Blastcore: Phoenix 2

[spyderblack723 407]

There is something about different people's computers or set up which produces different results. An update or 2 ago, I use to get smoke grenades look like a checker board while flying through the air and the first 5 seconds on the ground- yet while I saw a few people bring it up, other people said it was not happening. Then when the update came along and fixed it for me, I saw other people start describing similar problems.

Checkerboard smoke was due to an unfinished particle effect, should have been the exact same on everyone's end.

[alky_lee 276]

I can confirm the issue with the smoke grenades

In the last update, smoke was reverted because of the issue of AI being able to see while the player can't.

[Moon_chilD 200]

Well i don't know about you guys but BC2 is pretty much broken entirely.

The smoke doesn't work at all now. And the flaring and halo rings around lit objects at night is insane and basically unplayable. Go ahead check it out for yourself, make your map night time and throw a flare the halo rings around the flare will make it impossible to see. Same goes for most other light forms at night.

Jopp, for me BC is out of my game now, too. The smoke not really works at all. (All I can see is a VERY small area covered by smoke!)

I'm nobody who really likes hating and I will not but I think its just sad, OS is not really saying anything. I can see he is p*ssed as f*** and I'd understand if he stops working on BC but I'd like to HEAR that he will not. -,-

I don't say he has an obligation to do it, I just say he should do it!

[soulis6 24]

I'm only seeing smoke grenades that look messed up, is there a way to just disable those only? Everything else still looks great, and i'd really like use blastcore still, been a must have addon for me and my group for as long as it's existed.

[f3ckb9ll 10]

I can confirm the issue with the smoke grenades but other than that the smoke of burning vehicles looks like this for me:

http://i.imgur.com/Mv3ATUM.jpg (127 kB)

Which seems fine to me honestly :P

yup issue was fixed for me , asa i've re'installed bc ;)

[Zabuza 63]

Hey guys, does anyone of you have an older version of BC where the smoke of the smoke grenades spreaded all around the place instead of being such small? The best would be the newest version where it worked.

The problem is in the SmokeCS.pbo (you can leave that pbo out to have full BC but with vanilla smoke grenades). Probably we need only a few changes here:

 

 

I'd like to diff the problematic files to see what needs to be changed.

 

Greets

[Zabuza 63]

Here are some changements to get the smoke grenades going again:

 

Diff-Snippet from SmokeCS/config.cpp:

http://pastebin.com/nhrG5LP6

(original values in comments)

 

Result:

[owmyeye 14]

Here are some changements to get the smoke grenades going again:

 

Diff-Snippet from SmokeCS/config.cpp:

http://pastebin.com/nhrG5LP6

(original values in comments)

 

Result:

[]

 

Looks good, but... will the AI 'see' it? Or will they shoot straight through like it's not there?

[Zabuza 63]

I leaved that part as it was before in BC: "blockAIVisibility=1;"

So if ArmA-engine keeps its promises it will block AI visibility (if it runs on the server I think).

[Moon_chilD 200]

Great Zabuza that so great of you, that you want to take over the fiying. Looking forward for a fix!

[artisanal 22]

Dude, I hope you asked for permission to sniffle around and introduce modifications. Remember what happened to HopeJohnson.

[singleton 22]

Dude, I hope you asked for permission to sniffle around and introduce modifications. Remember what happened to HopeJohnson.

Being that OS said he was leaving for good and this mod is broken, there shouldn't be an issue offering a fix. He can easily make it a config if need be.

[ruPal 143]

Being that OS said he was leaving for good and this mod is broken, there shouldn't be an issue offering a fix. He can easily make it a config if need be.

Check license agreement before posting.

[serjames 357]

Being that OS said he was leaving for good and this mod is broken, there shouldn't be an issue offering a fix. He can easily make it a config if need be.

As long as it's only a config that runs secondary to the original it's ok. If it tweaks or modifies the original files, that would be a breach of the "rules"

 

Can someone confirm "blockAIVisibility=1;" actually does work..... ?

[Bamse 223]

I know what the forum rules itself states, but where are the mod-specific license? I could swear it was in the first post earlier this year?

Can't find anything on Armaholic or in the archive itself either :/

 

All I mean is that In situations like this when licenses is being talked about it's so much easier just referring to that.

[artisanal 22]

I dunno, the arma community as a group can be pretty unfair and cruel sometimes. Just giving a heads up.

[Bamse 223]

Can someone confirm "blockAIVisibility=1;" actually does work..... ?

 

Official documentation on particle effects states that the correct usage is "blockAIVisibility = true;" How are booleans treated in configs compared to scripting/sqf?

[ruPal 143]

I know what the forum rules itself states, but where are the mod-specific license? I could swear it was in the first post earlier this year?

Can't find anything on Armaholic or in the archive itself either :/

 

All I mean is that In situations like this when licenses is being talked about it's so much easier just referring to that.

Yes, I asked for that kind of situations in specific thread (cannot find it too). Most of the participants of thread told me that it is illegal to edit mods without author permission.

[ElectroEsper 14]

Thanks for the fix, works perfectly  :D

[dunedain 48]

Being that OS said he was leaving for good and this mod is broken, there shouldn't be an issue offering a fix. He can easily make it a config if need be.

 

Last time it had been broken for over six months without any news from opticalsnare. Some guy went ahead and fixed the mod for everyone, and got the door slammed in his face pretty hard for it. The irony here is that HJohnson has been offline for over a month too and hasn't been updating his patch for Blastcore which you can find on the workshop under the name HopeCore. Anyway unless BiS provides proper particle system tools I don't think its worth the pain. Blastcore reaches way too fast the particle limit of the engine and has a definite impact on performance. On Arma2, WarFx was a must have with JTD F&S especially on Takistan it really did wonders. On Arma3, I stick to the vanilla effect.

[owmyeye 14]

Last time it had been broken for over six months without any news from opticalsnare. Some guy went ahead and fixed the mod for everyone, and got the door slammed in his face pretty hard for it. The irony here is that HJohnson has been offline for over a month too and hasn't been updating his patch for Blastcore which you can find on the workshop under the name HopeCore. Anyway unless BiS provides proper particle system tools I don't think its worth the pain. Blastcore reaches way too fast the particle limit of the engine and has a definite impact on performance. On Arma2, WarFx was a must have with JTD F&S especially on Takistan it really did wonders. On Arma3, I stick to the vanilla effect.

Yeah that's true, but from my impression of things, the biggest 'crime' HJohnson made was to release his work in a way that implied it as all his. He didn't call it "A Blastcore (by Optical Snare) fix", instead he called it "HopeCore", which could lead users to believe it was his mod, not a tweak of someone else's work.

So,  Point 1) Don't release it as a new mod under your own name

Point 2) You may not be able to release it as a mod either way- but I can't see why you can't distribute a 'mod mod' (which comes separately from Blastcore, so people know they are getting that first and foremost, and your tweak as a secondary), or as instructions on how to tweak Blastcore.

 

Just completely avoid misleading people into thinking it's a new mod or your own work, but other than that, go ahead and tell the world how Blastcore can be tweaked (like you already have done here).

[CyclonicTuna 87]

Last time it had been broken for over six months without any news from opticalsnare. Some guy went ahead and fixed the mod for everyone, and got the door slammed in his face pretty hard for it. The irony here is that HJohnson has been offline for over a month too and hasn't been updating his patch for Blastcore which you can find on the workshop under the name HopeCore. Anyway unless BiS provides proper particle system tools I don't think its worth the pain. Blastcore reaches way too fast the particle limit of the engine and has a definite impact on performance. On Arma2, WarFx was a must have with JTD F&S especially on Takistan it really did wonders. On Arma3, I stick to the vanilla effect.

 

The problem was that Hope Johnson initially didn't present it as a patch to Blastcore but as a standalone mod of his own work, I mean he called it "Hopecore" for christ sake, while clearly the content was stolen. Only later after an enormous feud with OS and his supporters and being banned from the forums did he change the discription as being "a patch to Blastcore", but he has still never really apologized or asked OS for his permission to use and modify his code. 

What people need to realize is that pretty much any type of modding is supported by BI for Arma 3 with the exception of war FX. For some reason there has never been an easy way to create custom FX for Arma which is evidence by the fact that OS has been the only person in the 16 years that BI has been making military games, to ever take it upon himself to create a dedicated FX mod. You can implement your own models, game code, animations etc without much of a problem if you know what you're doing. But creating custom FX for Arma is bascially just a huge pain in the ass. And it doesn't help that BI pretty much breaks Blastcore with every new update. 

Having said that its quite remarkible that OS has managed to keep it alive and running for this long, and what you need to understand is that Blastcore was never intended to be for everyone. With that I mean that you need some serious hardware to get the full experience, yes its hard on your frames but if you're already barely scratching 30fps without Blastcore, that is just isn't for you. Not unless you get an upgrade. 

I just hope that BI sees the popularity of Blastcore, sees how much people love it and finally decide to get their heads out of their asses and replace to laughable vanilla effects at some point. 

[wantafanta 13]

wait wouldnt you use blockAiVisibility = 0; ? or do i have it backwards here? (0 = true in some programming languages)

[hoizen 18]

wait wouldnt you use blockAiVisibility = 0; ? or do i have it backwards here? (0 = true in some programming languages)

 

What kinda languages are you using? :P 

 

As long as it's only a config that runs secondary to the original it's ok. If it tweaks or modifies the original files, that would be a breach of the "rules"

 

Can someone confirm "blockAIVisibility=1;" actually does work..... ?

 

 

I leaved that part as it was before in BC: "blockAIVisibility=1;"

So if ArmA-engine keeps its promises it will block AI visibility (if it runs on the server I think).

(Preface: this whole multi-quote button is cool)

I've done a very rough test of how well the AI in my editor preview were blocked by blastcore smoke with the following mods:

-Blast Core Phoenix w/ Zabuza Fix

-ACE

-RHS

-AiATP

-Kunduz

-Hypnomatic's projectile tracing

I did not test with vanilla because frankly, It is irrelevant to me how well it works without ACE and RHS. 

Tested on AIATP Utes, Altis, and Kunduz.

From the looks of things, AI has a rather difficult time giving a hoot about smoke on Utes and possibly other AiATP Maps. 

 

As for Altis, the view block seems to have been on and off. There was Definite lack of shooting me in the face when I smoked the clearing around the Altis terminal. However with what I assume was slight clearings in the smoke, the AI continued to put accurate shots on me. 

For Kunduz, again a Definite lack of simulated face destruction via bullets with smokes. However, they seem to ignore smoke during their target acquisition stage and then go "oh wait, there's smoke there." as if realizing they aren't supposed to be shooting through it. I think a similar test but with a HC server would result in good info to see if it has something to do with calculation times.

I conclude with "Does BC smoke block AI view?:" 

Yes with a trailing (?)

[serjames 357]

So your research (good job BTW!) suggests there is a difference dependant on Map (?!)