SPON Scuba

[kroky 1]

@Spooner

Come on mate, SPON_Superman? (no I'm just joking..)

I have thought about your post and here are my thoughts and suggestions:

While a Superman addon is obviously unrealistic, a soldier in ArmA that can dive under water for 60-90 seconds isn't unrealistic at all. I think this is an essential feature left out in ArmA and you could bring it in globally into the game.

I agree with you that it's not realistic to have all the features that are included in SPON_Scuba globally for every unit in ArmA. My suggestion is:

Make an addon (let's say) SPON_Dive

(this would apply globally)

- Civilians could hold breath for i.e. 45 seconds

- Soldiers/Pilots/Crew for 60 seconds

- SF for 90 seconds and could have addtionally the Flashlight

all units would lose weapons after the same time, like they would when they swim on the surface.

It would be very perfect when these units would have a blurred vision under water, but it is not really necessary.

About the addon SPON_Scuba:

Leave the following features for Combat Divers (which can be added by the mission makers.)

- Air supply

- putting under water satchels

- Altimeter

- Harpoon

- retain weapons

- clear view because of under water goggles

Another suggestion is: Make the Air Supply replenishable at boats. (it would be even perfect to have a air supply unit being equipped to combat divers in the place of AT launchers, and air tanks as magazines. When the magazine is used up, it disappears like all other magazines.)

This way the game would stay balanced, but still enhanced with a vital feature that ArmA is badly missing. (It's really unrealistic that no unit can dive in ArmA, isn't it?)

About advantage/disadvantage issues:

This could be decided by the people who run the servers. They could accept people joining with SPON_Dive or not. IMHO this addon would become very quickly a standard and all servers would accept it. This argumentation could be expanded to all other addons which gives the player some extra features (like medi packs and other). So this is to decide by the server admin. In SP it's up to the player if he wants to use this addon and enhance the gameplay. I would love to!

Finally, addressing the MP issues:

I think with a simplified version of SPON_Scuba in form of a SPON_Dive would it make a lot easier to make it MP compatible. Since there are only a few features left.

What do you think Spooner?

[Spooner 0]

I have already added scripts to allow a given number of air tanks to be stored in a vehicle or ammo box, to be picked up by player or AI (they are action-based, since I'm not working with real objects). If you are offering to donate models and images, then I could configure them as dummy magazines for use in the addon version, but since I'm a pure scripter this isn't something I'd bother with on my own steam, as well as liking to keep things addon-free if I possibly can (well, I have some config knowledge and absolutely no 2d/3d skills, so I have to play to my strengths).

Well, you two aren't the only people to hassle me about globalising this. Although I'm softening a bit, I still have the fundamental problem: my system has people beneath 1m depth being setCaptived. That does rather change the way things work. Nevertheless, your suggestions seem reasonable and I suppose I should consider them some more...

If I eventually cave on this issue, I might as well just have a single SPON Scuba and just give the "simple dive" functionality automatically and make the mission add a logic or call a function to enable full combat-diving functionality. I don't think it is worthwhile maintaining two code-sets, even if one of them was simpler (it would just be a sub-set, after all). The MP issues are only really in the setPossing...and that is common to simple and complex diving! Everything else isn't a problem in MP really!

I like the idea of breath-times based on man types, too. Really, I hadn't got as far as worrying about individual configuration like that; just getting it playable was all I was worried about for first release.

[Pedgi 0]

The surface water looks really cool from underwater!

I, along with others, didn't think this would ever be possible.

Highfives to you!

[Spooner 0]

Yes, I was really impressed with the look of the water from below. I'm a bit disappointed by the way the whole sea is transparent until you get about 0.5m underwater though.  Well, I suppose that is when your eyes go below sea level (height 0) as opposed to the water surface level (higher or lower than 0 based on wave height). That is why the flashlight is not visible until you get a wee bit underwater...

For those interested in Gnat's work on making an addon-based scuba model which doesn't have the same MP limitations as this simple script-based system (Still very much a proof-of-concept though), he has started a discussion elsewhere.

[kroky 1]

@Spooner

First of all I'm glad you take my suggestions into consideration and I'm really happy you're softening up a little bit

I think a lot of ArmA gamers would welcome it, if you would add the simple dive function globally.

About models:

I'm not a modeler (I'm rather a config modder, but still learning a lot of things), but there are so many people skilled in this, I think it wouldn't be a problem to find anybody modelling air tanks and magazines (air supply) and the according pics for the gear menu.

[arye_r 0]

@Spooner

Amazing work man!

One thing I'd like to point out is the "UP" stance that a unit gets in automatically when getting out of water, wich is somewhat unnatural.

I think it's part of the ArmA core.

Is it possible that a unit will keep the DOWN stance (i.e. crawling) when getting out of water?

Again, thanks for your work!

[supergruntsb78 67]

i whould love to see the dive function permantent

every soldier is trained to swim (inlcuding underwater) most civilians know how to swim as well (unless they live in desert camps) Special Forces are even better trained in swimming as it is a large part of their insertion techniques well i am not going to tell you the combat diver story because if they couldn't swim the world would be a realy dark place by now

(if this didn't help in softening you further i am going to send in my mafia friends to soften you up a bit :P)

[Spooner 0]

@arye_r:

You are right about the transition that you undergo when leaving the water. It is pretty kludgy, but I can see why BIS left it like that. When you enter the water, you start swimming when the water is at your waist, so the transition from walking to swimming is a natural one. When you get out again, the water is up to your knees, so there is a jump from swim to standing. Maybe someone could be persuaded to make a specific animation for it, otherwise I could try and find something a bit better than jumping from virtually lying down to standing up...

---

I think I've solved the problem of dropping gear to a reasonable degree, but I need to do some more testing on that *fingers crossed* You still reload your weapons when getting out of the water, but you should be able to preserve magazine ammo counts as long as you don't fear a hideous workaround ;P

I've tried unsuccessfully to enable the player to fire their pistol in the water. Like the fact that swimmers are automatically teleported to the surface, they are also automatically switched to swimming animation so I can't just switch to a shooting posture. If I continually spam animations on the diver then he will keep in firing stance, but he can't aim up or down *sighs* The other problem is that it seems weapons can't even be fired if you are in the water. If Z > 0 then firing works fine. If Z <= 0 then fire button just doesn't work at all! Sooo, unless anyone has a bright idea, no luck with that!

An issue I am having in my WIP version is quite random crashes of the mission (core dumps, so no idea what is the cause). Loki has tested this version a bit too, but not had any problems. I assume it is something I changed since the original release. Anyway, just checking if anyone has had unexplained hard crashes with v0.1.0, because in my testing it seemed fine? Once I clear that particular problem satisfactorily, the new and improved version will be released. Sorry for the delay...and no, there definitely won't be global diving in that version. Maybe in a couple of versions...

[kroky 1]

@arye_r:

You are right about the transition that you undergo when leaving the water. It is pretty kludgy, but I can see why BIS left it like that. When you enter the water, you start swimming when the water is at your waist, so the transition from walking to swimming is a natural one. When you get out again, the water is up to your knees, so there is a jump from swim to standing. Maybe someone could be persuaded to make a specific animation for it, otherwise I could try and find something a bit better than jumping from virtually lying down to standing up...

---

I think I've solved the problem of dropping gear to a reasonable degree, but I need to do some more testing on that *fingers crossed* You still reload your weapons when getting out of the water, but you should be able to preserve magazine ammo counts as long as you don't fear a hideous workaround ;P

I've tried unsuccessfully to enable the player to fire their pistol in the water. Like the fact that swimmers are automatically teleported to the surface, they are also automatically switched to swimming animation so I can't just switch to a shooting posture. If I continually spam animations on the diver then he will keep in firing stance, but he can't aim up or down *sighs* The other problem is that it seems weapons can't even be fired if you are in the water. If Z > 0 then firing works fine. If Z <= 0 then fire button just doesn't work at all! Sooo, unless anyone has a bright idea, no luck with that!

An issue I am having in my WIP version is quite random crashes of the mission (core dumps, so no idea what is the cause). Loki has tested this version a bit too, but not had any problems. I assume it is something I changed since the original release. Anyway, just checking if anyone has had unexplained hard crashes with v0.1.0, because in my testing it seemed fine? Once I clear that particular problem satisfactorily, the new and improved version will be released. Sorry for the delay...and no, there definitely won't be global diving in that version. Maybe in a couple of versions...

and no, there definitely won't be global diving in that version.

Maybe in a couple of versions...

[I.M.G. 0]

Just a minor comment, for me I found no relation to helicopter ascend / descend, ‘Q’ and ‘Z’ functioned for me, I can’t rem’ remapping so I’m not sure if this will be of assistance to others.

Aside from that, congrat’s Spooner.

[Spooner 0]

It is most likely that you are using an addon or mission script that uses key-handling, which is not able to share key events with other addons. In this case, some addons will just not get notified when a key is pressed. Some addons are made to be compatible with others, such as all of the SPON components. Some have been fixed or patched and some just won't work in their current state.

* S_NVG (manually adjustable night vision goggles) then you need to use the fixed version[/url] of it from Shole.

* GMJ_sightAdjustment, then you have to use it along with the fix for it from Shole.

In both cases you also need to use Shole's DEH (the release also includes the fixes and updates I've mentioned above).