How the community fixes things

[steele6 0]

It is strange that the community has done alot of changes to the actual game, not just making mods and addons. for example we have:

1 cars that can open doors

2 AI range fix where the AI had a more realistic sight

3: Urban patrol scripts that fix up AI in an urban area

4: tons of sound mods that replace all the sounds in Orig Arma

5:extended event handlers in the mission editor.

6: replace the vegetation with a lesser impact of performance.

7: fix the vegetation so that the AI can see you thru a bush.

All these addons are numerous ( forgive me if i forgot one ) and it is kinda sad that the community has to fix these things up. the community has less time than a proper game studio.

that said I think Arma 2 BIS has fixed up a lot of things.

But i still think Arma doesnt handle your graphics card properly,

as i use up plus minus512.... mb when running the game and i have 2 gigs ram , dual core and an 8600gt.

what u guys think?

[-Total- 0]

Other than America's Army, which is un-moddable, there's not really any game I've played where a community created mod didn't set a new standard in the game.

Even the community created content of OFP improved that game greatly.

If I had any input into ArmA2 at all, I'd suggest BIS take a look at the "realism" sticky in the Addons&Mods forum and at least include those in ArmA2.

Many of the community improvements in OFP, in quite a few cases, should have been included into ArmA. Sadly they were not. If a "naked" game is released in ArmA2, I'm afraid many of the talented community scripters and programmers will lose their patience

[lee_h._oswald 0]

I'm extremly happy that the arma community is fixing all those little bugs/glitches/etc.

But the hardest thing for me is to keep the overview.

Does X work with Y, can I use a recoil mod with 1.14, and so on.

ArmA 1.14 is very good, no question, but I would not play it anymore, without all those effect/sound/bugfixing/feature addons.

MfG Lee

[Yoma 0]

All these addons are numerous ( forgive me if i forgot one ) and it is kinda sad that the community has to fix these things up. the community has less time than a proper game studio.

Time is not on the side of developers, time is on the side of communities.

Think about it: how does the time thousands of people can spend compare to the sum of the total time a say 100 man team can spend. (i think a 100 man team for arma is vastly over what really happened)

Even if these 100 do nothing but coding for arma.

Say you have a 40 hour workweek, that would mean 4000 manhours in a week.

This means that a 1000 guys doing just 4 hours a week of modding can do about the same work of a fullfledged dev team. The difference is: a real devteam is usually a bit better trained and have access to inside knowledge.

Maybe we should just be gratefull that we have a completely moddable game.

[walker 0]

Hi all

I explained this some time ago in the OFP forum and in other places.

It is the Million Monkey Effect and some of us produce sonnets.

How the community fixes things is not a weakness this is its strength!

ArmA was designed this way.

Kind Regards walker

[vilas 473]

community fixes, hehehe, it was me who made choppers using weapons against land targets, cause BIS had error in config and unguided launchers were not used by chopers (it was over year ago)

yes, it is strange that "player/user" has to fix things that should have been done by professional developer/coder/informatician

[sickboy 13]

If only this was a perfect world Vilas....

Original Creator:

1: That's not a fix, that's an addition / enhancement. If BI should make the game completely conform reality, im sure we can wait until after 2020, if they're not bankrupted before that time

2: I also believe BI could've made better job to this. I dunno if they made fixes in the last patches though. On the other hand, I believe this is all a personal opinion. "More realistic" has always been highly discussable

3: Enhancing the AI in Urban Environments, is well, like it says; An Enhancement. It would've been cool that BI include this stuff aswell, but they had other priorities; Too bad. So us modders create solutions

4: Sound is personal. I didn't hate the default sounds. I like some SoundMods too. Awesome right, to have a choice?

5: Extended Eventhandlers in mission editor? I guess you are referring to XEH, which is unrelated to mission editor, and is something only to supplement the default arma implementation and allow multiple mods to work together. Again, an enhancement, not a bug fix. BI makes choices in design, and im sure some of them are also due to time constraints; you cant have it all right?

6: The "fix" disables post-processing on the bushes/trees. So it's not a fix, rather a workaround. AFAIK to really fix the problem, all the bushes and trees must be recreated / rebuilt, and including that in patch could mean a huge patch, plus a lot of work for BI. It will however be fixed in ArmA2.

7: Actually, it's a fix so that AI can NOT see you through bushes too easily. BI Admitted that their solution doesn't work so good, and that they will fix it for ArmA2.

All in All, such a modable, expandable, enhanceable product? Total Awesomeness in my book

Everyone thinks they know how it's supposed to be... Everyone has an opinion, everyone has a vision... Well, with the ArmA series you can bring it to life!

If you don't like doing it yourself; there's 100's if not 1000's of modders out there who probably enhance / change the game to your liking. Like walker says; That's not weakness, that's power

Quote[/b] ]But i still think Arma doesnt handle your graphics card properly,            

as i use up  plus minus512.... mb when running the game and i have 2 gigs ram , dual core and an 8600gt.

2GB RAM, is unrelated to Graphics card.

Every 32-bit application can only assign a limited amount of memory, hence your game doesn't use multiple gigabytes of ram.

There is also a point where caching more data in RAM, does not increase performance. It simply comes down to how it all works and is setup.

Apart from that, ArmA is a single core application, just like 99,7% of all the other games out there. Hence it will never use the full capacity of your CPU

[baddo 0]

It is strange that the community has done alot of changes to the actual game, not just making mods and addons. for example we have:

1 cars that can open doors

2 AI range fix where the AI had a more realistic sight

3: Urban patrol scripts that fix up AI in an urban area

4: tons of sound mods that replace all the sounds in Orig Arma

5:extended event handlers in the mission editor.

6: replace the vegetation with a lesser impact of performance.

7: fix the vegetation so that the AI can see you thru a bush.

All these addons are numerous ( forgive me if i forgot one ) and it is kinda sad that the community has to fix these things up. the community has less time than a proper game studio.

that said I think Arma 2 BIS has fixed up a lot of things.

But i still think Arma doesnt handle your graphics card properly,            

as i use up  plus minus512.... mb when running the game and i have 2 gigs ram , dual core and an 8600gt.

what u guys think?

Well... let me tell you my opinion about the points you brought up.

1 cars that can open doors

It is a feature if standard cars don't have doors which do not open, and as such it is a matter of opinion.

2 AI range fix where the AI had a more realistic sight

This is also called a feature. And a matter of opinion as such.

Other people define realistic sight differently than you do.

3: Urban patrol scripts that fix up AI in an urban area

This is also called a feature. And a matter of opinion as such. An urban patrol script obviously is something that wasn't needed for the original game.

4: tons of sound mods that replace all the sounds in Orig Arma

Having sounds that do not please you as well as some other sounds is called a feature as well.

And a matter of opinion as such.

This is highly subjective. One man's beautiful sound is another man's annoying noise.

5:extended event handlers in the mission editor.

This is called a feature. And a matter of opinion as such. Who is the one to decide if this is really necessary? Can you point out to me why the original Armed Assault the game would need this? Why was the game shipped without it? You are saying this is a fix to some problem, so you should be able to point out what the specific problem was that needed to be fixed with it.

6: replace the vegetation with a lesser impact of performance.

This is called a feature. And a matter of opinion as such. A highly subjective thing. One man has a brand new blindingly fast computer and another man has an old and very slow computer; are they going to feel the same about this. Why not tune the game down so that we can use a computer that only just fulfills the minimum requirements told by BIS to run it with high visual quality settings.

7: fix the vegetation so that the AI can see you thru a bush.

This is called a feature. And a matter of opinion as such. Different people will tell you different opinions of how much one can see through a bush.

In fact, out of your 7 points, I see that 7 of them are matters of opinion. There is a lack of evidence that any one of those points actually needed to be fixed as you chose to word. They are matters of opinion.

Yes, it is great that The Community makes more choices for us from which to select. I am not downplaying anyone's effort, just pointing out an obvious flaw in your thinking. Maybe you could have made a better list which actually contains some things that we can agree that were clearly broken and needed to be fixed by a common agreement, AND which were fixed by The Community. Things which are highly subjective do not belong to that list at all.

[vilas 473]

realism till 2020 ? hm...

honestly:

> if developer do not know something, he shouldn't touch it

it is two different situation :

- if someone does a JOB and takes MONEY for it and

- if someone is hobbyst and had limited skills, but does for fun,

secondly if i have written on BOX "militatry realism" than i expect other things, but we staying out of topic:

yes - community fixes, like i fixed rockets some time ago, such things should be done by developer, who was betatesting game, if rockets were not fired by chopper to air targets ??

in which patch after release date it was improved

hmmm... how many months after release date

as i remember my addon was circa 1.04 version

other things can be called "extra feature", but fact that AI see through bush and you are killed by enemy which you couldn't see... hm...

i think bigest problem of BIS was weak beta-test before release

i hope they learned a lesson from this if they care about customers

[sickboy 13]

Bugs are usually fixed by priority and severity.

I stick to my earlier comment; Maybe in a perfect world vilas, you are right.

But the world isn't perfect, Software Companies don't create flawless software, not even multi-million/billion ones.

Expecting this from BI, is IMO completely unrealistic.

The fact that you try to judge the BI Development & Release process, while afaik you have no experience whatsoever in this area, is IMO hilarious at best.

[Yoma 0]

I understand Vilas frustration.

However, i make some software myself and i completely understand that making something like Arma can go a bit wrong especially with LOTS of timepressure and a smallish team.

In fact I would totally love to see a budget/team comparison between a game like Crysis (played it, dumped it) and Arma.

I bet that would put BIS a bit in perspective to most players.

It's a pity BIS couldn't get Arma upto v1.14 quality from day one, but maybe it's pretty darn unbelievable that they got it up to what it is today.

I am GLAD we have a game like arma 1.14 lot's of other companies would have simply dumped it and moved on.

The fact that they've kept on patching the game actually means that they DO respect their customers. A LOT.

People seem to forget that making patches costs a lot of hard cash.

[Balschoiw 0]

I think it´s sad that BIS didn´t really keep track with community produced addons, features, enhancements for OFP. There were things introduced that were widely appreciated like deployable weapons, multi-part weapon systems, etc, etc. These were things that kept OFP alive over the years and not taking such into account when developing a new product is a step backwards.

What´s really astonishing is that they brought over OFP 1.0 bugs to Arma release version. This is something that should have never happened and still, today with 1.14 the product is not running as it should run and working as it should work. Sometimes when I play Arma (I hardly play it anymore as with 1.14 my performance got worse) I see that they tuned here and there but it seems that they lost focus at some point as little changes here and there are not fully tested and what does work in one situation looks absolutely wrong in others. Take the FOV for example. If you drive a pickup now it seems that your nose is 5 cm from the windscreen. Looks stupid and is unrealistic.

Right now Arma is a dying patient imo. Too much doctoring, too little consistence and the performance is still not solid for a wider range of availabel hardware.

It´s good that the community tries to iron out things but in the end there needs to be a common, solid game-base. It´s a real dilemma to have to search for fixes here and there and find out that things collide and don´t work together. All this could have been avoided by a proper game-base delivered by BIS.

All that features that have been introduced with the patches like VON and such are definately meant for Arma 2. apart from introducing new features they should have better invested the time into fixing what was broken and still is broken. If Arma 2 is basing on Arma we can expect as similar desaster but this time noone will buy the "we had to release, we needed the money" thing anymore.

Quote[/b] ]People seem to forget that making patches costs a lot of hard cash.

That´s where I disagree a bit as BIS is evolving Arma to Arma 2. An unfixed Arma means a bugged to death Arma 2. On the other hand that´s a real concern I have as Arma right now is still not working properly and basing a new product on a flawed one may be the worst way to take.

[sickboy 13]

I can understand your pains Balschoiw.

However, My game runs like a dream most of the time, I've never touched SP, and anything I don't like or would prefer differently, I or someone else has modded, so for me the new features are actually welcomed.

(The Von however was simply bugged, thus the fixes and basic features it at least should have, was imo perfectly fine that they fixed it up for ArmA1, and didn't leave it for A2).

For missions, AI behaviour / waypoints etc; I never use the editor-waypoints/synchronization/triggers, but use scripts for generating missions and units, aswell as managing them.

I guess the above is mostly why the opinions differ so much

However, I must agree that the compatibility, performance and stability of the game, has been poor overall (Judging from the many complaints about various systems with ArmA)

(I luckily never had big performance or stability issues, especially none that couldn't be overcome one way or the other)

[Commando84 0]

I think BI saw that the community liked to mod stuff and thats why they didn't over work Arma with to many features and details.

I think also they didnt have time and money to make it all working 150% at first release.

And i think Bi developers saw that leaving the game open would make the fans , customers happy so they can modify the game as much as possible and to his/hers own style.

Some people want realism, some people can live without having their weapons breaking down or needing to click 10 times to call in a artillery strike.

Now with arma in 1.14 i haven't had a single crash, instead i've seen funny lines in my screen after a few hours when my graphics card is getting to hot..

But hey better that than some random numbers and a pop up saying it crashed due to memory error.

[benreeper 0]

The community cannot be pleased so the developer should NEVER listen to them. Doing so would be folly to the highest degree.

Case in point:

For years people complained that vehicles (armored in particular) were death traps against infantry. BIS then changes the damage system so that not a single shoulder fired weapon can destroy an armored vehicle in one shot. No sooner than that was done that someone complained that they could not, in fact, destroy an armored vehicle with one weak shoulder fired weapon, in a single shot.

--Ben

[max power 21]

The community cannot be pleased so the developer should NEVER listen to them. Doing so would be folly to the highest degree.

Case in point:

For years people complained that vehicles (armored in particular) were death traps against infantry. BIS then changes the damage system so that not a single shoulder fired weapon can destroy an armored vehicle in one shot. No sooner than that was done that someone complained that they could not, in fact, destroy an armored vehicle with one weak shoulder fired weapon, in a single shot.

--Ben

+100

[steele6 0]

Wow!

well, I think that BI should spend a little more time fixing things up ( better handling of : AI, Graphics, Memory etc)

but I am happy with the game but I just think that maybe more time should have been put into the testing and ironing out and adding in aesthetics ( which the community ended up doing) so that the community doesnt have be upset and then made our own addons that fix this or that.

Arma should have been a solid game, then the community could have taken it further.

I just hope Arma 2 is bug free and stable ( not like Arma when it first came out)

and PS :

The Single player Arma campaign should have been it didnt quite make it feel like a real sim and the missions were two short and no characters, among other things

I agree that you cant please all the people all the time, only some of the people some of the time

but

anyway Arma 2 looks fantastic and i think BI have (probably learnt a lesson)

gonna love flying that F35b

[code-red 0]

Well i see it with most online games these days that they dont seem to be complete and launch date.

It seems to be the industry standard these days.

Games change and get updated lots still AFTER release date.

I have seen it with OFP, Battlefield2 and now with age of conan.

Lots of things got changed and nerved.

For a bad example, a lot of PvP content that age of conan advertised with is not even working yet, maybe this summer!?!

In BF2 they changed/nerved so many things that it became a totaly different gameplay.

Most of the time i am fine with all these changes, but it can be quite frustrating to to adept your playing style every time the game get changed by patches.

So for me it has its good and its bad sides.

Tweaking after release is fine by me, but releasing stuff that is not working (as advertised) is realy crappy i think.

Bad example for arma is bridge crossing that still didnt work even that was known allready in ofp.

But in my experience BIS is one of the studios that has a very good contact with their community.

Best example for me is that developing en releasing arma was beyond my wildest dreams, i thought i would never find a game like ofp any more.

With BIS i get anything i wish for, but it seems only more complete one year after release date.

Anyway, thanks for listening to my weekly rant, if you made it this far.

[maatz 1]

Bad example for arma is bridge crossing that still didnt work even that was known allready in ofp.

come on, that's not a bug, it's a feature!

[code-red 0]

They are all becomming features to me eventualy because i've allways kept playing so far for all its good things.

[steele6 0]

When you stumble across those things, you wonder if either the Dev team doesnt test properly or they decided that nobody will notice or they screwing wid us.

[ck-claw 1]

As posted before months ago!

And i think a Placebo interview?

Demand? was to release-ish!

If they'd held out to fix bugs-ppl would've bitched about delaying the release date!

I for one was happy they released as is!

But you know-ya cant keep all the ppl happy all the time!

[hailstorm 4]

personally, i can't blame BIS for their releasing ArmA in the state it was. if money was the driving force for the release date, personally i'd rather see this product out (and eventually patched to a good state) than nothing at all. it's good that the team are going to be continually patching ArmA, and not abandon it like so many an EA product...

i can't agree with BIS 'not listening' to the community; but they should listen with restraint. some people may be wrong, but there are a few people here who know what they're talking about - and to completely ignore those is a folly.

Balschoiw is right, it's very weird for an OFP player to transfer to ArmA, only to find bugs from the original version. it's even worse if said player has been using comm. fixes for so long that it just the norm for the OFP community.

look at it this way - what would you think if ArmA 2 rolled out with useless bridges, trees that AI see clearly through, people who get shot and only die after completing their animation, or tanks that flip after hitting the smallest object? i'm not saying that ArmA2 will be like this, but if it were to take such a huge unwarranted step backwards from ArmA's standard then wouldn't you be disappointed too?

what i would like to see, in regards to community-made fixes, is for BIS to take those that are generally considered an improvement, take them apart, go over with a fine-toothed comb, and consider improving and releasing it as official - having stuff like kegety's lowplants, range fixes, patrol scripts, suppressive fire, countermeasures, solutions to missile-spam, etc. as part of a BIS-sanctioned patch would be a very good idea.

BIS should see the community as a sort of resource - if we work out a solution to a problem, why shouldn't BIS not look into it?

[Scarlet_Pimp 0]

Yea i wish Bis would implemet some of the comunity fixes into Arma clean them up abit if needed and make them official as part of a patch. Maybe it'll happen we'll see, still i enjoy playing Arma anyway just some of the community addons add alot to the game and should be in the game for all.

[dale0404 5]

Yea i wish Bis would implemet some of the comunity fixes into Arma clean them up abit if needed and make them official as part of a patch.  Maybe it'll happen we'll see, still i enjoy playing Arma anyway just some of the community addons add alot to the game and should be in the game for all.

Yeah, that would be cool. We all know which things work and which things dont.

BI, fix the things that DONT work, not the other way around please!!!!