Damage System

[westy159 0]

Do we have any images of wounded soldiers? My fear is that ArmA will feature the same damage system that is in OFP. I think we far surpassed the time of blood patches appearing on limbs. It would be disappointing to see this. We are capable of producing realistic damage systems where a bullet wound will appear exactly where the poor soul was hit such as in Hitman: Blood Money Picy

If we will get the old system, I call creator of the first ArmA blood mod

[stanhead 0]

At the moment, the system is the same as in OFP (AFAIK). Hopefully it will be changed to be more realistic in the future though.

[nephilim 0]

such stuff and even dismemberments are possible in ofp.

its just a sh*t load of work

[benreeper 0]

... and let's not forget the resource hogging of a more accurate dammage system. Multiply this by 500 units and whew!

--Ben

[westy159 0]

... and let's not forget the resource hogging of a more accurate dammage system. Multiply this by 500 units and whew!

--Ben

I dont see why it should cause such a great drop in frame rate. The original system knows which limb the bullets hit and reacts to that by covering that limb in blood. All you need to do is make it a little more specific in where the bullet hit and change that patch of blood to a red round hole. Hitman manges it well. For a gaming PC mine is quite average yet in certain scenes in Hitman there are huge (and i really mean it) crowds where I will drop to about 20 FPS and I can shoot these people (making the damage system kick in) with only another 2 frame drop.

My PC: P4 2.66Ghz, 1GB RAM, Geforce 6800 128mb

Hitman BM settings: 1280x1024 reso, renders medium

[frederf 0]

Upon hearing that the damage system was similar, I was slightly disappointed, but not very disappointed.

Yes, it's silly that you can shoot someone in the hand enough in OFP that suddenly their legs don't work, or shoot their toe and give them shoddy aim.

[meyamoti 0]

But its better than nothing.

[24Gamer 0]

... and let's not forget the resource hogging of a more accurate dammage system.  Multiply this by 500 units and whew!

--Ben

I dont see why it should cause such a great drop in frame rate. The original system knows which limb the bullets hit and reacts to that by covering that limb in blood. All you need to do is make it a little more specific in where the bullet hit and change that patch of blood to a red round hole. Hitman manges it well. For a gaming PC mine is quite average yet in certain scenes in Hitman there are huge (and i really mean it) crowds where I will drop to about 20 FPS and I can shoot these people (making the damage system kick in) with only another 2 frame drop.

My PC: P4 2.66Ghz, 1GB RAM, Geforce 6800 128mb

Hitman BM settings: 1280x1024 reso, renders medium

no, it would not be easy, the engine would have to create new verticies on demand where the wound was made, we are starting to see this kind of technology being used but it would add too much development time to code and implement such a feature, especially considering that it is only cosmetic.

and what would you expect to happen if a convoy gets blown up, 10-20 units all being dynamically deformed, the game would most certainly slow down.

enough ranting, i need some sleep

[Ryujin 0]

I don't think he was refering to dynamicaly deforming, I think its something along the lines of a decal. Just apply a little texture over the main skin and voila! you have a bullet hole! I'm sure they could fix up the accuracy of the damage system by improving the hitboxs and they said they improved the ballistics, so it shouldn't be hard. All I'd like to see is people not suddenly dropping dead because the took a few 5.56 rounds to the leg. They should be really messed up, not dead. Same for stomach wounds, but then you need even more accurate hit boxs to determin if the bullet passed through or hit the spine or kidneys . Some how much accuracy is enough? This also raises the question of incapicitated soldiers, but I'm not even going to go there...

[froggyluv 2130]

I would like to see the soldiers react more realistically when shot to really get that feeling of blowing them away. I like the way WGL has eneimes pause for a second when shot, so I hope AA takes this to the next level. Some of the "new animas" have enemies look like their about to start stretching, then collapse after I've fatally wounded them. I wanna see guys blown back in the opposite direction they were shot.

[Messiah 2]

Hitman manges it well.

yes, but it managed it well for the context its in... the levels are minute comapared to the flashpoint island. Even on the largest level, the mardi gras, you're only experiencing a level perhaps a 20th of the size of flashpoint, factoring number of people (of which the croud in HM have a very very basic AI and sequence, preventing mass lag), area, flora, fauna, different vehicle configs to enact etc etc etc

and hitman's reccomended settings are still greater than Arma...

hitman was designed to do what it does, its an up close and personal shooter/stealth game where you'd be able to tell where your round hit easily... in Arma i dont think many people care less if the body has the wound in the correct place, given that from 200m range you're not going to see it, let alone go over and check.

i agree the hitboxes could be increased to have a slightly more accurate system, but i certainly rather have smooth gameplay at 2000 VD, rather than a bullet wound thats pinpoint accurate. I think the damage system has been rethought for arma, at least for the armour according to one interview/report - perhaps this means men may be included

[Cpt Viper 0]

I completely agree with Messiah.

For a game like ArmA the bullet impact is not of major importance.

But for a new-gen FPS, like Call of Juarez for example, where you fight in much, much smaller areas than OFP/ArmA, it is important. Well, not 'important', but it just adds up to the graphics.

Games like Hitman may look much better, but as said, the levels are much, much smaller, so there's more performance for better graphics and physics.

And, like Messiah also said, the crowd in Hitman is very basic AI, they don't have the full physics of the other characters, and therefor don't die as 'cool' as other characters. They don't kill your FPS for these reasons.

- Viper

[Heatseeker 0]

If you are shot in the leg you dont get a perfectly round, red decall hole in your pants, it creates an injury and from that injury blood comes out, soaking your clothes with... blood.

So the flashpoint way was not so unrealistic after all and the idea of having models covered with 50+ perfectly round, red decals is... terrible. From a resource/performance and realism point of view.

Now what do we want:

We want to see the bullet wound if the body part hit isnt covered with clothing, and we want to see blood coming out of it and clothing becoming soaked in blood ?

And limbs, body parts, ragdolls, etc...

But we also want hundreds of units per mission and huge battles, artillery, etc.. and we want/expect the game to be playable?

I only want a improved damage model for the vehicles honestly... i dont think a flat tire makes a hmmwv drive in circles .

[Commando84 0]

totally have to agree with heatseeker on this

[benreeper 0]

And in all those games that have a decal system, those decals all disappear in a very short while. Is that realistic?

The 1st page of the ArmA FAQ should state the diffs between this game and all other corrider FPS's. Then we won't get questions such as: _newGame coming out, that takes place entirely in a tiny room and there is never more than one enemy in the game at one time, and the player has no body, can do this, why can't ArmA?

--Ben

[mickuzy 0]

heatseeker has this one down pat

[benreeper 0]

I concur.

--Ben

[frederf 0]

I am not speaking of the visual detail in the OFP vs ArmA damage modeling. I'm talking about the actual mechanics.

Having a small auto accident and then all of a sudden you can't walk, or almost drowning and then you can only crawl... um wtf? The simplication of a linear progression of health generated really weird situations. I couldn't care less about getting hit in the right arm and the decal showing a generic "upper body hit"

[benreeper 0]

Any added complexity adds to the CPU's load and that is bad.

This is because all CPU calculations are multiplied by the vast amount of objects and AI present in the game. If this was a typical corrider shooter (all othe FPSs campared to OFP), this wouldnt be as much of a problem and still these games have slowdowns in battles of a few units.

--Ben

[avrecko 0]

All what I would like to see is that if you shoot somebody between the eyes he dies instantly, if you make an accurate shot to the arms he cannot use the arms -> cannot shoot, if you shoot him in the leg, he cannot walk properly. That is all. I didn't see this yet in any FPS game. But would very much like to see something like that in ArmA.

And one more thing, I would really like to see that one is required to use the sights to make the shots and not just have a crosshair on the screen.

[Llauma 0]

All what I would like to see is that if you shoot somebody between the eyes he dies instantly, if you make an accurate shot to the arms he cannot use the arms -> cannot shoot, if you shoot him in the leg, he cannot walk properly. That is all. I didn't see this yet in any FPS game. But would very much like to see something like that in ArmA.

And one more thing, I would really like to see that one is required to use the sights to make the shots and not just have a crosshair on the screen.

In OFP you cant walk if you get hit in your legs, your aim gets much worse if you're hit in the arms and you will most likely die if you get shot in the head of upper torso for that matter.

You can also disable the on screen crosshair which forces you to use the sight. Of course you can shoot from the hips if forced to but it's only works at very close ranges.

[DEAD_RABBIT 0]

It should be possible to have an advanced damage system (e.g. realistic blood splatter and bullet wounds) with ArmA wihtout too much added CPU stress, if you just think smart.

Only the player needs to see the effects and thus you only need to load these effects for soldiers that are in the player's FOV and you could even upgrade it more if you could predetermine which soldier is going to die when.

Because then you can divide the processing task over a larger period of time to calculate the effect, diminishing the stress on the CPU.

[Krasny 0]

i though OFP human damage system was pretty good, especially when compared with other games

what really let down OFP was the vehicular damage system, which seemed to use 'hit points' rather than ordnance hitting a part of the vehical and maybe penetrating the armour and damaging the vehical or it's crew

[benreeper 0]

Dead Rabbit you must be a game programmer.

--Ben