Add On Compilation for more Realism and Immersion

[Specter 0]

Specter: Hm, are you sure? Works for me - SF marksman has an SPR, doesn't he? Weren't you using the SF Assault (with an M4ACOG+M203GL) instead, perhaps?

yeah i'm sure, i tried to replay the campaign and in the first sidemission, where you have to attack the convoy i had a nadelauncher. checked it in the armory and editor as well...

maybe i screwed up something with the files...

(that's why i like repacks of addon-compilations )

[tourist 617]

Hi there, just wanted to express the team behind this addon compilation my respect for their thorough testing and compiling work.

Actually, it was this thread and patch 1.14 together that made me come back to ArmA after it collected dust on my shelf for about one year.

Your thread did in fact do for ArmA what similar threads have done for OFP: Presenting to the community the product of a refining process that took some time and consists of so many single addons and scripts no average player could keep track of by himself.

So far, everything runs fine except a small bug with the windage and elevation script. I did put the rangecards in the right place and they appear always correctly behind the regular notebook. But the MIL script in the upper left corner seemingly does not get executed every time I load a mission.

This is most significant in the Abandoned Armies lookalike 'Punishment Battalion' which has only one script for itself running that may conflict with the Nightvision mods of your compilation.

It is a Mando Mortar that uses keys Page up, Page down and Delete.

Since I did not yet get the mortar, I don't now if it would work and therefor override the nightvision commands. Ingame it is just that sometimes windage and elevation dialogues are visible and working and sometimes not.

I installed the mod folders as suggested on the front page only giving the eventhandlers a folder of its own which leads to a load order like

... mod=@ECS;@general;@replacement;@punishment_btn;@xtended_events

The modfolder for Punishment Battalion only contains Urban SLA troops and SLX civilians and the editorupdate 102.pbo.

What could be the reason for the sript conflicts or lack of loading some of the scripts?

Hope you can help me on this one,

tourist

[the.d 0]

i0n0s: Ah that's interesting, thanks for the info! :)

acadiancrusader: So far I found the "client-side only" (non-themis) ECS to have a more reliable "(non-ECS) server/(ECS)client" compatibility but I'll try to tweak the full ECS .hpp files properly and according to their readme should I find some time to do that.

Do go ahead and use the full ECS version, for now I'm sticking to the pared-down version (they are working on an update btw, sounsd pretty interesting).

tourist: Why, thank you for the kind words :)

The "windage & elevation" bug is rather odd, as the sight addon does work even in the most complex scripting mission we've tested so far. Of course, the script only works for adjustable weapons, a good way to test it is to load the standard "Seize the base" coop in Sahrani and get an M24 (doesn't work on the M4 aimpoint) sniping the MGs near the water tower fortifications. 9-12 MoA should do it with NWD ballistics.

Please refer to the original thread for more profound answers and proper help, as I'm really bad and unexperienced with scripting I'm afraid.

As for "overlapping" scripts - mhm.. I don't know, really - for above reason. Could be one script is fully overwriting the previously loaded script's functions, thus disabling either NV functions or the mortar altogether, or one key will activate both.

It's best to take out the NVs while playing Punishment Battalion, to ensure compatibility.

I usually create subfolders called "Disabled Addons" in my addon folders and just move the things in there that aren't currently needed. For instance "CMCD_USA_1ID_Infantry_Replacements_Heavy.pbo" & "...._Light.pbo" & "...._Mixed.pbo" would overlap, so I am moving two of them into the disabled files folder to avoid conflicts. I am still able to quickly change the setup when demanded.

Guess this was a rather dodgy reply to your specific questions but, yeah, again, I'm not too good with this kind of stuff, sorry :(

[456820 0]

Well I have two problems with two different addons. Firstly the GMJ Sight Adjustment mod - It doesn't seem to work with all the addons, it works on its own even with XEH but with all the addons it doesn't work. Pressing Up or Down doesn't change the mils or whatever.

Secondly the Fixed Range Nightvision, when I press Page up and Page down nothing happens. I have yet to try this on its own actually but I assume it must be an addon conflict.

Other then that I love how this thread is shaping up and it realls adds a lot to what would be a rather crap ArmA

[the.d 0]

Hang on, are you guys using the "SightAdjustment_AutoInit.pbo" included in XEH? It does work perfectly for me, and I can't seem to be able to recreate this bug.

What weapons are you referring to? Of course it only works with the "original" (model-replaced) ingame "knobbed" or scoped weapons, such as the M24, SPR12, etc. ...

acadiancrusader, I decided to switch to the full ECS implementation in this guide - as far as it is possible. Personally I still have (and want) to refer to the "lite" version as I am not able to run an ECS dedicated server from the same ArmA directory I am using to join as a client (anything else would be a terrible waste of resources). You are right, though: It does seem to work without any major problems under any other circumstances. Thank you :)

Hats off also to zGuba for a reworked version of his Compact fix and to nikita320106 for a huge update on EVA - great work guys, way to go! :-)

(* update news and postscriptum: see current latest post )

[tecumseh 0]

Great thread - very helpful for a noob like me. Thank you.

After installing many of them, I've got two questions:

When I carry an AK-family weapon, in first-person view, there is a small gap between my thumb and the gun I'm supposed to be gripping. Is this normal?

Is there a way to add the extra weapons to the GEAR menu in warfare? i.e. so I can purchase non-standard weapons. I know how to unpack the pbo, just need to know what to edit.

[edit - sorted this, it's the loadout config file. Just add the weapons you want, make sure the ammo name is correct, and make up a $ cost. Thanks for the reply D]

Thanks

[the.d 0]

hello tecumseh,

to be blunt, RH's replacement models are too detailed for the clumsy standard BIS animation grip, hehe. So, yeah, there's a bit of an alignment issue. The animated bolts and great model details make up for it, I think.

As for Warfare: I'm sure extra weapons can be added, however this doesn't have anything to do with this thread (mostly because I really suck at ArmA editing! ;-) ).

What you have to find out about is the "classnames" of the weapons (or any items) in question and then head over to an appropriate warfare thread to ask and find out about how to include them into the mission.

[Emryse 2]

Hey there - just wanted to again say "thanks" for such a phenomenal job keeping this up to spec, in current with the latest mod releases, and also current with the latest patch releases!

First off, I have a suggestion: You may want to reconsider the TrueMods real FOV Accurate piece - I initially had it, but with 1.14 it would seem that the view is a bit skewed... almost like looking at one of those "bubble" mirrors used to spot folks stealing stuff at your local convenience store.

At any rate, I found it a bit "unrealistic", so I've scrapped it. I know that the 1.14 patch seemed to alter the view some... and I'm not the expert, so I just wanted to re-raise this to your attention and see if there was anything to be done.

And now for a question:

I use NVIDIA G8800GTX (x 2 in SLI) - I have the latest drivers. When I first tried SickBoy's tracers, it seemed very "Star-Wars like" for the tanks, and the tracers were thick with a bright glowing "aura" around each shot... felt too unrealistic, so I canned it... is that effect intentional, or is it just the way my cards handle the graphics, or what? I just wanted to find out if anyone else had complained to you or anyone about it.

Appreciate all your continued assistance!

[Drax 0]

The effect is gonna be more or less universal.. only the image quality as a whole will be different amongst different cards. That's usually just a case of sharpness of the entire screen for the most part, not one thing looking more glowy or what not.

You have the best of the best in terms of image quality atm. Had an 8800gts 640 meg before my 9800 X2's (yeah I play crysis >.> )

AWEEEEEESOME thread by the way. My only complaint is I got everything running and loved it, then I tried out SLX

.....the mod'ing just never ends.

[456820 0]

@Emryse

Yep thats how they should look, I thought the same as you at first but I grew to like them. They stil don't beat VBS2 tracers but I'm starting to accept something like them isn't going to happen in ArmA.

A few suggestions that I have for the thread...

Russian voices - replaces the SLA with Russian voices which although they might not be Russian its nice to have the other side speak in a different language.

RVN Compas mod - Currently my favourite compass addon, realy big and easy to read.

Functional iron sights for AT weapons - the ironsights on AT weapons now actually work instead

Currenty using them along side everything on the first page and no problems.

[the.d 0]

Hey there - just wanted to again say "thanks" for such a phenomenal job keeping this up to spec, in current with the latest mod releases, and also current with the latest patch releases!

Why, thank you! :-)

Quote[/b] ]First off, I have a suggestion: You may want to reconsider the TrueMods real FOV Accurate piece - I initially had it, but with 1.14 it would seem that the view is a bit skewed... almost like looking at one of those "bubble" mirrors used to spot folks stealing stuff at your local convenience store. :p

At any rate, I found it a bit "unrealistic", so I've scrapped it. I know that the 1.14 patch seemed to alter the view some... and I'm not the expert, so I just wanted to re-raise this to your attention and see if there was anything to be done.

Yeah, I tried that when 1.14 came out and I must say it's a rather accurate (modified) FoV. The narrow vanilla FoV is okay, too (I do dislike the zooming), but personally I'm really fond of the TrueMod variant. I cannot seem to be able to reproduce a "fisheye" effect. Looks fine on my system.

Of course, feel free to disable it to suit your taste; thanks for bringing it up!

Quote[/b] ]And now for a question:

I use NVIDIA G8800GTX (x 2 in SLI) - I have the latest drivers. When I first tried SickBoy's tracers, it seemed very "Star-Wars like" for the tanks, and the tracers were thick with a bright glowing "aura" around each shot... felt too unrealistic, so I canned it... is that effect intentional, or is it just the way my cards handle the graphics, or what? I just wanted to find out if anyone else had complained to you or anyone about it.

Appreciate all your continued assistance!

I'm running ArmA on a single GeForce 8800 GTX and, yes, SIX tracers are a bit "Star Wars"-like at times. However, the guy did the best job so far. These are arguably the best and most realistic tracers you can get at the moment (456820's nailed it with his comment on VBS2).

Drax: Hopefully, SLX can be integrated properly to the rest of the addons. So far it attempts to change too many things at once. It's an outstanding and impressive work of scripting/programming, no doubt. And I don't have to say anything about its breathtaking features. Let's just hope it's getting as modular as ECS :-)

456820: Thanks for the suggestion, mate. I had lots of work over the weekend but was already following the new threads. I am currently writing an update to the guide. RVN compass has been suggested by acadiancrusader before. It conflicts with TrueMods menu as far as I can tell (rather small compass there). Should be added for it's sheer usefulness, though.

Russian voices are definitely in, I'm just testing them quickly; same goes for the adjustable ironsights. Great stuff, that!

Thank you for bringing it up, mate!

Update:

(* update news and postscriptum: see current latest post )

Oh, on a personal note by the way:

<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>SCHLAAAAAAAAAAAAND!!!</span>

That will be all. Dismissed. :-D

[the.d 0]

Plans are made to add nikietha's "Russian Voices" (@general folder-specific) and the RVN compass mod - I'm running out of time right now, though.

Hopefully the next update will include them. Regards!

[Drax 0]

Yeah, I've been following this and the SLX thread. What you have here in this thread is phenomenal.. there's just a few more nice touches that SLX adds, the biggie being the AI of course, that's spoiled me now -_- It's ability to use vehicles aggressively etc just makes the game seem so much more alive.

I'm gonna work on my own hybrid of what's offered here and what can be done with SLX and stripping it down to something more modular, and of course keep tabs on what you pro's can pull off.

Thanks for making ArmA the game it really should have been. I had shelved it till now.. now it's looking to be my favorite game in my collection

I'll go shut up and play now

[the.d 0]

I'm glad you see it that way, mate. It's what my friends and I said, too :-)

The real Thank You goes out to the actual mod makers - you know who you are!

I don't see a way to properly implement the russian voices pack for the moment. RVN compass works like a charm, though, and we had the opportunity to further test zGuba's compact fix in (a quick) multiplayer (dedicated/client) session. If anybody can confirm the new files needs a dedicated server "guidance", please do so.

So here's the small update:

(* update news and postscriptum: see current latest post )

[i0n0s 0]

They have to be server-side.

But some has only to be installed on the client to.

[the.d 0]

Thank you :)

[Gemini 359]

Hi,

This topic is a very good idea, but what do you think about an "all in one - ready to use" gameplay & graphics tweaks compilation ?

I've downloaded most of those addons, but i'm bored to uncompress all archives to after put them into mod folders. It's very long and not as easy as it seems.

It would be easier to use for an occasionnal ArmA player who wants to play with the realism brought by those addons.

Am I the only one who thinks like that ?

[Alpha-Kilo 36]

No Gemini, you're definetely not the only one who thinks like that. Your idea has already been raised in this thread but unfortunately The.D decided against it because the addons are updated quite frequently and it would be too diffficult to keep an all-in-one version up-to-date.

I am thinking about a different approach: All addons exist in armaholic's database. Would it be possible to modify Yoma's Addon Synchronizer or a similar tool to synchronize the content of armaholic's addon section with the addons stored on the user's PC? Ideally, the user should be ble to decide which addons he wants to synchronize. In this case, only the addons which are part of the compilation would have to be considered. Perhaps it would be practical to host these addons on a specific server to which the users would have to connect from time to time in order to keep their compilation updated.

In brief: I am thinking about a way to introduce a kind of "automated updating". Does this make any sense? If so, the mission section might be synchronized in a similar way.

[VIPER SHIVA 0]

Didn't the Six Pack have a built in addon patch utility? I thought it worked fairly well.

[nikita320106 0]

The.D

@eva already there was final version

[Drax 0]

I had to reinstall ArmA recently so I re-did the install for the immersion mods from scratch.

Originally you had a modified core.pbo for the ECS part of the mod, and I understand why you changed that. Now however i can not reload in the middle of a mission, I get an error about the missing components from this install. Mentions the quiet.pbo and the armory.pbo. Your modified core file took of that in the past.

Anyway to get around this?

Also, from me not understanding that the Fidelis Marines and Cameron's units are a -choice- between the two I was using the Marines thinking I was using Cameron's units. No biggie, but it should be noted that if someone goes with the Marines option their default load outs for missions will be different. I had to use a grenade launcher instead of a sniper rifle on the early optional mission where you shoot all the soldiers in a convoy you ambush

Also special ops get these time bombs in their inventory that don't actually do anything.

Plus, I'm not positive on this, but going with the marines seemed to negate your new dispersion settings in the difficulty config for the enemy and friendly units.

Enemies where still all highly trained snipers that could shoot a flea off my shoulder as I landed in their hot zone from the seat of a Blackhawk on a stormy night. Now that I'm using Cameron's units they actually seem to miss once in a while I've only played the sanitizing mission three times since swapping the units, but it does seem different.

I'm not missing SLX soo much now.. seems the ECS AI is a bit more aggressive now with the un-mod'ed core.pbo file.

[poweruser 10]

Quote[/b] ]Now however i can not reload in the middle of a mission, I get an error about the missing components from this install.  Mentions the quiet.pbo and the armory.pbo.

This bug has been fixed already. Update your ECS install to the latest version (1.0.1.51).

ECS Team Website - Downloads

Quote[/b] ]... seems the ECS AI is a bit more aggressive now with the un-mod'ed core.pbo file.

That's because of not using the XEH addon, which delays the information coming from the game's eventhandlers and going to the ECS engine, a little bit. This becomes worse the more addons/mods you got loaded that use XEH.

[Drax 0]

Thanks.

[the.d 0]

Gemini/alpha-kilo: Good idea about the addon updater. If Yoma's Addon Synchronizer joined forces with Armaholic.com (and, to lessen the massive traffic this would cause, as many major ArmA sites as possible) it'd be most effective.

nikita320106: Yup, I am well aware of that, thanks. And it is quite amazing, too! Seems like there are some compatibility issues with your Russian voices pack, though. This is why I left the latter out of the list for now.

Drax: Thanks for the info mate. I never noticed. Got a pm recently that took up this issue but I was not able to determine the exact file that would have caused the changed loadouts (I'm currently using CMD's 1st Infantry combined with Rellikki's SLA Redux pack). Should I - for more overview and consistency towards the game's original content - remove B.M.Haley's addons altogether? Can anybody confirm the changed dispersion for the replacement pack? It'd be very odd but, hey, it's ArmA!

As for ECS, it adds great AI enhancements (amongst many other things), no question, but it'd be desirable to include SLX in the long run. Let's wait for Solus' opinion on the "modular" take on this mod :-)

dengibtsschon: Thanks for clearing that up!

Have a nice weekend, everyone!

[muju 0]

Hi, there! Nice work here with this compilation stuff The.D.

One thing i'd like clarify... just to be sure.

Quote[/b] ]Q11_Wind.pbo (optional) [signed] [@Server]

Does this mean that when addon tagged like above should only be loaded on dedicated server and not on client side computer at all ?