Is a few weekends worth of work worth half a million Euro?

[badluckburt 78]

;2873184']To do better' date=' one needs to learn from past mistakes.

Getting input and feedback with a different perspective is often very useful.

I think you misread the critic of most people. However you can always cherry pick attempting to push your POV.[/quote']

True, I won't argue that criticism is needed to improve and it should be welcomed by all. I should've been more clear maybe because I do see valid points being raised in this thread.

And then there's the people who just resort to memes and stuff. I posted with the latter in mind as they don't actually provide meaningful input other than reminding me I should watch Office Space again :)

- Technical quality: technical design, optimization and innovative solution of an Entry;

- Originality: originality and innovation of an Entry's concept;

- Experience: overall gameplay experience, balance of design and challenge presented by an Entry;

- Presentation: coherence and consistency of an Entry's presentation in terms of functionality and expression.

When i see the result, sorry too say that, but i must be dumb, I don't see rationnal choose with this kind of standard !

Just look the Multiplayer section. I feel that i'm not alone to think that !

And for me it make me angry for the modder, because they enter in the contest thinking that this would be a serious one because of the amount of the price !

I Feel bad for http://makearmanotwar.com/entry/aZDNVtbCpA#.VNCvi_l5OKQ

http://makearmanotwar.com/entry/2Nvm9bPQHl#.VNCwWvl5OKQ

http://makearmanotwar.com/entry/eba3yzQZev#.VNCw2_l5OKQ

Just With the standard they should have used, you can see that were are something wrong !

And that why some people feel Bohemia needs to explain their choices

The outcome of any contest is bound to leave someone disappointed. The only way you can say that something was 'wrong' with the choices made is if BI opens up about their decision-making process and give you their side but it seems you've already made up your mind. You are entitled to your opinion ofcourse, I just disagree. I may change my mind if BI does open up and the process turns out to be flipping coins or w/e.

I agree with the fact that a lot of people don't understand the choices of the jury. For me here are the variables that BIS should have taken seriously:

- Originality

- Code-scripting

- Supporters

- New gameplay added

- Optimization

- Popularity (steamworkshop, youtube)

That's why I don't understand why MOCAP or Armageddon were not in the finalists. For example, when I see every videos on Armageddon (even some with 100.000 views), every players are having a lot of fun. You can not ignore that. I don't know why this proves that it's not an acceptable mod. Maybe BIS is not aware of what's players are living ingame... I haven't seen videos of airsoft multiplayers having so much fun...

That shows there is a difference of mentality of BIS and the community...

True, I would've picked different finalists myself. The only parameters in your post I don't agree with are supporters and popularity, those only applied to the SP part of the contest and we all got to vote on that.

But if a mod is aimed at a small niche of Arma players but original, innovative code-wise, optimized and / or offering new gameplay, why should it not be a finalist and be chosen over a far bigger mod that more people play? Sometimes the real gems fly under the radar.

With that said, I'm sorry for giving the wrong impression with my own post. Most of the real criticism in this thread is solid and while I'm not sure they will, I know most here would appreciate it if BI revealed the details on their judging process. Perhaps the judges will share their insights for all finalist entries or just the winners once the contest is fullly over.

[AD_clem64121 11]

True, I would've picked different finalists myself. The only parameters in your post I don't agree with are supporters and popularity, those only applied to the SP part of the contest and we all got to vote on that.

But if a mod is aimed at a small niche of Arma players but original, innovative code-wise, optimized and / or offering new gameplay, why should it not be a finalist and be chosen over a far bigger mod that more people play? Sometimes the real gems fly under the radar.

after all, I should not have use "wrong" but incoherent (sorry for my french) ,I mean the decision is not wrong, i don't know because they didn't explain they decision ( they should have good one !) and this is why I post some "meme and stuff" I just want to know the decision, i don't want to change the result ! I JUST CAN'T, But you know it is what i think... i don't really understand they decision and good for you if you can ! But like said @ice9 the promoted entries and the finalist show that Bi's had other taste that the "masse" of the Bi's community (AND NO, I AM NOT JUDGING ) it is just a fact

[Ice9 10]

You mean that 10118 downloads on Armaholic is a proof that it's not interesting?. That shows again the incoherence of BIS: a contest for the community, but also totally doens't care about the community experiences.

Edited February 3, 2015 by Ice9

[chortles 263]

I Feel bad for http://makearmanotwar.com/entry/aZDNVtbCpA#.VNCvi_l5OKQ

http://makearmanotwar.com/entry/2Nvm9bPQHl#.VNCwWvl5OKQ

Two things: First, FFAA 6.0 was probably a victim of what kju described, that "It seems like BI tried to avoid select two items of the same type (Epoch vs Breaking Point, TFAR vs ACRE2, F/A-18X Black Wasp vs FC-37 Thunder, terrains, etc)". Based on that, my guess is that maybe the BI panel thought it redundant to have BWMod and FFAA 6.0 be matched up against each other twice, and thus decided to choose between them during the finalists selection?

Second, about MOCAP... let's just say that not everyone will agree as to just how game-changing that was -- it was after all in the Total Modification category where there was quite the stiff competition! -- and presumably BI thought that other Total Modification entries exhibited more technical quality, originality, presentation, and "experience"?

You mean that 10118 downloads on Armaholic is a proof that it's not interesting. That shows again the incoherence of BIS: a contest for the community, but also totally doens't care about the community experiences.

It would have been a question of whether the BI judges found the entry interesting... and whether they deemed the entry to meet the other criteria which 1REV_clem64121 described, something which community popularity doesn't account for.

[AD_clem64121 11]

@Chortes I see you point, and now i agree for MOCAP ( they should have moved/advise him to the addons section maybe ?). For me is mostly the multiplayer section that i don't really understand...

[Ice9 10]

Yes, it's just a little misunderstanding about multiplayer section contest.

Edited February 3, 2015 by Ice9

[badluckburt 78]

after all, I should not have use "wrong" but incoherent (sorry for my french) ,I mean the decision is not wrong, i don't know because they didn't explain they decision ( they should have good one !) and this is why I post some "meme and stuff" I just want to know the decision, i don't want to change the result ! I JUST CAN'T, But you know it is what i think... i don't really understand they decision and good for you if you can ! But like said @ice9 the promoted entries and the finalist show that Bi's had other taste that the "masse" of the Bi's community (AND NO, I AM NOT JUDGING ) it is just a fact

Yes, there's no doubt that BI's criteria are very different from what the players themselves would've picked and clarity is always a good thing :) the meme put me on the wrong foot as they usually don't promote actual discussion. Anyway, I understand where you're coming from and it probably would be a good idea for BI to open up about this. I don't have a problem with the whole thing but others clearly do with valid concerns so clearing it up would be a good thing.

- edit

nevermind, that clearly wasn't aimed at me :)

[Tankbuster 1746]

As a small aside to the OP, who appears to have lit the blue touch paper and retired (read: started a controversial thread then not taken part in it (read: flamebaiting)), it's neither a few weekends work, nor is it half a million euros.

No-one ever made anything for this game in a 'few weekends' and the half a million euros is the total prize fund. No one person is going to win that amount.

[hazey 9]

No-one ever made anything for this game in a 'few weekends' and the half a million euros is the total prize fund. No one person is going to win that amount.

Fucking, Amen! I wish I could have text with a sparkle effect because Amen would shine! OP is absolutely INSANE and I mean actually in-fucking-sane if he thinks ALiVE was created in just a couple weekends. Hell if you think ANY of the mods were created in just a few weekends, I would love to invite you on Teamspeak for a weekend of coding and bug fixing and listen to the rage. Forget what you know about coding, RV Engine will take what you know spin it around break something that makes perfect sense at the same exact time make something work that has no business even working...

omg I love arma.

[mr.g-c 6]

ACE did not enter MANW.

Is there by chance any thread about ACE? I used forum search but could not find anything. Sorry for the Offtopic gentleman.

News about ACE via PM also welcome :-)

[chortles 263]

You should ask NouberNou because he's the closest there is to a public face of ACE for Arma 3.

Edited February 3, 2015 by Chortles

[soul_assassin 1750]

Fucking, Amen! I wish I could have text with a sparkle effect because Amen would shine! OP is absolutely INSANE and I mean actually in-fucking-sane if he thinks ALiVE was created in just a couple weekends. Hell if you think ANY of the mods were created in just a few weekends, I would love to invite you on Teamspeak for a weekend of coding and bug fixing and listen to the rage. Forget what you know about coding, RV Engine will take what you know spin it around break something that makes perfect sense at the same exact time make something work that has no business even working...

omg I love arma.

I approve that amen :)! 11 years this May

[koffeinflummi 96]

I'm clocking in at 3006 hours in Arma, that's just 62.625 weekends, plus 2134 hours in the A3 tools for another 44.458 weekends.

[greyhound32 10]

Amen for some sense. Sure you can throw a map together in a few weekends with a small team but what do you do with it then?

Some of the Mods that never made it to the top 10 of their respective categories have been worked upon since the tools were first released and are still being refined today. Maybe monetizing it is wrong to some forum users but it is the easiest way for bohemia to acknowledge the work of those people that can still keep a game relevant and alive years after its release .. and of course all us armaholics clamouring for more.

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

Wouldn't surprise me if some of the more complex entries had 2500+ man-hours invested, if not far more. :)

[almanzo 144]

I must say that I understand the purpose behind this thread, and while I agree that there are quite a few very good mods and missions among the finalist (A small disclaimber, I have had a small role in one of the sp finalists) I think the whole idea of this contest might not have been beneficial to neither the community or bohemia interactive.

I too have a feeling that the intention behind might have been in part an attempt to recreate DayZ, a perfectly fine ambition on part of BI, but I also think that they genuinely wanted to create something positive in order to encourage creativity and diversity in the user made content that we as a community can enjoy. But sadly I think that the contest might have halted rather than encouraged new content due to secresy, fear of collaberation and the way you can't use mods to make own contributions. Part of what has made the ARMA community great is how well people cooperate and collaborate in a common goal, creating content for the benefit of all. Sure, there have been more narrow scenes as well, prior to ARMA III, the Life community was small and a nichè, and only one of many examples of small communities that use ARMA for something completely different than the main part of the community. But despite this, sharing and helping have been a huge part of the community all the time. The unspoken law that one does not do reviews of mods exept they spesifically ask for feedback have usually been respected, and people have been encouraged and cheered on from very early on when making small and "beginner" type mods before growing and learning new stuff.

Up to now, there hasn't been much competition. The spirit of the community has been cooperation and helping eachother grow. As such, this competition has more or less changed some parts of the community into becomming competative and sometimes even hostile towards others. Bringing money to the table I think wasn't the best of ideas, even though I really admire the reason and dedication behind it in part of bis. I also think that the money could have been better spent on small contributions ala "mod of the month" or things like that. Either way, I think it's really awesome for them to have tried, trowing 500 000 euros at their modding community is something just BI could have done. It shows they appriciate you and realizes how important you are to the game and the community at large. Sadly, I think it has been counter productive.

Either way, good luck to all finalists, please don't let it get in the way of the fantastic cooperative spirit of our community.

[.kju 3244]

I think your conclusion aLmAnZo that the competition has halted content is wrong or at least minor.

The real problems for lack of motivation, long time people dropping, mods not getting ported to A3,

has many other unrelated reasons, like effort, tools, docu, A3 setting, lack of progress in certain areas with A3 to name a few.

The competition certainly didn't help with these underlying problems either, yet the competition didn't have any meaningful impact in comparison.

[PiZZADOX 47]

;2881363']has many other unrelated reasons' date=' like effort, tools, docu, A3 setting, [/quote']

I think Julian and the like have done some great work with the Arma 3 tools, but yes, many community tools are still missing and to make matters worse it looks like several versions of the allinoneconfig are down at the moment. Documentation is sorely missing compared to A2 or OFP modding docs.

I would agree I think it comes down to the A3 setting. For me, it's not "arma" if it's futuristic bee people and multiple vehicle reskins and magical rezeroing scopes. That may be how combat is like in a couple decades, but count me out. Here's to hoping BIS gets the message and releases a current/cold war/ vietnam? full on expansion on it's own exe, so we don't have to load the gig's of content which i feel a lot of disciples of the series don't appreciate.

;2881363'] lack of progress in certain areas with A3 to name a few..

Referring to optimization/ selective fixing of feedback tracker issues?

[.kju 3244]

@ PiZZADOX

You don't seem much into arma modding, are you? What most people don't know, realize or are willing to accept

is that OFP was not made with modding in mind (nor with MP). Modding for OFP/Arma from a technical side was and

still is just a by-product of what BI does internally to develop mainly a new large terrain with a SP campaign and new assets each time.

It's not like most others engines or modding are far better - except those made in mind to license to other developers (UE, unity, CE, Id tech);

however those promoting modding, aka to allow users to generate custom content, mostly choose a more narrow scope and invest way more

these days in accessible, easy-to-use tools, workflows and documentation that allow with limited effort everyone to achieve decent results.

Nothing has changed here essentially. A3 is here almost as bad as OFP was at release in these regards (especially if you do not count the community

made tools and BIKI docu made by community people to 99%) - BI so far did not make it part of their strategy to make arma/RV a modding platform.

As its getting more and more complex, and less appealing to people (among some other reasons), the less people spend the huge amount of time to

learn more advanced modding in the first place or to create high quality and diverse content.

name a few

1) What many people complain about (dont need to repeat)

2) Elements to improve the experience, gameplay and fun while playing

Yes there are small improvements, yet no focus is put on these at all.

To give you an example - OFP's lack of JIP was a huge drawback. BI took the challenge and resolved it eventually.

Unfortunately hardly any significant improvements on that scale have happened since - and there are many weak areas.

Edited February 21, 2015 by .kju [PvPscene]

[PiZZADOX 47]

90% of what I make, which is more scripts and quick addons rather than hard added content, isnt published. I wouldn't say it doesn't meet the mark, but it's so niche, it's honestly really only in house stuff that I do for myself and the people I am playing with, and i really didn't think anyone else would have any interest in it. Nothing near to Ace or any of the biggies, never had the time to dedicate a huge part of my evenings/weekends to these projects. They had top men working on it.

I could recognize that from just the simple class defines... It's basically the module for expansions and dlc that we are using to add in content, is it not? As you said just a by-product of how the engine loads it's data. I would say it was a big possibility this was built around VBS contracts with different partner packs or simply a very easy way to load dependent expansions. Quite modular compared to say Cryengine 1's data system.

I really haven't delved into A3 modding as I stated before it simply does not interest me, but what I do know about the new systems they have added, it that is just piles up on the old data and adds new structures entirely. The worst sort of thing for backwards compatibility, as those older assets need to be fixed up, as you know very well, and it discourages people from entering at that stage. The more and more they add to an outdated engine the more and more needless complexity builds up into a poorly optimized (and more importantly very hard for the devs to optimize - I believe they are trying) overly complicated mess that frankly needs an overhaul, in my opinion.

I hate to be that guy, but as a well known community modder, what would you say the devs could do to try and alleviate these problems? Spend a large amount of time on a fresh new engine? A few months of work on adaptive backwards compatibility for the older assets, or simply convert them themselves?

[.kju 3244]

@ PiZZADOX

I was asking to see how much experience you have with arma modding or other games, or professional experience in that area.

If one doesn't have any such background or just does mod at a very shallow level, its fairly hard to judge the whole topic I would argue - aside

from the possible realization that one was not able to get deeper into it and could ask why that is the case.

The way the engine, configs, scripting, data formats, its integration was all determined back with the initial development of OFP.

Unless I miss something at the moment, nothing has been changed significantly with this - VBS has/had no impact whatsoever either (except

terrains/visitor/some tools maybe to some degree).

What I mean with by-product is that BI essentially never thought much nor did deeper research about modding, community interests, what makes the series popular.

As far as I can tell they always only had a very narrow view when developing the next Arma title - mostly focusing on their personal or internal

preferences, or just picking up what has been popular in the community in regards to mods/game mods on a shallow level.

There has never been any broad discussion or interaction with the community about the further evolution of the series - what is done to some degree

is to use the issue tracker (CIT/A3 FT nowadays), the forum and personal connections as input; yet I would argue this has not been happening in any

strategical or analytic way, nor at a deeper level.

To give you some examples:

• Enhancing the missions editor
  
• Making the mission editor moddable
  
• Reducing the effort of modding in general
  
• Opening up the scripting engine/engine in general to some degree
  
• Using a (more) standard scripting engine (JavaVM was in dev but seems halted/scrapped and was a controversial decision both in design approach and choice of "language")
  
• Getting away from the proprietary p3d format for assets
  
• Considerably investing/improving the tool set and workflow
  
• Open sourcing (parts of) the internal tools set
  
• Sharing the data formats with the community
  
• Giving the community access to the internal engine version with improved debugging capabilities (did happen to some degree finally after A3 release)
  
• Creating logging and debugging capabilities for performance and network traffic measurement
  
• More control over AI capabilities (FSMs, eventhandlers) or adjustment of AI CPU use
  
• Allow gameplay customization per server (arma playerbase is very diverse - COOP, PvP, fast paced, realism, RPG, etc)
  
• Customization and extension of the inbuilt server browser
  

Some positive exceptions are the dll extension and finally BI working on mod sync with server/mission.

Granted these are all very challenging topics and due to some insider knowledge I know reasons why these are not tackled.

At the same time OFP was revolutionary as it brought many of advances of this kind at that point and not much has happened since.

A new engine or switching to another engine is both a huge effort and risk, nor does it necessarily improve any of the fundamental issues/you have

other limitations to deal with in return; plus its very very hard to allow porting of existing/previous content - let alone think of backwards compatibility.

There is other issue like the staff having to learn all the new tech - so does the community.

Finally you might just loose the qualities both of the engine and gameplay it provides. To me this approach seems not meaningful at all.

IMO a fully working and flexible enough mod sync is a crucial step to make mod use finally accessible to the average player.

In addition I think BI needs to find a business model that allows them to invest massively in improving their engine, tool set and modding capabilities (see discussion in this thread).

Edited February 22, 2015 by .kju [PvPscene]

[inlesco 233]

I'll intrude the thread for a little reason - .kju, thanks for the elaborate posts on your considerations. They're some lovely reads on their own.

Think it's time for you to have your own blog and share the insight there. I'm in as a reader. ;)

[PiZZADOX 47]

Great response and points .kju, I'll be lurking in that thread, a very interesting discussion and one that could actually be constructive for BIS.

Perhaps the future of BIS could be one akin to Epic or Valve, developing a platform for communities, and prospective developers, to utilize and tailor to their own tastes - be that milsim or wasteland. Concentrating far less on content and more on engine features and optimization.

[IndeedPete 1038]

I can only agree with the other posters: It's really interesting what .kju has to share about his time with BI. Good to see a critical (and fair) point of view from the inside. Though I recall BI speaking of "Arma as a platform" several times by now, maybe they're shifting from (SP) content / entertainment to framework, engine, platform, support and such?

[bad benson 1733]

Though I recall BI speaking of "Arma as a platform" several times by now

so far this is just PR-fu. sadly what kju described there in detail is the reality. arma doesn't have outstanding mod support. it just is one fo the few games that has it at all these days. and considering how all the core issues with tools, docu and the game data itself (config structure and core system moddability...*cough...attachment system...cough*) persist over the years, it blows my mind how little the game itself has progressed. you would think that by not focussing on modding so much there'd be a lot of resources to push the core game much further.

As far as I can tell they always only had a very narrow view when developing the next Arma title - mostly focusing on their personal or internal

preferences, or just picking up what has been popular in the community in regards to mods/game mods on a shallow level.

this is so spot on (that it hurts :D) and exactly mirrors my personal view on things and experience over the years. it is very apparent just from looking at the configs and each new feature that is added. how most systems are set up. how certain things are locked down in places that can't be modded without replacing bin.pbo (basically making your copy invalid for MP play afaik).

this highlights the core problem and basically the essence of what kju said. the deeper you dig and the longer you do it the more you realise that the problem is not simply that the game itself is flawed but that even after so many years and at a point where they even do something like the contest, they have surprisingly not much regard for what modders really need. so then combined with the base game itself also lacking is what made me personally finally accept that i'm wasting my time with this "platform".