Please Please BI do not break All In Arma!!... or FINALLY support it!

[Tyl3r99 41]

Hey guys, first of all... i wish good luck to KJU who has done a splendid job and he will be missed!!

we will miss you.

ok.. now the mods such as terrain pack are not supported anymore by the main author, this means in time future BI patches to arma 3 will eventually break it and other AiA mods..

I please please ask Bohemia Interactive for the sake of the community and other map makers who use AiATP, please do not break this for us.

this feature is one of the most anticipated addons this game will receive and im sure i can say for a lot of people that we will be upset to see it broken from one of your updates.

regards

tyler

[edit]

In my opinion A3 should fix all in arma's biggest issues as a thank you to KJU for all of his hard work, if it wasnt for him im not sure what we would do!

Edited January 14, 2015 by tyl3r99

[Tyl3r99 41]

http://images.sodahead.com/polls/003126851/1636954326_bannedphones_answer_3_xlarge.jpeg

we shall see ey lol

[meaty 34]

trust me, the terrain pack isnt dead, it might not show up again as "aia" but it WILL show up and be supported.

[inlesco 233]

trust me, the terrain pack isnt dead, it might not show up again as "aia" but it WILL show up and be supported.

Source of info? Here, we despise rumors ;)

[meaty 34]

me and kju ;)

[Valken 623]

I want BIS to take this on. It would only push the last diehard A2 players to A3 and greatly draw more players to A3. A3 has a good engine (multithreading AI and 64 bit may help) but it needs content to grow such as all that from A2.

[malcom86 33]

I'll say, it would be very cool if BI could "adopt" and support AiA TP (and I'm talking about only the Terrain Pack, as the CUP team is working on all the other aspects) as it's a must-have and a very important part of all the Arma experience.

On the other hand, I suppose they have yet their huge part of work to do on Arma 3. So...it would be nice if at least they have a little eye of respect on making all their updates compatible with AiA actual state :)

[Tacti-Cool 10]

IMO, Arma 3 should not be relying on content from past titles, and should be moving forward with new content and terrains, as someone whos been there done that got the t shirt on Takistan and Chernarus for the last 6 years, backwards comparability isn't something im particularly excited about, or keen to support. I know some of you feel the exact opposite, but different strokes for different folks.

[slatts 1978]

The only thing BIS should be concerned about fixing is their own work. If fixing problems with vanilla Arma 3 breaks mods then so be it. That's what needs to be done. It's then up to us modders to make our work compatible with BIS' work. Not vice versa.

[ProfTournesol 956]

The only thing BIS should be concerned about fixing is their own work. If fixing problems with vanilla Arma 3 breaks mods then so be it. That's what needs to be done. It's then up to us modders to make our work compatible with BIS' work. Not vice versa.

Absolutely.

[beaar 78]

Nothing. I agree with Slatts.

I'd rather have them work on other content (for example: turret variations including non-RCWS, enabling content that's already in the game files, etc), and leave the mods for the community to handle.

[EddiePrice 16]

Although I agree BI should focus on creating more content, I think it's fair to request that they consider popular mods like AIA when releasing patches that may potentially cause issues. Personally if AIA didn't exist I probably wouldn't be playing ArmA3 at all as I rarely use the stock islands for missions. BI create the game but these mods ensure its longevity and it would be great if that was acknowledged more often with continued consideration.

[Jackal326 1181]

Although I agree BI should focus on creating more content, I think it's fair to request that they consider popular mods like AIA when releasing patches that may potentially cause issues. Personally if AIA didn't exist I probably wouldn't be playing ArmA3 at all as I rarely use the stock islands for missions. BI create the game but these mods ensure its longevity and it would be great if that was acknowledged more often with continued consideration.

Agreed. If OFP (and later ArmA sequels) hadn't have been so accessible to modders, I doubt myself and many others would even still be interested in this franchise. Hell, if it wasn't so mod-friendly, the game series wouldn't still be going as it wouldn't have been anywhere near as popular and probably wouldn't have seen so many sequels released in the first place. Some consideration to all existing mods (I think its unfair to single out just one mod) should always be taken when the developers update the base game.

As a weapon maker I really appreciated BI's approach when they updated the handling of weapon sound defines, which required weapon addons to have some config tweaks to be setup correctly. They said "Hey, we're making this change, this is what addon makers need to do to get your weapon addons ready to roll when we release the patch on stable branch in a couple of weeks". This allowed those of us with any sense, to have patches/updates of our own ready to roll out as soon as the game patch went live.

[slatts 1978]

if Arma didn't have mods I'd say we wouldn't have reached this stage but I digress. BIS like Jackal has said have given us heads up before that changes may cause problems with some mods, and if that continues to be the case I see no reason why just a single mod should be given some special status over the rest of them. How fair does that sound to anyone else currently or trying to begin work on a similar mod? Granted AiA is a fantastic mod and without it many others would be set back months or would have stopped (including one of my own projects). I don't think it deserves 'protection' from updates. ALL mods deserve it so that official updates don't cause the authors endless headaches update after update. But if it needs be that BIS need to change something in the code that will means we need to update our own work, a heads up in advance is much appreciated.

Side note. I've taken a bit of flack in some other channels that my first comment here was somehow a put down to Kju and his work. That's not the case. I can't thank him enough for the work he has done for this series and I'm as sad as anyone to see him go.

[OMAC 254]

The only thing BIS should be concerned about fixing is their own work. If fixing problems with vanilla Arma 3 breaks mods then so be it. That's what needs to be done. It's then up to us modders to make our work compatible with BIS' work. Not vice versa.

I agree 100%.

[inlesco 233]

Mods vary on scale and impact on the community. Mods like AiA deliver GBs of content and hundreds of playtime hours. It's up to BIS to stack up their priorities and decide what risks are worth to take.

If BIS ever intended to fully support AiA, keep it in shape after all the updates of core A3, I'd support them even more.

Speaking of modding importance, BIS have understood this pre-OFP. They've developed a pretty good Mission Editor and expected user-made content to make the game immortal. It all went according to plan, as we see.

[mikey74 186]

Hopefully Bis will realize and not forget what Codemasters over looked. There Modding community makes the arma series what it is. When codemasters took out the modding community for ofpDR it basically was the big straw that killed the ofp series. jmho Bis would do well to keep that in mind. We've lost several good modders that started out with ofpCWC and arma 1. again jmho

[brightcandle 114]

This whole problem is due to steam, I am not kidding.

Back in the Arma 2 days we applied patches manually. That meant when putting together a modded game we could choose the base version of the game we were using, then make mods for it and use mods designed for it. If BIS released a new patch or beta then we could test our mods with it, if it worked then all was well, if it didn't then we could continue playing the old version until we had repaired the problems in the mods. It might take 5 minutes it might take 5 weeks, it didn't matter because we could keep playing.

But Steam makes everything worse because it just auto updates your game. So the day BIS pushes out an update a number of mods and dependencies of your mods break. So people start fixing it as soon as they can and the fixes start coming in at different paces, some of them very quickly, others take a lot longer. With 20+ mods this takes a while to filter down to the top mods and in the meantime random things are just broken and you don't have a choice. A tool like Play with six makes this worse for also assuming you want all the latest versions, so you have to tell everyone to roll back when the mod breaks something. They only hold onto 2-3 old versions and then its gone and if all the new versions still have the same broken thing introduced you have to live with it or move to a custom repository.

But you can't reproduce a reliable dependable modset anymore because of Steam. Even if you fix all your mods in place and test all your updates to make sure they basically work you still get the base game just pushing whatever updates it wants. So while I see why people are requesting that BIS give a heads up in reality that isn't going to fix the problem, the issue is about dependencies. Mods depend on versions of games and other mods, "the latest" of everything doesn't always work together and since we can't version everything properly its all in a constant state of different types of broken. Steam just doesn't support modding properly, it assumes the publisher wont break them which obviously isn't how BIS and many others operate. The situation is broken and the core underlying issue of dependency needs to be addressed to resolve the problem.

[Jackal326 1181]

This whole problem is due to steam, I am not kidding.

Back in the Arma 2 days we applied patches manually. That meant when putting together a modded game we could choose the base version of the game we were using, then make mods for it and use mods designed for it. If BIS released a new patch or beta then we could test our mods with it, if it worked then all was well, if it didn't then we could continue playing the old version until we had repaired the problems in the mods. It might take 5 minutes it might take 5 weeks, it didn't matter because we could keep playing.

But Steam makes everything worse because it just auto updates your game. So the day BIS pushes out an update a number of mods and dependencies of your mods break. So people start fixing it as soon as they can and the fixes start coming in at different paces, some of them very quickly, others take a lot longer. With 20+ mods this takes a while to filter down to the top mods and in the meantime random things are just broken and you don't have a choice. A tool like Play with six makes this worse for also assuming you want all the latest versions, so you have to tell everyone to roll back when the mod breaks something. They only hold onto 2-3 old versions and then its gone and if all the new versions still have the same broken thing introduced you have to live with it or move to a custom repository.

But you can't reproduce a reliable dependable modset anymore because of Steam. Even if you fix all your mods in place and test all your updates to make sure they basically work you still get the base game just pushing whatever updates it wants. So while I see why people are requesting that BIS give a heads up in reality that isn't going to fix the problem, the issue is about dependencies. Mods depend on versions of games and other mods, "the latest" of everything doesn't always work together and since we can't version everything properly its all in a constant state of different types of broken. Steam just doesn't support modding properly, it assumes the publisher wont break them which obviously isn't how BIS and many others operate. The situation is broken and the core underlying issue of dependency needs to be addressed to resolve the problem.

Whilst I partly agree with you, one thing I will say is that BI have introduced the devbranch version of the game. Whilst its intention is probably more for players to test the new features/bug fixes and report any errors, this foundation can be used to update mods whilst still having the ability to swap back to "regular" versions of the game. I do also believe BI have more recently added in legacy versions, whereby if the if new patch breaks your game you can roll back to the last version (I may be wrong, but I remember reading about it in a SPOTREP).

[Greenfist 1863]

Whilst I partly agree with you, one thing I will say is that BI have introduced the devbranch version of the game. Whilst its intention is probably more for players to test the new features/bug fixes and report any errors, this foundation can be used to update mods whilst still having the ability to swap back to "regular" versions of the game. I do also believe BI have more recently added in legacy versions, whereby if the if new patch breaks your game you can roll back to the last version (I may be wrong, but I remember reading about it in a SPOTREP).

Yeah, the previous stable version is always available from Steam. This was introduced around last summer.

It surprising how many actively maintained mods suddenly break when the stable branch is updated. The modders could easily check how their stuff works in the dev branch, which is updated 5 times a week and includes good changelogs.

Even the upcoming stable release candidate is available at least 2 weeks before the actual release.

[Jona33 51]

It's a bit of a hassle, but a pretty solid way of stopping steam autoupdates is to restrict the allowed hours until the early hours of the morning (when you know your computer isn't on) and then launch with PW6 (or any other launcher out there presumably).

[ACPL Jon 68]

The questionnare lacks 1 important option: BI hiring Kju on the spot.

I mean, how could they not?

Edited January 21, 2015 by JonPL

[keeway 287]

That would be great, but there is no provided money for project like this in BIS dont you guys think?

[haleks 8212]

The questionnare lacks 1 important option: BI hiring Kju on the spot.

I mean, how could they not?

Because they do not share the same views about evolution of the Arma series?

[chortles 263]

Because they do not share the same views about evolution of the Arma series?

Well, they neither hired him before nor did the A2 porting themselves...