Arma Feels Unresponsive

[Exaercase 0]

Totally agree with wamingo !!!!

[4 IN 1 0]

i think we need a skeleton based anime system first if you want to make the best out of it(but you could still skip ragdoll as they just wont look too good in the game)

[Col.Flanders 0]

The original poster's point of lurching out into the open when only wanting to peek used to be a real annoyance for me too. The remedy really is the run/walk toggle. Much more precise, deliberate movements.

[max power 21]

I don't know why anyone is talking about the death animation problem anymore. That was fixed 2 betas ago.

[frederf 0]

It was? If I shoot a SLA soldier switching from RPG to Ak-74, he still waits for the whole animation to complete before falling over.

[Winters1807 0]

I generally like rag dolls, i mean, in games like battlefield, they really suck, cos they are horribly done, but in games such as half life 2 and armericas army, they are quite good. But i can only imagine huge amounts of lag that would be demonstrated by this, unless when the unit died, it died in a rag doll fasion, but wud become part of the terrain, so that it could not move again, perhaps that would minimize lag.

[Sosna 0]

Thanks for the tips, I'll try them out.

The mouse movement thing is probably my biggest annoyance, it will be nice to resolve that with driver settings, but hopefully BI will be able to fix it too.

As for recoil, I still think it should be somewhat tweaked. Rapid or full auto shooting is fairly useless, except with the M249. I realize OFP may have made rapid shooting too easy, but Arma makes it more unwieldy than flashpoint with JAM HD while badly injured  

[RangerX3X 0]

When it comes right down to it, it takes too long to get a bead on a target at range. Laying perfectly prone without exhausting the breathing getting the aim spot on is beyond difficult - it is almost as if it is completely random. IMHO, the game suffers because of it.

[max power 21]

It was? If I shoot a SLA soldier switching from RPG to Ak-74, he still waits for the whole animation to complete before falling over.

Maybe it's just my computer? I don't know. I get none of the problems that other ATI people get. I get none of the mod conflicts that everyone complains about. Using the latest beta, soldiers die right away. Maybe I haven't killed an rpg dude switching weapons. I don't know because I would only notice when something is not working and I haven't come across it.

BTW, ArmA has skeletal animations. Someone above mentioned that ArmA could use them. Clearly, that person is underinformed as to what exactly that means.

[Maddmatt 1]

When it comes right down to it, it takes too long to get a bead on a target at range. Laying perfectly prone without exhausting the breathing getting the aim spot on is beyond difficult - it is almost as if it is completely random. IMHO, the game suffers because of it.

I don't find it difficult to hit targets at range. Just yesterday I was sniping from a hill with an M24. I managed to hit targets at about 600m fairly easily while crouched, often not using the hold breath feature. I even managed a couple at over 1k! But I guess the M24 isn't really meant for that, considering the massive bullet drop which lands the bullet way below the mil dots. Still, it's not impossible.

Some weapons like the M4 have dispersion which makes hitting distant targets with an ACOG harder.

You expect it to be easy to hit targets at range? ArmA just adds some challenge to it so not everybody is an unstoppable sniper. In real life you have other factors such as wind, which would make it even harder.

I like sniping the way it is. It's not as easy as in other games, but it's not that hard either.

[MachineMadness 0]

ragdoll physics anyone? AA did it well.

how many times have a sniped a guy running, he then dives at the ground (he is ment to be dead a this point), gets back up then the animation of the death sequence occurs....at least ragdoll animations look like they die at start.

[mamasan8 11]

One thing that really gets me is::

When you are sniper, pull out your handgun. Now throw a grenade...guess what happens? My guy switches to sniperrifle, throws grenade, back to sniperrifle and THEN back to handgun.

When it should be: Chuck nade, switch to handgun.

What's up with that?

[The_Captain 0]

One reason BIS stated they didn't use ragdolls is due to performance. Popular games that use ragdolls have to deal with about thirty characters maximum using ragdoll. Arma has no upward limit. I don't want my game to chug when I kill thirty or forty soldiers in a row, and they all turn their rag doll deaths on...

[madrussian 347]

Great overall list wamingo!

[*]Differences between keybinds "Fast Forward" and "Evasive Forward" shows a lot of the problems:

- "Fast Forward" doesn't have a smooth transition to start and stop like "Evasive Forward" does. Especially shows when using Fast Forward from a crouch stance; the character will be in an instant sprint, where using Evasive Forward will have a nice smooth and slightly slower more real transition.

- "Fast Forward" requires the animation to end before you come to a full stop. This shows especially if you're trying to go prone from a sprint and sometimes he has to take 1-3 more steps often ending you up way off where you wanted.

- Only Evasive Forward will start a sprint from prone.

- Only Fast Forward will return you to crouch.

- Assigning "Evasive Forward" to a single tap key requires you hold jog at the same time. Non-control key combinations just to sprint is not really a good solution especially considering keyboards only accept very few key presses at the same time.

In this part of your list, you've hit on the major hang-up I've got right now with ArmA.  My particular issue deals with "turbo" key causing the problems you speak of (missing animation transitions, etc; I've also characterized the ability to go from standing to full sprint with no anim transition or acceleration what-so-ever).  I believe the issues you mention and the ones I experience are tied to the same root cause.  (i.e. "Forward" + "Turbo" = "Fast Forward")

Sure hope they fix these asap... as believe it or not it's really killing the fun for me right now with ArmA.  Most of the time I just play OFP and check back every now and again waiting for a fix.

Anyhow I did submit a bug on the bugtracker (#0002600), so if any of you want to go vote for it... maybe that would increase the priority?

For that matter, perhaps we should all take it upon ourselves to look through the bug list and vote for all the control/anim related bugs.  (Well, those of us who are bothered by this, that is.)

Now, all the potential good ArmA has to offer is definately not lost on me.  However, a fully functional control/anim system is really one of those critical things that should be present at game launch (even if they did have to ship the game early), not still missing this many months/patches later, imo.

EDIT:

Speaking of the bug-tracker, has anyone submitted the plethora of bugs wamingo listed into the system?  If not, we are probably spinning our wheels here.

[max power 21]

ragdoll physics anyone? AA did it well.

BIS tested some ragdoll physics solutions and could never get the performance out of them required. You must admit that this game's scale is much greater than AA, and therefore not everything that works in AA will work in ArmA and vice versa.

[wamingo 1]

snip

Ah yes, forgot about Turbo. But seems it pretty much shares the same issues as with Fast Forward. Turbo just requires a key combo where Fast Forward can be a single or combo.

@ plaintiff, I might have jumped the gun on the death animation. It does seem to be instant in beta. I could've sworn I had seen it while playing evolution though. So I'll play some more before confirming anything.

[madrussian 347]

Thanks for the reply wamingo.  Still wondering if your issues made it into the bug-tracking system.  You really did a fine job characterizing in detail just what the problems in this area (controls/anims) are and it would be a shame not to get your meticulous details forwarded to the right place.

The bug I submitted only covered a small percentage of what you identified, and not to the intricate level of precision you did, which is really what devs in general need to facilitate quicker turnarounds on bug-fixes.

In case you haven't already submitted them and don't have the time, etc, I'd be willing to submit all of your detailed info for you on your behalf (and credit you of course).

Again, you've really got some good, comprehensive info there, and though I know the devs read some of this stuff on the forums, it could easily slip past their watch.

[eihort 0]

I know a lot of people have a problem with the "aim lag". I've noticed this is directly related to the size of the weapon you're trying to use.

A full size M16 has this much more pronounced than say an MP5, which is as it should be.

[celery 8]

Second, aiming is very troublesome. This bug report describes it perfectly:

Quote[/b] ]Aiming with a mouse is a little sluggish and very inaccurate. .

Do a search for 'render frames ahead' or 'flip queue size'

I hope you die.

With that search I find more topics with you saying that than those with actual information. Could you please supply us with a real link to solve the issue?

[Maddmatt 1]

Second, aiming is very troublesome. This bug report describes it perfectly:

Quote[/b] ]Aiming with a mouse is a little sluggish and very inaccurate. .

Do a search for 'render frames ahead' or 'flip queue size'

I hope you die.

With that search I find more topics with you saying that than those with actual information. Could you please supply us with a real link to solve the issue?

Then you didn't search very well. I just checked and the first 2 results of this search show the answer, haven't checked the rest:

Search results.

[Sosna 0]

So finally I got a hold of my computer. I downloaded forceware coolbits and disabled frames rendered ahead to try and solve the mouse movement issue.

It made no difference. I tested a few times on the firing range training mission.

I did figure out what the problem is though, there's something terribly wrong with the way mouse sensitivity was implemented in Arma. I normally have my sensitivity set at x:50%, y:50%. Just to experiment, I set the sensitivity to the lowest setting and played the firing range mission. The aiming became perfectly fluid like in OFP, and i got 30/30 easily.

The problem is when the mouse sensitivity is higher than minimum, moving the mouse does nothing - until a certain point when the "cursor" jumps in the chosen direction. You can see the exaggerated effect if you put mouse sensitivity on full. Very minor aim adjustments are made impossible by this bug, playing on minimum sensitivity is simply impractical.

I really hope the bug gets fixed, IMO it is most irritating thing about Arma.

[celery 8]

Sosna beat me to it.

[castun 0]

I also has similar mouse sensitivity issues with OFP. Neither game likes my G5. In the Setpoint control panel, I have to tell it to use plain old OS implementation instead of Setpoint implementation in order to be able to adjust my sensitivity on the fly.

I also had to turn down mouse sensitivity in the game in order to have smooth mouse movement.

[whisper 0]

So a possible "solution" seems to be to up your windows mouse sensibility and down in-game sensibility to have smoother movement? Gotta try that (along with ofpforum's ATI setting if I can figure out where it is )

Apart from that, Wamingo simply hit the head of the nail perfectly with his list.

I had opened a global "animation issues" in bugtracker a while back : TT 2053. Feel free to visit, and vote for it Ticket is "Assigned", no other status change for a while, though.

I gonna add Wamingo's list into the ticket, if possible

[wamingo 1]

Quote[/b] ]I gonna add Wamingo's list into the ticket, if possible

My experience with the new 1.08 has been slightly different from 1.07 so the list I wrote would probably be a little different now. Though most of the issues persist overall.

Maybe rather than pasting my list you type something a little more abstract, but it's up to you.

As so far I've found,

Problems that persist but a bit differently than my my previous list:

[*] Animation transitions are now randomly inconsistent regardless of which keybind you use.

- eg initiating a sprint often has an instant non-smooth transition, but it now happens randomly to either Evasive Forward, Fast Forward and Turbo.

Problems that seem fixed:

[*]Death animations now seem instant and don't require previous animation to finish.

Can't think of more right now.