game it would make no sense.

yea much like in OA, right? nice logic. you can always argue that optical things are not gameplay things. that's besides the point though.

[CptMacMillan 20]

I just happen to be a 3D modeller myself, and what Bad Benson tells is just wrong, let me elaborate why:

1. So interior modelling, how many objects, what are the proprieties of these objects, their states: if say ... a tank strikes the house, the house falls, what happens to the furniture, get smashed, the you will have to work not in 1 set of meshes, but two. Aside that animation for those meshes, also their textures, more game data that needs to be mounted in the ram, more processor usage as it needs to visualize not only meshes, but textures and also all the engine proprieties like lighting, weather, post processing effects... the more complex a mesh is, the more demanding is for the engine to process (part of the performance drops in ArmA games is due to the pre-load data that goes into each object, whereas is an AI, a player, a static object, it is a value added to the game matrix that handles all these calculations, ergo it creates both loads on the processor and GFX).

2. Resources: normally a dev team for a triple A game like say ... GTA V is composed by maybe around 40 to 60 modellers(who create the meshes, map the textures, animate the objects, etc...). BIS is not as big as 4 Rockstar studios(San Diego, North, and the UK branches) and my estimate is around 30-40 modellers (at best, and this number in itself is an exageration), so you have a team of 40 people to make meshes for objects, vehicles, weapons, water masses, clouds, textures, mappings, animations, etc ...

This group of people would need to create several LODs for each object, since each mesh for different graphical settings means 1 mesh per graphical settings, you will find at least 7 basic meshes, not to mention distance to them, and so on and so forth. Integrating furniture would mean a creation of 3D objects that has all these characteristics.

3. Performance: so you know that a new model means adding all this data to the Processor and the GPU to be processed, imagine adding 5-6 meshes for each house, it will increase the amount of polygons, more textures, more animation, more game data to be loaded to these two, and ArmA III isn't primarily designed for higher end machines, there are also caps and benchmarks they have to reach in order to offer a playable experience for people with lower end PCs. You can make the test yourself, take some of actual furniture that the game editor has and populate a map with them, just create a house with a basic set up with these meshes, then ctrl+c -> ctrl+v in any "house", considering that each town in ArmA has around 40-50 buildings(estimation), add all these objects in a town, enter the town and run benchmarks to actually attest how much performance you lose, even if it is the same object multiplied several times you will find a pretty nasty experience as the game will drop it's frames in favour to load these objects.

From every logical standpoint (specially if you see it as a game planner) you will find that is not worth the effort, the game itself has to deal with more urgent matters (Complementing the weapons-vehicles catalogues would be the first thing, then making all these objects AI usable and add their respective proprieties to them), the team also has hands full in the campaign and additional content that might be planned and developed in the following weeks. It is pretty stupid to give priorities to such trivial objects, while from a planner standpoint you could use such resources to introduce new vehicles, weapons and modules that would be better welcome for the community.

So common sense people, the game is modifiable for a reason, if you want to waste a team's effort into making such a thing, you are free to do it on your own, the devs provided all the tools already, and if it is that easy to implement, why don't you do it yourselves?

BIS has more pressing matters, this BS is just stupid.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Akira_AC

[progamer 14]

Just thinking out loud but, dayz gave us a whole bunch of item models, what about a bunch of furniture models as well?

[bad benson 1733]

1. So interior modelling, how many objects, what are the proprieties of these objects, their states: if say ... a tank strikes the house, the house falls, what happens to the furniture, get smashed, the you will have to work not in 1 set of meshes, but two. Aside that animation for those meshes, also their textures, more game data that needs to be mounted in the ram, more processor usage as it needs to visualize not only meshes, but textures and also all the engine proprieties like lighting, weather, post processing effects... the more complex a mesh is, the more demanding is for the engine to process (part of the performance drops in ArmA games is due to the pre-load data that goes into each object, whereas is an AI, a player, a static object, it is a value added to the game matrix that handles all these calculations, ergo it creates both loads on the processor and GFX).

part of the model or proxy = same resource as a shutter that makes windows unusable for shooting from. balance. same resource applied elsewhere. if a tank strikes the house the furniture gets hidden like the rest of the house with the same hide anim since the facces are part of the same named selection. has been done before. nothing special here.

2. Resources: normally a dev team for a triple A game like say ... GTA V is composed by maybe around 40 to 60 modellers(who create the meshes, map the textures, animate the objects, etc...). BIS is not as big as 4 Rockstar studios(San Diego, North, and the UK branches) and my estimate is around 30-40 modellers (at best, and this number in itself is an exageration), so you have a team of 40 people to make meshes for objects, vehicles, weapons, water masses, clouds, textures, mappings, animations, etc ...

nice speculations. interesting. the effort is still minimal even if it was just one modeller. make like 5 furniture models ONCE. place proxies in each future house.

3. Performance: so you know that a new model means adding all this data to the Processor and the GPU to be processed, imagine adding 5-6 meshes for each house, it will increase the amount of polygons, more textures, more animation, more game data to be loaded to these two, and ArmA III isn't primarily designed for higher end machines, there are also caps and benchmarks they have to reach in order to offer a playable experience for people with lower end PCs. You can make the test yourself, take some of actual furniture that the game editor has and populate a map with them, just create a house with a basic set up with these meshes, then ctrl+c -> ctrl+v in any "house", considering that each town in ArmA has around 40-50 buildings(estimation), add all these objects in a town, enter the town and run benchmarks to actually attest how much performance you lose, even if it is the same object multiplied several times you will find a pretty nasty experience as the game will drop it's frames in favour to load these objects.

ok. you opbviously didn't read "what Bad Benson tells"...doors and small part of buildings are already separate sections.

You can make the test yourself, take some of actual furniture that the game editor has and populate a map with them.

talking out your ass much? read the thread again! it's all there.

So common sense people, the game is modifiable for a reason, if you want to waste a team's effort into making such a thing, you are free to do it on your own, the devs provided all the tools already, and if it is that easy to implement, so why don't you do it yourselves?

wrong again. yes there are some good arguments from the other side. your post has none of them though.

BIS has more pressing matters, this BS is just stupid.

no one said make furniture now and don't make anything else and make it highest priority. so yea this BS is indeed stupid. this is getting silly. i'm done here.

[froggyluv 2130]

I would have liked furniture myself as I tend to primarily enjoy indoor or cqb combat but I see and respect Akira_AC's points. The thing that bothers me more than the lack of furniture are games in which all objects are merely static statues that show no destruction effects. I remember the early R6 games giving us these glorious locales only to have them exist in a different dimension juxtapositioned over ours in which bullets and grenades wouldn't harm a hair on stained glass windows or anything really. I also can't think of too many games that treat furniture as real, moveable, destructible objects in which AI could navigate well except maybe the Oblivion ones..? But that was generally a couple AI's at a time and they couldn't really do anything remotely interesting such as archers leaning out from windows or assassins ambushing from corners. Speaking of which, I'd like to have more interiors that the AI can actually use such as the airport terminal even if it meant less enterable houses as for how it is now -they're clueless to inside corners, windows, doors etc...

On a happy note -I'm still stoked everytime glass shatters in A3 ;)

[CptMacMillan 20]

Bad Benson ... you clearly have no idea how the Real Virtuality Engine works; is not like Frosbite or Source or the Cry engine.

So do yourself a favour and and play the game, figure out how it actually works, check out the tools and then maybe ... you can work on the furniture yourself!

[bad benson 1733]

Bad Benson ... you clearly have no idea how the Real Virtuality Engine works; is not like Frosbite or Source or the Cry engine.

So do yourself a favour and and play the game, figure out how it actually works, check out the tools and then maybe ... you can work on the furniture yourself!

more than you it seems though. so how much value does anything you say have really? you are just so ignorant that it hurts. i respect arguments. what i don't respect is some random dude coming along "listen i'm a 3d modeller" and then stating nonsense at a rate of fire of an mg42. check your sources bro and don't bother me pls. benson out!