ArmA 3 Review (Critical)

[Polymath820 11]

Note: Sorry about the other thread not so objective more a critical review.

ArmA 3 from a critical standpoint. Although ArmA 3 is a good game, with excellent graphical fidelity and unique characteristics not seen in many games, such as being able to command units yet it can be improved.

Environmental experience.

ArmA 3 has some details that are quite obvious when it comes to "destroying the immersion feel" for example the lightning in ArmA 3 and the thunder a simple improvement to the game would be to add thunder claps with a random loud-ness value set in a min-max sort of system and on the fly processed pitch. I would find ArmA 3 much more enjoyable if I am sitting on top of a hill with a sniper and a flash of lightning above me and then a loud bang, making me jump out of my seat. Would definitely add a "adrenaline" rush feel normally associated with high speed action games such as battlefield 4. Although after a while the "rush wears off" in those action games and becomes a rinse and repeat system.

Mission development and Editor Fidelity.

ArmA 3 has a very dynamic mission editor making missions very interesting but ArmA 3 lacks a certain "flow" by this I mean controlling events or cinematic experiences is a pure nightmare. From my own experience telling AI to go inside a building and wait there, they fail to do even the simplest tasks of cinematic experiences, such as a scene such as bohemias opening camera-scene where you are in the helicopter flying towards base.

ArmA 3 also lacks non-physical mission design tools. Such as "plan-design etc". You even have a blatantly obvious problem where if you place down a trigger set to activate on blufors presence the trigger has delay (search delay) where it attempts to check if the condition is true or false and proceed with the activation of the trigger. Additionally Synchronizing objects is a nightmare when you get into very complex mission design with synchronizing objects for activation or units it's a spider-web of mess. Much like what bohemia was suffering when they had their animation states diagram.

You could quite easily fix this issue by adding in a "first and last" synchronization tree when you have the module synchronized and the units synchronized in a tree view and group them together into sort of "virtual call signs" so you could group an entire AI,buildings etc, into that group making it micro-manageable.

Scripting in ArmA 3 is also a nightmare I am the sort of person that gets "caught up" in the details, when I started scripting I couldn't handle un-optimised missions so I went looking into how to optimise little did I find an article last updated in.

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Code_Optimisation

Ok it tells you what is faster, but it does not tell you the "reasons it is faster". I also pursued the idea of compiled vs non-compiled vs pre-compiled functions and trying to get them to work as planned not exactly easy, when sure you have functions on the wiki, but has anyone actually ever looked at how dis-organized the wiki is? It's worse than reading mandarin while hanging upside down. Not to mention debugging is hell in ArmA 3's .sqf it could be so much better if a simple text-editor / parser was introduced into ArmA 3 even an IDE would be better and clear documentation of every single piece of scripting would be nice as well .SQF lacks a lot of the comprehensive documentation found in C++, Java or Python, Ruby etc. Yes steps have been started to improve this done by Karel Moricky but more needs to be done a lot more.

Zeus DLC.

Zeus is a nice touch but the dungeon master idea, needs serious refinement, maintaining a Zeus mission is hard, very hard. The lack of an ability to create a "pre-created" or pre-stored array of objects (custom objects) makes the design of Zeus missions difficult for example I made a mission in Zeus was a Transformer node destruction mission that would cause a power overload at a enemy transmitter tower a nice touch to this would have been when transformers synch'd to a (destroyed condition was true) it would have activated an "electrical sparking sounding and particle effect at the top of the radio-transmitter and small fire-effect inside the transmitters control boxes there needs to be more "informational zeus components as well" briefing is in sufficient Zeus also needs to be able to see the "players objectives have been activated or de-activated maybe show by "Green text on Objective Module (completed)" Red-text ("Failed") Yellow ("Cancelled") and Assigned "Grey" standard colour. Thats in the Zeus interface only makes for paying attention to whats active and whats not much easier.

There is also a lack of "triggers" which could automate everything by which when a "destroy condition becomes true on a synchronized object" it activates the next object and so on, automating a lot of hard-work instead of "Zeus having the maintain the entire mission" Zeus is a step in the right direction I also know that ArmA 3 also had a 3D map-editor although incomplete, which has an interface that appears to date back to "Arma 2 era" Maybe it was a prototype experiment but I don't know.

Artificial Intelligence.

ArmA 3 uses FSM based AI which is more like an expert system, than an artificial intelligence. AI which are attempting to execute a command seem to repeatedly fail to find their way around objects effectively, making them walk right around a vehicle you told them to get in and then randomly stop as if their FSM just "froze", and at other times the AI walk around as if they are "bump-bots" with random error correction procedures. AI also do some other pretty stupid things, such as when I am in the commander seat of a tank and say "target that Tank at 230*" The AI attempts to track the tank and fails to do so resulting in me being blown to bits, when I even explicitly state "target" and ~+3+3 -> Fire.

Could bohemia not use Neural-network based AI, to work out where it is going around obstacles and then use FSM's for more "static-based" responses?

There is an even more blindly annoying issue with AI take a few jets set them into a specific formation e.g a simple V-configuration watch what they do, they fail even if you stay on a straight movement, to get into a V-formation correctly and quite often crash into each other, which further causes pain for their recalculation having to compensate when one AI goes down changing formation and moving closer together or further. Now I remember in a lot of games I played as a kid particular aircraft ones and even Star-lancer epic game, the AI did form formations seamlessly, they would also respond to your targeting commands etc as well. So how can a game made by Microsoft from what 2001 or so, be able to form formation so easily and is a 3d game, and ArmA 3 can't even do that in flight?

Graphics and Fidelity.

ArmA 3's Graphics are absolutely beautiful amazing and down-right epic. But there is a few very glaring problems. For example ArmA 3 does not like deferred CSAA (Coverage Sample Anti-aliasing) X8 Anti-aliasing it appears to make things worse and more jagged, ArmA 3 also has quite a few problems with shadows,trees and other non-linear objects, where it calculates the light coming through trees but for some odd reason even on ultra, does not get rid of the slight pixelation so compare this to for example CryEngines (Crysis 2) and look at the trees, they trace the outline of the leaves perfectly, abeit the movement / animation of the trees themselves is a bit fast for "realistic standards" they successfully do this, without a hassle, although most people wouldn't notice it while running around is that a cause for, erroneous light-tracing of objects? Just because people wouldn't notice it? Another question, although I know a lot of games do this, to improve performance but paper-cutout card-board bushes are just depressing again CryEngine / Crysis 2 is able to create (more dynamic) independent model movement compared with arma 3, it also have a much more dynamic destruction engine. Making buildings just reduce to a basic-model is really cutting back on the realism, and Crysis 2 also had a unique capability which "battlefield 4" appeared to rip-off, interactive environmental components such as switching the lights off kicking a car, breakable windows, destructible, pretty much everything. And PhysX is supposed to be an innovation? I find it hard to believe, and PhysX supports liquid simulation acceleration? Did Bohemia utilise this in the maps liquid e.g (sea)? Rain, lacks GPGPU where by you see progressive water form in places over-time this is expressed in CryEngine 4.0

There is a lot of questions that need to be asked of Bohemia.

If you would like to know more about game AI programming please refer to:

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/designing-artificial-intelligence-for-games-part-1

If you would like to know more about CryEngine 4.0 please refer to:

If you would like to know more about Coverage Sample Anti-aliasing please goto:

Foreword: Coverage Anti-aliasing is faster than MSAA

http://www.nvidia.com/object/coverage-sampled-aa.html

P.S: Maybe Bohemia should do a joint effort with CryEngine and Virtuality 4.0 come up with a new engine.

Edited April 14, 2014 by Polymath820
Additional

[roshnak 41]

P.S: Maybe Bohemia should do a joint effort with CryEngine and Virtuality 4.0 come up with a new engine.

Without reading anything else, this isn't going to happen. I'm sure that Crytek would be more than happy to license their engine to anyone willing to pay for it, but they aren't going to team up with another developer to help them make a new engine.

Also, it's best not to mention other game engines on these forums, since it usually creates a huge pointless argument.

[Sneakson 1]

Wow, this was the most objective thing I ever saw... ;)

Aren't Crytek already working on their own advanced military simulator? So I doubt they're interested in joining up with BIS.

It would be nice if BIS could team up with some other simulator team like DCS though, but that's dreaming.

When it comes to game editors I'm always saying the same thing: just look at StarEdit. I could create missions in that thing when I was like 10, not being native English.

I agree the AI is bad at doing even the most basic things.

Graphics are great aside from mid-range textures and naturally all the glitches. Especially good when flying.

[13islucky 10]

Just an FYI about that Crytek sim: (No money+ small maps+ bad performance= no contract)= no money. Nice graphics=/= great simulator, even if it helps with immersion.

[ratszo 17]

Shilling for Crytek, really?

This is not a review; it's a proposition --biased, with an agenda.

[Fushko 59]

Agreed with most points, especially graphics. Arma 3 looks very good at first, but the more you play the more you notice the graphical issues that distract you and draw away from immersion.

e.g. blurry midrange textures, lod flickering, short shadow distance, no terrain self-shadowing, use of low-res stencil shadows, no light occlusion/dynamic shadows from light sources (except from the sun and moon), and the list goes on and on. Arma 3 uses D3D11, but there are very few features of this API implemented into the game.

[Sandy* 10]

Wow, this was the most objective thing I ever saw... ;)

Aren't Crytek already working on their own advanced military simulator? So I doubt they're interested in joining up with BIS.

No they aren't. A 3rd party firm licensed CryEngine for use in their military simulator for the US Army. That's competition for VBS & BI Simulations, not Arma.

It would be nice if BIS could team up with some other simulator team like DCS though, but that's dreaming.

DCS-level flight simulation would be a joke in Arma due to the engine limitations (maps too small, terrible draw distances for flying, bad performance with a large amount of units etc), while Arma-level graphics and gameplay on the ground in DCS is probably quite a pipe-dream. Afaik Eagle Dynamics are looking into simulating ground vehicles as well, but I'd expect this to happen with their current engine so the graphics fidelity would be closer to something like Steel Beasts.

As for the OP, you sound like yet another CryEngine supporter whose arguments mostly consist of CryEngine looking shiny and working well for a bunch of mainstream shooters. There's no denying that the RV engine has reached a critical state with Arma 3, being filled with stuff that should have been rewritten/redesigned/replaced not just in Arma 3 but years before in the earlier games. However, throwing RV out and replacing it with an engine that has no track record of games within this scope could just lead to BI digging themselves much deeper in the ground than they are now. A3 had a troubled development, and had they replaced the engine as well we probably wouldn't just be suffering from the lack of content and new/redesigned features today but also the lack of some features and gameplay elements that have always been present since OFP.

Most importantly, Arma is a niche title. It's not an AAA game designed for maximum sales and neither does it have a budget of one - graphics will never be on par with such. There's a ton of things that need fixing in the RV engine, and your fancy anti-aliasing and water effects don't really make it to the list at this point.

[Sneakson 1]

No they aren't. A 3rd party firm licensed CryEngine for use in their military simulator for the US Army. That's competition for VBS & BI Simulations, not Arma.

DCS-level flight simulation would be a joke in Arma due to the engine limitations (maps too small, terrible draw distances for flying, bad performance with a large amount of units etc), while Arma-level graphics and gameplay on the ground in DCS is probably quite a pipe-dream. Afaik Eagle Dynamics are looking into simulating ground vehicles as well, but I'd expect this to happen with their current engine so the graphics fidelity would be closer to something like Steel Beasts.

As for the OP, you sound like yet another CryEngine supporter whose arguments mostly consist of CryEngine looking shiny and working well for a bunch of mainstream shooters. There's no denying that the RV engine has reached a critical state with Arma 3, being filled with stuff that should have been rewritten/redesigned/replaced not just in Arma 3 but years before in the earlier games. However, throwing RV out and replacing it with an engine that has no track record of games within this scope could just lead to BI digging themselves much deeper in the ground than they are now. A3 had a troubled development, and had they replaced the engine as well we probably wouldn't just be suffering from the lack of content and new/redesigned features today but also the lack of some features and gameplay elements that have always been present since OFP.

Most importantly, Arma is a niche title. It's not an AAA game designed for maximum sales and neither does it have a budget of one - graphics will never be on par with such. There's a ton of things that need fixing in the RV engine, and your fancy anti-aliasing and water effects don't really make it to the list at this point.

Well if BIS and the DCS team joined up they could make a game that's somewhere in between in terms of scale and detail. DCS basically has three polygon mountains while in ARMA3 you can't even see the ground flying at the altitudes you would use in DCS.

But as I said it's only a fantasy.

[calin_banc 19]

On the graphics side you can have a lot of work done from the community over the years, just take a look at TES series. The rest are all fair points, however they have been with the series and discussed on this forum so much lately, there aren't many words to be said.

Probably the devs from Day Z will give a helping hand after that game is finished, but that will take at least 1-1,5 years judging by the state it's now.... that of course if they don't start working at Day Z 2 right away.

On the graphics side, some bottleneck will be addressed by Mantle implementation or DX12 if they ever consider going that road - still 1 or 2 years away, so no quick resolve here as well. Don't know what they're gonna do with the AI, it's quite bad where they are now to be honest and performance aside, this makes even the SP plays quite frustrating.

Well if BIS and the DCS team joined up they could make a game that's somewhere in between in terms of scale and detail. DCS basically has three polygon mountains while in ARMA3 you can't even see the ground flying at the altitudes you would use in DCS.

But as I said it's only a fantasy

That's just like saying "if all the studios join up, it will be the perfect game!". Never going to happen!

[chortles 263]

they have been with the series and discussed on this forum so much lately, there aren't many words to be said.

At this point this is what I think of criticism of Arma 3, period.

That's just like saying "if all the studios join up, it will be the perfect game!". Never going to happen!

Sneakson outright said as much...

[Sneakson 1]

That's just like saying "if all the studios join up, it will be the perfect game!". Never going to happen!

Well that's why I made it abundantly clear it's just a fantasy by saying so in each of the two posts where I mentioned it.

[[evo] dan 79]

Well that's why I made it abundantly clear it's just a fantasy by saying so in each of the two posts where I mentioned it.

Didn't VBS (yes I know its not the same BIS) do a module that allowed Steel Beasts and a flight sim to interface with VBS?

[pooroldspike 129]

I've been computer wargaming for 32 years and have never found a perfect game, they've ALL got issues of some kind, some minor and some not so minor, so unless they can be fixed we have to put up with them just like Old Yeller has to put up with the fleas on his back.

Also peoples opinions vary a lot about what constitutes an 'issue', for example in my opinion a major issue with Arma3 is the fact that HMG's can make a tank crew bail by simply putting a short burst into its tracks which is unrealistic in the extreme. I've been searching for a fix but haven't found one yet.

[the_demongod 31]

Zeus DLC.

Zeus is a nice touch but the dungeon master idea, needs serious refinement, maintaining a Zeus mission is hard, very hard.

It's not that hard. You just have to have experience with making missions, RTS games, and the Zeus interface itsself. You can't come out and say it's hard to use when you've only had access to it for a couple of months, you aren't going to master anything in that amount of time. It's also still in development, so some of the features such as prefabs are in the works/already created.

And cryengine wouldn't work for a game on the scale of arma; I have read that the farther away from the world origin you are, the more floating point errors occur. All things considered, I think the current engine does a pretty good job.

[Sneakson 1]

It's not that hard. You just have to have experience with making missions, RTS games, and the Zeus interface itsself. You can't come out and say it's hard to use when you've only had access to it for a couple of months, you aren't going to master anything in that amount of time. It's also still in development, so some of the features such as prefabs are in the works/already created.

And cryengine wouldn't work for a game on the scale of arma; I have read that the farther away from the world origin you are, the more floating point errors occur. All things considered, I think the current engine does a pretty good job.

Crysis 1 had some big maps though. Maybe not 16x16 km big...

[Bouben 3]

I have a question:

Why is there so few and "invisible" titles (with few exceptions) using CryEngine?

I prefer engines with "character". CryEngine does not deliver this for me. Same as Unreal engine. Hi-tech, but generic. It is like if the engine itself forced artists to certain aesthetics decisions.

Even the old OFP had more aesthetic "feel" than most of the newest games. I really like VR engine and art direction in BIS.

Edited April 17, 2014 by Bouben