Any official info on backwards compatability of ENFUSION engine and Arma 3 content?

[xon2 102]

Hey guys,

 

i kinda wonder whether there's any official info concerning the new enfusion engine in the works right now and whether this engine will generally be able to support ported maps, assets and missions from arma 3. I am 2000 hours in and i feel like i have a couple more thousand hours left before ''maybe'' getting close to being done with arma 3. I really like the setting, the maps and assets and stuff. Since Enfusion will probably be the most extensive overhaul and advancement for BI games from a technical perspective, i fear this old practice of porting over maps and assets from older arma titles might not be feasible anymore. You think Enfusion will be a clean slate and all old stuff will stay with arma 3 'as is', or might we be lucky and be able to get the major part of arma 3 assets ported to whatever future armaresque title BI might throw our way? 

[Dedmen 2714]

All we know about Enfusion currently is from DayZ. And DayZ doesn't have to worry about backwards compatibility with Arma content, so the compatability that we can observe on DayZ doesn'T provide any useful information about a potential future Arma.

Currently it seems like p3d models and paa textures and old configs are supported, maps only need to be repacked, SQF scripts are completely gone.
But the Engine is still in heavy development and this says nothing about the future.

[Private Evans 498]

Enfusion Engine ( in DayZ) does not provide support for human combat/pathfinding AI . So porting maps and gear, weapons and vehicles etc should be not that big problem at some point but single player and coop missions against human AI will not be possible for the near future....PVP should work fine though.

[Grumpy Old Man 3546]

58 minutes ago, Private Evans said:

Enfusion Engine ( in DayZ) does not provide support for human combat/pathfinding AI .

Thought there were zombies in dayz?

 

Cheers

[Private Evans 498]

Some of the DayZ devs stated...

 

" In short, at the moment, it should be possible to create an AI character, and play with movement states and animations but it would be difficult to deal with collisions since the pathfinding isn't available from scripts yet. We plan to add such support (pathfinding) but the timeline is unknown." 

 

not to speak about AI driving vehicles, doing formations and using tactics...etc

 

I guess Zombie and Animal AI will allow  any kind of creature/monster AI though 

 

 

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

11 hours ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

Thought there were zombies in dayz?

 

Cheers

 

objects dont need “im a good object to take cover behind” config in DayZ he means. also road networks with path nodes, etc.

 

sounds like support for AI is dropping, unless its just zombies with simple vector propulsion

[Dedmen 2714]

Again. DayZ != Next potential Arma.

You cannot port most things (like CUP Terrains) to DayZ anyway because the license doesn't allow it.

[froggyluv 2136]

Dev already stated they are "building AI from the ground up" for the next iteration so unless by "building" they mean "dismantling", im guessing a hybrid engine for Arma 4

[Dedmen 2714]

20 hours ago, froggyluv said:

im guessing a hybrid engine for Arma 4

Enfusion is a Hybrid engine yes. That's where the "fusion" comes from.

It's a combination of RV and Enforce.

[Spatsiba 89]

As dedmen said it'll be a mix of RV and Enforce. Some compatibility will exist but a lot will most likely have to be made from scratch. Anything else would pretty much be speculation at this point. All you can do is pray that they go back to OPF-A2 gameplay wise and don't create CS: Enfusion. 

[Vigil Vindex 64]

On 08/10/2018 at 2:55 PM, froggyluv said:

im guessing a hybrid engine for Arma 4

 

I can appreciate that there is a lot of content, both from the devs and the community, that we all get to enjoy from all of the Arma and OPF series of games. And I would love for that backwards compatibility to be maintained going forward with future games. And from what we can see currently with DayZ it certainly looks like content such as maps and models can indeed be ported to future games without much hassle, animations could be an issue. However my main concern is that the biggest challenge going forward, both for DayZ and any future Arma game is performance, MP AI performance in particular. If ultimately we have to sacrifice that backwards compatibility of the content from previous games to achieve the "magic bullet" that will finally solve and unlock the MP AI experiences we want to have in future games then I think we should accept that cost. Worst case scenario will be that we will have to port the logic for missions and scenarios to the new scripting engine in enfusion. DayZ seems to have made progress with large amounts of relatively static entities (loot) in the MP environment, but I am still waiting to see large amounts of complex entities (AI) in the MP environment. Arma is great for large scale warfare, but we really need to populate those large scale maps with AI to get an experience that deserves to be called "splendid".

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

6 hours ago, Vigil Vindex said:

 

I can appreciate that there is a lot of content, both from the devs and the community, that we all get to enjoy from all of the Arma and OPF series of games. And I would love for that backwards compatibility to be maintained going forward with future games. And from what we can see currently with DayZ it certainly looks like content such as maps and models can indeed be ported to future games without much hassle, animations could be an issue. However my main concern is that the biggest challenge going forward, both for DayZ and any future Arma game is performance, MP AI performance in particular. If ultimately we have to sacrifice that backwards compatibility of the content from previous games to achieve the "magic bullet" that will finally solve and unlock the MP AI experiences we want to have in future games then I think we should accept that cost. Worst case scenario will be that we will have to port the logic for missions and scenarios to the new scripting engine in enfusion. DayZ seems to have made progress with large amounts of relatively static entities (loot) in the MP environment, but I am still waiting to see large amounts of complex entities (AI) in the MP environment. Arma is great for large scale warfare, but we really need to populate those large scale maps with AI to get an experience that deserves to be called "splendid".

 

do you have evidence of BI hiring a Game AI programmer to work on their next flagship title? i dont, and their lack of AI development 2012-2018 indicates their next flagship title may not include AI at all

[Vigil Vindex 64]

On 25/10/2018 at 9:40 AM, fn_Quiksilver said:

 

do you have evidence of BI hiring a Game AI programmer to work on their next flagship title? i dont, and their lack of AI development 2012-2018 indicates their next flagship title may not include AI at all

 

I've seen no evidence that BI has hired anyone new to specifically work on AI for future titles. I do think that they already have staff who can do work on AI but they did not get allocated enough time and resources to implement the scope of changes that we would like to have seen in A3. Hopefully they are given the resources and time to work on AI for future Arma games in Enfusion.

I think your suspicion that AI might be skipped in future Arma games could be true, Vygor for example is basically DayZ without the AI zombies. Which is fine, it makes sense to focus on the parts that work and cut the stuff that can cause problems and cost more development time than the value they bring to the gameplay. In the context of Arma I could see the benefits of cutting a complex AI system to focus on a platform that keeps the main focus of the engine efficient etc. Perhaps it would be best to make the platform robust enough to enable the community to develop custom AI but isolate that from the engine itself so we don't see the kind of problems we see in Arma when AI are added and cause the engine to get bogged down.

We might already be in a better position with Enfusion, I got the feeling that the AI systems in RV was so embedded and undocumented that it was almost impossible to de-tangle the systems and prevent AI from dragging the engine performance down, leaving us with just small changes but nothing radically changed. Perhaps this is not the case with Enfusion and it will give them enough overhead to develop a new AI system.

I just hope that we get something that allows for the large maps to be populated with more AI, we need a realistic military population, a company for each side, with maybe 2 platoons in each company. So that is potentially over 200 AI, then we want civilians so another 100-200 AI. And it would be hard to do that sort of stuff in RV without elaborate systems and hardware such as caching and headless clients which most of us are not in a position to do. If we could get those sorts of numbers I would be happy. And if the AI needs to be simpler to achieve that I could live with that, but let the community script more advanced AI subroutines that they can choose to use.

I'm pretty sure that BI wants this sort of experience in the Arma games, there was talk of a large open single player campaign with the whole map being populated but it got cut, I think because of the Greece thing, but more likely due to the technical difficulty of implementing that sort of scenario in the game. We did see an engine based caching system in RV near the end of A3's main development cycle, but it was never really used much probably due to it's limitations in the way that caching system works by effectively pausing stuff that you want to be actively moving and interactive.

[FallujahMedic -FM- 867]

Quote

Any official info on backwards compatability of ENFUSION engine and Arma 3 content?

Officially, no. 

[redarmy 422]

I would really hate it if i wasnt able to play all the mission content(and use some scripts) iv created in my current time,and alot more time to come,in Arma4.

 

Its a long way off though.I just hope more consideration goes into AI. There needs to be a player/AI revive system and rearming for SP use.Im suprised after all this time these two fundamental abilities dont exist in Arma3.