Firing from Vehicles feedback

[bis_iceman 7385]

Shooting the AT specialist's MXC in 4x accelerated time makes the camera change to the ground whilst each shot :confused:

Hey, I cannot reproduce the problem, could you please provide more specific info (which position were you occupying in which vehicle and so on)? You can PM me if you want or create a ticket on our feedback tracker.

Thanks!

[das attorney 857]

It is a little bit messy at the moment, but obviously it is not done and dusted yet. I hope for a wise solution myself, this addition is very cool, but it messed up vehicle cargo.

I only noticed this morning that there's a new command for this which should help:

_veh enablePersonTurret [turretpath, enable];
_veh enablePersonTurret [[1], true];

http://dev.arma3.com/post/oprep-firing-from-vehicles

I've yet to try it but will check when I'm back from the outdoor (real) world later.

EDIT:

OPOREP says the assignAsCargo and moveInCargo have been adjusted, so it sounds like AI shouldn't be randomly in falling anim. Will also check later. Not sure how useful this enablePersonTurret command will be. Guess I can scan through the turrets config with extended select and look for first part of configName to see if it equals "cargoTurret" (assuming the nomenclature is the same for all vehicles). Then get paths and enable/disable.

EDIT2: Or check for "isPersonTurret" config entry - just found that.

Edited September 23, 2014 by Das Attorney

[odie0351 67]

Absolutely loving the new feature! Have noticed a problem though, was kinda late when I got a chance to play last night but in my missions where the hummingbird is supposed to transport a group only the first two get in. I'll play around with it some more this evening to be sure its not something on my end. As far as things I'd like to see changed, I think that all the cargo positions on the back of the uncovered large trucks should be used for the firing from vehicles, maybe change the seating animation where they're facing outboard when expecting contact. Also on the hummingbird, if its possible to set aiming limits according to rather or not adjacent seats are occupied, then I think even the two internal seats should have the ability to fire, especially as without scripting, those are the first seats occupied by personnel. Maybe have them setting facing outside the aircraft and shooting over the shoulders of the guys on the benches if the aircraft has a full load of troops?

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

I think he meant the camera shake. What you're describing is a bug when the JIP player in a turret (active vehicle pos.) is not synced correctly. It was fixed (at least we hope so) by a major change in the order JIP messages are created 23-07-2014, rev. 126089. But afaict it can also be caused by data inconsistency. If you encounter the issue again or have any further info about how to reproduce it, please create a ticket on the Feedback Tracker and you can also let me know in a PM. Thanks a lot!

Yup, this is exactly the issue, which may have re appeared due to the new feature. I'll check again today when I get the time.

[killzone_kid 1326]

I only noticed this morning that there's a new command for this which should help:

_veh enablePersonTurret [turretpath, enable];
_veh enablePersonTurret [[1], true];

http://dev.arma3.com/post/oprep-firing-from-vehicles

I've yet to try it but will check when I'm back from the outdoor (real) world later.

EDIT:

OPOREP says the assignAsCargo and moveInCargo have been adjusted, so it sounds like AI shouldn't be randomly in falling anim. Will also check later. Not sure how useful this enablePersonTurret command will be. Guess I can scan through the turrets config with extended select and look for first part of configName to see if it equals "cargoTurret" (assuming the nomenclature is the same for all vehicles). Then get paths and enable/disable.

EDIT2: Or check for "isPersonTurret" config entry - just found that.

assignedVehicleRole returns ["Cargo", [turret]], so it is still treated as Cargo, but it is not. Confusing.

[niktator 10]

I think he meant the camera shake. What you're describing is a bug when the JIP player in a turret (active vehicle pos.) is not synced correctly. It was fixed (at least we hope so) by a major change in the order JIP messages are created 23-07-2014, rev. 126089. But afaict it can also be caused by data inconsistency. If you encounter the issue again or have any further info about how to reproduce it, please create a ticket on the Feedback Tracker and you can also let me know in a PM. Thanks a lot!

No, not related to camera shake. I had one mate sitting outside, when I took of he was suddenly standing outside of the helicopter, lagging up and down by desync, and finally destroyed the mainrotor as described.

[takelmeifter 10]

In regards to the offroad, the hard limit on where you can aim is made even worse when the door for the bed isn't there on some of the randomised bits of the offroad. it would be cool if you could aim past that point as you can't fire through the door when it's there anyway, but when the door isn't there then it works out

also, a variation of the stance adjust would be nice. i.e. you can duck down within the bed for cover, rise up a little higher high enough to shoot down the side of the car/so that you can shoot the tires of cars right next to you etc. also towards the front side of the bed, an extra one higher so they can fire forward. (because of course).

It would also be cool if the guys on the back could lean out to fire forward too, but that's probably overdoing it

[devilslayersbane 28]

Maybe instead of having a specific cone-of-maneuverability, bohemia could develop some auto-detect feature that recognizes the mesh of the vehicle and persons in the vehicle and gives you ability to aim based on that. That would also mean that 1-person defending an offroad could have a higher turn-radius because there's no one else in the mesh of the truck.

[oksman 37]

We all know we want to do this, firing from open windows in vehicles, firing from opened doors on Ghosthawks and other airframes. Just thinking about something right now that I'm worried about, when you get into the back of a truck, you usually get into the furthest away slot from the rear-end, this means that you need a full truck to be able to fire from the rear, but I'd rather have those firing positions as cargo positions index 1-2.

Everyone loves Generation kill, firing from those highly detailed Humwee's the community released. Let's get some!

[Bouben 3]

It would also be cool if the guys on the back could lean out to fire forward too, but that's probably overdoing it

I believe it is not overdoing it but actually necessary. Offroads attacks are completely useless without it.

[oksman 37]

There's a reason that seat is called shotgun! Humwee' mods must have, leaning out or not. Badassery

Looking forward to the DLC

[Sniperwolf572 758]

Just thinking about something right now that I'm worried about, when you get into the back of a truck, you usually get into the furthest away slot from the rear-end, this means that you need a full truck to be able to fire from the rear, but I'd rather have those firing positions as cargo positions index 1-2.

You don't have to have a full truck, you can be the only one in it and still shoot. FFV cargo slots are not exactly same as the regular cargo slots. You can precisely choose between FFV cargo slots, just like you can with turrets on the Ghosthawk, etc.

[Tonci87 163]

THIS FEATURE IS AWESOME! Seriously BI, good Job!

Now for the things that can be improved:

View restrictions don´t make much sense in some cases, for example on the wildcat where you can´t aim past the missile pods.

The front Left passenger in the assualt boat is hovering in the air.

Two rear gunner positions is fine for the covered trucks, but the uncovered variants should have more possibilities. Basically everyone should be able to turn around, kneel on the bench with one leg and shoot outwards, of course you need animations for that but hey you are the guys with a Mocap studio.

The Offroad needs this stuff for the passenger seat.

Please don´t forget the little civilian flatbed truck, you can make the guys sit on the flatbed back to back, facing outwards. That litte truck can turn out to be a real fun mobile.

Please enable this stuff for the hatches on APCs.

[nomisum 129]

Please enable this stuff for the hatches on APCs.

This. So much awesomeness possible.

[onlyrazor 11]

Adjusting the cargo positions has left me a bit stumped until the BIKI is updated with the new code. Since FFV positions appear to act more like turrets than cargo positions, assignAsCargo and moveInCargo only move units to the FFV-disabled cargo positions first, before advancing to the FFV positions (tested on MH-9). If someone could enlighten me with the cargoIndex of FFV positions, I'd appreciate it.

Also, testing out a small scenario, units ordered to board a helicopter via waypoint are only able to enter the regular cargo positions, which means that the MH-9's capacity is effectively reduced to 2 passengers.

In addition to everyone else's comments, some of the aiming radius restrictions are a bit off (Hellcat lateral, Offroad elevational and lateral, since you can't really fire at anyone below 90° which is bad if you're on a downward slope), but I have full trust that that'll get tweaked.

Edited September 23, 2014 by OnlyRazor

[klamacz 447]

Adjusting the cargo positions has left me a bit stumped until the BIKI is updated with the new code. Since FFV positions appear to act more like turrets than cargo positions, assignAsCargo and moveInCargo only move units to the FFV-disabled cargo positions first, before advancing to the FFV positions (tested on MH-9). If someone could enlighten me with the cargoIndex of FFV positions, I'd appreciate it.

Also, testing out a small scenario, units ordered to board a helicopter via waypoint are only able to enter the regular cargo positions, which means that the MH-9's capacity is effectively reduced to 2 passengers.

Basically, we have an custom array of proxyIndexes ordered, per vehicle, which consists of both cargo and personTurrets positions. cargoIndex is a index of this array, for Hummingbird I'm quite sure it will be 2, 3, 4, 5 (player moveInCargo [vehicle, 3]).

GetIn, moveInCargo and assignAsCargo are currently in rather bad not-splendid state, expect it will be fixed soon. Also, guys, please provide your feedback with information if the issue is singleplayer/multiplayer, as some of those problems might originate in network code, thanks!

[das attorney 857]

assignedVehicleRole returns ["Cargo", [turret]], so it is still treated as Cargo, but it is not. Confusing.

I just tried on a Tempest:

(Turrets enabled)

Order my group to board anywhere. Set player rating to -5000. Other passengers jump out to attack me.

2 stay in the cargo turret seats and shoot me.

<Restart editor>

(Turrets disabled)

tempest1 enablePersonTurret [[0], false];

tempest1 enablePersonTurret [[1], false];

Order my group to board anywhere. Set player rating to -5000. Other passengers jump out to attack me.

2 stay in the cargo turret seats and do nothing.

The issue here (for me) is that the 2 units in firing positions just sit there like lemons. There's no logic to tell them that the position is disabled so they should jump out and attack me with the rest of the passengers (like they used to).

I was hoping that by disabling the turrets, they get treated like regular cargo slots, but instead, it just stops them from doing anything.

[killzone_kid 1326]

I was hoping that by disabling the turrets, they get treated like regular cargo slots, but instead, it just stops them from doing anything.

That's an idea, dunno how this is going to work with altered config though. There is also an issue with moveInCargo (index) in MP, when assignAsCargoIndex is simply not called automatically, but instead assignAsCargo is called. So it doesn't matter what index you set to enter, you will be assigned to whatever index the game thinks best.

[smookie 11]

Animation blending could be a way to go if only the engine supported the blending in the proper way. Otherwise, the animation is fixed, could be perhaps walked around with use of A,D,S,W keys but so far no green light on this. What do you think?

[galzohar 31]

Will we get a detailed explanation of new relevant scripting commands needed for filling up a vehicle properly?

How is backwards compatibility planned to be supported (since as far as I understand it currently isn't really working)?

[Sniperwolf572 758]

Animation blending could be a way to go if only the engine supported the blending in the proper way. Otherwise, the animation is fixed, could be perhaps walked around with use of A,D,S,W keys but so far no green light on this. What do you think?

While talking about manned turret animations last night (like for example the gun boat rear gun), I suggested a system where there would be a single gunner anim with multiple keyframes (let's say 60 keyframes for a gun that turns 60 degrees). Each keyframe would relate to each degree the turret is offset from the center. Vertical could still be controlled by the IK.

This could also be a solution to the person turrets. Animations could be switched with the stance keys to achieve "ducking behind the tailgate" and such situations and enable more freedom of movement.

Technically, this could be "guerilla scripted in right now" (albeit with multiple static animations instead of a single multi-keyframe one) and I would do another proof-of-concept for it in a heartbeat if someone provided me with anims I could use.

I'm not sure what DICE did for BF2, but to me it feels like a similar solution to what I'm proposing (watch the boat front gunner):

EDIT: For the FFV, maybe multiple "lower poses" can be tied to the relative rotation of the passenger? Switching between them when tresholds are met.

If any of the above could be done, then even the animations that exhibit the most deformation and unnaturalness, the boat lying ones, could be made to look awesome even if they had 360 degrees horizontal rotation.

Edited September 23, 2014 by Sniperwolf572

[bad benson 1733]

could be perhaps walked around with use of A,D,S,W keys

could you explain this more?

to really be able to make suggestions about the animation part we need a sample model so we can see how exactly the character proxy (or what ever determines the way it animates) is set up. right now it looks like simply the upper body is the moving part of the turret. what i'd like to know is, if it would be possible to make the whole body the moving part. and even better, and in my opinion ideal, would be a set up like a tank turret. the lower body would be the rotating hub and the upper body would be like the barrel moving up and down.

i think that the current set up is neither perfect in terms of usability (limited angles) nor on the cosmetic side. i would prefer to have the character slide/rotate like it does in some anims already (healing, prone, all the "inbetween" stances). this kind of fake IK kind of thing limits the rotation just to keep the characters spine intact and the result is not pretty enough to justify it since as i said it's just limiting aiming in an immersion breaking way.

not sure how the lowering and raising is handled on the anim side but it would be great to have a full body lowered anim with any rotation except usual freelook (acting like default cargo anims) that blends into a normal crouch (or stand for places like right behind the offroad driver area) for the raised state with the described properties (360 rotation).

this ofc applies mostly to cargo seats like in the offroad. the littlebird makes total sense and feels right the way it is.

@Sniperwolf: yea. a procedurally played anim seems like the best solution that combines a good look and maximal usability. i don't think you'd need many anims. just one animation of the character rotating taking the vehicle's shape into account. that then would need to be played procedurally based on player input (angle). but i think that's what you meant.

Edited September 23, 2014 by Bad Benson

[Sniperwolf572 758]

@Sniperwolf: yea. a procedurally played anim seems like the best solution that combines a good look and maximal usability. i don't think you'd need many anims. just one animation of the character rotating taking the vehicle's shape into account. that then would need to be played procedurally based on player input (angle). but i think that's what you meant.

Yep, that's it. I'd just love it if BI could dig in and make this feature more complete than it currently is in regards to animations and limits. It's getting silly how often we hear about features being halfway done due to the exact same reasoning as Smookie gave us, now to the point that I'm imagining that the following scene is very common over there:

Anyway, yeah, that could literally fix things like these (left side gunner, also happens for the right side gunner) by doing the right thing, instead of just arbitrarily limiting angles because "that looks bad, so we'll just limit the feature":

Just imagine that guy actually dropping his legs in all the room in the boat and turning for a much more sensible and stable firing position or the guys that are sitting to actually shuffle around a bit to provide cover to the right instead of being hard locked to the left.

Edited September 23, 2014 by Sniperwolf572

[smookie 11]

There are multiple problems with implementing the crazy idea of keyframes etc... This solution seems to be flawed to me and really not worth an effort considering ammount of resources required (please note we dont have gesture based weapon switching supported by engine etc.etc.). Again, dynamic blending [i use it in our upcoming RTS game and it works simply perfect and looks epic since 360o is covered with 8 anims] of several animation states should be a go here but the engine does not support such thing in the present. It might be possible in next iterations if there is some attention given to it (this would unlock extreme possibilities of improving the looks of anims in general). This is unfortunately not up to me but try prodding the men higher up and see what can be done :)

BadBenson - the technology is quite simple, the body behaves exactly like in regular animations, using regular animations config which basically means that what is turning around is what is being masked with aiming and aimingBody masks. To rotate whole posture, just change the mask to fullbody one (i have created such long time ago, its there in anims config). You can tweak the rotation scope through config settings (PersonTurret) for each position to ridiculous values so that you will be able to rotate 360 at all times. Just be aware of some limitations: the fire geometry doesnt work inside your own vehicle, massive glitching of anims will occur etc.

About W,S,A,D - would allow to switch animation state where possible and thus change the rotation angles of the "turret". Like if you want to aim backwards on the offroad , press S and you will interpolate to an animation with new angles to cover etc. Lots of work (weeks of animating properly) but most feasible within current engine limits.

Edited September 23, 2014 by Smookie

[Sniperwolf572 758]

There are multiple problems with implementing the crazy idea of keyframes etc... This solution seems to be flawed to me and really not worth an effort considering ammount of resources required (please note we dont have gesture based weapon switching supported by engine etc.etc.).

Fully aware, as I said, it's the first thing that comes to mind that I could accomplish without even having to touch the engine and purely from my own resources, as was the case with the switching weapons and moving. You're the one with the expertise on this to suggest the proper solutions for your own work. :)

This is unfortunately not up to me but try prodding the men higher up and see what can be done :)

Will making more funny pictures help change their mind? ;)

@ Men higher up:

Consider yourself prodded by a cattle prod! Allow Smookie to dazzle us damnit!