Stripped down, OFP-like graphics, anyone?

[5133p39 14]

Before ArmA was released, i hoped that we will get only a slightly better OFP:R graphics, with much more capable engine, optimized for current HW, which could handle many many more units, somewhat better AI, and of course better scripting engine (not that any of them was too bad) - but i never cared for better graphics.

Of course BIS had to improve the graphics a lot to make it sell, because world is full of people who judge the game mainly by screenshots (sad but true).

I know that a lot of you people are satisfied with your ArmA running at about 20FPS, but for those like me, who aren't and who would rather trade all the fancy graphics and effects for more performance, i was thinking...

Would it help to remove the fancy stuff like shaders, normal maps, etc. and leave only the basic textures?

Decreasing number of polygons on the soldier models would surely help, anyone thought about modding them this way?

What do you think about the HW strain - where is the bottleneck? Would it help at all to strip down the graphics, or is CPU the main problem?

What do you think we could do to make the ArmA perform better(faster)?

I know, we don't have all the tools yet, but would anyone be interested?

[nephilim 0]

removing the shader model includes modifying the game engine

thus illegal.

removing normalmaps from the game can cause that the models will be all black due the way the shader works.

and shaders arent just fancy stuff..

OFP also uses a shader, a very basic one but shader nevertheless

maybe you should know what you are talkin about before making such posts.

not very smart

and just decreasing polygons will not help much either.

and since the community hasnt got insight into the gameengine its pretty useless debating whats possible and whats not.

and besides that releasing a changed codewill get your a$$ sued very fast.

and if you want to recruit someone for such "illegal" things

its pretty dumb to do this on the official boards...

and y dont you try it yourself instead? no knowledge?

sit on your 3 letters and learn it, thats what half the community does.

i just cant stand whiners argh!

cheers

[5133p39 14]

removing the shader model includes modifying the game engine

thus illegal.

removing normalmaps from the game can cause that the models will be all black due the way the shader works.

and shaders arent just fancy stuff..

OFP also uses a shader, a very basic one but shader nevertheless

maybe you should know what you are talkin about before making such posts.

not very smart

and just decreasing polygons will not help much either.

and since the community hasnt got insight into the gameengine its pretty useless debating whats possible and whats not.

and besides that releasing a changed codewill get your a$$ sued very fast.

cheers

i don't know where to start... have you actually read my post, or to what are you replying to?

clearly i do look that stupid to think i can remove the support of shaders and normal maps from the game engine.

No, i don't think so, i was talking about removing textures, and altering material config settings.

removing normal maps will cause the models to be black? really? i mean - you actually KNOW this, or do you only think this would happen?

And for decreasing polygons - you dont think decreasing polygons will help?

have you ever tried changing the view distance? (=increasing/decreasing the number of polygons drawn).

I think that decreasing # of polygons in each model could be significantly helpful (in theory - the less polys to draw, the faster the image is drawn, and the less size the models are, the faster they can be loaded, etc.)

And for the last thing - i am not debating possibilities of reverse engineering the engine, thats illegal, we all know that, thus i am debating the possibilities of what we can do in terms of altering models, configs, and textures.

[abs 2]

Serioulsy, are you always this nice, Nephilim?

Not everyone has an education in game design, and from where I sit, he wasn't whining...you might want to read his post again, but instead of that angry voice in your head that you seem to read posts with, try a mellow one for a change.

If he "knew what he was talking about", then he wouldn't be here asking questions, and he would do it himself. Odd that he should come on the forums looking for some intelligent insight from 'experts', and he should get flamed by one. Honestly, it's shameful behaviour.

5133p39, unfortunately, I don't think anyone will be interested in doing this. The game has taken a giant leap from OFP graphically, so why take a step back? Instead of wasting hundreds of hours modding it to look worse, it'd be easier for you just to buy new hardware, mate.

Cheers.

Abs

[5133p39 14]

Serioulsy, are you always this nice, Nephilim?

Not everyone has an education in game design, and from where I sit, he wasn't whining...you might want to read his post again, but instead of that angry voice in your head that you seem to read posts with, try a mellow one for a change.

If he "knew what he was talking about", then he wouldn't be here asking questions, and he would do it himself. Odd that he should come on the forums looking for some intelligent insight from 'experts', and he should get flamed by one. Honestly, it's shameful behaviour.

5133p39, unfortunately, I don't think anyone will be interested in doing this. The game has taken a giant leap from OFP graphically, so why take a step back? Instead of wasting hundreds of hours modding it to look worse, it'd be easier for you just to buy new hardware, mate.

Cheers.

Abs

yes, i know that its lot of work - that is why i haven't started yet ;-)

First i wanted to know whether anyone already tried something which would help me to guess if it would be worth it.

As for the new HW... well, i don't own the bleeding edge cray supercomputer, but i don't think gf8800, 5200+ CPU, and 3GB RAM is so much bad that i need to upgrade already, but still, when testing things and i only put few hundreds of soldiers who does nothing, the game becomes unplayable (i know, playability it's a subjective thing).

I think reducing polygons of those models would help a lot in this kind of situation.

[nephilim 0]

sorry if i sound rude...

but again you got me right

he asks for engine/gfx degradation

Quote[/b] ]Would it help to remove the fancy stuff like shaders, normal maps, etc. and leave only the basic textures?

Decreasing number of polygons on the soldier models would surely help, anyone thought about modding them this way?

and i just answered

thats illegal and not too smart to ask on official forums.

of course hes no expert (thats y hes asks..)

i havent been very good at that stuff either

but its far more productive to sit down and learn.

C++ for example mate

[5133p39 14]

sorry if i sound rude...

but again you got me right

he asks for engine/gfx degradation

Quote[/b] ]Would it help to remove the fancy stuff like shaders, normal maps, etc. and leave only the basic textures?

Decreasing number of polygons on the soldier models would surely help, anyone thought about modding them this way?

and i just answered

thats illegal and not too smart to ask on official forums.

of course hes no expert (thats y hes asks..)

i havent been very good at that stuff either

but its far more productive to sit down and learn.

C++ for example mate

Ok, i admit, by bad.

I haven't thought that when i don't specify explicitly, that i am not talking about reverse engineering, someone will automatically think that i am.

For the last time: i am not talking about reverse engineering, even if Nephilim think so.

My apologies for this misunderstanding.

English is not my native language, nor is it my favourite one, so obviously i have some difficulties issuing proper and acurate statements.

Now, could we focus on the topic, or let the topic die in case noone has anything to say about it?

[456820 0]

Personally i think its a good idea. Theres a lot of rather pointless stuff in the game which I haven't really noticed and just reduces our frames. As it stands at the moment with ArmA, I would have loved OFP:Elite with better AI but also like 5133p39 i never really wanted the better graphics, i knew it would cause all sorts of performance problems that ArmA now has.

I would love to see a 'playable ArmA' mod but I dont have the time nor the knowledge to help. But I do hope someone decides to help in such a project to make ArmA more playable for all.

[mattxr 9]

Yeah BIS will, Just wait untill we get Arma 1.96

Your dreams will have come true haha.

[MehMan 0]

I gotta say, why? Jeez man, if you want OFP graphics, stick with OFP. I don't have the cutting edge tech and I can run ArmA just fine at low with one setting at normal. I'm not too picky with the difference between 30 or 100 FPS.

ArmA took OFP graphics on another level and it improves immersion(yeah I know, it's sooo cheesy to say this) atmosphere and general feel of the game. It's just better.

[JdB 151]

I gotta say, why? Jeez man, if you want OFP graphics, stick with OFP. I don't have the cutting edge tech and I can run ArmA just fine at low with one setting at normal.

I think this is not a standalone issue, but rather one very much connected to the question "Why improve the graphics so much and leave so many smaller realism-related tweaks out that people wanted so much?"

Which is what I have been wondering myself as well. In OFP alot had to be scripted to circumvent engine limitations, which is what alot of people had hoped would be included in ArmA by BIS. OFP/ArmA players are mainly playing these games for the gameplay (realism), if they only wanted cutting-edge graphics they would be playing something else.

[mattxr 9]

Actually i have solved his problem..

IF you want OFP with a Slightly Better Engine and New Scripting things By VBS1.

[MehMan 0]

I gotta say, why? Jeez man, if you want OFP graphics, stick with OFP. I don't have the cutting edge tech and I can run ArmA just fine at low with one setting at normal.

I think this is not a standalone issue, but rather one very much connected to the question "Why improve the graphics so much and leave so many smaller realism-related tweaks out that people wanted so much?"

Which is what I have been wondering myself as well. In OFP alot had to be scripted to circumvent engine limitations, which is what alot of people had hoped would be included in ArmA by BIS. OFP/ArmA players are mainly playing these games for the gameplay (realism), if they only wanted cutting-edge graphics they would be playing something else.

These aren't cutting edge graphics.

But I believe that so much has been missed out because they most likely made this game from 0 in a year and a half. Or at least with a small basis. As you can see a lot of other games have a development cycle that's a lot longer than this. So a lot was missed out. And to ensure sales they had to get some eye candy in there. You can't really show gameplay via screenshots.

[5133p39 14]

I gotta say, why? Jeez man, if you want OFP graphics, stick with OFP. I don't have the cutting edge tech and I can run ArmA just fine at low with one setting at normal. I'm not too picky with the difference between 30 or 100 FPS.

ArmA took OFP graphics on another level and it improves immersion(yeah I know, it's sooo cheesy to say this) atmosphere and general feel of the game. It's just better.

Yes, the probably most shortsighted answer which i should anticipate: "If you want OFP graphics go play OFP".

Well, i want better performance in scenarios with more than few units, while i also want to have all the good things which ArmA offers - obviously OFP can't give me that.

And as for atmosphere... even now, when i am playing OFP, i have better immersion feeling, than in ArmA (i can't help myself, but it kind of feels like its made of plastic) - so you can see immersion is a subjective matter.

Sincerely, please, enough about immersion, OFP vs. ArmA comparisons, and all other offtopic babble. Lets discuss facts (on topic) and not feelings.

[456820 0]

The problem with the graphics is, sure they add a lot to the atmosphere but you would get more out of the atmosphere if they spent more time fine tuning the game and fixing little realism tweaks and left the graphics like OFP/OFP:Elite.

Another thing with the graphics is that they are 'too good' so when they are played on very low they just look quite damn stupid.

[nephilim 0]

a solution might be vbs2..

they dont use normal maps...

[Maddmatt 1]

There are graphics options. If you want performance then turn them down. Setting shader detail to very low will turn off normal and specular maps and setting post processing to low will disable unnecessary shader effects.

Quote[/b] ]

Another thing with the graphics is that they are 'too good' so when they are played on very low they just look quite damn stupid.

Use low or normal for some things then . You don't need everything at it's lowest to get decent performance.

[ag_smith 0]

IMHO downgrading graphics won't help you all that much in a long shot. The problem with having hundreds of units in a mission is not about rendering them all (graphics are *very* scalable due to use of LODs). The engine will simply use LODs to decrase the number of polys/textures/whatever to be rendered.

On the other hand, the processing power needed to simulate AI cannot be optimised that easily. You can easily check that looking at the wall (only a little number of polys is rendered) doesn't incrase your fps, because your cpu (doing all the AI calculations) is the actual a bottleneck. The only feasible sollution out is to get more processing power (ie. by optimising engine to use multiple cpu cores, etc). :|

[OrLoK 20]

Hello

I DO understand what the origional poster was getting at.

Less eye candy/more realism/gameplay.

Unfortunatly, I dont think that those with the programming/texturing/scripting etc etc skill will be interested in this kind of projectm as mostly they will be wanting to push the envolope of what Arma can achieve and usually this involves the Graphics too.

(I know there are exceptions to this rule so no flaming pls).

My advice really would be to install OFP with mods like FFUR et al.

These mods greatly enhance OFP gameplay and raise the image level, but retaining that good ole Gameplay.

Alternativley look at buying a second hand copy of VBS1. There are a few floating about (although you will have to get in contact with publishers to transfer the ownership as each version is coded to a particular user).

Hopefully, with the next couple of patches, they'll be able to improve performance to a better level, but theres only so far one can go with that. So perhaps its time for an upgrade?

Just thinking about it, I do remember folks altering game configs (like for DooM3 and indeed Arma) to get max fps from their particular systems, perhaps this was the kind of thing you were after?

Have a search through the forums for those bits and bobs.

And I also now that you dont want to reverse engineer the program, rather you want to "enhance the engine for lower spec users".

Good sentiments though, I hope it happens. But I'm doubtful.

Rgds

LoK

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Set everything to very low? Wtf!?

[5133p39 14]

Everyone, thanks for your answers.

Looks like you, and some of my tests, have convinced me, that it is not worth the time. We'll see what BIS can do about the performance (if there is any room for changes).

As for the "get copy of VBS#" - that's not a solution for me, because:

1. I don't think VBS1 scripting engine is equal to ArmA scripting engine (but i could be wrong, because i haven't seen its scripting reference).

2. I don't think i would find much VBS2 servers and players (the rumor has it that VBS2 is more simulation, while ArmA is more like game - which i still do prefer)

Neither is the "use OFP with FFUR/other mod" answer to my problems, because OFP too isn't performing too well with many units on map.

And there is also the limit of max. 64 groups per side if i remember correctly, and FFUR/whatever mods can't change these limitations and can't provide better scripting engine.

As for the "change your detail settings" answer, it's not answer to my problems either.

Changing the shader settings have huge impact on the vegetation appearance - it looks very ugly when shader settings are low.

If i could change the settings for terrain/vegetation/objects textures separately, and if that wouldn't depend on the shader settings, and if i could change separately also the LOD settings for terrain/vegetation/objects, then that could help a lot - but i can't.

[nephilim 0]

i kinda dont get you mate..

you want better performance but still keep the same look on hte vegetation (as you said for example)

but at the same time reducing polycount, leaving normal maps and HDRI..

hows that supposed to work?

get a new GPU / CPU...

thatll fix it..

[Jahve 0]

Just play OFP. No one is forcing you to play arma

[5133p39 14]

i kinda dont get you mate..

you want better performance but still keep the same look on hte vegetation (as you said for example)

but at the same time reducing polycount, leaving normal maps and HDRI..

hows that supposed to work?:crazy:

get a new GPU / CPU...

thatll fix it..

Looks like i am misunderstood again (it almost looks like you don't want to understand ;-).

What i meant is that i wanted to remove the shaders and normal maps from the rvmat settings, while leaving only plain textures (whether is this possible without editing the p3d and reaplying new textures i don't know yet - probably isn't).

Try reducing shading quality and you will see how badly it affects tree textures - is that neccessary? couldn't it be altered so the trees would still be using better quality textures even after lowering shaders quality to minimum (or 'disabling' them in rvmat configs)?

So i wanted to remove/disable the use of shaders and normal maps in the way like i described above (by altering the rvmat files), while still allowing use of not so low quality textures at the same time.

The part about reducing plycount wasn't targeted towards the vegetation, but mainly soldier models.

For example - i had the oportunity to take a look at early alphas of the Stalker game, there you can see that normal maps absolutely aren't neccessary if you have nice and good quality textures - the game world can still look very good even without applying all the fancy shaders etc..

Getting new GPU/CPU won't help, because there still aren't much better ones on the market (at least not much better ones in terms of better ArmA performance :-).

(btw. what a stupid answer is this anyway? when you look at the topic title, do you see the question "should i buy new HW?", i don't think so, so please stay on topic and don't be a smartass).

[5133p39 14]

Just play OFP. No one is forcing you to play arma

Another cleverly crafted and VERY helpful answer.

I am starting to be tired of these stupid, totally useless answers.

What is happening to these forums? What's wrong with you people?

For everyone: If you don't have anything to contribute to the discussion, then please don't post nonsense.