Movement is so sluggish in all BIS games, WHY?

[Tomsk 0]

Personally I found the controls in ArmA to be a serious weakness of the game. It was one of the reasons that my clan did not adopt ArmA as one of our played games.

So there are a couple of problems with the controls in ArmA. The first, and largest problem is exactly as the original poster described: movement is tied to animation, not to key bindings.

For example, if I press left, even very gently, it starts a "move left" animation which moves my character at least one foot left. This is incredibly annoying if all you are trying to do is peek out round a corner, or shuffle inside a bush so you can see through a hole. You strafe left, but you go too far, so you strafe right, but now you're back where you started so press left again. Back and forth trying to press it gently enough that you can move just the few centimetres you intended. Very, very annoying - and I've never known any other game have this problem.

The other problem is less difficult to pinpoint, but basically moving and aiming your weapons felt like your virtual character had been up drinking the whole night. The movement just felt "weird" and unnatural, as if you couldn't really control your character.

Another thing that may have contributed to this was the high level of momentum in game. You were constantly trying to fight against the momentum that caused you to slip and slide around. Now I'm not debating that soldiers in real life have momentum, but also they have finely tuned balance systems developed through millions of years of evolution, and refined by years of training. All I have is a monitor, a mouse and a keyboard ... so trying to deal with realistic momentum is just impossible.

The game's very unpredictable performance may not have helped either, sometimes your framerate would be capped at refresh for most of the time, but then you'd look in a particular direction and start getting 10 fps ...

Interestingly we didn't find the problem nearly as bad in OFP ... OFP had it's own oddities with regards to movement and control, but overall it was a lot easier to handle than ArmA.

As I say, this was one of the reasons we didn't adopt ArmA. Which is a shame, because there were many things we did like about it. Whether this, and our other main issues (unpredictable performance, lack of included coop missions, seriously buggy FADE detection), have been solved in ArmA 2 is very likely to determine whether we adopt that game as well ...

[Alex72 1]

Animations needs to play out - not really true. You can move little or much. Its not as bad as you paint it out to be even though you have a small point. But again you dont move like a jacked up rabbit in real life either where you are possible to step superfast back and forward now can you? Many want ARMA to go the way all the other shitty FPS shooters go. Superfast handling completelly unrealistic dravel that bores the shit out of me fast. ARMA you LEARN to play it. Its not 15 minutes know it all game and many kids fall away cause most of them seem to have ADD these days and cant keep concentration unless there is a cookie around every corner.

I agree it can be made better reagarding FPS and i know it will. So far OFP and ArmA1 got that treatement, and they played real good on my pc's after the patches dealing with performance. So this is just a matter of reporting in a constructive way back to BIS so they can get a feeling of the performance on our systems. I know they will enhance ARMA2's performance just give the guys some time - they need it more than the big companies with tons of employees.

About the buggy FADE detection? I never had any problems with my copies ever. And i have a lot of them. I also have *a couple* of friends playing since OFP and i dont hear anyone saying they had to buy a new copy because the FADE system activated (if thats what you mean?). Maybe your mates played cracked versions but told you they werent? Some issues here on the forum since ARMA2 came out where some few say "maybe" FADE activated and my game is legit. We dont know. Might be players not used to dispertion and sway etc.

Anyway, bottom line is that ARMA is a game you learn with practise, and i like that. Very much so even. Newcomers i played versus for fun through history have many of them called the movement shitty and impossible to be good with. Then i wonder how i can be killing people with ease and put the bullets where i want them? Seems strange maybe? Not at all - i just practised.

And now we wait for 19th and 1.02 patch and after that i will enjoy the game and also start help reporting what issues i find. :)

Alex

[OrLoK 20]

Hello all

Just a quick one.

As an owner of The OFP series, VBS1, and ARMA1/2, one of the main Things I found irritating throughout the lot is the movement.

No, I dont wanna bunnyhop like a CS loon, but i would like to be able to move smoothly through the world.

Yup, it's a little better in Arma2 but its still a pain, especially in buildings.

I'm sure if your rig is terrific then the issue isn't so bad, but for me its still way to clunky.

You CAN have smoothness without making the game a BF clone, and I shouldn't have to "train and practice" to use my own body, I've been doing that for 40 years.

Yes, movement IS different when kitted up, but, I can still move subtley if i need, or drop excess kit if I need to be fluid.

Still, I doubt this will be tackled by BIS, but if it was Id be a happy bunny (not a happy bunnyhopper)

rgds

LoK

[dvolk 10]

For example, if I press left, even very gently, it starts a "move left" animation which moves my character at least one foot left. This is incredibly annoying if all you are trying to do is peek out round a corner, or shuffle inside a bush so you can see through a hole. You strafe left, but you go too far, so you strafe right, but now you're back where you started so press left again. Back and forth trying to press it gently enough that you can move just the few centimetres you intended. Very, very annoying - and I've never known any other game have this problem.

Have you tried walking?

You can't move precisely while running, doh.

[Alex72 1]

Have you tried walking?

You can't move precisely while running, doh.

Good point! Forgot that. Walkmode and you move very subtle and in small small steps if you want. Just give ARMA2 a chance now and be amazed. ;)

Alex

[diveplane 0]

Edit:

The title should better have been: "Why is movement in BIS games so choppy while aiming down your scope when making small adjustments to your view by tapping 'a' and 'd'.

Hi

my suggestion to make Arma2 more appealling for a wider range of players and less clumsy to play in general:

Get rid of animation bound movement.

If feels weird and hurts the gameplay experience in many situations where you need exact control over your camera and target reticule.

A human naturally controls his body and is not bound to "bopping" or "choppy" movement like we are presented in all BIS games. Since OFP I am wondering why you went with this movement model.

It is really just

-not fluent

-annoying when you adjust your position just slightly

-frustrating in buildings and around obstacles like tress where you tap 'a' and 'd' alot to get into the right position

-feeling like an artificial restriction

I know Arma 2 is aiming at sim people (and I like it, I come from all the Jane's Games and also worked on a game called "Soldner" which was fairly realistic) but getting rid of that sluggish movement doesnt contradict realism. In fact it is not realistic to limit movement to animation sequences as you will never be able to animate a character like it would move in real life and thus will never be able to create an authentic feel of movement while binding it to the animation.

Thanks for reading.

Edit:

My suggestion would be: Add a new key, like SHIFT does for walk, that makes the soldier go really slow while putting all effort into maintaining a stable view down the ironsight. That key would probably be CTRL, just becauses its handy.

think the movement is poor is this wait till you see americas army lol

imo the movement is very realistic in this.

[galzohar 31]

Regardless of movement mode, a tap of a movement key should not give your character enough time to accelerate to a running speed, and thus should only move you by very little, again regardless of movement mode.

[Tomsk 0]

72;1313936']

Its not as bad as you paint it out to be even though you have a small point.

Well I exaggerate a little' date=' it's not quite as bad as if my soldier had [b']actually[/b] been drinking heavily ... but it wasn't that good either ... Perhaps how bad it is depends on the person. Some people are probably more tolerant of sloppy controls than others. I don't think I'm alone though, it is a common ArmA complaint, and a lot of reviewers have faulted it for the poor controls.

72;1313936']

But again you dont move like a jacked up rabbit in real life either where you are possible to step superfast back and forward now can you? Many want ARMA to go the way all the other shitty FPS shooters go. Superfast handling completelly unrealistic dravel that bores the shit out of me fast. ARMA you LEARN to play it. Its not 15 minutes know it all game and many kids fall away cause most of them seem to have ADD these days and cant keep concentration unless there is a cookie around every corner.

I actually had no problem with the speed of movement at all' date=' and indeed I'm totally with you on "superfast" speed in other shooters. I much prefer the slow, cautious and thoughtful approach. I was glad that the speed in ArmA was slower than OFP, you could run far too fast in OFP.

However, I'd say that's a totally different question to how responsive the controls are. And you can easily have really tight, responsive and natural feeling controls but still move at a realistic speed.

72;1313936']

I agree it can be made better reagarding FPS and i know it will. So far OFP and ArmA1 got that treatement, and they played real good on my pc's after the patches dealing with performance. So this is just a matter of reporting in a constructive way back to BIS so they can get a feeling of the performance on our systems. I know they will enhance ARMA2's performance just give the guys some time - they need it more than the big companies with tons of employees.

I did find that the patches did help with both the performance and in fact the movement, though even by the last patch there were still quite a lot of issues.

The patches definitely improved base line performance, the main problem was unpredictability. It was really hard to set your options so as to always get reasonable performance, as every so often the frame rate would plummet into the 10s. My computer is actually pretty powerful, it's a good way over the ArmA 2 recommended specs, yet I still had these kinds of issues in ArmA 1. Some people in my clan have less powerful systems, and so we felt we couldn't play it, since even I couldn't get good performance. This was probably the single biggest reason we didn't adopt it. I'm very hopeful at all the comments describing the much improved performance in ArmA 2 ... still a nicer controls system would be nice as well :)

72;1313936']

About the buggy FADE detection? I never had any problems with my copies ever. ... some few say "maybe" FADE activated and my game is legit. We dont know. Might be players not used to dispertion and sway etc.

It may have been an issue with my particular CD drive causing FADE to kick in' date=' or it might not have been a FADE problem at all. That's half the problem, it's really hard to diagnose whether you've been FADED or not. A copy protection system should prevent people from pirating the game, and tell them unequivocally that is the problem. Making players constantly wonder if a particular problem is FADE related is a bad idea in my opinion.

72;1313936']

Anyway, bottom line is that ARMA is a game you learn with practise, and i like that. Very much so even. Newcomers i played versus for fun through history have many of them called the movement shitty and impossible to be good with. Then i wonder how i can be killing people with ease and put the bullets where i want them? Seems strange maybe? Not at all - i just practised.

It's certainly possible to learn to work round the limitations of any system ... but that doesn't mean you should have to :)

Have you tried walking?

Err yeah, I walk by default and have run whilst holding the shift key :)

Edited June 17, 2009 by Tomsk

[Cellus 10]

72;1313982']Good point! Forgot that. Walkmode and you move very subtle and in small small steps if you want. Just give ARMA2 a chance now and be amazed. ;)

Alex

imo the movement is very realistic in this.

Have you even played the game? Have you ever bothered to get up and move around? How can you reconcile one with the other? Are there so few people here coming from real life to the game, rather than chronic gamers trying to reconcile with some abstract theory about how things must work in reality? Must surely be people getting up from their PCs, going to work/school and sitting behind another desk there and back again. I can't see how anyone else can think of it as 'realistic'.

[Hell_Toupee 0]

It's not the concept of acceleration that's the problem. It's the fact that this concept gets greatly increased on certain systems, usually with lower FPS. If you watch some youtube videos of people with good systems you'll see the weapons are pretty damn responsive and it's a non-issue. I wish they'd fix it though so it works the same on all systems.

Yea im pretty sure thats mouse smoothing lower FPS lower sample rate results in small movements of mouse discarded, many games this is optional feature I always turned it off.

72]

But again you dont move like a jacked up rabbit in real life either where you are possible to step superfast back and forward now can you? Many want ARMA to go the way all the other shitty FPS shooters go. Superfast handling completelly unrealistic dravel that bores the shit out of me fast. ARMA you LEARN to play it. Its not 15 minutes know it all game and many kids fall away cause most of them seem to have ADD these days and cant keep concentration unless there is a cookie around every corner.

Its not about speed its about precision, precision is what those other "shitty" FPS's do better, its not something you should need to learn assuming you know how to walk already, but should feel natural and precise like our own movements IRL.

[mkultra 10]

It makes very little sense that the movements has much more in common with controlling a vehicle than a human.

E.g when dragging the mouse and then stopping the movement won't stop directly, it'll continue a bit more (like it's not real analog movement and can't handle the precision of a mouse). And you can't even controll e.g where to go/look smoothly either, it's like controlling a robot. This really takes away from the experience more than adding to it.

They should've made _certain_ movements more difficult, but not _all_, i mean even when the weapon is not out the movements are very robotic and difficult, highly unrealistic.

Fix this and a lot of more people could enjoy your game, reviews would be way better too, this game deserve higher scores imo (i LOVE the other parts of the game).

Edited June 30, 2009 by mkultra

[LJF 0]

The movement in ArmA2 is brilliant. I love it.

The only thing that bothers me is the way your character puts his gun down everytime you jog and that there are chops in between moving (moving forward -> moving left). I would really like to be able to fire from the hip while jogging (not to actually kill anyone, but to provide suppressing fire it would be great).

As to the rest of the movement system, all it needs is smoothing. If it was like COD it would suck. I hate that style of movement. ArmA2 has the most immersing movement system ever in any game ... ever.

Edit: As far as I know, ArmA2 movement IS realistic as it is a character moving with a camera attached to the head. And for another thing, in real life, do you go where you want to go or where your body takes you? That was worded pretty bad I know, point is, you go where your body goes, it's not the other way around. CoD simply tries to make the player model follow the camera which results in smooth movement but it's unrealistic and looks aweful in 3rd person. In ArmA the animations are more solid, meaning your character's limbs will never jump or jolt into position, apart from being kind of clunky (yeah, I admit, a bit clunky) it is almost seemless movement, much better than any other shooter out there. And the fact that you can see your feet and body and it's what others see (true first person not a first person model and a 3rd person model) is just brilliant, it's original and immersive.

Congrats to BI.

Edited June 30, 2009 by LJF

[Booga 10]

One thing that bugs me WRT movement is sometimes the complete stop to crouch or to go prone, it just doesn't feel that real to me. I would like to see it replaced with how AA3 (America's Army 3) goes from running to crouching/ going prone, instead of stopping then laying down, in AA3 the player if running when prone is pressed will dive to teh floor while moving, the same is with crouching.

The video shows better then I can describe :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGS3uxIfQ6U

[mkultra 10]

Edit: As far as I know, ArmA2 movement IS realistic as it is a character moving with a camera attached to the head. And for another thing, in real life, do you go where you want to go or where your body takes you? That was worded pretty bad I know, point is, you go where your body goes, it's not the other way around.

I can agree to that, but i dont agree that the movements are more _realistic_ just because the movements are "attached" to the character in the game more than a free-floating camera. If the in-game character felt more like a human and less like a robot/vehicle it might have worked great. When i move around IRL it's easy to look where ever i want or go where i want, i wont slide a short time before i stop, for example. So no, sorry but it's just not realistic and a simulator needs realism.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Well, it can dive when sprinting and running, so I don't know why they didn't allow it when in the crouch running mode.

[Leopardi 0]

If you put a big floatbox for weapon then it's like controlling a turret on a mech.

[B()NE 10]

i recorded the movement bug where the gun goes to "safe-mode" ..

thats a gameplay destroyer on CQB maps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOiFe3RY_OI

Thank god, I thought I was going crazy when this kept happening to me, it feels so wrong and unatural ( and has killed me a couple of times in battle), this is a bug that needs looking at for sure.:butbut:

[Karas 10]

I usually play twitch games like COD but Arma2 controls felt natural to me from get go.

So I dunno lol.

[SaBrE_UK 0]

I like the movement. Of course it could be streamlined further, especially making snap adjustments easier, but it has many advantages. For example, what you see in first person is the same as the enemy sees- you can tell if your elbow is sticking out around the corner. Also, in games such as Insurgency Mod, which are quite realistic, they have trouble with the first person view matching with the third person model so you can shoot others without being seen sometimes, or the other way around.

I think BIS' system is best in theory, although it's not perfect as it stands in practice.

[whisper 0]

From what I saw the mouse lag reappear very fast in A2 at the slightest FPS issue and become noticable. Zooming in on certain bushes or trees make it suddenly kick in big time. And as far as I remember, I had exactly the same issue with OFP (the new Nogova bushes and trees coming with Resistance had the exact same impact). From what I understand it may be due to a combination of engine limiting the maximum turning speed regardless of mouse sensitivity and the engine unable to produce enough FPS at times, creating this kind of delay.

Heavy FPS issues also make a (very) few bad things of A1 reappear, mainly control reacting too late (you stop 3 steps after releasing key, things like that). Must have happened like 3 times to me. Honestly, I had sometimes also the same issue in CoD4, no biggie.

As for steadiness while moving, I'm still convinced you shouldn't have a dead on aiming while moving even slightly. The lil movement cause by walking & strafing & such (use the damn Shift key!) are maybe only exagerated a bit for forward movement when standing up. When strafing around a corner, no problem.

Mmmh, well, actually there is a problem : when leaning + crouched + strafing, pushing the Walk key makes you stop, unlike any other stance where you push Walk + movement to get the desired result. Wierd and annoying that you have, just for this specific movement, to change your keys pushed and release Walk.

A last animation issue : transitions while sprinting are badly done, you can't turn smoothly and always have a transition using the normal run and not the sprint. It can even leads you to a dead stop.

[nomdeplume 0]

When i move around IRL it's easy to look where ever i want or go where i want, i wont slide a short time before i stop, for example. So no, sorry but it's just not realistic and a simulator needs realism.

Well it's easy for me to look where I want in Arma2, but then I'm using TrackIR... :)

The thing is, when I walk I have inertia. I don't stop immediately. Go ahead and try it and really pay attention. We've been walking around for so long that we instinctively know it'll take a moment to come to a halt, and plan for that without even thinking about it. I think once you get used to the movement system in Arma, you'll do the same thing: release the key shortly before you actually want to stop.

But I think the big important thing to keep in mind is that Arma doesn't simulate out-of-balance situations. In real life I can turn this way and that really quickly and accurately, but it takes a moment after that to regain my balance and properly distribute my weight. There's a funny post in in the demo thread about being able to turn 180 degrees "in a heartbeat" in real life, but it takes time to steady yourself and be able to fire a weapon after making a turn like that.

The real life sequence would be: turn, steady, aim.

Since Arma doesn't try to simulate unsteady movements, the first two are collapsed into one. This results in what people perceive as "robotic" movement, because the character is always ensuring they're properly balanced and stable at all times, which is something people just don't do in real life.

I guess it's a fair thing to criticise, given the game tries to be realistic. However it's still a game and subject to limitations, so I don't think we'll be getting this level of fidelity in games any time soon. The industry standard shooter solves this problem by ignoring the "steady" step, and many collapse the "aim" step into it as well. Okay for fast-paced shoot-em-ups, but it allows for very unrealistic things like hurtling down a corridor, stopping immediately, spinning 90 degrees and shooting with pinpoint accuracy.

[max power 21]

Using the left alt button to freelook is a secret protip.

[ebud 18]

Well it's easy for me to look where I want in Arma2, but then I'm using TrackIR... :)

The thing is, when I walk I have inertia. I don't stop immediately. Go ahead and try it and really pay attention. We've been walking around for so long that we instinctively know it'll take a moment to come to a halt, and plan for that without even thinking about it. I think once you get used to the movement system in Arma, you'll do the same thing: release the key shortly before you actually want to stop.

But I think the big important thing to keep in mind is that Arma doesn't simulate out-of-balance situations. In real life I can turn this way and that really quickly and accurately, but it takes a moment after that to regain my balance and properly distribute my weight. There's a funny post in in the demo thread about being able to turn 180 degrees "in a heartbeat" in real life, but it takes time to steady yourself and be able to fire a weapon after making a turn like that.

The real life sequence would be: turn, steady, aim.

Since Arma doesn't try to simulate unsteady movements, the first two are collapsed into one. This results in what people perceive as "robotic" movement, because the character is always ensuring they're properly balanced and stable at all times, which is something people just don't do in real life.

I guess it's a fair thing to criticise, given the game tries to be realistic. However it's still a game and subject to limitations, so I don't think we'll be getting this level of fidelity in games any time soon. The industry standard shooter solves this problem by ignoring the "steady" step, and many collapse the "aim" step into it as well. Okay for fast-paced shoot-em-ups, but it allows for very unrealistic things like hurtling down a corridor, stopping immediately, spinning 90 degrees and shooting with pinpoint accuracy.

This post should be required reading for everyone registering here. Nicely worded and explained. It's too bad many people getting this game will just dismiss the movement as buggy :(

[Farout 10]

reading half of these responses saying the movement is fine makes me laugh...who the hell cares if YOU think its realistic, its a game... and its the reason WHY this game will flop. The movement is terrible and a mousefix needs to be made immediately if this game is going to go ANYWHERE =[

[ebud 18]

reading half of these responses saying the movement is fine makes me laugh...who the hell cares if YOU think its realistic, its a game... and its the reason WHY this game will flop. The movement is terrible and a mousefix needs to be made immediately if this game is going to go ANYWHERE =[

Who the hell cares what YOU think troll?