ARMA 2's player movement "feel"

[Imperator[TFD] 444]

My only complaint with the movement system is how long it takes for a model to ready their weapon again. Speed up that animation and if possible allow it to occur on the move (like with reloading) and I'd be happy.

[Rayers12 19]

I agree, I feel like I'm in a tank when I'm on foot.

[zeep 3]

Another neutral here (aka don't care). It is not that I don't care, it is just my concern that 'improving' the movement could result in something like the ridiculous jumping and diving which is found in other fps, where CQB resembles a bunny rabbit disco.

I guess i wasn't clear then. You should check out the infiltration mod, linked in my sig. I am so NOT for ridiculous jumping and diving and what have you COD type movement.

It's not about arcade movement but realistic movement. Seriously, i believe that most of you, were you (able) to try out Infiltration for a month, would see heaps of room for improvement in ARMA2's movement.

..In the poll you must specify what you want to change, and make a list of neutrally worded changes... "Who wants to make things better?", not a valid option.

You are right with the poll having limited options, only because i was wrong to think ARMA2's players wanted realistic infantry movement and would understand what i was after and what is wrong with the current movement system. I wanted to narrow the poll down solely to movement, ergo few choices. There's plenty of room for discussion here too :)

And don't get me started on weapon handling.. Like the spastic raise/lower weapon behaviour which badly translates into the player's movement. It may look ok but it sure doesn't 'feel' ok. I don't shake and shuffle like that when i change a weapon. This again seems like the animation playing is interfering too much with the movement, tieing the player down, sort of uncontrollable during the procedure.

There's lots of room for discussion there too. Please don't think i want to sound like i know best. I just want to see how many players share these (similar) thoughts for now.

Everybody struggles with the movement when they first start playing ArmA, the inevitable result of being brought up on Quake and COD where you can adjust your position through 360 degrees in centimetre increments like you're on castors and you run everywhere - even indoors. I think most people who stick with ArmA grow to love the movement and the integrity of ArmA's full-body animations (freelook, proper disruption to sighting when moving or changing stance). That's not to say I wouldn't like the animation system to be more interruptible but I understand why they elected for what we have and I think they opted for the right compromises.

I've played COD and Q3A and that is miles away from realistic movement. You shouldn't think that all people who complain about ARMA's movement are automatically coming from that area. I can understand that people get used to ARMA's movement but that doesn't necessarily mean it's correct. I think you should try out Infiltration and maybe broaden your perspective on realistic movement. Not that Infiltration is without flaws, but in the movement and weapon handling department it's pretty darn close. Edited February 12, 2010 by zeep

[Logan9773 10]

After a lot of experimentation, I have nailed down what is really killing this game for me. Its the lag between key press or mouse movement and when the game finally responds to it. This lasts about 1 to 1 1/2 seconds. Its horrible. Trying to move, raise your weapon, or drive a vehicle, you have to wait 1 1/2 seconds for your character to react. It makes the game unplayable. The next worse thing is the clunkiness of the characters movement. It needs a lot of refinement. As someone said, its like his steps are too big. I too come from Infiltration, and believe me we don't want any COD movement crap. I think the running animation is dead on when you reduce head bob by about half, we just need to refine the clunkiness out of it. The walking animation should be a lot smoother as well on a flat surface. The character seems to walk with a limp. Now of course, if he / she is injured, they may walk all kinds of bad and lame.

Edited February 12, 2010 by Logan9773

[Guest]

After a lot of experimentation, I have nailed down what is really killing this game for me. Its the lag between key press or mouse movement and when the game finally responds to it. This lasts about 1 to 1 1/2 seconds. Its horrible. Trying to move, raise your weapon, or drive a vehicle, you have to wait 1 1/2 seconds for your character to react. It makes the game unplayable. The next worse thing is the clunkiness of the characters movement. It needs a lot of refinement. As someone said, its like his steps are too big. I too come from Infiltration, and believe me we don't want any COD movement crap. I think the running animation is dead on when you reduce head bob by about half, we just need to refine the clunkiness out of it. The walking animation should be a lot smoother as well on a flat surface. The character seems to walk with a limp. Now of course, if he / she is injured, they may walk all kinds of bad and lame.

Fair enough, but when was the last time you could walk without putting one leg in front of the other?

[Lhowon 10]

The poll question is a bit silly, of course everyone would want to see X feature improved as by definition that means to make it better. Who wouldn't want something to be better? I take it you mean "Do you think the player movement needs improvement?"

[zeep 3]

The poll question is a bit silly, of course everyone would want to see X feature improved as by definition that means to make it better. Who wouldn't want something to be better? I take it you mean "Do you think the player movement needs improvement?"

No i mean "Would you like to see ARMA 2's player movement improved?". I expect people who have problems with the current movement system to respond and possibly post their thoughts. People that don't have a problem can either vote no or not click at all.

Again:

..You are right with the poll having limited options, only because i was wrong to think ARMA2's players wanted realistic infantry movement and would understand what i was after and what is wrong with the current movement system. I wanted to narrow the poll down solely to movement, ergo few choices. There's plenty of room for discussion here too :)..

[Logan9773 10]

Fair enough, but when was the last time you could walk without putting one leg in front of the other?

Of course we have to put one foot in front of the other, but in real life, we don't walk like stiff robots, taking giant clunky steps. Nor do we have to think about it for a second and a half before we get our body to do it. Action potentials travel down nerves at 200 MPH. So, almost instantaneous, as any healthy individual can see. As it is now, the game is just unplayable because of the movement.

I brought up Crysis on my computer, and I notice that there too is some lag, but much less than in Arma2. In Crysis, the lag is just tolerable, in Arma2, it is unplayable.

Humourously enough, the AI don't seem to have any movement problems, and X-Ray vision to boot. :rolleyes:

As for the poll, I think it says it all. Do you want general movement in Arma improved? The answer is a resounding yes, and here is the place to discuss what needs to be fixed.

Edited February 12, 2010 by Logan9773

[Pulverizer 1]

There's always delays with character animation-centric controls (aka true 1st person or body awareness). You don't go from full stop to sprint instantaneously.

[Logan9773 10]

Yes, but you don't just sit around thinking about it for a second and a half, once your mind decides to start running, your body immediately starts to do it.

This game has about 3 times the lag speed of Crysis, and I think Crysis has hit the max tolerable limits for lag.

[andromedagalaxe 10]

"unplayable" ????

Many people seem to be playing and enjoying it. Maybe you should rephrase this ...

[Leopardi 0]

if BIS only realized to disable vsync by default it kills the gameplay for most LCD monitors.

[kklownboy 43]

if BIS only realized to disable vsync by default it kills the gameplay for most LCD monitors.

They should never do anything that degrades IQ by default... A option to turn it off is the way. And its only ATI drivers in Vista or Win7, do to MS. So if it was off you couldnt turn it back on...Now that would be bad.

When you get a kit that can run higher frames then you will like the lack of tearing.

Edited February 12, 2010 by kklownboy

[Logan9773 10]

Well, its not so much the movement, its the lag. I've been experimenting. I turned off the Vsync on my Nvidia card, and I turned down resolution on Arma2 to the lowest it can go (640x400 screen, with graphics at like 300 x 200). Everything is a blur now. But now in some parts of the maps, the lag is low enough for the game to be playable. So it may be that you need a real Super Computer to play this game. Unfortunately, I have no way of proving that.

A real problem with these game companies is that they develop and test everything on Work Stations and then expect the general public to have just as good or better. Yeah, right. I think they need to go in and really try to tweak this game to work on somewhat lesser machines.

Edited February 13, 2010 by Logan9773

[Imperator[TFD] 444]

Humourously enough, the AI don't seem to have any movement problems, and X-Ray vision to boot.

This has been proven wrong about 10000000000 times already.

[AliMag 0]

Of course we have to put one foot in front of the other, but in real life, we don't walk like stiff robots, taking giant clunky steps. Nor do we have to think about it for a second and a half before we get our body to do it. Action potentials travel down nerves at 200 MPH. So, almost instantaneous, as any healthy individual can see. As it is now, the game is just unplayable because of the movement.

I brought up Crysis on my computer, and I notice that there too is some lag, but much less than in Arma2. In Crysis, the lag is just tolerable, in Arma2, it is unplayable.

Humourously enough, the AI don't seem to have any movement problems, and X-Ray vision to boot. :rolleyes:

As for the poll, I think it says it all. Do you want general movement in Arma improved? The answer is a resounding yes, and here is the place to discuss what needs to be fixed.

Hi,

I would not go as far as saying its unplayable but I can clearly see where you're coming from.

There is no need to mimic the delay between thinking and action after the key press since pressing the key is obviously the result of that thinking. The reaction to the key should be instantaneous IMHO.

This lag in movement start is a fun killer for me and the lack of small increment movement makes CQB a very painfull task.

Hope they fix it and make this superb game even better.

Cheers

[Logan9773 10]

Well, after experimenting by turning down graphics as low as they can possibly go, lag disappears and movement gets a little smoother on some parts of the map. So, it may be that this game really need a super computer to play. So, I think I will need to play this game on a very high end computer before I can truly judge what is happening with movement and lag. So, I will have to wait until then. This game seems to be much harder on a computer than even Crysis.

[Leopardi 0]

They should never do anything that degrades IQ by default... A option to turn it off is the way. And its only ATI drivers in Vista or Win7, do to MS. So if it was off you couldnt turn it back on...Now that would be bad.

When you get a kit that can run higher frames then you will like the lack of tearing.

vsync doesn't add to visual quality. Only some nitpickers with 60Hz or less monitors complain about "tearing". It adds so much lag the cons overcome the pros of the option. Especially if you have a monitor that isn't 60Hz.

[Zipper5 74]

This game seems to be much harder on a computer than even Crysis.

Yes, well, that should need no explanation, but since the internet seems to have deemed Crysis the universal benchmark, it does. Essentially, Crysis is scripted with some elements of dynamic gameplay that occurs in relatively small, detailed places with pretty graphics. ArmA II on the other hand is 90% dynamic, with a huge map that is always being rendered and streamed, and has much more realistic-looking graphics. Those are just a few reasons as to why ArmA II is a much more demanding game than Crysis.

[Defunkt 431]

I'm surprised nobody has suggested turning off triple-buffering (aka pre-rendered frames), haven't experienced it myself but I understand it can add significantly to input lag.

[MrXToTheN 10]

I think the movement system is basicly fine (an improvement over ArmA's), although a bit too sluggish in buildings with weapons not lowered. The collision geometry of the weapons is the problem with this one, if I heard correctly.

A problem I think which really needs fixing is climbing onto ladders from the top side. It works terribly. The context sensitive icon often doesn't show on the first try and you will teleport onto the ladder if you manage getting it to activate.

Edited February 25, 2010 by MrXToTheN

[celery 8]

I find it very annoying that there is no jogging speed where your guy doesn't get an asthma attack after a hundred meters.

[An Fiach 10]

I find it very annoying that there is no jogging speed where your guy doesn't get an asthma attack after a hundred meters.

Talking about the breathing? lol yea

---------- Post added at 11:13 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:12 AM ----------

I declined to vote because this poll is flawed and the OP used a video highlighting poorly placed colliders/Geo LODs as an example of infantry movement.

[IronTrooper 0]

Among the things that annoy me about this game, compared to ofp and ArmA1 is the animations. Particularly the Robotic jolting up and down - forwards and backwards motion of your weapon in 'walking' mode, I find it maddening. You would have to be a Robot with Tourette's syndrome to actually move like that in the real world.

Secondly, the speed-of-light transition between the end of the running animation and then bringing your weapon to bear animation. The transition is so quick between the two that the human eye is not fast enough to see the switch between them.

Thirdly, the speed of the 'sideways' slow walk compared to the speed of the 'forward' slow walk. The 'sideways' animation is faster than the 'forward' animation - but I would like to see the 'sideways' animation reduced to around half the speed of the 'forwards' walk, 'sideways' is much too fast and clumsy especially when you are trying to get a peep round the edge of a wall.

Having said that the animations look good in third person mode - but who plays in third person? All these flaws in animation are exacerbated by slow frame rates.

I would love it if the above could be tweaked.

:bounce3:

I agree with all this

And it's true that some animations (weapon handling) look good in third person but not in first person.

And even though people here complain about some movement delays, I would actually add one (or rather an animation), at the end of sprinting before full stop, so it does not appear so instantaneous.

[Imperator[TFD] 444]

I find it very annoying that there is no jogging speed where your guy doesn't get an asthma attack after a hundred meters.

There is actually, it's just not accessable via a key press. If you've got a throttle controller you can see it by binding that to walk forward. There's a slow walk + fast walk and then the same for 'running'.