Please, Start Fresh.

[JdB 151]

In addition to the cost, developing a completely new engine from the ground up would take a LONG time. Especially if you consider how big BIS is (tiny). At least a decade IMO.

Also, when Maruk and Suma made the core of what became OFP, it was just the two of them working on it. That was possible at that time because computer graphics was still in it's infancy. Today, engines are vastly more complex (many more lines of code = many more problems, just look at all of the people complaining that today's games have far more bugs than games of the past, you want complexity, you get complexity, along with all of the disadvantages), and it would take them a lot more than 10 years to build a new engine from the ground up. If there were to build one with the current team, it would take less, but it would also mean having to pay people without money coming in, which is impossible.

A modular system can have particular parts of the engine taken out and replaced. If done properly, there is no need to rewrite everything from scratch. Whether this is the case for BIS, no one knows (no engine access obviously).

And as for the graphics side, I would have been happy if BIS had just made ArmA2 with OFP's graphics, but optimized for better performance, longer view distance, more realistic vehicle simulation etc.

[cjsoques 0]

Didnt BIS said that Arma2 will be their last military game?

Arent they working on Carrier Command: Gaea Mission?

Wouldnt it take too much time to develop an ultimate sim engine which covers all kind of things? Ist it clever to take the full risk, the money and time to develop and only focus on the best all-in-one simgame?

How many mainstream/casual and console players would buy such a hardcore game?

How many simfans left? Is BIS able to make real profit with the new engine+simgame?

If they used this amazing game and incorporated the playability of an arcade shooter like Call of Duty to Battlefield 2 all the way to the current realism of ARMA they would have a Game of the Year without a doubt.

For example. DCS Black Shark has a really fun arcade mode while at the same time being the ultimate helicopter flight sim (civil and military) out there and you can change the settings from arcade all the way to full blown simulator.

BIS needs to learn to adapt to varying learning curves and player types (those that like COD vs. Battlefield vs. ARMA). If they can do that they will cater to all play types therefore increase sales.

If a game with ultra-realism like Black Shark can adapt for Arcade style play, then surely ARMA should have had that ability.

[no use for a name 0]

If they used this amazing game and incorporated the playability of an arcade shooter like Call of Duty to Battlefield 2 all the way to the current realism of ARMA they would have a Game of the Year without a doubt.

For example. DCS Black Shark has a really fun arcade mode while at the same time being the ultimate helicopter flight sim (civil and military) out there and you can change the settings from arcade all the way to full blown simulator.

BIS needs to learn to adapt to varying learning curves and player types (those that like COD vs. Battlefield vs. ARMA). If they can do that they will cater to all play types therefore increase sales.

If a game with ultra-realism like Black Shark can adapt for Arcade style play, then surely ARMA should have had that ability.

If they did this then they better make servers searchable by the set skill level!

[cjsoques 0]

If they did this then they better make servers searchable by the set skill level!

Haha yeah that's goes without saying of course!

[IronPants 0]

I agree that a fresh perspective is needed if they decide to make another Arma. Achieving combined arms simulation is the important part, whether or not it's done with legacy code.

I don't understand why BIS insists that detailed damage and systems modeling is for the birds. If you're going to make a combat simulation, at least keep the components at rough parity.

Why bother with accurate ballistics when the damage modeling is so simple? I'm not saying that everything has to be obsessively simulated, I'm saying that the KEY aspects of modern combat need to be simulated - i.e. tanks are impervious to small caliber bullets and weak explosives.

Why bother with fatigue when it has zero relationship to the equipment carried? Why is the inventory system so arbitrarily divorced from reality (or even anything that makes sense)?

Why are all electronic detection and targeting systems abstracted away to 'press tab, then fire'? At least model enough so that missiles and bombs must have appropriate targeting prerequisites and engagement envelopes. Again, it's not about modeling every little detail - just enough to constrain their use to realistic employment instead of the wildly impossible, i.e. a laser beam riding Vikhr which is somehow able to maneuver well enough to hit a fast evading jet (already impossible - dedicated AA missiles have more control surfaces for a reason) behind the launch platform, where the targeting laser cannot possibly have line of sight.

These sort of questions should have arose during development and been taken seriously. BIS, if you decide to make another Arma, please commit to making a combined arms simulation and not a semi-complete infantry simulation.

[ActionMan 10]

I hope Dragon rising gets a good modding community and is given an ultimate realism mod, because i really need to get away from some of arma 2's limitations sometime. We'll see, i will always play arma 2, but the way things stand it isn't going to take a whole lot for another game to sell me.

That's a good point. There's a lot of anti-OFP:DR, anti-BF2, anti-COD people on here.... but even if OFP:DR is a terrible game, it is built on an totally new engine, which I hope equates to better modding potential.

For starters, BIS still uses their own proprietary scripting language, which is a real pain for modders to use. Compare that with DR, which is using the industry-standard scripting language Lua! Not only is there infinitely more resources on how to use this language, but it is easier to learn, easier to write/maintain, runs faster and supports modern programming paradigms such as OOP.

If DR is more flexible in terms of modding, then it could be potentially turned into an "Arma Killer", even if it is an inferior product.

I think Fallout 3 suffers from this also. Bethsoft has been using the Gamebryo engine since Morrowind (2002), and some of the bugs that were in it then are still in it now. Also if you go to their forums you have hundreds of threads about the same issues...random CTD, more picky about drivers, hardware, etc. It's almost a mirror image for pc issues

I think these companies are just trying to milk every last drop out of these engines, then when they've modified and tweaked them so much to run with current hardware it bites them in the ass.

Just for the record, Morrowind uses the original version of Gamebryo (NetImmerse), which is very different from the version used in Fallout/Oblivion.

Gamebryo is also a very rock-solid piece of software -- all those bugs and crashes come from the bad engineering practices used by the developer.

Also, when Maruk and Suma made the core of what became OFP, it was just the two of them working on it. That was possible at that time because computer graphics was still in it's infancy. Today, engines are vastly more complex (many more lines of code = many more problems, just look at all of the people complaining that today's games have far more bugs than games of the past, you want complexity, you get complexity, along with all of the disadvantages)

In many ways, graphics was more complex back then - OFP was written back when graphics cards were only just starting to be able to do "T&L" (transform and lighting) in the hardware, so they had to do many of these operations on the CPU, and support many different code-paths for different types of cards.

Nowadays, pretty much all cards support the fully programmable SM2.0 or SM3.0 standards, instead of a variety of subtly different fixed-function register combiners.

Also software engineering has come a long way in the last 10 years, to the point where developers can write better (faster, less buggy) code in less time than ever before. Unfortunately, many games companies lagg behind the 'curve' by 10 years, so much so that companies like Bethesda and BI are renowned for buggy products.

Again, it comes down to money though. If you're going to hire a few people with up-to-date skills to speed up development, you're going to have to fire the rest of your entire team and throw out all of your bug-riddled tech :rolleyes:

[Relemar 10]

i feel sorry for BIS, they bring out an amazing game, i dont think i've never seen a game like it, top of the class, it's got pretty much everything. yes it runs like shit, yes it has bugs, but as you say BIS aren't rich, they've done an amazing job i think.

they have like 30 employers (developers) and they've produced a good game, now you are wanting more guys.

give them a break :)

/rantover

[Big Dawg KS 6]

And as for the graphics side, I would have been happy if BIS had just made ArmA2 with OFP's graphics, but optimized for better performance, longer view distance, more realistic vehicle simulation etc.

Yea, I would definately buy it even if it only had OFP quality graphics if it meant the rest of the game was more polished & feature complete. Also the cold war setting really worked for OFP. Hopefully any future mil sims from BIS will revisit this setting.

[cjsoques 0]

Yea, I would definately buy it even if it only had OFP quality graphics if it meant the rest of the game was more polished & feature complete. Also the cold war setting really worked for OFP. Hopefully any future mil sims from BIS will revisit this setting.

I would have also taken this instead of fancy graphics as well.

Like many endeavors they missed the sweetspot by not catering to their true customer base...those that would have preferred stability performance and realism over fancy post processing.

Cosmetics only get you so far

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Like many endeavors they missed the sweetspot by not catering to their true customer base...those that would have preferred stability performance and realism over fancy post processing.

Cosmetics only get you so far

Well in that case the community is pretty divided. For example, before ArmA and ArmA 2 were released there were a LOT of people who wanted better graphics. Same with all the not-so-complete features they added... So really BIS was trying to give the community what they wanted... too bad the community doesn't really know shit about what's good for them.

Let's be realistic though. If BIS had left the game at OFP quality graphics they wouldn't get half as many sales. It's an unfortunate truth that many people won't even pick up a game if it has outdated graphics. So if there's anyone to be disappointed by, it's the PC gaming community and not BIS IMO.

Edited August 12, 2009 by Big Dawg KS

[echo1 0]

That's a good point. There's a lot of anti-OFP:DR, anti-BF2, anti-COD people on here.... but even if OFP:DR is a terrible game, it is built on an totally new engine, which I hope equates to better modding potential.

Isn't it built on some racing game engine?

[Alex72 1]

Yes it is...

[IronPants 0]

i feel sorry for BIS, they bring out an amazing game, i dont think i've never seen a game like it, top of the class, it's got pretty much everything. yes it runs like shit, yes it has bugs, but as you say BIS aren't rich, they've done an amazing job i think.

they have like 30 employers (developers) and they've produced a good game, now you are wanting more guys.

You're clearly new to this amazing series. The only significant differences between Arma2 and OFP (released in 2001) are graphics and AI. Arma2 has the same shortcomings that Arma had, which were the same that OFP had. Of course they deserve accolade for what they've accomplished - but to ignore the fact that bullets will make tanks explode for multiple iterations of the game over 8 years boggles the mind. If they had just one designer with the gumption to do something about it, Arma2 might not suffer from the same ridiculous problems that BIS has done nothing to address for over eight years.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

the fact that bullets will make tanks explode

Actually that's no longer an issue... stay tuned.

[Defunkt 431]

i feel sorry for BIS, they bring out an amazing game, i dont think i've never seen a game like it, top of the class, it's got pretty much everything. yes it runs like shit, yes it has bugs, but as you say BIS aren't rich, they've done an amazing job i think.

they have like 30 employers (developers) and they've produced a good game, now you are wanting more guys.

give them a break :)

+1

For me ArmA2 is an outright triumph and easily twice the value of any comparable title. Of course it has weak points, every game is developed within limitations, but if it were truly perfect the armchair 'experts' wouldn't have anything to huff and puff about, or perhaps they would still?

[kozzy420 21]

Meh, I am loving this game so far.

[ActionMan 10]

Isn't it built on some racing game engine?

Yeah, an updated version of a 2 year old racing engine

If it turns out to have better modding features than our beloved 8 year old engine, then Arma could be in trouble...

[LJF 0]

I just don't know anymore, I mean, on the one hand ArmA2 is just brilliant, the scale and easy modding and everything just combines to create what is damn near the finest game ever created. On the other hand, it runs like ass, sometimes looks like ass, has really odd physics, etc. These are all problems related to the engine itself though, I'm not sure what they could do to it if they really wanted to, new lighting engine for one, physics for another, multi gpu/cpu support etc.

It's a mixed bag I think, like a croissant with sand in it.

[tron 10]

Im completely new to ArmA...this is my first post, even, here. Without ArmA 2, I somehow would have missed OFP and ArmA completely. So Im happy with Arma 2, as a first time user I suppose. But, still, I see some really silly stuff that happens in game, and it turns out from reading the posts that these silly things are carry-overs from previous games. That sucks! I'd not mind so much if these silly problemss had been taken care of, and there were brand spanking new problems in ArmA 2.

But they have me anyways...even with the silly problems, the game, especially online, is great to me. I hope they continue improving it, though. And if there were ever such thing as an ArmA 3...I dont think they'd need a completely new engine, as long as they somehow masked or fixed the silly problems. It seems to me the current engine is capable of quite a lot, really.

[HyperU2 11]

So, the U2 in my name comes from the band U2. I'm a lifelong fan and as such I've seen them continually set the bar exceedingly high, so much so that any little error comes off as a major problem. I think the same can be said for ARMA. The 99% of the time that it's good, it's fucking mind blowing. That 1% just really seems gigantic when it happens though. In the end, it's just entertainment.

(not a music review, I don't care who you like)

[Inkompetent 0]

ArmA DOES need an engine upgrade, but it might take two years to code a new engine (two very expensive years), and its first iteration will probably have a lot of youth-issues, and that's even assuming they scrap backwards compatability with addons and mods for the current engine.

We'll see after Carrier Command. Maybe that engine will be so brilliant that it won't need much change to work in an ArmA3. Future will tell.

[Zipper5 74]

BIS have said in the past that it is possible that Operation Arrowhead/ArmA II will be their last game in the military simulator genre. Therefore I doubt we'll ever see a new military simulator from them based around a new engine. Personally, I identify BIS' games with their engine, as it has that certain "feel" to it. So I wouldn't want them to change it. Alas, I doubt they ever will.

[jw custom 56]

Atleast we are not stuck on EGO :eek:

[LJF 0]

BIS have said in the past that it is possible that Operation Arrowhead/ArmA II will be their last game in the military simulator genre. Therefore I doubt we'll ever see a new military simulator from them based around a new engine. Personally, I identify BIS' games with their engine, as it has that certain "feel" to it. So I wouldn't want them to change it. Alas, I doubt they ever will.

That would be a sad day for gaming :( We'd be left with the clone wars: CoD and it's army of clones vs Gears of War and it's army of clones.

[Inkompetent 0]

Well, we'll see. ArmA2 seem to have gone quite well, but I understand if they want a break after 10 years of OFP/ArmA. Maybe a 5 year break with other games and they'll be back at it again :D