Useful radio communication, more human. Examples:

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Again, cardinal directions work best:

* Clock fails because of you don't know how your leader is oriented.

* Clock fails because of your leaders movement causing a change to formation direction.

* Clock fails because formation direction fails bigtime sometimes, I've experienced this in the demo already.

Cardinal works because:

* As stated above, no other method actually works due to bugs and whatnot.

* You have a general feel for where a direction is at.

* If not, all it takes is a quick look at your compass.

The only problem afaik with cardinal (W,NE etc) direction is when the mission designer didn't give you a compass.

[frederf 0]

I have to say that the E/W/N/S is the most "AI proof."

Does anyone know what the AI means when they say something like "Enemy man way right of us"? I don't know what "way" means in that context.

Also is their a way to get the radio to stop using the phrases "Get Back!" and "Fall Back!" when you order "Return to Formation." These things don't mean the same thing.

[Provac 0]

"Contact armor, north, 300m."

flip up compass, find north. Easy as pie :D

[nomdeplume 0]

Yes I would prefer compass directions as the direction of travel the game the game uses doesn't always match what I think it is. In fact it often doesn't. I can generally keep track of which way is North, though.

An alternative would be to have something on the HUD indicating the direction of travel that your group is using (as far as the AI is concerned). That way when they say "to our left" you know which way is left. Just an overhead view of an arrow, that points up when you're traveling in the same direction.

However that adds to HUD clutter which the game tries to minimize - so cardinal directions is my preference.

Also the distances used seem a bit strange. The AI seems to have a different definition of "far" than I do. I guess I'll get used to it. :)

and for the devs, why dont you record full sentence of a transmission like "contact man 3 o'clock 100m" and then just crop the recording like contact | man | 3 o'clock | 100 meters, instead of recording everything separately

Not sure I understand your logic here. If they had a full sentence that was appropriate, then they'd just play the full sentence. Why chop it up? They record it separately so they don't have to record fifty million lines of dialog to account for all the variations.

Maybe I misunderstood what you meant. But there's a lot of variation in how people speak, so just saying the full sentence each time and cutting out only the key word will result in the same choppy sounding speech.

The only real solution would be to adopt monotone radio tones to make things sound more even. Might be a bit better, but then we'd be complaining they sound like emotionless drones reading the weather instead of reporting on a tank that's about to kill us all.

[Shinobi575 10]

i give props to the BIS guys for trying something new, I. along with most of the community liked/prefered the little clock with the 12 O'Clock marker pointing the direction you were looking at and hearing your self/ AI shouting "2 o'clock Enemy tank 500 meters!" but I'm not complaining i can addapt to new things as should most people; but in any case the old system was much easier to go with then this new one , i find it a bit confusing at times.

[no use for a name 0]

Hi all

My suggestion:

Contact Reports should then be given based on a reference.

LINE OF MARCH first reference

Groups, line of march in degrees should always be given by team leader every time there is a major direction change. There should be an option for group commanders to give it to subordinates, AI or human. That is your first and primary reference. Ideally all waypoints and lines of march are given both at the briefing before the mission and repeated in small briefings at waypoints, rally points, LZs etc.

1) Less than 150 m Range:

You should use 90 Degree arcs from line of march:

Contact Left, Contact, Right, Contact Front, Contact Rear.

Add Close, for less than 50 m

Add Near for 50 m to 100 m

2) 150 m to 300 m Range

Clock position from line of march and range to contact.

3) 300 m to 500 m Range, plus all air contacts

Compass bearing, plus range.

4) 500m plus

Designated Reference object:

The ability to reference geographical objects, such as Forrest, building by general type eg church farmhouse, office block etc, town, village, lone tree and hill top, designated point by colour eg point red, point green etc and person eg player or external group member or even target.

Ability to do this in first/third/command mode with a right click menu, then match option to above type to map object. And the ability to use the map to do same both in briefing and in mission. Reference objects need, names.

Ability for the AI and players to say "Seen!" when can see the object in first/third/command view otherwise they refer to map and say acknowledged/understood/got that.

Then use distance left, right, front, past for close. Clock for 150 m to 300 m, compass and map for greater distance.

Kind Regards walker

^This^

That would be about as perfect as I can imagine.

Even if they can't implement everything here, AT LEAST put in compass coordinates and range instead of left, right, near, far

[bravo 6 0]

Hi all

My suggestion:

Contact Reports should then be given based on a reference.

LINE OF MARCH first reference

Groups, line of march in degrees should always be given by team leader every time there is a major direction change. There should be an option for group commanders to give it to subordinates, AI or human. That is your first and primary reference. Ideally all waypoints and lines of march are given both at the briefing before the mission and repeated in small briefings at waypoints, rally points, LZs etc.

1) Less than 150 m Range:

You should use 90 Degree arcs from line of march:

Contact Left, Contact, Right, Contact Front, Contact Rear.

Add Close, for less than 50 m

Add Near for 50 m to 100 m

2) 150 m to 300 m Range

Clock position from line of march and range to contact.

3) 300 m to 500 m Range, plus all air contacts

Compass bearing, plus range.

4) 500m plus

Designated Reference object:

The ability to reference geographical objects, such as Forrest, building by general type eg church farmhouse, office block etc, town, village, lone tree and hill top, designated point by colour eg point red, point green etc and person eg player or external group member or even target.

Ability to do this in first/third/command mode with a right click menu, then match option to above type to map object. And the ability to use the map to do same both in briefing and in mission. Reference objects need, names.

Ability for the AI and players to say "Seen!" when can see the object in first/third/command view otherwise they refer to map and say acknowledged/understood/got that.

Then use distance left, right, front, past for close. Clock for 150 m to 300 m, compass and map for greater distance.

Kind Regards walker

^This^

That would be about as perfect as I can imagine.

Even if they can't implement everything here, AT LEAST put in compass coordinates and range instead of left, right, near, far

Which one is better, The Above or the following?

Close distances: ( < 50 meters )

Compass Coordinates are just no good in quick situations.

12 o'clock, ..., 6 o'clock, ..., should be used in very close cases.

The hours direction should be mentioned related to our position, even if AI reports.

• 3 o'clock, Man, 4m!

(whispering)

• 11 o'clock, Machinegunner, 8 m!

(whispering)

I liked how it was in OFP, its very useful, direct, fast and effective.

Midle distances: ( 50 to 200 meters )

Compass Coordinates are just no good in quick situations.

Right, Left, Front, Back, Up, Down.. should be used in these particular cases.

• Man, 50m, left!

• RPG, 100m, right!

Far distances: ( > 200 meters )

Compass Coordinates + Distance is good in this situation.

There is good point to use Compass Coordinates over certain distances, and in most vehicles.

• Enemy T55, South, 800 m.

• Enemy "Squad", South East, 600m.

• Enemy machinegunner (At soldier/etc), South West, 1000m.

• Enemy Armor, Enemy Armor, South East, 2000m.

• Enemy Dragon, South East, Far.

Ps- Of course the interval distances could be other, it was to give an idea.

@walker: would be nice if you could use exact phrases as example, so Suma can copy paste them without wasting time. Could you repost but with exact complete words as suggestion?

I'm trying to organize my posted suggestion and I'm gathering my feedback and suggestions in a single post: here (signature link)

[CarlGustaffa 4]

but in any case the old system was much easier to go with then this new one , i find it a bit confusing at times.

The old system was better than the current one, but also that would fail miserably when the formation direction became all screwed up (Wegde becoming a Vee, me as leader in the back of a column, completely wacked). Happens to me in the demo sometimes, and happened throughout Arma1.

[Thirdup 0]

Thirdup, what game are you playing? The AI never calls out contacts East, West, etc. They seem to call out in terms of left, right, front or by grid reference if they are far.

Hmmmm, I'm playing ArmA2 (505 English version). I think you might be mistaken. I'll Fraps some examples tonight.

The AI does in fact call out North, South, East, West as directional bearings.

*edit: there may be something situational about it (range, AI type, etc), I'll look and see. But I get compass bearing reports from my squads quite frequently.

Edited June 30, 2009 by Thirdup

[galzohar 31]

It had been mentioned before, but:

Humans can tell when "front 50m" is clear to everyone and when "north 100m by that house" or "by that tree" is a good description, and when you just have no choice but to open the map and report coordinates. Teaching AI to tell the difference is much harder, hence it's better if they use only N/S/W/E relative to your position, again unless they can tell the difference between when they should report in relation to their position (enemy closer to the AI or the AI is right next to you) to when they should report in relation to your position (enemy closer to you and they're not next to you).

In short, the smarter the AI the more human-like it can be, but if it's dumb I'd rather have him unrealistically accurate than totally impossible to understand which is also unrealistic.

"Enemy by that tree" is not good direction report when you're in a forest, but it's pretty great in the desert.

[bascule42 10]

OK you have to press "k" and glance at a different part of the screen, but unless its infallible AI, (:rolleyes:), and it knows where you are facing, then I think compass points are the best to get from an AI sighting report. Man 200m, NNE, hes got a gun.

Well not the last bit, but it would be funny. Could use degrees also as they, (as you see when in a tank for instance), are not relative to the direction you are in. 90 degrees is East where ever you are. And of course, after a while playing with these kind of reports, you'll soon recognise places as being, to the east, or your setting out from Stary Sobor and patroling in the direction of Vyshnohy, you'd know which direction your heading in, and a report to the south would be instantly known. And you'd simply get to know the map better as you continue to play over the months. It wouldn't take that long to "know the land" as such.

So, compass points, or non relative headings I think is a must. I mean, even when your not trying to kill a virtual soldier, and someone says: "Its on your right". What usually comes next? "No. MY right". Right left etc, its just to subjective, and since you likely to get shot dead at 300m if your not careful, I just don't see the point in trying to make this simple.

Edited July 3, 2009 by Bascule42
typo

[galzohar 31]

An example for when it's actually fine to always have the AI use relative (front/rear/left/right) is when he's in the same vehicle as you, when "front" is the vehicle's front. But if he's reporting to the entire squad and not just to you, then you go back to the "it's not easy to tell which description is better".

[frederf 0]

When compass directions are used very frequently, you quickly learn what they are and don't have to reference your compass every time.

[akd42 10]

When close, a call using left-right etc, but player centric. When far, calling out using compass and distance.

That's the way to go. Distance should be very approximate unless rangefinding equipment is available (e.g. AFVs).

[frederf 0]

The distances should be given as "Close" "Fifty" "A hundred" "Two hundred" and so on. Maybe after 300 you skip a few to 500 1000 or just far. There's no need to say "meters" either. "Contact, enemy squad, East, 500." The units are obvious. Also at 1000m, 2000m, etc they should call them "Clicks" "One click" "Two click" "3 point 5 click."

[Cpt.Goose 10]

I would love to see the Comm system cleaned up with the voices. It's very confusing with them shouting out multiple contacts and wanting to engage that sniper they called out only to open the comm and see 2-3 snipers and not knowing what one it is, which one is closet and posing the most immediate threat.

Example, already having 2 snipers contacted, have the newest contact come through as. New Contact, Sniper, Close, 200 meters, North 1 o'clock, "hes engaging" or "Has not seen us" (or some kind of rating system of how close and how much of a threat he is (does he see us yet, is he already shooting)

Robot like voices suck but it's worse when the keep shouting out and you can't properly assess what contacts need to be taken out first or where they all are, and no I don't have time to pull the map out and look at a bunch of red dots.

[MehMan 0]

The post is made in assumption that you play without any helpers, such as enemies getting marked, etc.

Instead of using the current robotic sound system(it is very robotic and very choppy) why not just record all the sounds? There's a finite ammount of these voices to do, most of the recordings would be around the 1 second mark, so I don't think it would increase the size by a huge chunk...

It would be more immersive, fluent and just better. What would be needed is a bit more thought to the reporting process. Currently it goes:

-Man, to our front, far.

That doesn't tell me a lot. Which front? Your front or my front? How far is far?

What I'd really like is this:

-Man, north, 1000 yards(only said in one piece, instead of strung together voice files)

First off, the front, rear, left, right thing isn't as functional as it should be, the traditional route of using north, south, east, west would be less confusing.

Also, it's obvious that the stitch up system isn't working so I think it'd be better in the long term if you'd record all the possible voices. You'd need recrodings for distances of 50,100,200,300,500,1000, with north, south, east, west, southeast/west(etc), taking in account that you'd have to report in classes man, plane, armour, helicopter and in three different stances(stealth, regular(patrol etc), danger(under contact) and then you have to factor in probably at least 3 different voice actors for each language, you get several thousands of voice samples. It's a fair ammount of work, but I think the end result would justify it and it would be much better than the robotic jumble currently in place.

[Dreossk 10]

I completely agree. The actual "robot talk" is awful and it's ridiculous to hear them say "front or left" instead of "north or west". I understand that they had to release the game quickly to make money so things like this are butched and not tested.

[MulleDK19 21]

I love the voice system in OFP, ArmA and ArmA 2.

One thing I do hate is that in every game there's been unexisting voices.

OFP, the "Stay Crouched" was missing completely... It also missed in ArmA, but was later added in a patch.

Now with ArmA 2, 50% of the sounds are missing. Some soldiers doesn't know how to say north-west, north-east, etc. so they just say "We are not far from Novy Sobor", while the chat says "We are not far north-west of Novy Sobor".

They can't say "are we", so when asking for directions they just say "Where...".

Also, the SecOp Manager voices, are missing a lot of sentences.

I don't want all the robotic voices to be pre-recorded, though. I like the dynamicly created voices.

Also, it would take an awful amount of sound files to create all possible sentences.

[Dreossk 10]

For example, in order to would start the game (with all the recorded voices), you would have to push either the A or B button. Otherwise the game would not start properly, leaving the game without mouse support.

What?!?!

[Alex72 1]

I have problems with the front, rear, left and right as well. So far i have never found the enemies when my AI shouted this information. I always have to scan horizon until i see them or wait for a bullet to be shot so i hear roughly where they are. This should be improved as it doesnt help at all.

On the matter of changing all the voices into full ones. I dont know how much work or space that needs. But i reckon its quite a bit.

[Dreossk 10]

I don't see what you mean by A and B buttons Joan, you also posted this in another post:

I have found that while pushing A button, combined with B button and running in any direction may also help.

While assaulting an enemy city, I ordered my teammates to push A button while I pushed B button. The main problem with this was none of my teammates were pushing B button, I was the only one. We failed that mission, but we had a second go; we all pushed A button and B button while running to the north (it also works while running to the North-west, South-west, South-east, and East). The result was a delightful victory for our team, many civilians were saved!

If you are playing alone with AI, I suggest only using B button, and if you can, double-tab the C button. Remember the directions you must face in order to be succesfull

What the hell are you talking about? What A, B and C button?

[nomdeplume 0]

The current voices have more than just man, plane, helicopter, armor (and you forgot "car" as a generic class). They report the type of man if they're close enough (machine gunner in particular is useful to know, or if you're in a tank a 'missile soldier' is of far more interest than most types of infantry), for example. And ideally I'd like more - if the text says it's a Mi-8, the voice should say so.

There's more than 3 different voices at the moment also. Only having 3 would be awful, I think.

The ultimate solution would be using a passable speech synthesis engine to generate the sentences. If it could be done in real-time the possibilities would be amazing, even if it is naive and needs to be provided with phonetic spelling for every word it can say.

---------- Post added at 06:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:16 PM ----------

On the subject of left/right/front etc. I'd also prefer cardinal directions. But with the current system I'd settle for the addition of an on-screen indicator (probably an arrow) so you always know which direction your group thinks it's moving in. That way when they call "to our left" you know which way is "left". At the moment it's often confusing, especially if you've recently stopped and are looking around.

[ck-claw 1]

I don't see what you mean by A and B buttons Joan, you also posted this in another post:

What the hell are you talking about? What A, B and C button?

Spun me out too! :confused:

[nomdeplume 0]

I don't see what you mean by A and B buttons Joan, you also posted this in another post

In fact, all of Joan's posts mention pressing various buttons. I guess it's their method of trolling. Yet another good example of why mind-altering drugs are bad for you.