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jonneymendoza

What if CryEngine was used as Arma 3 future engine?

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(...)Then you look at community, learning to use new tools, getting used to new tools, overcomming troubleshooting (...)

Not only the community, the entire BIS staff would have to do the same.

RV engine is BI engine, they are used to it and it allowed them to spend more time on other things. But I guess it's already have been said 50 times on this thread :D

I never thought about the community POV. Indeed if you look back a few years ago we've lost many modders when BI moved from RV1 to RV2. Many people were pissed off they couldn't bring their OFP addons in ArmA. So I can't imagine what it would be with a completly different engine :butbut:

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I did not go through all the thread so this was probably said already.

CryEngine is something totally different to what ARMA needs. You see nice screenshots and think "wow that looks so cool, I'd love to run there with my humwee" but bare in mind that the ARMA is a sandbox game. Whole engine has to be developed with keeping in mind that everything must work in multiplayer and AI (not pure scripted objects, AI!) has to be able to navigate and interact with the world around them.

Just imagine how much information would have to be transfered over the network if everything would be destructable - every stone has its position. You have hundreds of AIs, dozens of players, verything they shoot would broke down into pieces. Engine/server has to handle every object's coordinates, speed, orientation in the world of hundreds of square km and send this data to the player... AI has to deal with those changing conditions as well, they should see you when you see them, they have got to find their way through the world, their projectiles has to be computed just like yours... Also the engine has to be able to render the world from different altitudes (without scenery being restricted by walls/trees/rocks) and in high speeds - still, you've got to be able to see and interact with small units on the ground. I'm pretty sure this is not something the CryEngine is prepared for. It is designed for something different. ARMA allows a lot of freedom which is what we love but it's also something that brings additional requirements.

My nice-to-have list for the ARMA's engine would be:

  • ragdoll bodies (this was even in BF2!)
  • improved character/vehicle interaction with solid objects (like stones, bridges, buildings, ruins - it is so different to walk on the ground and to walk on any object - your character, as well as AIs, keeps stucking somewhere or strangely bouncing...)
  • added waters - streams, rivers and waterfalls are the missing element in otherwise live and realistic world (i understand the river might not be that easy but small springs that do not require any changes to physics can't be such a problem - gimme roads with water texture! :)
  • improved effects (fire, explosions, shooting into water, atmospheric effects behind aircraft... - coloured smoke particles are not everything :)

Of course fixing all known bugs would be nice as-well :)

Edited by Dair

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I did not go through all the thread so this was probably said already.

CryEngine is something totally different to what ARMA needs. You see nice screenshots and think "wow that looks so cool, I'd love to run there with my humwee" but bare in mind that the ARMA is a sandbox game. Whole engine has to be developed with keeping in mind that everything must work in multiplayer and AI (not pure scripted objects, AI!) has to be able to navigate and interact with the world around them.

Yep. The other thing to bear in mind is that the current ArmA2 engine is non player-centric, whereas engines like Crysis are player-centric. Meaning that those spectacular features happen around the player only.

Edited by DMarkwick

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Multiplayer....the bane of us SP's future :mad:

Back to the title'd thread, has BI ever even announced plans for a full sequeled release?

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The last thing I've heard about that "Arma 3", BI planned to step down a little bit with the military simulation genre, and will try to focus on others. So my guess (based on the latest info I have), depending on the successes of DLCs, two maybe three more DLCs (counting in PMC and what is planned after it with that chechen guy) and maybe (!just maybe!) one more DVD expansion...

Based on these info of mine, I don't think there will be a new "ArmA 3" in the next 5 years but it's only my guess.

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The last thing I've heard about that "Arma 3", BI planned to step down a little bit with the military simulation genre, and will try to focus on others. So my guess (based on the latest info I have), depending on the successes of DLCs, two maybe three more DLCs (counting in PMC and what is planned after it with that chechen guy) and maybe (!just maybe!) one more DVD expansion...

Based on these info of mine, I don't think there will be a new "ArmA 3" in the next 5 years but it's only my guess.

Yeah, I agree with you. I'd say a few more DLC's, get the game bug free. Then BIS will focus on other games. Creating a new engine maybe? And then ArmA 3 maybe as you said 5-6 years down the track. But by then, there will be so much content for ArmA 2 it will be still most certainly playable :)

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small company or not they need to drastically updated their engine or come up with a new one because its shockingly bad/limited in numerous ways.

sad thing is so many arma fans are used to the extremely poor engine and for some reason think its good enough, so used to having low standards i guess !

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small company or not they need to drastically updated their engine or come up with a new one because its shockingly bad/limited in numerous ways.

sad thing is so many arma fans are used to the extremely poor engine and for some reason think its good enough, so used to having low standards i guess !

As i've got very low standards reading this forum topic, i'm used to extremely uninformed posts.

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The size of the island in Crysis is quite large. And it is an island, the game isn't linear, you can go over to the other side of the map. But also, there is an extreme amount of detail. Detail that isn't exactly needed in a full scale war game such as ArmA, therefore reduces some lag which makes room for more square km's of land.

So... Didn't you play Crysis far enough to experience the first level load? It's a linear corridor shooter divided into several maps, the so-called "island" is nothing but a low-res backdrop with no detail.

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small company or not they need to drastically updated their engine or come up with a new one because its shockingly bad/limited in numerous ways.

sad thing is so many arma fans are used to the extremely poor engine and for some reason think its good enough, so used to having low standards i guess !

Okay name something that has a comparable engine... Anything. There are some major changes everyone would like but swapping to cry-engine is not a reasonable answer...

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So... Didn't you play Crysis far enough to experience the first level load? It's a linear corridor shooter divided into several maps, the so-called "island" is nothing but a low-res backdrop with no detail.

Yeah I remember being very surprised, and disappointed when it became apparent that the "map" is really lots of maps that load one after the other, and each only enterable by specific entry points, i.e. gullies etc. It was entirely different from the one described before game release IMO, and it turned me right off the whole Crysis technology hysteria.

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small company or not they need to drastically updated their engine or come up with a new one because its shockingly bad/limited in numerous ways.

sad thing is so many arma fans are used to the extremely poor engine and for some reason think its good enough, so used to having low standards i guess !

Well big companies are also using "updated" version of old engines -Quake engine, Unreal engine - or how old is Havok? It has been released in 2000, and is still being used by several titles...Or let's take latest Call of Duty engine (IW engine since CoD 2 in 2005 up to MW2), which in turn is based on Idtech 3 from 1999, which is based on Idtech 2 from 1997, down to Quake engine...

I understand some of you newcomers think that it's a snap and things can be changed in no time, but you really don't look behind the topic even a bit, you just scratch the surface. I'm not a graphic engine expert, but I know how long can it take to learn something (f*ing difficult) from the very basics.

Low standards? Maybe, at least for eye-candies. If you can show another FPS (let's stay at this category) that can produce the things that RV is capable of without sacrificing some points, then I'll raise my hat for you. Because nice-nice and shiny and all, but let's face it, Crysis is still a level-based corridor shooter, although the corridor is wider, has some forks but you still have to get from the start point to the finish. And you can either walk along a tunnel or you can go with bicycle, car, bus, train but a tunnel is still going to be a tunnel, even if it's painted pretty.

The main thing in this jibbering is not against Crysis (which I enjoyed to play with), but to tell that even Crytek couldn't pull out this beautiful visual experience without sacrificing things they promised; it had to has lower number of entities, lesser freedom and an island parcelled into several levels. To be honest, in this context Crysis was a major stepback compared to FarCry 1.

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@Pulverizer & DMarkwick:

Indeed, Crysis is nothing else than a corridor shooter like any other corridor shooters. It was visually pleasing, but in a way that screamed computer graphics. Effects was nice, but doesn't make or break a game. Original Farcry was infinitely much better in this respect. Those islands didn't put much restrictions on you on how you solved things. That added a LOT to replayability. Probably my most played singleplayer action shooter.

Even Farcry2 had elements making it look like a corridor shooter. Sure there were some very large areas of free choice, but there were too many where you didn't have much choice. And they felt artificially placed there, I guess to limit view distance.

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Personally...I'd just like them to get the AI to unload from vehicles faster.

Seriously, is anyone else annoyed by the fact that everyone unloads from a vehicle one by one, in order of rank, calmly and in a relaxed manner, regardless of whether or not they are actually near an opening, or in the middle of an ambush?

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Personally...I'd just like them to get the AI to unload from vehicles faster.

Seriously, is anyone else annoyed by the fact that everyone unloads from a vehicle one by one, in order of rank, calmly and in a relaxed manner, regardless of whether or not they are actually near an opening, or in the middle of an ambush?

I just script them to get out faster... :P But yes default behavior on dismounting under different conditions would be nice.

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I just hope that the future engine can enhance the simulation on aircrafts. You can really see nothing or detect enemy ground targets when you are driving an aircraft in ArmA2 engine.

btw, I can't increase the viewdistance up to 15000m because my cpu will stop working. lol.

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I believe ArmA 3 would work with CryEngine 3. Although, I don't know purchasing such an elaborate engine is in BIS's budget. If ArmA 3 was to use CryEngine 3, a 'real' publisher deal is almost confirmed. Not only is the engine proven itself in Crysis, but it's not 'buggy'. And with a box with ArmA 3 andm "powered by CryEngine 3", on it, its bound to sell.

About the size issue. i.e CryEngine 3 wouldn't be able to handle the size of say Takistan or Chern... I disagree. The size of the island in Crysis is quite large. And it is an island, the game isn't linear, you can go over to the other side of the map. But also, there is an extreme amount of detail. Detail that isn't exactly needed in a full scale war game such as ArmA, therefore reduces some lag which makes room for more square km's of land.

"Arma3 powered by Cryengine3" on the game box would make me vomit. I really don't know which version of Crysis you have but it must be different from mine. It's very clever at giving you the illusion of freedom of movement the first couple of plays but in reality it's just another linear shooter albeit with good graphics. As someone has said before if you unpack the levels in the editor you'll see that it's not as good as you think.

While I'm not particularly familiar with the technical capabilities of Cryengine3 it certainly looks amazing in screenshots but anything designed for PC and consoles together will have certain limitations that just don't fit with a simulation as complicated as Arma 2 (or 3).

You say that you hope RV4 will come with Arma 3... I would be very very surprised if it didn't since a new version of the engine has come out with each game in the series.

The Crysis landscape isn't that impressive compared to the capabilities of RV3, I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to recreate it but why would you want to?

Anyway, the real strength of RV3 is the AI behaviour "out of the box". I know of no other engine that allows you to just place so many AI on the map and have them behave realistically without having to dick around with flow-graphs and scripting. Cryengine 3 seems to be a very player centric technology which is all well and good but not exactly what we're looking for.

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Im sure if BIS really wanted to make a corridor shooter like Call of Duty with the RV3 engine it would easily surpass it.

RV3

Dynamic AI and alot of it

Totally open world have you ever ran into an invisible wall.

Nah didnt think so.

give it some time BIS will make something special they're a business and they wouldnt do something that would jeopardize their status.

im coming to the conclusion that not going DX11 was actually a good decision.

I keep faith in BIS, RV4 will be great and Arma 3 hopefully will be more polished at launch.

That is all.

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@Pulverizer & DMarkwick:

Indeed, Crysis is nothing else than a corridor shooter like any other corridor shooters. It was visually pleasing, but in a way that screamed computer graphics. Effects was nice, but doesn't make or break a game. Original Farcry was infinitely much better in this respect. Those islands didn't put much restrictions on you on how you solved things. That added a LOT to replayability. Probably my most played singleplayer action shooter.

Even Farcry2 had elements making it look like a corridor shooter. Sure there were some very large areas of free choice, but there were too many where you didn't have much choice. And they felt artificially placed there, I guess to limit view distance.

what are you talking about "screamed computer graphics"? every game features computer graphics.

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I'm sure if BIS really wanted to make a corridor shooter like Call of Duty with the RV3 engine it would easily surpass it.

Not a chance in hell...

Not saying Call of Duty is so great or anything (first one was, but the rest all just the same as the first), but RV3 is CLEARLY not intended for use in a COD style game. All the features that make the RV engine great, would be all but wasted on a corridor shooter, and all the features required to make a smooth corridor shooter are MIA in the RV3 engine.

What makes COD fun to play, and likely so popular, is that its very smooth and solid feeling. ArmA2 on the other hand is one of the least smooth, and clunkiest commercial shooters your ever likely to see released. It works fine in a wide open environment... but a tight, "corridor" style environment from COD? It would be horrible.

Everything has a place in life... and the RV3 engine's place is making games like ArmA2.

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Am i a game developer? do own a games company? Are BI soo stubborn that they are not capable of learning something new?

optimization? im sure BI are smart enough to optimise the engine if need be. you sound as if BI are a bunch of thicko's who cant learn and adapt to anything new.

Optimization. Well, I think there is a valid criticize to make against BI in this area. So far all the installments of their ArmA series get optimized best only in about the last year of the game's life. I think BI be better off delaying release a year, optimize the game as much as possible and then release the game.

I remember when I first bought ArmA, the AI had a massively huge problem of stalling out on waypoints and pathfinding was very bad. In fact I couldn't even finish the single player missions. One of them in the campagin was not working right and I just gave up. I remember thinking, "how could anyone release a game with so many problems?".

Theirs only so much you can do from a what? 3-4 year old engine? Your telling me that BI should stick to their current engine forever?

You know, I think what BI should do is focus on being a simulator and not making a game engine that's an entertainment experience. I think they should completely abandon the burden of making a single and multi-player campaign.

Instead, they could just make a bunch of individual mission to give the player and experience of playing with all the units and and equipment in the game and ship the game with that.

Now, that would free up time, money and resources for them to focus more on making the mission editor more contemporary and far easier to use. That will help mission makers make better quality missions. (and I speak form a lot of editing experience on that). Also, the it would allow more time to focus on developing more features in the game engine and improving it.

I do believe this could work for them. I remember the older game Steel Beasts (I think that's the name). It was a tank simulator. They didn't have any story driven game. They just shipped it with a hand full of missions and then there was the editor and it was expected that the community would use the editor to make missions. I think BI should go this route. Embrace the simulator, loose the "entertainment" single player campagin burden. Focus on development and realism (better sounds, etc.) and of course a easier editor to use.

Just my two cents.

---------- Post added at 11:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:13 PM ----------

What is your qualification to judge those things? Guess you are one of those millions of computer scientists out there, who can judge from outside the box whether an engine sucks or not by just staring at the screen. So LOL indeed...

No actually it IS staring at the screen. What goes on "under the hood" doesn't matter in the world of business. The END PRODUCT matters. Everyone know that the ArmA engine is stereotyped unstable and for good reason. It is at times. More so than other games.

That guy you commented to is an end consumer. he play's games. He can see when they are running good and bad.

Edited by GeneralCarver

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what are you talking about "screamed computer graphics"? every game features computer graphics.

Going for a computer rendered look vs going for a more realistic look.

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