PROPER Weapon Collision Shape

[.kju 3245]

Everyone should be aware of the problems like turning on a

staircase or within a doorway with a weapon. Pretty annoying.

Thanks to General Baron and especially rocko for the idea and realization!

It exchanges the collision shape model for infantry animations

where it is need with the one that is used when you have

lowered the weapon.

It improves the playability already quite much.

This version changes standing, crouch and weaponReload's

collision shape.

The one for lying is still missing. Once all issues are sorted,

there will be an update.

Download:

PROPER_WeaponCollisionShape_2008_11_01.bikey

PROPER_WeaponCollisionShape_2008_11_01.7z

Demo videos:

PROPER_WeaponCollisionShape_DemoVideo_01.avi (450 KB)

PROPER_WeaponCollisionShape_DemoVideo_02.avi (450 KB)

PROPER_WeaponCollisionShape_DemoVideo_03.avi (2 MB)

Any feedback welcome!

Enjoy.

[Panda-PL- 0]

So, this changes the soldier model?

Or does it remove weapon's geometry lod?

I tried the later but I don't think it made any change.

[.kju 3245]

The later.

Maybe you have edited the wrong p3ds?

Check the addons config to see what models are important here.

[manzilla 1]

What do you mean? Do I need to make changes to something for this to work? I thought it's something I just pop into a mod folder somewhere and it works.

[.kju 3245]

No changes needed. Just load it along in some addons folder.

Works out of the box. Should be fully compatible to any fan made

stuff for ArmA.

[Guest]

Very nice work Q, I am really annoyed by this indeed so I like this fix a lot

Frontpaged at the Armaholic.com homepage.

The Armaholic.com download page can be found here:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=4141 (serverkey included)

[mattxr 9]

wrong thead ^^

[Dr.Pulp 0]

Nice as always!

Is this addon Client or Server Side only or both?

[.kju 3245]

Mainly client side. However to have it for AI of the server,

you probably need it on the server as well.

[Dr.Pulp 0]

is there a way to make it server side only? That would be cool...everybody on our server coud use it! ;-)

[.kju 3245]

Not possible due to technical reasons.

Collision is calculated on the local computer.

[kegetys 2]

Doesn't this mean the weapon goes inside/through the wall then? A bit of a cheat in my opinion, I always thought it was a nice realism feature that moving around in small corridors/doorways with a 1m long rifle was rather clumbersome, and using a pistol instead in those situations gave you an advantage in mobility.

Though a better "solution" would be to have the player automatically lift the rifle up if it "hits" a wall... Maybe in arma2.

[.kju 3245]

Hopefully it will be in A2 yes.

This is only a little 'cheat' to improve playability with little effort.

There is still the collision shape of the infantry model.

With this shape it looks quite nice. You nor the weapon almost

never 'clip into' a wall (I didn't try all houses of A1 nor every corner

or edge). In general it looks normal without visual issues.

At the same time you can turn with any launcher on stairs by

default. Guess why.

[N'kEnNy 0]

While I've yet to try it; this is an absolutely brilliant idea.

Would it also be possible to get a patch that removes the move-block for vegetation in the game? (Operation flashpoint style move through bushes.)

[.kju 3245]

Hehe.

We have consider doing this a long time.

Let's say with the upcoming vegetation replacement packs for

the ACE island pack we will do it anyway, so most likely there

will be a normal ArmA vegetation replacement pack as well.

[General Barron 0]

Doesn't this mean the weapon goes inside/through the wall then? A bit of a cheat in my opinion, I always thought it was a nice realism feature that moving around in small corridors/doorways with a 1m long rifle was rather clumbersome, and using a pistol instead in those situations gave you an advantage in mobility.

Interesting to see someone made this.

As for the above point, people need to realize a couple things about the existing (non-modded) collision shape:

1) It does not change depending on weapon, just on animation. So all primary weapons have the same size geometry for the weapon, be they a .50 cal sniper rifle, a carbine, or an SMG.

2) The shape does not bend with your character. It only rotates to match your direction. So, if you point downwards or upwards, the collision shape still points parallel to the ground. Meaning, it does a poor job of blocking where your weapon is really pointing.

3) The collision shape, not including the part representing the weapon, is already considerably larger than the character's body. It should even contain the chamber of most weapons within its bounds anyway, which means it would be impossible to shoot thru walls in those situations.

So, while it is true that the current system gives an advantage to pistols over primary weapons, I do not think it is overall more "realistic" then this mod. The problem is that SMGs are just as hard to move around in a hallway as a sniper rifle.

And in reality it is MUCH easier to turn around in a hallway then in default Arma, anyway. It is already considerably harder to move around in a game using a keyboard, compared to movement in real life. Complicating simple things such as turning your body doesn't really help a game's immersion or realism, imo.

Until we get some better then a keyboard to control an avatar in a game, I don't think it makes sense to worry about tiny kinetic nuances, such as the differences between a 12 or 18 inch barrel on movement in a hallway. The way you control movement just isn't good enough to allow you to worry about such

details. In real life, I don't have to think about how I'm going to rotate my body in a hall. So why should I have to think about the controls to do the same thing in a game? How does that help realism, or immersion?

[Lester 0]

3) The collision shape, not including the part representing the weapon, is already considerably larger than the character's body. It should even contain the chamber of most weapons within its bounds anyway, which means it would be impossible to shoot thru walls in those situations.

I can't confim that !

I produced a situation of 20 near standing civilians behind a BIS 'Zed' wall

and shoot from the other side of the wall via MG a whole magazine with a soft rotation in an ±45° angle.

Normally this kills up to 1-3 civilians in my tests, but with active mod this count get up to 7-10 !

[.kju 3245]

So what is your conclusion?

[Lester 0]

This mod give a significant higher chance to shoot through walls.

[.kju 3245]

The technical conclusion would be that the new collision shape

is bigger and that that collision shape has a relation to the Fire Geometry LOD.

Both sound strange to me. We will check this.

[mrcash2009 0]

So's to play dumb here to clarify, this irons out the sticking and jittering in small spaces annoyance then right?

[Namikaze 0]

@mrcash2009: Yeah, basically. The way it works by default is that the weapon collision box is added to the player's collision box, and that weapon box sticks out a certain distance in front of the player. It makes turning in a narrow corridor really hard because this "stick" is pointing in front of you. It also makes it impossible to put your face into a wall (not that you'd want to do that in real life, but that's the way most turning in FPS' is done).

[teacup 2]

I think this is a clear improvement on the clunky movement system. Sure, the tip of your rifle will in some special cases poke through a wall, but you will not be able to shoot or look through it anyway. Inconsequential for gameplay.

The whole weapon collision thing was rudimentary and awkward in the first place. Then again, automaticly-raising-your-rifle-when-facing-a-wall a la Crysis is not such an awesome solution either..

My 2 (overly critical?) cents

[stilpu 0]

Unfortunately, this solution is prone to exploiting. Basically, seeing (and shooting) through walls is possible if you're zooming in while moving towards the wall or looking at certain angles. This was also an issue in the first versions of ArmA (at least for the pistol) and was later fixed by BIS.

The best implementation of weapon collision I've seen is in the still-unmatched Infiltration mod for UT, where the weapons have separate collision geometry based on weapon size and they're automatically "lowered" to allow unrestricted turning when unsighted (see http://dslyecxi.com/botg_infiltration_2.html , scroll down to Weapon Collision)

[.kju 3245]

Good find stilpu!

We will try to fix this by adding a bit more of collision.

ArmA already has a collision shape for each stance and animation

basically (200+ shapes).

So unless you are able to automatically generate the shape models

or make this part of real time calculation, this is a huge effort.

I agree that the auto lowering system is a good one.