Ashes of Altis - Upcoming ArmA3 Multiplayer Modification

[JOHNBELLO 3]

So, back when ArmA3 released it's first alpha build we were already extremely hyped. Everyone was playing DayZ, Wasteland and ArmA in general got a huge amount of attention, and then this gorgeous game, ArmA3 was released to the public and just blew everyone away.

We played tons of missions and different versions of all kinds of mod's for arma2 back then but were kind of disappointed that it took so long for people to come up with something new (and working) in ArmA3, and that's when we decided to create our own project.

Starting as a mere mission under the name of 'Operation Blue' (we soon found out calling it that would be kind of weird, especially since we're from germany) we advanced and started to convert the project into a real modification that would give us way more control over the game, would let us allow adding of extrenal content and just creating our vision of a persistent multiplayer warfare sandbox.

The game is not done yet, and we still have a lot of work in front of us but today we finished the basic parts on our website and decided to go public with our project in order to look for additional developers and asset creators that support our idea and would like to join the project.

Just to avoid misunderstandings, we do not just have a website. We worked on this mod basically since ArmA3 released it's first alpha, and while we have most of the advertised features already working we still want to improve and polish them to a maximum and also add more features, and that is why we'd like some help if anyone's interested.

We are looking for additional developers!

If you have the time and know your way around in ArmA Script contact us either here per PM or send us an E-Mail!

The modification is called 'Ashes of Altis', it's plot might seem familiar since we kind of built upon ArmA3's main campaign factions and the war between them. A list of features contains a variety of things, such as:

• Persistency
  
• Multi Server Hive System
  
• Dynamic Groups Systems (Ingame)
  
• Dynamic Missions
  
• RPG Like Progression
  
• Survival (Food, Health)
  
• Economy
  
• Leaderboards and Rankings tied into our website aswell as Player Statisitics and Character Statuses
  

EDIT: Added Pictures and Informations!

All of these pictures are work in progress and will most likely change in appearance once we reach the phase of polishing!

http://i.imgur.com/jYOLrpT.png

Status Hud - Showing hunger, thirst, overall medical condition, money and current rank.

http://i.imgur.com/APx35zj.jpg

Inventory Items - Food, medical and potential mission items. Mission items will be used in dynamic missions.

http://i.imgur.com/njRjxLf.jpg

Mission Log - Simple tracking of currently running missions and their descriptions.

http://i.imgur.com/13xq9xf.jpg

Player Status Menu - Overview of specific healt statuses, eat and drink specific food from your inventory, apply medical items to specific body parts to heal them (different items have different effects etc.)

http://i.imgur.com/l9zV0ca.jpg

Group Managment - See you current faction, stats and ranks, playerlists and additional informations.

http://i.imgur.com/3tLpDHz.png

Stream Friendly UI Changes - While arma3 features an unbuilt stream friendly feature we had to build something since we're using a custom group management that's not controlled by ArmA3's forces/sides. We added military callsigns (WW2) that will be attached to players in your group and consist of 2 parts (e.g. Able-Baker) This allows streamers to use the group managment without covering up parts of their screen.

Informations

I'd like to share some basic informations about the game, features that are already working and what is planned for the future.

So far we have working:

• Working loot spawns all around the map (think like DayZ, a bit less scarce, weapons wise)
  
• Hive Features and Database savings of player stats and posessions aswell as group settings, member and their stats.
  
• Create your own custom group with your own color, own logo and name (we will allow players to add their own logos over our website that will be put into the game on updates)
  
• There are 2 Public factions - CSAT and NATO. If you're playing alone and want to form an easy group join these teams and group up easily with other players. You are not forced to join or create a group, you can lonewolf if you want to.
  
• Vehicle Spawns around the map
  
• Basic Mission Framework - Simple missions such as capture vehicles, capture bases etc.
  
• Doors make sounds on open/close (minor feature but big impact!)
  
• ... and way more!
  

We're actively working on: (rough list)

• Capture cities and areas to provide spawn locations for fallen players and other benefits (shops, build material)
  
• Dynamic Missions - Every faction will be involved, mission types like "capture and hold point x to allow your faction benefit y" and more.
  
• Spawn options (paradrop, truckstop etc.)
  
• Economy parts - well and buy weapons from arms dealers (they will tie in to mission etc.)
  
• Skill systems - receive passive bonuses like less food consumption, cheaper prices, usability of special items and more.
  
• Radio Features (enable paradrop on teammates location if requirements are met, like in range of owned radio station)
  
• Melee weaponary
  
• ... and more!
  

We're going to add external script's and mod's:

• We will add the known build mechanics that are available in games like Wasteland or some DayZ mods. You'll be able to save building and lock them on a server (not hived) and keep them through restarts. You'll have to re-lock them in order to keep them again.
  
• Custom weapons, vehicles, uniforms etc. (what's available)
  
• Sound addons (ACRE, JSRS (if available and wanted))
  
• Chernarus and other maps! (Yes, we plan on adding a chernarus version and other maps if wanted)
  
• 
  

If you'd like to read more about Ashes of Altis or just stay updated on our mod feel free to visit our website at www.ashes-of-altis.com, our subreddit at /r/AshesOfAltis or just follow us on twitter @AshesOfAltis.

If there are any questions, feel free to ask them here, privately or in our own subreddit. Whatver you like.

Thanks for reading!

Edited March 29, 2014 by JOHNBELLO
Added information

[disco.modder 116]

Is this something like DayZ without the Zeds? Do you have any concepts to show off - images or gameplay vids?

Sounds interesting.

[JOHNBELLO 3]

I'll update the post later today with some screenshots of our player menu. EDIT: Content pictures will be delayed a bit but i'll deliver as soon as possible! Since we haven't really had some kind of a bigger scale testing (only like 5 people) we don't have any real footage to show off yet. But as soon as it comes to that we'll deliver that content footage. I know that it is pretty boring just to talk about something instead of showing it, but like i said we're still in development, that means no real polishing done yet..

And yes, the idea was to take some of the system elements of DayZ (Loot, Persistency, Hive Servers) and to combine them with the gameplay of a more war orientated game like Wasteland (Missions, Base building, 2 Big "Public" Factions and the possibility to create your own private ones, independent style, Vehicular warfare etc.) - additionally this is going to be tied into a website to show off stats and things like that (group management etc.)

And yes, no zombies. Not that we don't like zombies, but there are enough games with DayZ SA and their ArmA3 ripoff-counterparts already.

Edited March 22, 2014 by JOHNBELLO

[theevancat 277]

I can into warlordism now? Cool.

[giorgygr 61]

I really like the general idea.

I hope it will be "as-light-as-possible" performance wise.

Good luck

[JOHNBELLO 3]

Updated the firstpost with additional informations and screenshots!

Keep in mind that this is a work in progress and most of the menus etc. are function only at the moment, so there is no fancy graphics etc.

Feel free to ask if you have any questions!

[Alpha-Kilo 36]

This project sounds very ambitious and I wish you the best of luck with it. I'll follow this thread with interest.

[Blackout 10]

How will you handle uniforms?

since I believe currently the system is the uniform is connected to a side because of the connection to a soldier.

doesn't this create issues?

Main problems I can think of are: players not being able to pick up his uniform, or the player killing a vehicle and then getting team kills because of it

Radio Features (enable paradrop on teammates location if requirements are met, like in range of owned radio station)

Why not use Taskforce radio together with Warpad GUI and Radiotowers?

This should create for far more interesting gameplay.

and the last question how will you handle camping behaviour around arms dealer?

It has alot of potentional, and would love to see how it turns out.

[haleks 8212]

How will you handle uniforms?

since I believe currently the system is the uniform is connected to a side because of the connection to a soldier.

doesn't this create issues?

There's actually multiple ways to work around that - I trust these guys already found a solution of their own. ;)

[JOHNBELLO 3]

How will you handle uniforms?

since I believe currently the system is the uniform is connected to a side because of the connection to a soldier.

doesn't this create issues?

Main problems I can think of are: players not being able to pick up his uniform, or the player killing a vehicle and then getting team kills because of it

Why not use Taskforce radio together with Warpad GUI and Radiotowers?

This should create for far more interesting gameplay.

and the last question how will you handle camping behaviour around arms dealer?

It has alot of potentional, and would love to see how it turns out.

The uniform thing is not a problem, we already worked around that. ;) Team kills are also not a problem since we're using a scripted group system and not the arma sides to put players in teams. Besides that we're going to use a custom "scoreboard" to track kills and stats and no kill messages to increase the "realism" (not knowing if your enemy is dead until you got there and "confirmed" him).

About the radio things - we might think about these. Funny thing, this is kinda the idea we had from the beginning for the long run. We wanted to do some kind of smartphone/smartpad thing of player menu where you'd be able to bank your money and things like that. Also that if you're in range of a radio tower you would have "internet access" and that would allow your gps to work -> mates can paradrop on your location. You could find prepaid sim cards to allow x paradrops anywhere... But we kind of were struggling with the logic having a smartphone or pad in a warzone etc.. I don't know, we might come back to that.

Camping around arms dealers.. we'll think about something. :)

[giorgygr 61]

Camping around arms dealers.. we'll think about something. :)

I hope you ll end up using each factions main base for ANY transactions between player & equipment.

I cannot think any other way without tons of grieving/trolling/exploit by *various players

[JOHNBELLO 3]

That's one solution we were thinking about. This will most likely be the case, to have arms dealers in your bases (and you'll improve them or change their stock if you're winning specific missions) Additionally, another one was inspired by the game Jagged Alliance 2. Again with the smartphone/pad thing the idea would be to have some kind of "online order system". You pay additionally for a paradrop or you need something to allow the use in your area (big area to make it dangerous) or you choose one of the airports around altis and find your things somewhere there.

We also thought about dynamic armsdealers that kinda like a mission just pop up and stay at place x for like 10 minutes.

I think we're covered in the end when it comes to armsdealers and ways to minimize camping/griefing. But nice to see ideas popping up, keem them coming ;)

[almanzo 144]

I don't think this is something for me... However, I chose to comment on this only to say one thing!

We played tons of missions and different versions of all kinds of mod's for arma2 back then but were kind of disappointed that it took so long for people to come up with something new (and working) in ArmA3, and that's when we decided to create our own project.

What a great attitude. I like how people want something, and instead of requesting it or complaining to other modmakers, they start doing it them selves. So I only replied to this thread to say thank you for being awesome. I'll check it out once it's been released, but as I said I don't think it's my kind of play. However, it's quite obvious that alot of people will be interested in this. Good luck to you, I hope you'll be sucessfull! It's quite an ambitious project!

[JOHNBELLO 3]

Thank you very much! :)

[JOHNBELLO 3]

I'd like to kinda push this thread to "remind" of the main reason for us going public with our project - since i basically just found out that i kinda forgot to point it out more or to mark it better as our main need right now in the firstpost.

Since we are a very, very small team right now and our main coder is pretty busy with his real work at the moment, we're in desperate need of additional developers, code wise, that would like to join the project to keep progress going and basically improve the workflow.

We're looking for someone that is able and knows what he's doing. Additionally people with knowledge of custom animations and modeling for ArmA3 would be cool aswell since that would allow us to customize the game even more with, well custom animations and models. (simple stuff, not expecting professional modelers or anything like that)

If you're interested you can simply PM me here, visit our website at http://www.ashes-of-altis.com and use the contact information you'll find there or just directly email us.

Thanks!

[JOHNBELLO 3]

I don't know if this is allowed or not, but it is kinda hard to find people so i have to push this thread again to make people that might not have seen it aware of that we're still looking for ArmA3 coders to join our project!

(Is there any place better suited for this?)

[R0adki11 3949]

I don't know if this is allowed or not, but it is kinda hard to find people so i have to push this thread again to make people that might not have seen it aware of that we're still looking for ArmA3 coders to join our project!

(Is there any place better suited for this?)

Perhaps the Editing Section of the forums.

[theevancat 277]

Perhaps I might be able to hone some skills with simple object models.

[JOHNBELLO 3]

A small bump to this project, we recently posted a newspost on our website -> http://www.ashes-of-altis.com/news/

Just clarifying that we're still alive and working on the project but having some time issues due to work and other stuff.

And we're still looking for experienced scripters/coders that would like to join the project!