31st NORMANDY MOD - WW2 Â -BETA RELEASE

[Enigma85 2]

Rip!

I want to complain that your Tiger can take out an M1A1 Abrams tank!

This ruins the immersion in my new

"Nazi Zombies coming back from the dead"

Mission.

God rip now what do i do? XD

i kid,i kid.

Anyways on a more serious note,

I thinking basing it all from modern values isn't the answer.

Having a damage system worked out for the mod would be the better option,We can figure out some system for the working out of armor values and damage on rounds.

not getting into the grades of materials used as that might take it a bit far.

as a quick example,

Give a base value amount of points per mm of armor plate thickness of the tank,

Then work our an armor value by taking the maximum armor thickness.

multiply by the value of armor points per mm.

to give you your base value.

Then you could add certain modifiers for advantages and disadvantages.

IE

advantages

sloped armor

extra armor/protection

disadvantages

poor reliability

poor crew protection/damage protection

getting kind of complex

But all this would be worked out at set values.

something like a 5-10% + or - for modifiers.

So as an example and test of the theory

The tiger and the m4 Sherman worked out from the quick value system.

Values in example might not be 100% accurate.

Base value of armor thickness =20 (for example).

All modifiers will be worked at 5-10% ratio.

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">m4 sherman

thickest armor=76

so Sherman value(76) X armor value(20) = 1520

- 5% due to exploding/burning crew after kinetic round hit.

1220 - 5%(76) =1444

so rounded up

Final Sherman armor value=1450

And the tiger

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">

Tiger I

thickest armor = 110mm

So Tiger I value(110) X  Armor Value(20) = 2200

no real problem with the armor of tiger as i recall.

Final Tiger armor value = 2200

Obviously this is not a full proof way of doing it still needs polishing,but you get the idea.

This way all tanks can have there own armor values quickly from real life data.

All the tank rounds,

AT gun rounds

infantry Anti tank weapons

would have to have there own way of being worked out so that it balances with armor values though.

[Ragnar_Darude 2]

I don't know much about addon damage models but wouldnt it be a good idea to have a script-based damage system? Then you could make the tanks indestructable by machine-gun fire and HEAT-round have low effect on infantry. You could for example assign a eventhandler to a tank to check when it is getting hit if the ammotype is armor-piercing or not and if so in what angle the round hits and assign a damage value dependant on that. You could also kill/hurt crew members according to where the tank is hit, ie if hit in front: kill driver. As others have stated before, you don't really need to make the addons compatible with other non-31stWW2Mod units...

[Enigma85 2]

sounds interesting,

but i think it's a flaw in the arma engine that everything can be damaged by weapon fire,

i'm not sure if scripting can fix it.

i would like to see damage effects though.

I know this is possible through scripting and might solve the "is that tank destroyed or not?"

problems that have been showing up.

a visible damage model would be amazing but quite labour intensive to create.

however i recall a addon in creation to show visible effects of catastrophic explosion in a tank that would blow the turret from the hull.

effects like this be used to stop the problem of verifying if something is destroyed without using the burnt out shell destroyed RVMAT.

how hard to implement i don't know.

i know the Lancaster loses a wing when destroyed but the dynamics don't change.

it still floats on the same path as it was heading rather then spiraling into a dive.

is/was anyone working on something that deals with a damage system that shows visible damage and perhaps effects performance?

or is this even possible in the Arma engine?

[ShrubMiK 0]

I think the idea of having a quick formula to arrive at vehicle damage points from the real life data is fine...you can always tweak the values a bit more later, but the important thing si to get the vehicles all more or less right in relation to one another rather than spending a lot of time trying to get them all exactly right.

A thought though - it would perhaps be better to base the formula on average* armour thickness rather than maximum. All tanks had thicker frontal armour than side or rear. Some tanks though had very much thicker frontal armour than side or rear (e.g Panther), whilst others had less of a difference (e.g. Tiger 1). Basing the formula on the maximum armour thickness unfairly favours the former over the latter.

* A true average cannot be computed of course. But data is available for turret front, turret side, turret rear, hull front, hull side, hull rear for all WW2 tanks. Add them up and divide by 6 would seem a reasonable approximation.

[Aqu 0]

Anyways on a more serious note,

I thinking basing it all from modern values isn't the answer.

Having a damage system worked out for the mod would be the better option,We can figure out some system for the working out of armor values and damage on rounds.

Yeah yeah. The meaning what I said at least was that the armor can be as good as some modern tank. I didn't mean we copy them 1:1 from Abrams to Tiger for example. Of course we should work some formula to convert the real data in the game data. Just like with the weapons hitpoints. That's my opinion.

There is some basic armor value system for different vehicle parts in the config. So I don't think we have to use just some average.

The script system suggestion...Well I guess that might in some situation, but what happens when the hit kills the tank straight away? To my experience you cannot bring dead back to life. I suppose it would work with the setDamage command? If so, it won't work because you cannot set what parts in the vehicle the damage goes. E.g if you have 50% damage and you get damage 60% and then you try to negate it with setDamage 0.5 It won't work quite right because the set of damaged systems would be different. I tryed that some time ago and what happened was that using the  setdamage it seems always to clear e.g wheel damage. Someone who has more information on this could comment, but AFAIK with setdamage it won't work quite right.

[miles teg 1]

Aside from the script issues...about what XxEnigmAxX posted earlier... having a Tiger with armor value of 2200 is a bit much as a Bazooka then would need to be so powerful that it would likely take down a building with one shot. I was thinking more along the lines of a Sherman having a max armor value of around 900 and a Tiger I with something like a value of around 1,400 or 1,600. That way if Bazookas have the same dammage of roughly a BIS RPG-7 it would take around 4 to 5 bazooka shots to take out the Tiger. Sherman would be taken out in around 2 shots from a Panzerfaust. But again, these are all things that can be played around with and that would need some good beta testing.

I would highly recommend getting advise from Col. Faulkner who is pretty much our resident historian. He's a good source of info on such things as the practical armor penetration (in combat) of certain weapons. He could also probably recommend to you some good books to look for in a library or websites online with that kind of info.

At any rate, as mentioned earlier in this thread, specific sections of the tank can be set to have weaker armor settings. I believe the Merkava Mk2 that ModemMaik (sp?) fixed up for us has such values if I remember correctly. When I get home I can check it out or see if I can find some other examples of this type of variable armor system so that it can be applied to the tanks in this mod.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[whydoyouwanttoknow 0]

Yeah I agree. Giving tanks modern armor values and adjusting weapon values to suit is probably the easiest way to solve the problem as their really is no reason why any of the tank addons should be mixed with any modern addons other then just to mess around with stuff in the mission editor.

Anyone who complains that his Tiger can take out an M1A1 Abrams tank is most likely an idiot who just throws every addon they can think of into the mission editor and proclaims his mission a "Nazi Zombies coming back from the dead" type mission.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

I think it'd be cool to get a mission or a campaign or whatever like John Birmingham's Axis of Time trilogy. Who wouldn't want to take on an M1 Abrams or a T72 with a King Tiger with the "proper" armour and gun ratings and see what happens?

[rip31st 98]

A little WIP vid of the scenery I'm working on.  Lots of hours into now.

Here is a little surprise that will be in the next patch after some fine tuning:

Thanks Aqu!

[Enigma85 2]

Haha kept that one hidden away :P

flamethrower will be awesome for those pesky bunkers that are guarded but fanatical Germans (or campers XD)

Also will fit right into the pacific side when needed.

would there be any way to have the fuel tank as a vulnerable section of the weapon though?

or do you think this would be a bit out of the way.

I would imagine a stray bullet hitting a tank of flammable liquids could cause some problems for the user.

i guess seeing as the effects are there for flame throwers now it shouldn't be too hard to configure it for flame tanks as well?

Churchill crocodile,American M4A3R3 and the British converted M4 Sherman Crocodile and a like.

good job though,

that's definitely not going to be a fun thing to run into at close quarters

[Aqu 0]

Looks like cat got out of the bag  

Don't get too excited, it is still heavily WIP. It was originally just kind of prototype or proof of concept. As you can see no textures or the gas bottles yet.

It has a pile of technical problems still (game technical that is). One of them is what to define the bottles to be. If you make them part of the flamegun, then they move same way as you move the gun (not good). If it is part of the soldier model, then how could you drop them and pick them up (to be used by any solider class). Also making it MP compatible is bit tricky (in a nice way, without messing very much around). At the moment I'm thinking making the bottles same way as the RPG (even they are not weapons).

As you mentioned the Pacific...I actually got the idea when I watched some USMC footage of taking Iwo Jima. I thought we got to have one of those in ArmA (not the island, but the flamethrower...well the island would be nice too ).

About flame tanks. The file comes with the backpack flame thrower plus the vehicle mounted one which has a bit more range and bigger tank. USMC used couple of Sherman types with a flamethrower, but no idea if they were used elsewhere.

The vid doesn't give a full idea what it can do already. The gas is sticky (like IRL it was thickened gasoline) so it gets stuck to walls or trees. It also stays burning on surfaces for some time like shown in the vid. Night time the flames light up the surroundings. Even if the burst doesn't hit you directly you can get burns from splashes.

[Enigma85 2]

Sounds good on the way it clings to all the surfaces it touches as IRL.

i guess the same sort of "stickiness" could be used in napalm in game.although the splash and splatter would have to be random.

As i recall some fighter bomber pilots started to drop napalm on the heavier German tanks in normandy due to there armor being too thick to penetrate.

The napalm would essentially cook the crew alive.

Not a nice way to go,To say the least

From what i know on the flame tanks the British converted M4 Sherman Crocodile and the Churchill Crocodile saw action in Normandy to clear out stubborn positions

[toadball 35]

Just a thought of the top of my head, iirc when your making a weapon there are the selections that define the weapon and one for the muzzle flash effect as such, if you excluded the models of the tanks from these selections would they not be independent of the weapons movement?

Just a thought, not familiar with how ArmA's selections work in comparison to OFP at present so you'll have to excuse me if it's blatant stupidity

looking good though.

[Aqu 0]

Just a thought of the top of my head, iirc when your making a weapon there are the selections that define the weapon and one for the muzzle flash effect as such, if you excluded the models of the tanks from these selections would they not be independent of the weapons movement?

Just a thought, not familiar with how ArmA's selections work in comparison to OFP at present so you'll have to excuse me if it's blatant stupidity  

looking good though.

Mmmm... The model is quite simple. At the moment it has no animations (or bones). I have no named selections which I would have used in the config to somehow define the gun part which moves with the hands (there is a named selection for a muzzle flash, but no other special afaik). Not made guns before so I have no indepth knowledge of making them. If there is a way to define part of the model as 'immune' to hand movements I would like to know. I guess there are no other hand held weapons with such a requirement, so no big surprise if there isn't a way to do it in a single model.

[toadball 35]

My knowledge is a tad out dated as I learnt my weapons config stuff from this tutorial however IIRC the same principles apply, if you read through that tutorial (mainly the later sections regarding selections within O2/p3d models) then read my post I think what I posted may be a little clearer and possibly/hopefully offer a solution to you.

I'm actually hoping a more experience modder can come along and refute or confirm what I'm saying as I'm not entirely sure myself hehe

[Basstoass 0]

Hi, just a question: can we expect so see the the enemy running around and burning. Im thinking of the effect from OFP ECP when you shoot a vehicle and the crew sometimes were burning. Nice feature to have this roll animation in ARMA now, so you can make them first run around a bit and then let them roll on the ground to turn the flames out (what would not happen;) )

[Enigma85 2]

ECS in ArmA has Burning crew members as well.

they basically run around without weapons on fire until they fall down dead.

i'm sure making the victim drop weapons and run would be a pretty good way of doing it at the minute.

but not for ridiculously long periods of time.

[Aqu 0]

Heh. I was thinking about bit that kind of anims. Not running around but screaming and 'dancing' in flames before collapsing.  

Not sure if there are already suitable anims for all that. No idea how to make own anims.

I added yesterday a feature that small flames stay on corpses bit longer and small trails of smoke and puffs come out.

My knowledge is a tad out dated as I learnt my weapons config stuff from this tutorial however IIRC the same principles apply, if you read through that tutorial (mainly the later sections regarding selections within O2/p3d models) then read my post I think what I posted may be a little clearer and possibly/hopefully offer a solution to you.

I remember looking at that, but I decided to name the selections like in the BIS mlods. I used iirc M4 or AK-74 as an example. There are some differences to the manual you mentioned. For example Arma weapons do not seem to have "zbran" ("weapon") in the memory lod. In the resolution lods they have used only "magazine" and "zasleh" (muzzle flash).

Of course I could experiment with "zbran" and other OFP style

[fritz160 wolf 0]

hey i found a problem with the gliders they freeze the game if ya try putting them in the air in editor

[Enigma85 2]

There fine for me I'm afraid,

are you all patched up to the latest patch/fix?

It might have had some problems with the downloading or extracting process.

I'd suggest you re-download it and see if this fixes the problem.

i have no problem starting the horsa in flight with troops in cargo

or on it's own.

[fritz160 wolf 0]

i do got all the patches . and i got it all from armaholic. maybe they got a bad file.

[Enigma85 2]

I downloaded mine from Armaholic.

it all works.

I'm a bit confused on this one.

all i can suggest is re-download re-patch and see if it still occurs.

[rip31st 98]

UPDATE:

Worked on the map a bit tonight. It's coming together nicely. Still lots to do. We estimate there will be close to 250 towns on the map when we are done with it. IT should make a great map for all sorts of gameplay. From single player to multiplayer missions. The towns are relatively close together now and we are elimination most open areas.

[ck-claw 1]

Thats excellent news with the map Rip!

[Aqu 0]

Great to hear  

It is really needed especially in veteran level when you don't have icon for your position on the map. Without landmarks you could be in Sahara as well.

Any flamethrower experts here? How deadly one burst (about as long as one burst from M4) should be compared to e.g 105mm howitzer round, hand granade etc?

[Enigma85 2]

well from what i know and have looked up in books.

the M2A1 flamethrower gave roughly 8-9 seconds of burn.

it's effective range was 22.9-35 meters

max range under good conditions was 36.5 meters

as for the damage is obviously a different type of damage then grenades and bullets.

there is no explosive shock wave,shrapnel or projectile to cause internal injury.

the flamethrower was a pure system shock weapon.

death isn't instantaneous and the wounds are all exterior.

leaving the victim in agony until the body goes into shock and shuts down.

I would use it as a one shot one kill weapon in the effective range area.

if you get doused in the fuel you are pretty much guaranteed to be killed or at least mortally wounded.

on another topic about the flamethrower.

how are you going to work the shots?

I would simply have it as a set burst mode.

0.5 second giving you 16-18 bursts

and 1.0 second burst giving you 8-9 extended bursts

this way your not going to get flamethrower operators burning the whole tank in one extended shot.

Hope this helps you a bit