HWM ADDONS PACK V4.0 - WIP

[suhsjake 1]

I forgot to say:

Nice work HWM team. Can't wait for this addon.

[GD Mast 0]

I know alot of us have been waiting patiently for a great AH-64 Apache mod and this could be it.  

GD Mast

[xnodunitx 0]

Size ratio of the pylon weapons look about right...the olive drab paint color is about right..nose sensors scaled and shaped correctly.. Overall I'd say I'm impressed, though curious as to wether or not the loadouts are dynamic.  Hearing about damage systems also quirked my curiosity, will this in a way mirror Franze's apache's?    

All in all I have to say great work but there are some things that need to be changed if realism is your goal.  The interior instrument stations appear to be the same color as the helicopter exterior, they need to be grey.  

The Diffuse looks great but the rivet placement on the normal maps look quite off, I can clear this up through messenger if you want with close ups, there is also a blueprint at airwar.ru that shows every rivet, I would use this as a reference as from what I'v seen and studied its spot on.

Otherwise I'm glad to see another nonBIS AH-64 on the streets and with such details.

[vengeance1 50]

Awesome looking detail guys! Great work.

[sparky 0]

Thanks for your usefull feeddback comments.

So let's start putting things together.

1)about the rivets, well i can ensure you that the rivets are the best way they can be given the fact of the UVMap which is 2048X2048 for the solid body. About normal maps, those images are quite old, we've already have reworked normal maps, so hopefully the rivets should be look ok this time.

2)To D or not to D. that's the question. Well somehow we choose the AH64A version, mainly cause we believe that fits ArmA better. At this point given the fact that we are small team (2-3 people), we're not going to spend more time to a D version (at least for ArmA), in ArmA 2 we can re-evaluate the facts.

So here are some more

HWM AH-64A Damage System.

before watching the following video, it would be good to read the following general lines about our enhanced dammage/destruction system, that you can't probably see on this video.

1)dammage/warnings.

we have build the system based on the hit points. Generally every hit above an amount at a specific AH-64A component triggers an effect (sometimes not), a warning indication on panel, and a beep sound.

Based on the available hitpoints we have the following.

1)critical engine hits, produce randomly (left, right, none) smoke from the engine, and the appropriate beep and warning.

2)tailrotor damage has some levels. For the 1st level some dammage not critical but significan MAY cause the tailrotor to spin in wrong axis. critical damage destroys tailrotor and produces smoke aswell. Again beep sound and warning light is present for every damage level.

3)mainrotor critical damage can makes it spin in wrong axis and produces smoke. Again, warning lights both in CPG and Pilots panels appears with a beep sound.

So far we have implement these, there are few ideas left but we see if we have the time to implement them aswell.

HWM AH-64A Destruction System.

1)destruction is quite fancy. This time our goal is to convert the model itself to a wreck. that's why we have changed the destruction texture to something more good looking that the standard bis. Also the model takes a wreck position when it crashes.

Now some random thing can happen, like the main rotor, some of you may have noticed that in the fotos the wreck has only 2 blades instead of 4. that's why cause when it crashes randomly 2 are animated leaving only the rest 2, whic one i random.

Well more or less, that's all so far about destruction/dammage system. a small video to enjoy.

Let it burn......

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more to come stay tuned.

[ck-claw 1]

That vid is looking very good!

[lee_h._oswald 0]

Impressive work, looks great.

Only the fire/smoke on the smaller wreck parts is a bit too much.

MfG Lee

[GD Mast 0]

I couldn't tell from the video but does the tail wing move down and level?  At a certain speed the tail surface moves to level.  I can't remember what it's actually called.  

GD Mast

[roberthammer 582]

Very nice done

like said Lee_H._Oswald Only the fire/smoke on the smaller wreck parts is a bit too much.

[manzilla 1]

Guys, as usual, your work is absolutely stunning. I look forward to using this when it's out. Without a doubt the HWM stuff is among my very favorites. I always use at least a few of your Huey's in the missions I make and I have to add them to the missions I DL and play as well. HWM may be a small team but you guys have some serious skills and put out some of the best content, IMHO of course.

I just wanted to say thanks for all the time and effort spent over the years. And thanks for the great content as well.

[xnodunitx 0]

So yes you then plan to have the damage systems of main rotor, engines and so on, that is good to know.  Although you may want to extend to loss of an engine as well and if so a loss of altitude gaining.

On the aspect of damage to engines will fire extinguishers be available for a chance to put fires out? (only used one time in flight)

About the main rotor, that wouldn't produce smoke really, if you can get rid of the explosion when the helicopter crashes at low altitudes I'd so that as it was built with survivability in mind.  

With that in mind if you want to extend the realism for the lighter crashes you can give them a 70% survivability chance for the crew.

The wreck while good could use a few tweaks, for one the starboard wing wouldn't bend THAT far out of place unless it landed directly on it, the TADS and PNVS should remain, they are only gone in some wreck images because salvage crews took them.

And will the pilot view for "v" be located in the PNVS? While not essential this will give the player far more awareness of the environment.

The tail rotor' the blades are spaced out just a wee bit much, rotating one to make them closer would take only a few seconds but make a big visual difference.

One last thing about the rivets, if you are using 2048x2048 1 pixel would be your best bet, using nvidia normal map tool comes in handy for this.  Since you say the normal map is old and being reworked I'll have mercy on you this time :P

Are LOAL and LOBL firemodes planned?

All in all I'm impressed, I hope this replaces the BIS remakes and :that one day Franze and I can compete against you guys.

[suhsjake 1]

Is there a possibility of getting a TOW variant?

[sparky 0]

@lee and Robert Hammer. I see your point there, truly the explossion is a bit too much. maybe we should reduce the number of exploded parts?

@GDMast, sorry i'm not sure if i understand what are you saying. it's something wrong in our ah64? or is a feature of the real ah64?

@XNodunit.

Well some parts MUST explode, the AH64 is high poly, and i MEAN high poly, therefore in order to achive the impot, some parts are proxies (for the 1st LOD only). therefore in proxies the dammage texture cannot be aplied, that's why we disapear them (make the explode).

Abut the wreck position, it has a standard position making it the left wing (as you're looking it from behind) to bend. But there's no way to recalculate geometry collisions, so there's a possinility the ah64 to turn to the "unpredicted" side.

About extinguasers, wee haven't thought about it. as for the "dammage effects", engine dammage causes the reduce of speed (just like huey).

As for the competition. Well competition is the "thing" that moves the quality forward. Cause if the already made addon (no matter what addon), is at certain quaility, if someone wants to create the same addon he/she must make it better in order to be "competitive". Through this process the ArmA community wins by having better and better addons.

So we consider competition as a good thing.

@About variants. Well i'm afraid we can't make more variants. Even now the (ah64 with sidewinder) is a bit prblematic and may not be released. sorry.

NOW LET'S GET TO SOME REALLY GOOD NEWS

after a lor of forum requests/pms etc.

hwm has decided the following:

1) from this point and so on HWM addons will be compatible with XEH (extended event handlers). That means that HWM_Air which going to be released (huey,ah64) will support XEH.

2)Racs and US versions will be released as COMPLETELY STANDALONE. But since this requires somework the us/acs version will be released about 15-20 days after the release of the greek versions

[manzilla 1]

1) from this point and so on HWM addons will be compatible with XEH (extended event handlers). That means that HWM_Air which going to be released (huey,ah64) will support XEH.

You guys rock! Thanks for doing this.

[GD Mast 0]

@XSparky, I do believe that it is a feature of the real AH-64.  Also, I didn't explain it correctly, my bad.   Look at the "Blackhawk" when it's flying, at a certain speed, the small tailwing moves.

GD Mast

[sparky 0]

ahh, i get it. you mean the flap?

yeah, in our AH-64 the flap is moving too. this is a standard animation bind to a controller, so don't worry about it.

[GD Mast 0]

Sweet...flap/tailwing...whatever it's called.  

GD Mast

[rstratton 0]

Well some parts MUST explode, the AH64 is high poly, and i MEAN high poly, therefore in order to achive the impot, some parts are proxies (for the 1st LOD only). therefore in proxies the dammage texture cannot be aplied, that's why we disapear them (make the explode).

how high is high poly?

[sparky 0]

well, let's just say that we will announce the polycount after the release (if requested) in order to avoid the "before release whining" since we don't have performance issues from our beta testers.

so you need to wait a bit....

[xnodunitx 0]

It's impossible to make an AH-64 of such quality without it being high poly, unless you use alot of alpha channel tricks which just don't quite do justice for much else then the wires on the rotor hub.  

And this has aLOT of details, I can even make out the wires on the hellfire racks and connecting devices to the tilt mechanism in the pylons as well as the sensors located on a correctly shapen tail, the plastic piece in the FAB's to cover the landing gear struts at the top,   support piece between the TADS day and night sensors, can't see the landing gear detail on the back too well but I'd reckon it's quite detailed.

The adjoining nose piece between the TADS and PNVS has a gap as it should, proper intake on the top, and all of the knobs, dials and switches in the cockpit. *fans self*

Strobe and nav lights are present although the green should be blue instead, I was confused by it too but when off they are definatly blue..but when on they appear green, strange thing, all aircraft do.  

@Xsparky I think GD mast means the verticle stabilizator  and well said the competition, it is our goal as community addon makers afterall to strive for the best and I would love nothing more then to compete with the current best. Alas I don't think that will happen anytime soon however so enjoy the future spotlight with your team, I'd say you've most certainly earned it and I have no doubt this will be a hit.

[rstratton 0]

well, let's just say that we will announce the polycount after the release (if requested) in order to avoid the "before release whining" since we don't have performance issues from our beta testers.

so you need to wait a bit....

i for one think people dont use enough polygons in their models.

[sparky 0]

Ok lads, some more information.

The next video is demonstrating AH-64A weaponry enhancements.

As we have already written in the 1st post, ANZACSAS Steve is our Sound Enginner from now on. So in this video yyou can enjoy his sound work, he's also responsible for so excellent config tweaks related to weapons.

The person that we haven't metion untill now, is the man responsible behind our TADS/FLIR system. This man is Dr Eyeball, he is making an awesome job!

Also keep note that the version of TADS/FLIR presented in the video is the 0.5 internal, we've already have the 0.6 version, but we didn't catch up in order to put it there. You can take ateste though.

Enough with talking.

Let's burn......

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            FullSize                                                      FullSize                                                       <a href="http://hwm.armedassault.info/images/news_im/tads_04.jpg" target="_blank">FullSize

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</a>

[roberthammer 582]

Hmm pretty good effects About M230 - make a better real sound

[kasrkin85th 1]

Hi, realy great work so far with TADS and PNVS.

One thing: is it possible to make the Apache compatible with realistic tracer effects?

[sparky 0]

1) from this point and so on HWM addons will be compatible with XEH (extended event handlers). That means that HWM_Air which going to be released (huey,ah64) will support XEH.

Most of the already gemplay/effect addons that have been released and support XEH, will be compatible with HWM_Air (Huey,AH64A).

So i guess tracers too.