Project ASTFOR - Astelandic Armed Forces

[wildcatbridge 377]

unfortunatly we already have our ship list, aircraft list, and military units all worked out....one of the benefits from having a dedicated lore guy  ;)

[Derek Thompson 176]

This project looks like it will turn out great with all the dedicated people here!

 

 

unfortunatly we already have our ship list, aircraft list, and military units all worked out....one of the benefits from having a dedicated lore guy  ;)

 

Now, i wouldn't mind seeing that Ship and aircraft list if it aint private  ;)  ;)

 

Good luck on the rest of the project guys!

[wildcatbridge 377]

Unfortunately yes it is private. ads to the surprise  ;)

[Derek Thompson 176]

Unfortunately yes it is private. ads to the surprise  ;)

 

Ah, shame :) 

 

Although, i do love my surprise every now and then ;)

[tasksoldier121 80]

Night Stream

https://www.twitch.tv/tasksoldier121

 

Edit: its back online

Edit(2338GMT): Stream off

[thepuglife 30]

It’s time for yet another long-winded post…except from me this time.

              Let me first start by stating this; All of us here at ASTFOR have to endure the struggle of balancing academics, work, family, and our commitment to this mod, resulting in seemingly little progress over the past few months. Yet, with the holiday’s right around the corner, we are finally getting the much-desired time to continue progress with this mod!

As excited as I am to continue working, I know my to-do list is endless, and the same story goes for all the modelers here at ASTFOR. Currently, we only have 3 active modelers on this team, and thus the 3 of us are forced to tackle multiple projects at the same time in order to meet our goals for the initial release of the mod. However, such circumstances bring various consequences with it. For one, it forces us to have to learn new programs, software, and techniques to reach the desired end result for a given project. While in the big picture this is far from being a bad thing, in the short term in requires us to dedicate a sizable amount of time to simply learning (which you become quite tired of as college students) and no forward progress with the mod. Next, overall quality CAN take a hit as you begin to overlook certain details to get things finished, and despite our desire to avoid this, it happens. Finally, and in my mind, most importantly, it becomes easy to lose motivation when you’re working your ass off but seemingly getting nowhere, which I have no doubt felt in recent months. As much as we would love to avoid this, it is inevitable with a team as small as ours.

              Thus, I am here to ask the community for assistance. We are currently looking for anyone who has experience with 3D modelling, whether it be with 3DS Max/Maya/Blender/Zbrush/Modo/etc. By no means do you have to be an expert, trust me, I am far from one, we just ask that you have a level of proficiency to where step by step guidance isn’t necessary (for the most part, there are exceptions). However, we do want to emphasize the importance of dedication. Over the course of the 5 years this project has been alive, we have had countless experiences where individuals make promises then fall through, leaving us behind with nothing but wasted time and energy. If you know that this may become an issue, we kindly ask you to disregard this post. Additionally, if you happen to be working with another major project/mod, it would be in the best interest of both projects to not make another commitment, as in the end, we all do this in our free time for free, and thus it becomes to find time to produce results for two projects, which inevitably ends in both projects being left empty handed.

Speaking from experience, trust me when I say that ASTFOR is an amazing team. The ASTFOR team is a wonderful group of individuals to work with, with a ton of knowledgeable, friendly, and dedicated people that no doubt make you better at what you do. If you are interested in sharing your modeling skills with our team or have any questions, please feel free to PM any of us, we look forward to hearing from you!

 

[wildcatbridge 377]

Wanna just announce that today is Jerns day. Its a very important anniversary for us, and so i want to just take a moment to say that Jerns never ceased making me cry with laughter. 

 

#NeverforgetJerns

[PTV-Jobo 820]

Just a non-official WIP to show we're still alive. Just people's time is very limited at the moment, thus why it took awhile.

Aimpoint 3X Magnifier DONE

Original HP model made and donated by - Enrico "rubixlight" Santi

Low Poly & Baking by - ThePugLife

IMI Negev LMG 5.56 DONE

Original HP model made and donated by - Ognjen Saponja

Low Poly & Baking by - ThePugLife

 

.50 Cal HMG WIP

Model being made by - Jones (AstFor)

 

IN OTHER NEWS...

So aside from the above, we're still chipping away little by ever-so-little when time can. We would love to get things pushing forward at a quicker pace, but unfortunately we just don't have the manpower, and after posting several please for help on here and on our FB page, never got anything out of it other than a few pats on the back and people asking again if we can release certain weapons and vehicles now so their squads/clans/groups can gut our mod for their own stuff, lol. So, while I contemplated numerous times of closing ASTFOR down for good after having 6 years of discouragement building up, I decided to just keep pushing forwards and see where things take us.  So, our apologies if things are a little too slow for the community's taste. We all want to see things kicking out left and right, but we're tiny and too few. C'est la vie and all that....  ;)

 

Also, I would like to take a moment and thank personally and publicly a very awesome member of our ArmA community--Adacas. We had some unfortunate issues surrounding our uniforms that risked ASTFOR's development to be halted. Adacas was very kind in allowing Project ASTFOR to integrate his base uniform that will be a pretty sexy placeholder until we can sort our own finally. After which case, the uniform will be passed down for Asteland's Special Forces units to use.

 

Finally in regards to weapons, our weapons pack is pretty close to be considered done and ready for Alpha Release. Our talented weapons modeler, ThePugLife, is laying down the groundwork for what will eventually become our Astelandic Carl-Gustaf M4. We're not sure if it'll make it into our Alpha release, but it's quite probable. This way aside from the usual rifles/smg/sniper and lmg classes, we can provide the community with something that has a little more bang (or Boom!) for dealing with those pesky enemy vehicles at the get-go in our Alpha release.

 

Right now the biggest thing I'm waiting on is a response back from LAxman in regards to sounds/framework. I'm a personal fan of Dynasound, but also want to ensure that our mod "plugs in" with other mods like RHS, 3CB, etc that communities typically use a lot without causing a conflict in terms of soundscape experience, so to speak. I'd like for everything to flow nicely, without our sounds conflicting with the style of everything else. And for those in the community who are JSRS users, don't worry as I have your backs as well. We also have a self contained JSRS system of sounds for our weapons as well so it also provides a consistent sound experience for those who prefer to use JSRS. While impossible to cover every single possible scenario, I'm doing my best to keep the community in mind and have a few bases covered in terms of compatibility with different tastes, mods, etc. Thus why I am making sure users/fans of JSRS and (hopefully) Dynasound are covered.

 

That about covers it for this report, folks. While not technically an officially planned WIP report--it was overdue. We can't have the community thinking we're dead, now can we? Rest assured, our tiny band of misfits and mental asylum escapee's are doing everything we can to keep Project ASTFOR moving forward and closer towards Alpha Release. It's just due to not enough manpower, things are going to take a lot of time to get there. But we will get there--come hell or high water, so to speak! lol

 

 

[PTV-Jobo 820]

Astelandic AFS Viper

(part of the Astelandic Future Soldier Program / Astelandic Framtid Soldat )

 

 

 

 

CREDITS:

Model: Tasksoldier121 & ThePugLife

Textures: RobertHammer

[REFORGER88 144]

New to the forums, but I've been playing Arma 3 for a long while now, and I've been keeping an eye on this mod for a while as well. I'm very excited for the assets you're working on! Don't give up hope! I really want to see how this one turns out.

[PTV-Jobo 820]

Hey all, we're just sending out a message to the community that if there are any good scripters out there, we could use one for the team for effects and features we would love to explore to make Project ASTFOR as awesome as we can for the community to play with. We have one who knows his way around some scripting, but due to being already having a massive to-do list with vehicles and other modeling-related work for ASTFOR, I feel it would be more beneficial to the team to have someone come in as a dedicated script guru to avoid a backlog of work for the 3d modelers on the team.

 

So if you know your way around scripting/coding to do things like help ensure we are fully ACE supported, integrate some of the ACE features (3d pip optics, etc), particle effects, or animations, etc.....basically all those kinds of neat little details kinda things to get the most features and abilities squeezed out of ArmA's engine, feel free to contact me via PM and we'll go from there.

[C.T 44]

So...CADPAT.

 

;)

[wildcatbridge 377]

eeeeeeehhhh.....no. It's more based off ESTPAT. Although ESTPAT is based off CADPAT, ours has variations from the original ESTPAT....so you could say ASTPAT is CADPAT's cousin twice removed.

[tasksoldier121 80]

5 hours ago, C.T said:

So...CADPAT.

 

;)

 

Not CADPAT, that is Guy Cramer´s work, this, although is based on the same principle, it is as much as a copy of CADPAT as Marpat is one, or ESTPAT or Surpat. If you were to have a player in each camo you will notice it. Now I would even suggest you trying to find the easter eggs we left in it ;)

[PTV-Jobo 820]

12 hours ago, C.T said:

So...CADPAT.

 

;)

Close, and yet wrong. ESTDCU, or what I just call 2nd gen, as the original ESTDCU seemed a little more on the warmer side of green tones, to the new ones which seem like a deeper and cooler green. But alas how "so...CADPAT" pertains to our asking for scripters, I'll have to ponder that one. lol. But thanks for observation of what our pattern is, although a wee bit on the wrong end. ;)

[C.T 44]

I guess I should redo my point then.

 

You've made a fictional location, why not go with a "different" fictional version of the digi pattern color scheme?

 

 I just see it as being something already done as opposed to a new and different camo.

 

As far as the tones...all uniforms wash out and change color. Its more about the actual colors than the tones

 

It's good... but pretty similar. If its not Canuck or Estonian, shouldn't it not look like a new camo color to reflect a new and interesting country?

 

Not a demand or anything, just an observation.

[REFORGER88 144]

3 hours ago, C.T said:

I guess I should redo my point then.

 

You've made a fictional location, why not go with a "different" fictional version of the digi pattern color scheme?

 

 I just see it as being something already done as opposed to a new and different camo.

 

As far as the tones...all uniforms wash out and change color. Its more about the actual colors than the tones

 

It's good... but pretty similar. If its not Canuck or Estonian, shouldn't it not look like a new camo color to reflect a new and interesting country?

 

Not a demand or anything, just an observation.

ASTPAT seems to be a fairly interesting and unique pattern, and as far as Arma 3 goes it is unique amongst the camouflage in-game. I don't think the fact that Canada and Estonia, two less-than-popular nations represented in any kind of media let alone video games, use some kind of green digital camouflage disqualifies ASTPAT from being original.

[wsxcgy 1960]

Is this intended to be current day or is it intended to be "2035-ish"?

[thepuglife 30]

17 hours ago, wsxcgy said:

Is this intended to be current day or is it intended to be "2035-ish"?

Current day

[PTV-Jobo 820]

20 hours ago, C.T said:

I guess I should redo my point then.

 

You've made a fictional location, why not go with a "different" fictional version of the digi pattern color scheme?

 

 I just see it as being something already done as opposed to a new and different camo.

 

As far as the tones...all uniforms wash out and change color. Its more about the actual colors than the tones

 

It's good... but pretty similar. If its not Canuck or Estonian, shouldn't it not look like a new camo color to reflect a new and interesting country?

 

Not a demand or anything, just an observation.

 

Not sure how long you've lurked the forums and our thread. So I'll try my best to sum up an answer to your "Why?" in case if you haven't really followed our project or thread for very long...

 

Like with weaponry, we've had several discussions even on here about such things. It's virtually impossible to do something 100% on its own that some other real-world nation doesn't have in common. Especially in the world of camo. We've had people even complain about the patterns on our FB page like 2 years back. We've even held a poll here showing a few patterns and which pattern the community was more inclined to prefer and ESTDCU-style pattern still won.

At the end of the day, I've grown to have one singular answer that seems to perfectly answer every single immeasurable "Why...?" question we get posed over the past several years of development: "Because that is what we want to do."

 

That's pretty much the core answer that applies to everything we have done and will do in the future with molding and shaping Asteland. At the end of the day, I do what I do because its apart of my vision of what I like and/or want in my vision for my fictive nation. I'd rather a group of people not always like my decisions and than sacrificing my vision to try and please every single person in the community--who also have their own tastes and vision--which is why mod teams get literally bombarded with people wanting them to change every...tiny...thing several hundred times to meet their own vision or creative ideas. Also why soundmod makers have to make hundreds of versions of 1 rifle sound, because everyone has their own interpretation or taste in how that one rifle should sound).

 

We've changed things and experimented with dozens of patterns and variants of patterns, same with constantly changing directions with weapons and vehicles. At the end of the day, I need to make a decision and not be stuck in a creative  limbo spending year after year of just testing things and then holding polls for community members to vote on, and then have to do a re-vote months or a year later because a batch of new people join and have suggestions for changes themselves. lol. We're getting closer to an Alpha release at it is, I have no intention on changing anything. My own focus right now is to see things are the best they possibly can before the release.

 

Sorry if my response comes off a little harsh. It's not meant to be in any way. However, for those out there reading this, keep in mind every project team gets asked constantly "Why did you go A instead of B, or why does X look like Y, shouldn't you go with Z instead to be more interesting/unique/cooler/etc?". It's nothing personal and completely logical to expect, especially if people come asking these same "why" questions who haven't really been following the threads long or relatively new to those forums. But even so, at the end of the day, one message needs to always be made clear and to the point: that at the end of the day we do what we do and even how we do it--because it is our desire to do so.

[C.T 44]

Ive been on these forums as CanadianTerror since OFP days. Worked on many mods behind the scenes. I lurk now because discussion isn't needed for mods anymore. Its mostly showcase.

 

I don't take your response as harsh and I do get it from a mod makers point of view sure. Cant please everyone.

 

I think I had a valid observation but hey that's just me. I've told many people "hey here's what I think". Its a forum.

 

I think its a great looking project and I wish ya good luck. :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PTV-Jobo 820]

Absolutely, man. Like I said, trust me when I say I've banged my head on the wall and drove my team crazy at times experimenting with stuff like patterns, etc. lol  :D I've experimented with Fleck, ESTDCU, Hex, Splinter, etc. I mean all of them had their pro's and con's. I will say though, I have to hand it to the CSAT pattern. If it wasn't for the fact that it's for CSAT already (obviously, heheh) it reminded me a taaaaaaaad wee bit of like the Finnish-style and could have been an interesting one to mess with. But again, even then it's pretty much right back to "it's not a 100% unique pattern where only 1 nation in the entire world--both real or fictional--uses it".

 

We even had one guy kinda-sorta complain about the pattern on FB and we basically responded with, "Welp if you can do something better and unique, be our guest. We're totally up for it." And pretty much got handed a library of already known patterns around the world just tweaked color values. So I pretty much had to face palm a tiny bit at that point because it proved my point how ass it is to try getting something 100% unique. I was being driven crazy to the point I was saying to myself, "Just screw it, take a page out of the Austrian's and go a single solid color!", haha.

 

But yeah, to each their own. No ill or hurt feelings here. To be honest, it's kind of nice having a little community interaction again as things have been mega quiet from our side for awhile. So while this is certainly a conversation subject we've often had with people, it's still nice having a discussion here nonetheless. ;)

[wildcatbridge 377]

I tried to make a pattern that was based off of ATACs foliage, but made it digital, and it ended up coming out basically as the spitting image of the AAF camo from arma 3 which was a kick in the teath hahahah. Its verry difficult to come up with a 'unique camo' cause its either gonna end up looking spitting image of something that has already been done or close enough as makes no difference. Since camoflage patterns started appearing regularily in ww1 the past 100 years has seen litterally every idea under the sun be produced. Still if our camo is good enough to be mistaken for someone elses, I'd say we have done a good job at making something thats realistic.

[Shundrah Soka 2]

Hey! so i've been following this mod for probably about a year now, and I must say it looks truly amazing. Using the Galil platform with great textures. as there aren't really any good galils for A3 that isn't A2 textures. Also the CV90 with variants is great! Me being a gunner on a NORAF CV9030NO, Just craves somthing like this.

 

However me getting to the point. Have you guys taken a look at the Norwegian M/98 Camo pattern, that we wear on our F1, M02 & M04 Uniforms in both woodland and desert camo? Personally I think that looks better than the Estonian camo pattern. Also when I was in Estonia on exericise ''to show Russia, NATO's military might'' we stopped our CV90 in the woods, to pretend that we had ran over an AT mine, and our IFV was disabled. and as we where told to wait for an engineer vehicle. We easily spotted Estonians closing in our position to ambush us being dismounted. So we hit the dirt and spread out away from the CV90 and opened fire with our MP7's at about 150m range, the three of us in the CV90 took out two estionian squads alone. and held back another platoon unitll the other three CV90's in our platoon could arrive. When we spoke to the estonians after the firefight, they said they never even spotted us, and just returned fired in the direction of the gunshots. Now it might be due to lack of spotting traning. But I believe that it was because of our M/98 camo on our M02 uniforms. 

 

I've also been experimenting with the M/98 camo on Altis and Tanoa etc. and I find the M/98 quite adapting as it, has both green woodland and tree/desert schemes in it.

[roberthammer 582]

@Shundrah Soka

We are glad you liking it so far and we trying to push forward as we can in our small numbers so thanks for those words

 

now about the camo - we experimented with different camos at the start of the mod which you can find in this thread and so far our digital camo works the best in arma 3 so we went with "similiar" estonian style of camo which our is not a exact clone of ESTDCU but a variant of it for our forces