what cheap, immersion features would be good for Arma?

[kothen 57]

I feel more some more dialogue between units when they fight. COWarMod did a great job of this by adding ambient chatter between units during peace times and firefights. Gave them a more human like feel and less AI.

[devilslayersbane 28]

Steele6' date=' when you die in a helicopter and fall out of it, flat like you're laying in an invisible coffin is not what I call physics/ animations.[/quote']

Actually, the intention (although it doesn't always work out this way, especially with open helo's like the MH-9) is that the dead animation plays where you're slumped over in your sleep. Most of the time you're not kicked out of the vehicle for death unless someone takes your spot.

Go into third person mode while crouched and turn your charachter, do you notice he turns 360degrees without the use of his legs? Like he's floating / levitating.

Ok, sure, there's no animation that plays, but a sound does. Plus unless you're LOOKING for it, you won't notice.

What about landing with a parachute? the charachter freezes when he hits the ground then you get a prone animation. It's linked very cheaply together.

Part of this is due to how ArmA handles vehicle, including parachutes.

What about dragging or carrying another charachter? there are no animations there whatsoever.

Actually, these animations exist (which you would know if you used the animation viewer). They're just really buggy when used by scripts in mp. However, when it works right it looks pretty good. http://ttp3.dslyecxi.com/img/ttp3_341.jpg (153 kB)

Right now there is a gross lack of physics and animations not just for charachters but also for vehicles. The strangest things happen when a car hits another car or a rock.

Care to explain? If you're talking about a lack of crunchy vehicle animations where you're vehicle's front end is trashed, the damage system would need to be even more modular than it already is. And I would like for them to prioritize basic modularity for fixed-wing first.

You can clearly see it's not a real physics engine but scripted sequences tied together.

Actually it IS a real physics engine. Ragdoll is a thing in Arma 3, and there's even 2 mods that when used together make it better than it already is. Slingloading wouldn't work without this physics engine, or it would look shitty like RAV lifter (not that they didn't do a good job, but anyone who still uses that mod for slingloading needs to get with the times). Placing some crates and driving through them doesn't just make them fly across the map like in arma 2, it actually affects them in a realistic way.

Concerning desync, as game breaking as it is, I understand it's hard but that is a big NO NO.

This statement is productive. It's about .000000000000000001% productive, but nonetheless productive. How about hopping on the dev-branch for once, and try to help the developers by telling them in which situations you experience desync. It's not like they're sitting there in their offices going "mwahahahaha, we're BI and we're putting desync in the game on purpose just to screw with people." No, actually they've been working with other BI teams to help solve network latency and desync issues.

These three points, physics, desync and animations are what bother me most cause they're so detrimental and important for immerssion /gameplay (desync).

As far as physics and animations go, did you even play ArmA 2? Did you know that the animation viewer exists? If you're truly experiencing so much desync, make sure that you're mods aren't causing the issue. As has been stated by BI, and other sources, a lot of modders push the boundaries of what ArmA3 can handle which means that, when a lot of said mod's content/scripts are running, it tends to cause FPS drop. On a server, this means latency issues and desync problems that the engine isn't prepared for. And while it's not fair to blame modders for such issues that they probably didn't foresee, it's not really something BI can fix without working with every modder on an individual basis to make sure that either A: the mod is properly optimized and can be handled by the engine, or B: Improve the basic way the engine handles things such as polycounts, textures, outside scripts, LOD's, etc. to the level that a single mod needs to run on the same level as vanilla content. Therefore, as sucky as this is, modders need to be aware of the performance limits of the vanilla content and scripts and try and work with that accordingly. I'm sure most modders already do this, but this is not always the case.

[chortles 263]

To delve bit deeper, the bipods development took at least 3months while not including pre production

(Research, proof of concept, scripts...) which would be like 4 months.According to read of Sitreps.

Hence my own remark, as BI's statements on "resources" have tended to imply them viewing time as a cost, and we can even look back to BI's admission that for Marksmen they actually had to decide what to even attempt.

[bad benson 1733]

I feel more some more dialogue between units when they fight. COWarMod did a great job of this by adding ambient chatter between units during peace times and firefights. Gave them a more human like feel and less AI.

great suggestions. i'd love that too. it has been shown that it's so easy to achieve. same goes for more pronounced pain screams when they get shot.

[chompster 29]

Being able to stand(and move) on a moving object

Amphibious tracked vehicles(Arma2 had these..)

Physics(as the site states there is/would be but i have yet to experience anything described or shown http://i.imgur.com/kj2hXeD.png )

[slim_pikins 12]

AN2 with .50 cals in the wings ;-)

A safety for my weapon

[dmarkwick 261]

Bring back sound occlusion by objects :)

Ramping low-pass sound filter for distance.

Throwing improvements.

5DoF while prone.

Aim-based item interaction.

Action menu overhaul.

GUI based team orders system (i.e. radial menus or something similar).

[chompster 29]

RO2 like dead-zone aim would be nice as well. The dead-zone(free-aim?) currently in is absurdly snappy and rigid, Feels terrible.

having different magazine models on weapons based on what you actually in there(like DayZ has it)

Edited March 23, 2015 by Chompster

[DancZer 65]

ammo repack

[dav 22]

Realistic blood. A 50 cal should cause much more mess, for istance.

Night vision should automatically disable when you are using a scope. There is no better and cheaper trade-off for NV. It makes sense, you can't look through a scope when you have night vision goggles.

+1 for more blood splat and as mentioned below the text on the middle of the screen, anoying icons and so on. There should be one hud button that allows control of squad members, inventory control of squad members, magazine count, health and current stance, waypoint information, map information, objectives, one button, one screen with mouse control.

[gibonez 18]

RO2 like dead-zone aim would be nice as well. The dead-zone(free-aim?) currently in is absurdly snappy and rigid, Feels terrible.

having different magazine models on weapons based on what you actually in there(like DayZ has it)

YES!!.

Finally someone that agrees with me on this aspect the very slight free aim/ dead zone aiming in RO2 makes the shooting mechanics end result far more like real life than the rigid aiming ever good.

Some people will complain that it does not feel good but who cares if the end result is in firefights and gunplay having more realistic qualities in the end .

[Defunkt 431]

I'd like to see the transition between optic modes animated. Wouldn't require actual animations just a bit of code to briefly track the camera from one memory viewpoint to the next.

Lots of good improvements in DrSheep's Action Button Mod would be better implemented by the engine.

[enex 11]

I'd like to see the transition between optic modes animated. Wouldn't require actual animations just a bit of code to briefly track the camera from one memory viewpoint to the next.

Lots of good improvements in DrSheep's Action Button Mod would be better implemented by the engine.

To follow your tangent, I would love to see moving your view from backup optics to primary optics smoothly, not snappy as we have now.

[toysoldier 35]

Some graffitis in the towns and definitely more blood.

[rockdpm 10]

Pretty sure... firing from vehicles is already implemented... maybe if your driver.. but that would require extra control mapping.

[tokyoindia 18]

Larger library of ambient sounds. Distant combat, explosions, fire fights, jet engines, missiles, sirens, civilians, animals etc.

[almanzo 144]

blind-fire isn't usable really, AI and most players arent affected by suppression like in COD/battlefield/rainbow six, as those games are more close quarters where that would be effective. I think this shouldn't be improved.

Well, the Marksmen DLC does include suppression as an effect, the AI are planned to scan areas for bullet impacts and to avoid open ground or running into fire from now on. Plus, there are mods who does this allready, when I play coop sessions with my community, we use suppression extensively and it's very effective. We are playing with Ollems TPWC AI suppression system:

and it makes fireing manouvers a must, to be honest. In the Marksmen DLC stream, they demonstrated much the same feature, so blind fire might actually be a good addition in my opinion, especially if your pinned down in order to regain fire superiority.

[chompster 29]

Landing from high fall animation and animation blending(?)

Actually pulling the pin from grenades and throwing them appose to this casual insta throw

[chortles 263]

Pretty sure... firing from vehicles is already implemented... maybe if your driver.. but that would require extra control mapping.

At last check FFV for the driver is by design (and something that I haven't really seen console games have a control solution for either).

Add radio clicks to in-game radio channels.

Perhaps a simpler version of ACRE / TaskForceRadio

Oh wait, i missed a few. Sub Pixel rendering and infinite View distance.

So.... not cheap then. Edited March 24, 2015 by Chortles

[EDcase 87]

Add radio clicks to in-game radio channels.

Perhaps a simpler version of ACRE / TaskForceRadio

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

Oh wait, i missed a few. Sub Pixel rendering and infinite View distance.

[theevancat 277]

I think when doing a company nothing is really "cheap." Whereas with a mod or whatever you can do whatever the hell you want (I could make my modded uniforms turn purple and pink and I wouldn't need to get approval from anyone) in a big company you need to go up the chain of command, do meetings, think about how it'll go in, and then task people or whatever to do it. It's there for quality control, of course, but I'm not sure if any serious game company at all (not an indie Dev in their garage) can knock out a feature in an afternoon and call it good.

[chortles 263]

I think when doing a company nothing is really "cheap." Whereas with a mod or whatever you can do whatever the hell you want (I could make my modded uniforms turn purple and pink and I wouldn't need to get approval from anyone) in a big company you need to go up the chain of command, do meetings, think about how it'll go in, and then task people or whatever to do it. It's there for quality control, of course, but I'm not sure if any serious game company at all (not an indie Dev in their garage) can knock out a feature in an afternoon and call it good.

And of course, mods don't have deadlines that aren't imposed by Make Arma Not War. :p Considering that BI treats time as a cost...

[big_t 1]

Hi guys,

..basically, little features that are cheap to implement, but have the effect of improving the immersion or feeling of combat.

• Improved multiplayer filtering, mainly to filter out servers running 1PP only.

First person perspective is the single most effective way to immerse yourself into the game and feel the intensity of a firefight. If you haven't tried in a while, give it a go :)

[theevancat 277]

I think when doing a company nothing is really "cheap." Whereas with a mod or whatever you can do whatever the hell you want (I could make my modded uniforms turn purple and pink and I wouldn't need to get approval from anyone) in a big company you need to go up the chain of command, do meetings, think about how it'll go in, and then task people or whatever to do it. It's there for quality control, of course, but I'm not sure if any serious game company at all (not an indie Dev in their garage) can knock out a feature in an afternoon and call it good.

Actually, here's a quote from the recent Steam announcement that sums this up perfectly:

"Where the packing of game data had already been restricted, they now have to request permission to do any work on the game. That may sound crazy, but it helps us greatly in this final stages. The smallest and innocent-looking change can make seemingly unrelated systems implode. This tool allows us to carefully track changes, quickly address issues and focus on the things that matter."

Nothing is really "cheap", especially during final release stages.