Questions: SOG Prairie Fire

[bigshot 64]

Considering that I only paid $30 for Arma3, and this 3rd party mod will cost around $23...

My biggest concerns, personally speaking, are:

1. What is the actual quality of the included assets (modeling, textures, sounds, weaponry & vehicles).

2. Just how good (or poorly) will the AI bots path finding be, across the entire terrain (especially when it comes to driving across it)? *THIS ONE IS MOST IMPORTANT TO ME, IF ANYONE KNOWS THE ANSWER

My intentions are to be able to play my D.U.W.S mission on this terrain and transpose all the assets in my mission to use all the vietnam assets and units... but if the path finding is crap like it is on the Tanoa terrain...then its not for me. If any testers can comment on my questions I'd be grateful.

 

 

 

[JD Wang 352]

7 hours ago, bigshot said:

Considering that I only paid $30 for Arma3, and this 3rd party mod will cost around $23

So what? If $23 is a big deal to you then I suggest saving your money for something more important than video games.

 

7 hours ago, bigshot said:

What is the actual quality of the included assets (modeling, textures, sounds, weaponry & vehicles).

GlobMob has excellent quality assets, the CDLC has to pass BI standards, so there's no reason to doubt they won't be great. All promo images I've seen so far and word from beta testers say it's excellent, but as usual with the ARMA community there will be sad individuals complaining.

They've already said there will be a demo/compatibility mod like GlobMob where you can download stuff and try it out for yourself. I suggest you try that when it's released.

[zukov 490]

quality seems good , 23 euros are cheap MELEE COMBAT! my dream come true! My only prayer is, please Savage add the mig 21 with same quality!

[bigshot 64]

On 4/6/2021 at 11:02 PM, JD Wang said:

has to pass BI standards, so there's no reason to doubt they won't be great

 

You must be relatively new here, and a tad premature on the optimism (although I understand your point) 🙄...

.. .ever heard of the official BIS Tanoa terrain? Pretty awful path finding for a very large mission, like mine. I couldn't use it...pretty terrain, but without good pathfinding, an open world vehicular oriented mission can't be used on it. A real shame.

 

If there is really to be an easy to use demo for the terrain itself that is great, but I tend to doubt that can ever happen. Would be a great idea though and I'd certainly jump on that.

[froggyluv 2136]

On 4/6/2021 at 11:02 PM, JD Wang said:

has to pass BI standards, so there's no reason to doubt they won't be great

 

Are you serious? Like TS said there are large swaths of terrain in downtown areas in which the AI can simply not even move to evenn with a direct order. Have you ever seen ONE hotfix/update in which they address these sorts of issues -they simply ignore them. I have no doubt the mod will have decent content quality but id sure like to see the melee in action first 

[bigshot 64]

5 hours ago, froggyluv said:

Are you serious?

 

Apparently he IS serious, and ignorant as well 😜

[bigshot 64]

1 hour ago, JD Wang said:

I love these CLDC's they really bring out the entitled gamers, who are quite honestly fun to laugh at.

 

Just because arma3's poor vehicular AI pathfinding is part of the base game code, this does not mean that terrain makers are helpless and can't do anything to help their product work better in this regard as you would have us believe. 

 

The fact is, for the last 20 years now 3rd party modders have been needing to do as much as they can to minimize the inherent flaws which are in the base game since 2001. Some of them do a good job at it and some clearly do not. The original BIS team from 2 decades ago understood these flaws and took them into consideration when making the terrain. The Bohemia of today also knows it but ignores it all too often anyway.  In a terrain with potentially thousands of trees you need to carefully consider the AI pathfinding issues and make sure you don't create bottlenecks that the AI can't deal with.

 

So what I'm saying is that to release a piece of payware that would not take good care in this regard would simply not be worth my own time, nor my money. That's for me to know and decide...not you.

 

Oh yes and, I certainly AM entitled to decide what I require in a payware product before I will get good use out of it after purchasing it... that is exactly how markets are formed and this is how business is done all over the world. There is nothing about my concerns that deserve to be ridiculed by you or anyone else. 

 

You need to wise up more in your head, and less in your arse...my good fellow.

[stburr91 1002]

On 4/6/2021 at 3:47 PM, bigshot said:

Considering that I only paid $30 for Arma3, and this 3rd party mod will cost around $23...

My biggest concerns, personally speaking, are:

1. What is the actual quality of the included assets (modeling, textures, sounds, weaponry & vehicles).

2. Just how good (or poorly) will the AI bots path finding be, across the entire terrain (especially when it comes to driving across it)? *THIS ONE IS MOST IMPORTANT TO ME, IF ANYONE KNOWS THE ANSWER

My intentions are to be able to play my D.U.W.S mission on this terrain and transpose all the assets in my mission to use all the vietnam assets and units... but if the path finding is crap like it is on the Tanoa terrain...then its not for me. If any testers can comment on my questions I'd be grateful.

 

 

 

 

My suggestion to you is that you try to contact the developers, and see if you could take part in the beta testing, and provide feedback for them on the AI pathfinding. 

[papanowel 120]

23 hours ago, bigshot said:

If there is really to be an easy to use demo for the terrain itself that is great, but I tend to doubt that can ever happen. Would be a great idea though and I'd certainly jump on that.

 

@icebreakr is one of the person behind this CDLC if I'm not mistaken, he has great experience with terrain (as you probably already know), you might try to contact him.

 

I do hope BIS will open a topic related to "SOG prairie" in  CDLC sub-forum.

[icebreakr 3157]

I can confirm that. Regarding the path finding, well... I am not at liberty to discuss that (yet) you'll have to wait out a bit more 😉

p.s. we are all experienced community members and players, so we know what players look for and we spent numerous hours testing and improving some of the stuff.

[Pagoda.br 8]

AI drives badly in all maps, it's not something related to the map itself.

[bigshot 64]

12 hours ago, Pagoda.br said:

AI drives badly in all maps, it's not something related to the map itself.

guess you didn't bother reading this before posting:

 

[pierremgi 4852]

On 4/25/2021 at 8:49 PM, Pagoda.br said:

AI drives badly in all maps, it's not something related to the map itself.

 

You're right. Imho, the best driving behaviors are in Arma vanilla, even if some big mods are fine. The BI models are tuned. But, they are too few, especially on historic assets! Some big mods (CUP, UNSUNG,IFA3, RHS,...) are making up for that, with rather good results, but sometimes totally weird behaviors (and corrections).

 

But the maps are also important. Some maps are worse than others. Arma vanilla Altis and Stratis are almost clean for infantry paths (with some difficulties for vehicles in urban areas). Tanoa is not at its most, due to poorly implemented buildings (some building paths and positions are missing), bunch of trees and jungle pathways. The map was probably... expedited. Then, you have modded maps, issued from brand new projects, but most of the time transposed from Arma2 or sooner. That's an enormous work and sometimes the result is just not bad: broken roads, unlinked bridge segments, "steel"/"opaque"/"impenetrable" trees...

Some best exotic playable maps, imho: Takistan, Lingor, Kunduz (corrected version), Dakrong.

 

I scripted/played thousand hours with or without the mods above. At this moment, I don't feel the need to buy a DLC like global mob. Not a question of price. Just, the feeling I will not find something better or newer (in concept/improvement) than existing mods. This is not irrevocable but, right now the disk space asks me for some choices.

 

Last but not least, what I'm afraid of: BI will never develop an Arma 4, just surfing on paid DLC's like this.

 

[bigshot 64]

9 hours ago, pierremgi said:

The map was probably... expedited

Gee, wouldn't that be a shocker 😁 I remember the first thing I thought to myself after seeing Tanoa for the first time in action was..."this is a map designed for PvP, it'll never work well for large AI type missions (PvE)".

 

 

9 hours ago, pierremgi said:

what I'm afraid of: BI will never develop an Arma 4,

It is long over-due isn't it? But after seeing how this team handled Arma3 and the direction they have gone with it, I'm not so sure I'd be willing to buy into an Arma4...bring back the old team from Flashpoint & Arma 1, but keep the graphic artists from Arma3 please 😁

[stburr91 1002]

58 minutes ago, bigshot said:

 

 

 

It is long over-due isn't it? But after seeing how this team handled Arma3 and the direction they have gone with it, I'm not so sure I'd be willing to buy into an Arma4...bring back the old team from Flashpoint & Arma 1, but keep the graphic artists from Arma3 please 😁

 

It is long over due, that's for sure. The fact that BI has no new games announced using the Enfusion Engine really shows that they should have devoted a lot more resources to it's development much sooner than they did.  Heck, if they had, maybe they wouldn't have had to take on Chinese partners. 

 

As far as Arma 4 is concerned, I'm of the opinion that they need a whole new development team, especially new storyline writers, because Contact was not only a bad concept, but was quite a poorly written storyline. It's time for a new team, and a fresh new approach, hopefully with a much more realistic storyline set in the present time, or slightly in the future. My biggest concern about the future of the Arma series is that the next Arma game will almost certainly be a multi-platform game, so who knows what this will mean for PC gamers, we may end up with a game more "watered down" to accommodate consoles, and console players.  

 

Anyway, back on topic, I for one am excited by the Prairie Fire CDLC. I hope there is enough new features to give an exciting gameplay experience that it will bring back some of the people in the community that have drifted away. 

[Valken 622]

I wanted to ask is this mod also being developed by the Unsung team? If so, I would buy it in principle to support them. 

[zukov 490]

tomorrow is the day?

OMG!

[zukov 490]

Moderator please merge the threads on CDLC discussion

[cenkcnk 0]

I have been playing this dlc since the release

This is my first creator dlc thing. My question is, why all menu themes are changing when I enable this mod? Can't I play it within normal arma menu? 

[pierremgi 4852]

1 hour ago, cenkcnk said:

I have been playing this dlc since the release

This is my first creator dlc thing. My question is, why all menu themes are changing when I enable this mod? Can't I play it within normal arma menu? 

 

No. Consider that as an immersion. Like for other big mods (Ravage, Unsung, Exile...).

On the other hand, it's at your discretion. You launch the game with or without Prairie Fire... playing or not Prairie fire.Tthis DLC is so big that doesn't make sense to keep it loaded for playing something else on Arma.

Imho, such all-in-one DLC could gain in being modular. Map, units, extra commands and functions...  Not saying to split the retail, just enable the DLC to be loaded in 3 addons instead of one global.

[madrussian 347]

Now that it's out, curious about OP's big question. How does foot & vehicle AI path-finding perform on the terrains? (Specifically in the big cities.) More like Altis (A3 standard, for better or worse)? Or more like Tanoa (with big dead zones all over the place, etc)?

[Hautautujaaa 23]

On 5/9/2021 at 9:48 AM, madrussian said:

Now that it's out, curious about OP's big question. How does foot & vehicle AI path-finding perform on the terrains? (Specifically in the big cities.) More like Altis (A3 standard, for better or worse)? Or more like Tanoa (with big dead zones all over the place, etc)?

 

It is okay. Some areas are not accessible by default, but there are new invisible paths for infantry you can place in editor and they work fine – at least by Arma standards. They are somewhat wide, so if you need to have AI follow very narrow path, you can use the old method of using the training obstacle bridge placed just below the ground and turned invisible. 

 

What comes to vehicles, this is still Arma III we are talking about. The AI can sort of navigate the urban environments in safe behavior mode without crashing too much, but if they encounter other roads users or become engaged in combat they will crash each other, get stuck and all the usual. On rivers boats zig-zag all over the place and will accidentally beach the vehicle almost immediately. Forget the idea of dynamic boat patrol missions with AI. 

 

Considering it took over 10 years for Bohemia to make AI pilots competent enough to be usable, maybe in Arma IV we will see AI that can navigate waters. Add another 10 years and maybe then, finally, we have AI that can drive and fight with land vehicles. 😆

[chortles 263]

5 hours ago, Hautautujaaa said:

Considering it took over 10 years for Bohemia to make AI pilots competent enough to be usable, maybe in Arma IV we will see AI that can navigate waters. Add another 10 years and maybe then, finally, we have AI that can drive and fight with land vehicles. 😆

I confess that I wonder how this compares with the 'drive and fight with land vehicles' behavior of so-called AAA games...

[bigshot 64]

Without too much testing yet, it seems that open world type missions where you depend upon enemy AI to traverse large sections of the map and hunt you down and patrol large areas are going to be problematic.

 

I can see a mission type such as Evolution working here, since it requires very limited movement of the enemy AI since they tend to stay in small locals and you go hunt them down yourself anyway. For that type of mission where you're just dumping some enemy groups and searching for them on foot its ok I guess.

But to get something like Duws to work on this terrain will likely never happen, not in it's current scope anyway. Something like it might be possible with infantry only and on a smaller scale though...but it would take alot of work and rewriting to do it justice.

[jgaz-uk 132]

Hi quick question how do you lock the Helicopter gunners positions in S.O.G.  the  vanilla lock pilot works, but not lock gunner. To stop players taking the gunner slot.

 

S.O.G. Well worth the money as far as I'm concerned, Its a whole new game! 🧐