Armed Assault Annoyances 1.01

[yarex 0]

Personally I think that making HDR mandatory is a) lazy from a scalability standpoint and b) screwing all the people with machines around the 'recommended' specs right in the... well you know where the sun doesn't shine?

I agree with you only on 50%. I'd allow to turn off things (HDR, Grass...) in all single player missions or campaigns, and also in multiplayer too, but i 'd make sure that all players in multiplayer have it turned off then. (so make some checking on server side).

Becouse HDR or grass can mean some advantage of some players against the others, that have it torned off (and therefore for example can't be blinded by sun or "hidden" in grass.....)

[TheReddog 0]

Read my whole post

I already pre-countered your argument at the bottom. Blinding glare can be done in other ways. Try looking at the sun on Danzig in RO and notice how you get glared, and the game doesn't even have HDR (it does have bloom though) the effect still happens even with bloom turned off. Like I said it can be done in other ways.

Grass well there's pointless eye candy if I ever saw it. The amount of times I hit the dirt and can't see 1m in front of me while the AI happily drills me from 400m away is astounding.

[Stealth3 0]

Fixed center view.

In vehicles, you can't look around with the mouse without moving the vehicle.

It was there in OFP, but it was taken out.

[MisterXY 0]

ERhh, I don't know if this is a feature or a hack or something but today I played a bit, and suddenly, another player had control over my soldier!? Is it supposed to be like that? That other players have control to others?

That's really annoying, I was still alive, like, somebody hacked in my keyboard.

[yarex 0]

Grass well there's pointless eye candy if I ever saw it. The amount of times I hit the dirt and can't see 1m in front of me while the AI happily drills me from 400m away is astounding.

I don't really care about AI becouse it will be always stupid no matter how developers will try.

I play this game becouse of multiplayer and grass has quite important meaning there. I hope that in the future in dx10 age it will be even better supported and will allowe more action and more realism.

I vote no against grass removal. There must be a point in time when it has to be mandatory, and imho that time is now. Get a better box and don't expect that end of 2006 game will run on 2004 hardware.

Minimum config is usually specified as something that you can run game, but actually not njoy it and you can blame then developers that you dont have frame rate 30+ if your hardware sux.

[TheReddog 0]

Grass well there's pointless eye candy if I ever saw it. The amount of times I hit the dirt and can't see 1m in front of me while the AI happily drills me from 400m away is astounding.

I don't really care about AI becouse it will be always stupid no matter how developers will try.

I play this game becouse of multiplayer and grass has quite important meaning there. I hope that in the future in dx10 age it will be even better supported and will allowe more action and more realism.

I vote no against grass removal. There must be a point in time when it has to be mandatory, and imho that time is now. Get a better box and don't expect that end of 2006 game will run on 2004 hardware.

Minimum config is usually specified as something that you can run game, but actually not njoy it and you can blame then developers that you dont have frame rate 30+ if your hardware sux.

I'm not arguing against grass from a performance standpoint, it doesn't give me any issues there. I am talking about functionality.

If you cared so much about MP surely you'd realise then that because of the short draw distance involved grass blocks your view considerably when prone while the enemy player a little distance away just sees you laying on bare ground plain as day. Now explain to me how grass in this form is good in MP?

Also if you read my first post properly my current machine is pretty much right on the recommended specs, NOT the minimum ones, and by the large plays the game fine.

As a full time student renting my own place I don't have the budget to have a bleeding edge machine. So before flaming someone about getting a better box maybe you should realise that we aren't all able to shell out thousands of dollars every year to keep our systems up to date, nor can we all dip into mommy and daddy's pockets to do so.

[icebreakr 3156]

We played an online mission and one of the village bridges collapsed during the crash of cobra... we found out that couple of players continued to drive across the "already gone" bridge like it was standing.... like a freaking Evil Knievels without a jump

Another guy tried doing that and he crashed down into the river... any ideas why the "bridge destroyed != true" is so late on all of the clients? There was practically no lag on server.

[hoak 0]

Thanks guys, great posts and discussion on HDR, to which I'd add that anyone that thinks HDR should be locked in an on setting for fairness, probably doesn't understand game HDR Light implementation or that the differences in contrast ratio of end User display devices (CRT or LCD) can have contrast ratio differences of over 300% which totally mitigates locking HDR for fairness and actually makes forced HDR more unfair then making he feature an option.

But again a Developer did say that the implementation was a done deal, and that HDR can't be turned off -- which as silly as it sounds may be the case, so perhaps the best we can hope for are improvements in control over the dynamic range, speed, and smoothness of the effect as discussed earlier.

IceBreakr, I agree the bridge collapse issues are annoying, in addition to being able to drive across destroyed bridges, you often get stuck on completely intact and undamped bridges, but this is one for the bug tracker on the Wiki as it's a bug, and not an annoying game feature per se, or annoying by design.

In this thread WindsorTheater makes mention the lack of any Mod Manager in ArmA, and the discussion covers just some of the annoying outcome for Fans and Armed Assault -- another valuable addition to the annoyances list...

I also agree that with TheRedDog the grass issue is very annoying, has unfortunate consequences, and perhaps should be addressed with a solution along the lines offered in Söldner where the server had the option of rendering this detail for certain game-modes where it was an issue.

Will update the topic post when I'm back from work...  Keep playing and having fun (even when annoyed), and keep documenting -- nothing improves if nothing is discussed.

[spitfire_142 0]

ACI suggested a possible correction with: "HDR response needs to be dependent on viewpoint, not aimpoint"...

Well shouldn't the aimpoint be aiming in line with his eyes. I'm guessing the soldier doesn't keep his eyes dead straight while moving his gun around.

[hoak 0]

If you look at the video posted in the thread, and read the discussion you'd see that it looks like HDR gets it's light sample from a very small area, perhaps even point, rather then view or from a view port -- this makes HDR perform very erratically in ArmA...

[Joe_1911 0]

To add:

The player lists in multiplayer.

I CAN'T READ THE NAMES!

BIS made the background translucent, so the nametags of players (especially the yellow ones) are completely unreadable. I can never tell whose not "greening up" and such, because I can't read the names!

Drives me nuts!

[Stealth3 0]

Regarding the chat box, when there are more than 4 lines of text, and you try to type something new, it types on top of the the old text, so you can't see what your typing

[lee_h._oswald 0]

One thing I would like to see is a little change with the action menu.

At the moment you can only scroll up and down.

I think, it would be better if the scrolling start over again on top after reaching the end, like it was in OFP. (Loop)

Now I have to use 3 Buttons on my joystick for the action menu.(up, down, execute)

With the "loop system" I only need 2 buttons (down, execute)

MfG Lee

[NeMeSiS 11]

I think, it would be better if the scrolling start over again on top after reaching the end, like it was in OFP. (Loop)

My OFP never did that?

[lee_h._oswald 0]

Click for video(~800kb)

MfG Lee

[Second 0]

I think, it would be better if the scrolling start over again on top after reaching the end, like it was in OFP. (Loop)

My OFP never did that?

The loop was for keyboard's actionmenu-scrolling-buttons, mouse wheel doesn't loop. Me thinks...

[ebud 18]

Probably posted, but I haven't seen it.

Helicopters flying in groups is extremely annoying. The fly, stop, fly, stop, fly, stop gets very tiresome. I thought that one might go away. Why can't they just fly straight to the waypoints and on to the next without coming to a halt, or the leader halting every 5 seconds for the rest to catch up.

Not a huge deal as in missions I never use helo groups for this reason. Hoped it could have been fixed as it's not something we can.

[Spectator6 0]

I can't help but notice that the reload for the m249 SAW is horribly inaccurate. How can a belt fed weapon be swapped a new crate as if it were a sidearm or automatic rifle? Not only are the rounds not properly set, the whole animation is VERY fast... If it's some sort of animation problem, fine, but at least extend the reload process to a realistic timeframe.

Also on reloads, it would be nice to have both dry and tactical reloads too...

And it also bugs me that the last few rounds of the belt don't gradually feed into the weapon (ie, you're out of ammo but you still see the rounds dangling from the box) This kind of thing has been around since the end of '99.

[max power 21]

I'm not sure but I don't think the engine can support that kind of detail... just like most other engines can't support a 2 km view distance and 40 tanks + infantry.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Click for video(~800kb)

MfG Lee

Link doesnt work, but i assume that Second is right. (cant check it anymore, uninstalled OFP)

[Capt.Marion 0]

If this is a "simulation," then why does the M923 5 ton have a shift-pattern decal and shifter lever in the cab?

Pic: (Left arrow is decal, right is lever)

btw: the decal reads:

R 2 5

N

1 3 4

yes I know 4th and 5th gears are switched, but thats the way the trannsmission is in these type trucks from the 2 1/2 ton M35A2 to the 5 ton M923 and the older M813.

the cab should look more like the one in this picture (linked to):

http://www.easternsurplus.net/339m.JPG

[frederf 0]

Probably leftovers from OFP? Keen eye none the less.

[dmitri 0]

Only time I can live with the grass is when the ground is rougher and there are patches with no grass. Kinda cool having to run and dive (or roll) into one of the patches to get a better view though. Of course, the lucky AI don't need to do this.

I'm not in favour of removing the grass completely, its part of what makes ArmA feel "newer" than OFP.

Grass would be much improved if:

a) a little shorter (Surely that's easy to implement? I'm surprised no one has modded it yet. Is this dependant on the release of modding tools? Obvously would want to avoid a "mowed lawn" look though, the yellow flowery grass could be left at the original since there is less of it)

b) more patches of bare ground (This is dependant on an image mask generated from the terrrain's color map, right? A Photoshop filter could take care of that..)

[OFP_PUPSI 0]

Hello,

I agree absolutely with this gras annoyances !

I can imagine, that developing a game is quite tough business and not everything can be perfect, but not much is perfect in that game yet.

That you get sight blocked by gras but AI not, that´s not only very uncool, it frustrates a lot !!!

Overall the AI is annoying. I think it is not a bug and programmed in that way, but getting shot from AI 400 meter away from you while sitting in a bush .... bfff ... that´s something Rambo can do. But not a serious military simulation.

It might be ok in multiplayer, but I play it mostly singleplayer. Do not know if I am the only one.

Also annoying is the missing camera function in waypoints and trigger. I know, there is a better way for that by scripting and it is worth to do it that way when you publish stuff. But also here, I do quite a lot stuff for myself. This camera options in trigger was quite nice in OFP. Why is it removed ??

Hope that this game will get better very soon.

[j w 0]

If this is a "simulation," then why does the M923 5 ton have a shift-pattern decal and shifter lever in the cab?

Pic: (Left arrow is decal, right is lever)

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/9037/armam923ss12ak2.png

btw: the decal reads:

R 2 5

N

1 3 4

yes I know 4th and 5th gears are switched, but thats the way the trannsmission is in these type trucks from the 2 1/2 ton M35A2 to the 5 ton M923 and the older M813.

the cab should look more like the one in this picture (linked to):

http://www.easternsurplus.net/339m.JPG

On a scale from 0-10, how important is that really?

I'd say 0, since;

1. I don't need to actually shift. At all

2. I won't be driving to much

And yes, it's a combat-simulation, not a hyper-realistic-car-model-simulation.

By the way, your signature violates the rules.

JW