More unification in addon-making needed!

[Ezekiel 0]

It's an idea that I'm becoming more and more excited about - for the good of ArmA and the community at large, I think everyone should really make an effort to produce some kind of standardised 'community' approved addons. It would allow the use of so many of the amazing things the modders here have created in public multiplayer sessions, and it would make some of the best work easily available for new players or those that wouldn't usually bother with mods and addons. Yeah I know if you're in a clan with their own server this isn't such a prob, but not everyone is in a clan (specially not those that are new to the game, who are really the ones that would benefit most from seeing the new features most.

I'm talking about things like new and improved units - all with textures that are of equal quality and appearance. So it's no good doing an incredible hi-res realistic texture or model when it looks obviously superior sat next to vanilla ArmA, you'd have to either drop the detail down to match BIS' LODs, or go on a mission to bring all other units available in the editor up to the same standard.

Entirely new units would be cool as long as they fit the original Sahrahni plotline (as in, an up-to-date Bradley IFV would be amazing, WW2 era tanks would be better in their own addon pack). Very particular infantry would also be suitable for inclusion (say, Cameron's 1st Inf Division) as long as they were not in the form of replacement packs, and came with a correct variety of units and groupings in the editor.

Features which the large majority of the community will agree is a 100% improvement of the game would be candidates for the addon packs. Such as:

* New weapons available in the editor via correct scripting (with master list of all code snippets), all with model and texture detail on par with BIS work (no more, no less). Sounds would have to match original sounds as closely as possible (*important*, since if the idea took off sound modders would be able to take the master list of weapons and add these to their sound conversion)

* Ditto new units

* Ditto new buildings

* Improved armour technology. If someone can get the hit locations and armour values of ALL vehicles up to a standardised and more realistic quality, and the weapons to match, then that would be amazing. We have some individual units that have such a thing, but nothing I believe that gives the full treatment to all units across the board. Without this it wouldn't work.

* Better scopes and night vision. There are numerous mods fixing the failings in the vanilla NV mode, and improving the quality and realism of small arms and vehicular scopes.

* Better vehicle quality across the board. Get everything looking as sweet as the new Abrams models - complete with alternative camo patterns, extra interiors where missing, realistic loadouts/ammo counts, fixed bullet origin points for things like Shilka and AH-6, SMOKE LAUNCHERS (which moves onto:)

* Improved AI. It's very difficult to find a *perfect* AI addon - for example Durg's vegetation fix does a lot to prevent AI shooting through bushes, but thus gives human players a bit of an advantage since they can then see enemy movement through dense foliage better than AI. Preventing AI from seeing through smoke is nice, but the AI isn't coded to be able to deal with smoke blocking their view, and there might be... anomolies. The community would have to do extensive testings and agree that it's more realistic. The script that allows AI to scavenge weapons from bodies dynamically is great but causes strange effects when you shoot someone in the middle of a crowd of soldiers (quite fun watch them all run into each other trying to get to the body). But there *must* be faultless little tweaks out there that are optimised for MP too, we need to find them all and collect them together!

Things which definitely would *not* fall into the scope of such a project would be:

* Sound mods - too much of a personal choice

* Units from armies not included in the vanilla story line

* purely aesthetic improvements - hi-res sky textures, hi-res weapon models that don't fit the rest, dismemberment, female units etc

* anything which drastically alters the gameplay, thus breaking most pre-existing missions or gameplay styles - jump animations, AI using smoke (do tank AI have IR scopes to see through the smoke? No - this would have to be added along with any mod combos allowing AI to throw smoke and be concealed behind it), flares/chaff which is realistic but undeafeatable by AI or unrealistic AA weaponry etc etc etc

Features from large scale conversion mods like SLX and XAM could be cherry picked for their undisputable improvements and combined if the authors were willing to allow it. I could go on listing stuff but it would take forever, but all it takes is a bit of organisation and commitment.

It's terrible to see addon makers go to such effort to produce stuff which ends up falling by the wayside and not getting used, usually just for the simple reason that people don't make the effort to integrate it into the ArmA that most people play day to day.

[Smartti 1]

I think everyone should really make an effort to produce some kind of standardised 'community' approved addons.

You're not the first one to suggest such thing.

Personally I don't like idea of forcing or setting any guidelines. Standardization kills or at least restricts creativity. It is also about who are you (as a modder) trying to satisfy - your own imagination or rest of the community. Lots of hard decisions.

I'm just trying to be happy and enjoy all these wonderful gifts to the community. Hope the authors are happy too!

PLUR

[manzilla 1]

I agree with Smartti.

It's a nice thought but the coordination would be quite difficult. As fas as new weapons, vehicles, unit, etc., excluding everything that has come out thus far, who would make them? As far as I know, most modders work on their free time and conforming to such large standards may discourage some based on the added work time alone.

Although I gotta say, if this standardization could be organized and implemented it would definitely be a benefit to the community.

I wish you luck in this endeavor.

[mr reality 0]

This sort of thing eventually happens towards the end of a games life. Looking at OFP, we had the FFUR mods and there where two other very good mods that included all the best addons to date. Modding for ArmA has only just taken off, it's mainly been reskins and the overall look of these new addons looks very promising.

[Ezekiel 0]

Yeh, I know it'll happen one day but it'd be better if some of the modders getting into full swing could get it going sooner rather than later. Sucks to see so much effort go into making new tanks and the like, only to have them disappear from the public eye because they never had the final balancing touches put on them to integrate them properly with the vanilla game or other mods.

[acadiancrusader 0]

i actually consider The.D's big list (stickied in this forum) to be in spirit to what you are suggesting.

[Ezekiel 0]

That list is pretty much what inspired the post - I played unmodded ArmA barring sound, mostly cos so much stuff seems to be unstable or unusable for MP. Then when the official new patch came out I came back to the game (stopped playing after the... second beta patch in a row came out, and people started arguing about which beta was better) and downloaded almost *every single addon* on that list. I had to disable pretty much all of them cos they didn't seem to be liked by any public server, and even when I played single player with the best ones loaded they didn't integrate very well at all, leading to much jigging, disabling, editing and eventually deleting.