Please, Start Fresh.

[vasmkd 12]

I still think the ARMA2 engine is the best we have available for a mil-sim. No one else has developed anything better.

Developing a new engine would take time and will be very costly and BIS must still release games. BIS could also be developing a new engine on the side already as far as we know

[Inkompetent 0]

Indeed the current engine is the best this far in its genre, but that's not to say that improvements aren't needed. I just hope that ArmA2 proved popular enough to make it worth making an ArmA3, even if it'll take until 2015 to get there with other BIS-games in between :)

[Flash Thunder 10]

You never know, some of BIS programmers might be prototyping stuff as we speak.

RV3 does a fantastic job with Arma II.

I think if BIS does Carrier Command it will be RV3 and BIS will be secretly working on a different engine and then it would be around for Arma III.

I agree though Richie I would wait another Decade.

Because Arma II will keep me busy for years to come. :)

[welcome to hell 23]

I agree. They need to have a better infantry model.

Take Infiltration mod for UT for example or upcoming RO2. Those have some depth to their infantry combat. ArmA 2 has been the same thing as OFP pop around a corner and shoot.

[johncage 30]

seriously. this engine sucks.

[Zipper5 74]

seriously. this engine sucks.

Thanks for trolling. Was wondering when someone was going to do so in this thread.

To be honest, if there is to be an ArmA III, I wouldn't want a new engine, rather, another improvement to the RealVirtuality one. I mean, the differences technologically between RV2 and RV3 are quite impressive, especially from a company as small as BIS. Therefore, who knows what they could do with another improvement. :eek:

[celery 8]

Thanks for trolling. Was wondering when someone was going to do so in this thread.

To be honest, if there is to be an ArmA III, I wouldn't want a new engine, rather, another improvement to the RealVirtuality one. I mean, the differences technologically between RV2 and RV3 are quite impressive, especially from a company as small as BIS. Therefore, who knows what they could do with another improvement. :eek:

There comes a time when an engine is just too old and patched up for an upgrade. A complete overhaul is the smart thing to do even if it ends up looking and feeling like the old one. It's the old methods and integral but obsolete parts of the code that restrict further development, at least that's what I'm hoping because the other alternative is developers who leave old bugs and limitations in the game out of laziness.

[Defunkt 431]

I'm sorry but this 'start over' idea is plain nonsense, I doubt anybody with actual development experience would promote it. Evolution rather than revolution will get the product further, faster.

[celery 8]

I'm sorry but this 'start over' idea is plain nonsense, I doubt anybody with actual development experience would promote it. Evolution rather than revolution will get the product further, faster.

One of the primary rules in programming is not to fall in love with your code. If it doesn't do what it's supposed to do now or in the near future, you have to rewrite it. There's a reason why developers either write a new engine for a game or use an existing engine that does what they want. Recycling the same limitations and bugs is a sign of poverty or laziness.

[Jockson 10]

In a perfect world yes, they would write a new engine that looks better, runs better, has better physics etc etc but seeing as BIS are already tired of making milsim games and OA might be the last game in the series, I'd say that's not going to happen. Rewriting the whole thing from scratch would probably take too much time and cost too much money for it to be worth it for them.

I'd rather have ARMA III sometime in the future than not have it at all, even if it meant it was just an upgrade of the current engine.

[Inkompetent 0]

The current engine doesn't seem to cope with 'evolution' as some people put it. How does the multi-core CPU, multi-graphics card and 64bit-support look in ArmA2? Quite terrible at the moment. All of them. And I wouldn't think that the current engine is even remotely easily changed to work well with those things, since the core of the engine is designed for a single 32-bit CPU and a single GPU.

People moan a lot about performance and that their new high-end computers underperform terribly bad in ArmA2, and it's exactly because the game's engine isn't designed in a way that makes it able to use those additional resources (in addition to being storage drive-heavy, and it's not until now that people start to realize that upgrade storage hardware from the old 7200rpm SATA or IDE drives might actually be an idea)

Every single program and engine comes to a point where it is better to rewrite than to add and change, and with the giant leaps in computer technology it'll be hard for an engine to keep up in the long run.

Not to mention that I bet that the coders at BIS have accumulated a lot of coding experience and skill during the many years of work there, having a lot of ideas about how they want a new engine to work. What is good with the current one and where it cannot do what they want it to do.

Yes, it is expensive and cumbersome to write a completely new engine, but at some point it has to be done.

[Yoma 0]

One of the primary rules in programming is not to fall in love with your code. If it doesn't do what it's supposed to do now or in the near future, you have to rewrite it. There's a reason why developers either write a new engine for a game or use an existing engine that does what they want. Recycling the same limitations and bugs is a sign of poverty or laziness.

One of the primary rules in programming is to make modular, reusable code, to keep you from reinventing the wheel (and bugs that came with inventing it), when you finally got it to be round and rolling.

This is exactly why higher level object oriënted languages boomed.

As with a lot of things, the exception confirms the rule.

This does not mean a design cannot be redesigned, one just has to balance benefits to workload.

[Scrub 0]

Wow, quite a bit of 'throw the baby out with the bathwater' mentality. I don't care what is designed, the goal remains the same. If something works, but is hard to use or has difficulty in a relationship with another part, you tweak it to remove those undesirable issues.. You don't just start over unless you "can't get there from here".

As Yoma stated, modularity, scalability, and common methods allow for design evolution, containment of function, and the inherent bugs.

What would be nice is a complete review of the engine from the gestalt point of view, of how to better integrate the separate modules into the whole. I believe they are doing something like this with the betas. With what is newly broken (and fixed), the improved performance, new little features (IK improvements, AI improvements) looks like they are combing through the whole thing.

The game has quantity of abilities as Repunzel has hair.. Give it a bit of brushing out with the snarls, and you'll have something big and beautiful. (sorry, my little girls have corrupted my cold black heart:p )

[InFireBaptize 0]

And that is precisely my point. I will happily wait a decade for BIS to start again, rather than getting the same old flashpoint, except with glowing cows and lots of grass.

well you need grass to feed the cows and get the milk

[NoRailgunner 0]

How many manpower, time and money is needed to develop a complete new engine that is sustainable, modular and economically reasonable?

How many publisher are ready and willing to pre/co-finance such an risky effort in sim-gaming niche?

[Defunkt 431]

Recycling the same limitations and bugs is a sign of poverty or laziness.

ArmA would have to be the least limited engine known to me and if you think BIS are lazy I suggest taking a look at

; you could not possibly have seen it and still hold this opinion.

---------- Post added at 07:40 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:48 AM ----------

The current engine doesn't seem to cope with 'evolution' as some people put it. How does the multi-core CPU, multi-graphics card and 64bit-support look in ArmA2? Quite terrible at the moment. All of them. And I wouldn't think that the current engine is even remotely easily changed to work well with those things, since the core of the engine is designed for a single 32-bit CPU and a single GPU.

Delivering an x64 binary is as easy as setting a compiler switch but the only meaningful enhancement is an increased address space. How does one improve game performance with more memory? By caching data and I cannot think of a more easily separated function than file/resource caching so how on Earth would throwing out the current rendering engine make that happen quicker? Suggest you read Suma's blog entry on the opportunities and pitfalls inherent with multiple CPU's, I am certain he knows far more about it than you or I.

Given all this game manages on top of cutting-edge visuals I consider performance to be quite exceptional and I am especially grateful that they have pushed today's hardware and ensured the game (this one especially) enjoys a decent longevity, it's what PC titles (those that are left) should be doing. If you ask me it's the assumptions of the "OMGZORS nOt all me 733t corez is crankin'" set that need rewriting.

[celery 8]

ArmA would have to be the least limited engine known to me and if you think BIS are lazy I suggest taking a look at

; you could not possibly have seen it and still hold this opinion.

You can't draw a straight line between a game's openness and its engine. You can just as well make a dog ride a bicycle from one end of the map to the other but it doesn't mean that the engine itself doesn't have serious restrictions and limitations. Modders and mission makers have to deal with them daily.

[Defunkt 431]

Modders and mission makers will always reach limits, it is the nature of the beast, you cannot contemplate a 3D world with zero parameters, it is a fantasy. Maybe you could tell me which game you are comparing ArmA to? I'll say again, it is (by a country mile) the least limited I know of without considering what might be possible with a full SDK under the terms of a commercial license which is (obviously) not relevant here.

[itax 0]

I play Ofp from 2001, back then the engine was awesome! Then ArmA 1 came out with upgraded engine, i said hmm ok same engine but it has improved abit. Now ArmA 2 is out with the same old engine + not significant upgrade(AI are still stupid... ). Reality engine is so overcoded (or just badly coded). Arma2 is so bugged only because the engine is too old and overcoded. We got no Ragdolls, no normal movement in buildings ( damm i hate building fight since ofp! It's as crappy as.... Jeez i don't even know with what to compare it :) ) we can count and count things that are limited by the engine.

In the end i love ArmA 2 ;) but engine replacement should be highest priority for BIS

[jw custom 56]

I play Ofp from 2001, back then the engine was awesome! Then ArmA 1 came out with upgraded engine, i said hmm ok same engine but it has improved abit. Now ArmA 2 is out with the same old engine + not significant upgrade(AI are still stupid... ).

Correction, AI is NOT stupid it's actually very smart.. it got some annoying issues at time but thats another story.

[An Fiach 10]

Ragdolls are overrated and overused. What this game really needs is a proper physics engine but most systems couldn't handle it unless BIS manages to pull off a miracle regarding optimization.

Every game engine has limitations, they are limited by what they are not designed to do. This engine has few limitations compared to other game engines but you must also remember, it is based off of a military training sim, intended as a tool before it was used for entertainment. It doesn't need to be replaced so much as rewritten to integrate functionality that has been attached to it and to accommodate future functionality when home systems can handle it.

Complaining about BIS' engine not evolving enough is a pretty weak position when you consider what other game companies (many better funded with larger staff) have been spitting out. Crysis at first glance appeared to be a leap forward in technology but when you really examine it, it isn't so impressive. Think about it, an engine introduced a decade ago is still well beyond what the major developers have on offer.

I can understand how a player would get tired of the same thing over time, hoping to find something extraordinary with a new release. Do not forget also the benefit that the mod community, which is the backbone of these games, now has a decade of experience upon which to draw and they continue to push the limits. A brand new engine would bring all of that to an end and the rate of releases would appear to come to a standstill compared to what we see with ArmA 2 until the community learns how to work with the new engine.

[LJF 0]

Ragdolls are overrated and overused. What this game really needs is a proper physics engine but most systems couldn't handle it unless BIS manages to pull off a miracle regarding optimization.

Every game engine has limitations, they are limited by what they are not designed to do. This engine has few limitations compared to other game engines but you must also remember, it is based off of a military training sim, intended as a tool before it was used for entertainment. It doesn't need to be replaced so much as rewritten to integrate functionality that has been attached to it and to accommodate future functionality when home systems can handle it.

Complaining about BIS' engine not evolving enough is a pretty weak position when you consider what other game companies (many better funded with larger staff) have been spitting out. Crysis at first glance appeared to be a leap forward in technology but when you really examine it, it isn't so impressive. Think about it, an engine introduced a decade ago is still well beyond what the major developers have on offer.

I can understand how a player would get tired of the same thing over time, hoping to find something extraordinary with a new release. Do not forget also the benefit that the mod community, which is the backbone of these games, now has a decade of experience upon which to draw and they continue to push the limits. A brand new engine would bring all of that to an end and the rate of releases would appear to come to a standstill compared to what we see with ArmA 2 until the community learns how to work with the new engine.

Very true. I still wouldn't mind some rounded edges though :D

[grub 10]

I also played OpF from the beginning and only stopped to buy ArmA 2. I'm thinking if OpF didn't change from its release form it wouldn't have lasted anywhere near the 8years it did. It was due to patching to 1.96 and Mods like ECP, and FDF, FFUR, that literally turned it into an almost different game. I remeber the first time I installed ECP, I nearly s**t. I reckon it took so long to reach this level due to funds (and all that other CM stuff that went on) as BIS are an indy company.

I guess what I'm trying to say (with no modding or programming experience remember) is that cant we expect ArmA 2 to hang around for that long also, getting better and better with mods like ACE and more that are yet to be created or oldies being finely tuned?

Yes the community has lost a lot of the old addon makers and modders since OpF but the future of new blood is looking promising if you ask me. We're already seeing "rag-doll" effects being released. Can't this only get better?

I might be wrong but I'm looking forward to the community input turning ArmA 2 into an extremely pretty OpF.

Isn't it "Let BIS build the engine and the community build the game"?

Regards,

Grub

[Heatseeker 0]

This sugestion is irrational. One should think before posting a sugestion as ridiculous as this one.

[jasonnoguchi 11]

Seriously, ArmA is already unique in this marketplace. I really don't know what you are asking for...