How Long And How Much Work To Build Future New Engine?

[gibonez 18]

Even thou a new engine will be good for issues with clipping and lighting... I don't care for eye candy.

We don't need a new engine, we need this in ARMA:

https://bisimulations.com/virtual-battlespace-3

Bring back ARMA to what is supposed to be.

I have to say that is incredibly impressive.

The single most impressive feature for me was the 150 km view distance.

The other impressive feature is the After Action Review , tracking all of the events of a mission and then letting the user review it and play it back to analyze information is incredible.

[dayglow 2]

AFAIK EDGE is not a new engine, it's an improved version of the current one that have it's legacy all the way back to LOMAC 1.00 released 2003.

/KC

yes, I said it was a rewrite.

[semiconductor 309]

We don't need a new engine, we need this in ARMA

Bring back ARMA to what is supposed to be.

Do you really expect some other company to give away their military-grade software for some symbolic price? Don't be funny. :)

But to my knowledge BISim could sell VBS to ordinary folks, so if you really want advanced simulation and have a decent sum in your bank account you are more than welcome to give it a try.

Edited February 4, 2015 by Semiconductor

[KeyCat 131]

yes, I said it was a rewrite.

OK, just wanted to clarify since a "rewrite" can mean different things for me.

/KC

[jsmuk 13]

Even thou a new engine will be good for issues with clipping and lighting... I don't care for eye candy.

We don't need a new engine, we need this in ARMA:

https://bisimulations.com/virtual-battlespace-3

Bring back ARMA to what is supposed to be.

You really do not want that. Unless you love ArmA 1 era graphics and physics (and bugs) and features which would destroy gameplay.

Edit: Admittedly a lot of the newer content looks impressive, but the majority of it is pretty old stuff.

[PuFu 4600]

You really do not want that. Unless you love ArmA 1 era graphics and physics (and bugs) and features which would destroy gameplay.

Edit: Admittedly a lot of the newer content looks impressive, but the majority of it is pretty old stuff.

content != engine...

[lao fei mao 21]

RV engine has its advantage and shortage. I won't exect BIS would altered to other engines, after all RV is their most valuable asset.

[jsmuk 13]

content != engine...

The engine is geared towards that content, it has the same clunky problems that plagued ArmA 1. All of the nice content in the world wont get over that (there is ArmA 2 / 3 content in VBS3 yet it still feels just as bad as A1 did).

[PuFu 4600]

The engine is geared towards that content, it has the same clunky problems that plagued ArmA 1. All of the nice content in the world wont get over that (there is ArmA 2 / 3 content in VBS3 yet it still feels just as bad as A1 did).

lad, read what you wrote above, then re-read what you wrote here ("engine geared towards that content"? really?)

[jsmuk 13]

lad, read what you wrote above, then re-read what you wrote here ("engine geared towards that content"? really?)

New content in VBS3 is (from my experience) exactly the same as older content (animations, controls, features etc) apart from the fact it looks better. It still appears to have a lot of the older issues that we got away from after ArmA1/2. I think I may have come across wrong in my first post though (that'll teach me to write posts at 4 in the morning).

However I still stand by my initial point, if ArmA was on the exact version of RV as VBS3 is then people would not enjoy it at all.

Now a hypothetical combination of both engine versions would be great..

[pulstar 55]

Anything that makes the animations and environment interactions less robotic is fine by me!

[windies 11]

OK, just wanted to clarify since a "rewrite" can mean different things for me.

/KC

They completely rewrote the entirety of the rendering portion of their engine. No it's not an entirely new engine, it is however a giant step forward and probably as close to defining what the term "new engine" should mean in context for laymen. I would say it's akin to what BI are trying to do with DayZ and hopefully that transitions to ArmA as well.

My issue is that history dictates the future and BI's history with issue's like this is generally to band-aid and sweep the rest under the rug. A lot of their solutions seem elegant but have little thought or regard for the future generally. The data streaming the engine does for example is a very unique way of getting around 32 bit limitations for 64 bit systems without actually requiring 64 bit binaries, however as 64 bit becomes more the norm it becomes more of a limitation to itself as it's basically trying to mimic larger addressing through file mapping when you have the ability to do it native now and really you always did just with a lower saturation of capable systems.

Is it a huge issue? No, not really, I would say it's pretty minor but it's a good example where good intentions and bad implementation can and do create an issue. Things like that compound over time and as more and more band-aids are placed it gets harder to correctly fix the issue's the band-aids cover up. It just seems like they create more work for themselves by trying to take the easy way out or what looks like the easy way out at the time rather than just doing things properly.

Does that mean they need an entirely new engine? No, I think RV is as fine a base as any for all intents and purposes, it's simply what BI do with it and how effectively it can use modern hardware which is where the real problem lay.

[troptastic 10]

I definitely agree with Windies: Arma 4 doesn't need a new engine, but RV needs to be developed and enhanced so that there are less instances of "hacky" code that negatively impacts the long-term future of the engine.

In addition, there are still performance issues remaining to be solved, nevermind all the improvements they could make in terms of animation, view distance, and visual effects. Probably the most important of these is true 64-bit support and proper utilisation of multi-core CPUs. Both of these qualities will define good engines by the time 2018/2019 rolls around, and not having them would severely hamper Arma 4 as compared to other games given that Arma is already more demanding than most series.

[johnnygitarr 7]

hi,

i think a complete new engine would be great, but it would be take to long to develop.

why not integrate some cool middelware. the earned money from dayz sa can be usefull

for arma 3 (or arma 4) too.

here are some examples:

http://www.naturalmotion.com/middleware/

https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-visualfx-overview

specially this would be great:

https://developer.nvidia.com/turfeffects (available in early 2015)

imagine:

if theres something new in the bis roadmap for their engine,

i would like to have something like this:

http://sim.unigine.com/

cheers

[KeyCat 131]

http://sim.unigine.com/

Really impressive pictures!

/KC

[pulstar 55]

I was experimenting with the Dunia engine, and while the animations and environments blow Arma out of the water, I found the AI limit to be quite ridiculous. AI should be a priority for BIS, to optimize both believability and scale.

[inlesco 233]

I was experimenting with the Dunia engine, and while the animations and environments blow Arma out of the water, I found the AI limit to be quite ridiculous. AI should be a priority for BIS, to optimize both believability and scale.

Keep in mind AI is one of the most complicated [and yeah, fascinating, too!] game dev areas. There's lots of unexplored areas regarding AI and lots of devs are reluctant to take the risks. It takes lots of time and resources for a good AI.

Simply hiring moar people doesn't translate to more progress, especially a believable AI system. So all has to take its toll before maturing to a certain level.

[pulstar 55]

Far Cry's AI is pretty okay, and heavily scripted to react to danger which is probably why you can't place too many units on a map. Still, I hope BIS does a complete re-write to make the AI more life-like.

[inlesco 233]

You mean Far Cry 1? Because the AIs in FC2-4 are atrocious - tactical monkeys, they cannot pull off a formation or move from cover to cover properly. They get themselves into impossible and deadly situations very quick, they're too dumb to notice things, they get alerted too easily, due to FC's "stealth mechanics", they react to every piece of shit that hit the ground during mankind's existence. :D

I'm sorry, but Far Cry isn't the one to be praised. STALKER series, for its combat AI which shows good awareness, realistic reaction times, and proper use of cover is the opposite.

[calin_banc 19]

Lol, the AI in Stalker cheated as hard as possible, both in knowing where you are or in how good they shoot. That of course, when they didn't just look at you and move from here to there without a fired bullet. :D

[chortles 263]

Lol, the AI in Stalker cheated as hard as possible, both in knowing where you are or in how good they shoot. That of course, when they didn't just look at you and move from here to there without a fired bullet. :D

That... that doesn't sound better than Arma's AI, only bad in its own ways! :lol:

On the other hand, the recent addition of bullet-flying-close-to-a-given-unit-detection means that such "is now mapped to the behaviour of a unit reacting to threats. The next step will be to connect this to penalties in AI aiming accuracy. Although we're at an early stage, we can say that our goal is to improve the experience of firefights by refining their lethality and promoting / rewarding the use of legitimate tactics / maneuvers." (Source is SITREP #00094.) As I posted in the dev branch AI discussion thread, it's not AI suppression but it sounds like a step on the road to that...

[calin_banc 19]

Each game has it's AI tailored to his gameplay mechanics. Of course, some fail at this, for instance - wanting stealth approach, but the NPC react poorly, either by spotting the player too easy or too hard (honestly, I prefer the later in that case). In doesn't really matter that the AI from other shooters does poorly in ArmA or vice-versa, they weren't meant to face these kind of situations.

Just in ArmA, the AI seems to point out and exacerbate about every single flaw of the game at the moment. Granted, there are signs for changing, personally I'm waiting for those in regards to player detection in the environment, squad/team and inventory management, movement in the field, etc. Too bad the campaign can't be played in COOP, it would have been a blast! :D

[pulstar 55]

Since we're talking other engines now, what is the game with best emergent AI behavior? For example, if you ask Arma's AI to assault a fortress, they would never plant explosives to take down a reinforced wall, there's no initiative without some major scripting (which is why I guess PvE games with other human players are so popular right now).

[Ckrauslo 12]

i wish there was an inbuilt caching system that one could activate and manipulate on the fly. like a slider on each unit for "simulationDistance" or something much like the skill slider for which you then could change the value dynamically via script functions. maybe something that puts the AI in a simplified hold loop where it maybe does some dice roll stuff based on loadouts and stuff, similar to ALiVE.

it's a real shame the engine doesn't do such things by default. it's one thing to say that arma allows 100s of AI but making i work dynamically and scale intelligently is another thing. i don't even see the point in having stuff actually happen when no players are around in most cases. at least not as complex as when they are actually around. without stuff like that arma is sadly just a shooter that is too big for its own good. i get that there has to be a limit where one can't expect it to run well anymore since you can place way too much stuff with the editor (which is great) but the limit is currently way too low especially compared to arma 2.

There are a lot of scripts who can make objects and AI disappear as you go away, and re-simulate when you appear into view distance

[war_lord 934]

Since we're talking other engines now, what is the game with best emergent AI behavior? For example, if you ask Arma's AI to assault a fortress, they would never plant explosives to take down a reinforced wall, there's no initiative without some major scripting (which is why I guess PvE games with other human players are so popular right now).

As far as I know, there's no 3d engine with that level of AI emergent behavior, other games can give the illusion of intelligent AI because they typically take place in "controlled environments" within liner levels, so multiple AI responses for any given situation can be scripted together. Arma, being a sandbox can't do that.