Why is this game not more popular?

[Atkins 10]

Also everyone warps!? Like 2-3 metres... Obviously this is known about but looks bad.

This.

I am still kinda new to the A2 scene but it is beyond me how in every mod, every server, no matter if it is coop or PvP, every one warps (either just a little or very much) and ppl go by like nothing is wrong... Perhaps I am still so new that i pay attention to the teleporting bots or players.

Take a look at this:

Everything looks so nice, absolutely freaking beautiful to be honest, until you notice that everything is warping back n forth like crazy. Seriously...

I can imagine that such a huge maps take a toll on the connections etc but still... any other game with such a warping would be out of players in no time. The huge fanboy base is the only one keeping alive the small MP scene...

With all these huge maps and awesome atmosphere, I was expecting huge battles of 64+ vs 64+ (PvP) and all i got was few random ppl shooting warping bots from 1km with sniper rifles...

[Sky999 10]

This.

I am still kinda new to the A2 scene but it is beyond me how in every mod, every server, no matter if it is coop or PvP, every one warps (either just a little or very much) and ppl go by like nothing is wrong... Perhaps I am still so new that i pay attention to the teleporting bots or players.

Take a look at this:

Everything looks so nice, absolutely freaking beautiful to be honest, until you notice that everything is warping back n forth like crazy. Seriously...

I can imagine that such a huge maps take a toll on the connections etc but still... any other game with such a warping would be out of players in no time. The huge fanboy base is the only one keeping alive the small MP scene...

With all these huge maps and awesome atmosphere, I was expecting huge battles of 64+ vs 64+ (PvP) and all i got was few random ppl shooting warping bots from 1km with sniper rifles...

It really depends. I rarely play large online battles purely for this reason, the warping is just silly at times. I did have a good time once when I played with some guys near where I live, there was literally no lag whatsoever and it felt exactly like playing single player. It was great while it lasted.

[jblackrupert 14]

With all these huge maps and awesome atmosphere, I was expecting huge battles of 64+ vs 64+ (PvP) and all i got was few random ppl shooting warping bots from 1km with sniper rifles...

Part of the problem is the Arma crowd being on average much older then say the Battlefield crowd.

- Jobs

- Mortgage payments

- Family

etc....etc.

Getting those numbers is pretty hard with so many things going on coupled with time zones, servers running addons you can't identify, large numbers of people who prefer playing SP with the editor and of course a much lower audience/sales number then your average FPS.

When Arma 2 and then Arrowhead came out, servers with 80+ players was common

but the excitement of something new and shiny wore off and now it's 20....30....maybe 50 on a good night, usually the weekend.

Personally I'm sick of seeing nothing but 24/7 single team Domination servers.........

I'd run a PVP server or at the very least a 2 team Domination server but the prices in Canada for slots is outrageously high.

Nothing wrong with Domination itself, but it's getting pretty stale. you can only blow up so many radio towers and shoot so many brain dead AI before you lose interest.

Edited April 23, 2011 by jblackrupert

[Tonci87 163]

Don´t forget that most people play on Squad Servers!

[noubernou 77]

People complaining about warping are playing crap missions. The problem with 98% of missions is that mission makers know NOTHING about scripting correctly. This game needs to be scripted in very specific ways and regarding very strict tolerances. These are things that most mission makers have NO clue about.

Too many wanna-be programmers in this community.

[maddogx 13]

People complaining about warping are playing crap missions. The problem with 98% of missions is that mission makers know NOTHING about scripting correctly. This game needs to be scripted in very specific ways and regarding very strict tolerances. These are things that most mission makers have NO clue about.

Too many wanna-be programmers in this community.

Congratulations on essentially calling 98% of mission makers incompetent wanna-bes. I'm sure they really appreciate that.

[noubernou 77]

Congratulations on essentially calling 98% of mission makers incompetent wanna-bes. I'm sure they really appreciate that.

That was my intention, lol, because it is true.

How many mission makers do you deal with on a daily basis? What is the highest number of players that you have had on your server?

At UO right now there are 70 players on the server and the community has at least a dozen mission makers.

Also, how much experience do you have with time critical systems like those that ACRE employ, systems where script lag caused by mission makers can cause very weird stuff to start happening?

I am speaking from a place of experience here.

Actually, I take back the wanna-be programmers comment. They don't even want to be programmers, in fact I have been told by multiple mission makers "I do not think I should have to know how to program to make a missions for this game" and then go on to throw every script under the sun that does something neat into their missions and on top of that add in hundreds of AI and expect it to perform well.

Edited April 23, 2011 by NouberNou

[Zipper5 74]

Your intention was to call 98% of mission makers incompetent wanna-bes, yet you're only speaking about MP missions. Sorry, but there are a hell of a lot of SP mission makers out there, including myself, yet that still doesn't make it okay for you to intentionally insult people.

Make your opinion known if you must, but refrain from insulting those who put their free time and effort into making content for themselves and others to enjoy. They owe nothing to you, and offer no guarantees.

[ProfTournesol 956]

Thanks god this community isn't full of self satisfied persons.

[noubernou 77]

Your intention was to call 98% of mission makers incompetent wanna-bes, yet you're only speaking about MP missions. Sorry, but there are a hell of a lot of SP mission makers out there, including myself, yet that still doesn't make it okay for you to intentionally insult people.

Make your opinion known if you must, but refrain from insulting those who put their free time and effort into making content for themselves and others to enjoy. They owe nothing to you, and offer no guarantees.

I am sorry if I offended.

SP is fine, if people want to have a poor experience in SP it only effects them, but in MP you are dealing with the player experience of dozens and dozens of people.

You have people blaming the game for issues like warping, which while the games internals lend to that situation to some degree, a lot of it is caused by poor practices in coding.

I do not think it is insulting to tell people that they do not know what they are doing when it is the truth. Hopefully they will learn from those experiences, but often times when myself and other experienced programmers have told people better ways to do something they ignore it because it might be slightly harder or they do not fully understand it, often getting angry that their knowledge was questioned, rather than accepting any form of criticism or critique.

[Zipper5 74]

I do not think it is insulting to tell people that they do not know what they are doing when it is the truth.

I'm sorry, you work specifically on the programming of the netcode for BIS' games and therefore are 100% informed as to exactly what causes these issues, and that "a lot of it is caused by poor practices in coding?"

Or is it because you work on ACRE and ACE, therefore the same applies?

Sorry, neither is true. The truth in this case can only be spoken by those who have built the game, and it has yet to be fully explained. It is still only your opinion, not the truth.

[jaynus 10]

I'm sorry, you work specifically on the programming of the netcode for BIS' games and therefore are 100% informed as to exactly what causes these issues, and that "a lot of it is caused by poor practices in coding?"

Or is it because you work on ACRE and ACE, therefore the same applies?

Sorry, neither is true. The truth in this case can only be spoken by those who have built the game, and it has yet to be fully explained. It is still only your opinion, not the truth.

We have attempted to share out insights.

Whats the base problem here?

The only mission makers that deal with high intensity situations on a regular basis, I'm sorry to say, are the makers at UO.

Most mod maker and mission maker assuming 20-30 players max. We deal with 70-90. We had 89 players on UO today. For 4 hours consistently. Scripting and mission making are a completely different ballgame at this area. Minimal desync or server lag. This is also our *norm*. This isn't a "once a month" thing. These are our average weekend numbers. We average 40-50 on week days.

Oh, and proof I've shared my insights:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Biki2.0:Performance_Considerations#Scheduler

Mission makers don't care to learn these things. So you cant blame it on the engine. Blame it on the lack of desire to learn. It has nothing to do with "who you work with". We've made this information public and have promoted it, and have helped multiple scripters *deal* with their perf/lag issues.

Some just don't care.

[noubernou 77]

I'm sorry, you work specifically on the programming of the netcode for BIS' games and therefore are 100% informed on exactly what causes these issues, and that "a lot of it is caused by poor practices in coding?"

Or is it because you work on ACRE and ACE, therefore the same applies?

Sorry, neither is true. The truth can only be spoken by those who have built the game, and it has yet to be fully explained. It is still only your opinion, not the truth.

Empirical testing and results would prove otherwise.

You do not have to see the source to understand how things work, there are other methods, like inspecting network traffic and the output of the program itself, repeated testing, improvement of methods after analyzing results of collected data, etc. All of these things have been done and continue to be done.

The knowledge of the internals of ArmA2 are quite well known to a number of people within the community and as such it has helped us build better mods.

---------- Post added at 03:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:18 PM ----------

Oh, and proof I've shared my insights:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Biki2.0:Performance_Considerations#Scheduler.

Jay's knowledge of the internals of ArmA2 are pretty close to the knowledge of those that work on it directly at BIS, I can guarantee you that, as I am sure Maruk and Dwarden and a number of other developers could as well. ;)

[Zipper5 74]

Maybe so, but you haven't played 98% of the missions made by the community let alone decompressed and analyzed them to determine that the MP problems you may or may not be seeing in game are a direct result of their scripting and little else.

For that reason, do not make such blanket statements which make you out to seem like you're better than the rest of us, as if it's some type of competition.

And for the record, they do not have to care. They are doing this as a hobby and have no obligation to do better. Believe their mission is causing problems? No one's forcing you to play it.

[noubernou 77]

And for the record, they do not have to care. They are doing this as a hobby and have no obligation to do better.

Then people should stop complaining about warping in MP missions, since the problem is almost 100% avoidable?

[Zipper5 74]

I've been playing MP since OFP and no, it's not almost 100% unavoidable. I could have 0ms with no desync hosting a game locally, have my neighbour connect and play, and still see warping of AI in a mission that consists of our group and an AI controlled one.

[jaynus 10]

I've been playing MP since OFP and no, it's not almost 100% unavoidable. I could have 0ms with no desync hosting a game locally, have my neighbour connect and play, and still see warping of AI in a mission that consists of our group and an AI controlled one.

Go use ACRE. WE handle servers crashing with grace, and it *still* works even though the rest of A2 breaks.

Its avoidable.

The reason your getting AI warping is because AI mod makers don't realize that FSM and SQF share different schedulers, causing overall script lag - which causes AI update lag.

e.g.

spawn/spawn/spawn/spawn is ^4 more destructive to the engine than one master FSM loop.

and vis versa.

Oh - and server settings affect AI lag as well (proven in test cases I did a year or so ago with multiple AI addons).

---------- Post added at 03:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:26 PM ----------

Posting again - I should point out that BIS also realizes the same, and does it anyways. Vanilla AI has the same issue, with multiple FSM's sharing scheduler space.

[Zipper5 74]

Go use ACRE. WE handle servers crashing with grace, and it *still* works even though the rest of A2 breaks.

For that reason, do not make such blanket statements which make you out to seem like you're better than the rest of us, as if it's some type of competition.

The reason your getting AI warping is because AI mod makers don't realize that FSM and SQF share different schedulers, causing overall script lag - which causes AI update lag.

I envisioned my above scenario with the vanilla game patched to the latest beta patch, having a mission that is literally just our group and one AI controlled preset group assigned a random move waypoint.

Edited April 23, 2011 by Zipper5

[galzohar 31]

I do agree that missions are a big part of why this game isn't more popular, as after all BIS missions are just, how to put it, not up to par, and finding good community missions (not to mention servers running them) is just not that simple, especially when you keep in mind that the actually good ones require a mod installation process that is just not that simple for the newcomer.

However I think that your "AI warping complaints" argument is just a tiny factor in all this "can't find good missions to play" thing. There's also the fact that a very significant portion of the missions you'd find are just terrible design or have basic features bugged that make them either unplayable or play poorly. As in, they fail on a much lower level than what you are talking about.

Then there's the lack of feedback problem. There seem to be more missions than players or something! I have yet to find a mission on armaholic that actually had useful feedback that the mission maker could have used to improve that mission. Without people caring to come back and share their experiences playing the mission, you can't expect the mission maker to have motivation for or even knowing he should look for ways to make it better.

So yes, most mission makers are rather clueless about scripting (and most of those mission makers already know that, but they really wanted to make something and probably did do their best with the limited time they had for it). But there's a lot more than just that when it comes to not finding good stuff to play.

As for the technical stuff, I would really like to read more about what you have to say about the connection between AI warping and scripting. Because I really couldn't make out much from the link you posted, at least not anything I didn't know already, but it does seem like there's more to it... That probably deserves it's own thread though. In any case, though, I feel that even if my missions do need certain improvements placed into them, I doubt it would make them get played any more, as like I said earlier, the zero feedback I'm getting for my missions doesn't seem to point at anyone not playing them because they were having problems with them, but rather because they simply don't care to even try them.

Also, I remember having some AI warping even in a mission with almost no scripting at all (and especially no loops that keep running), just some AI on waypoints and maybe a gear script and a mission ending script.

[noubernou 77]

A lot can cause warping because it is a sync issue, and a lot of things can cause sync issues, JIP, object spawning via scripts done poorly, lots of event handlers or triggers used in a poor way, etc.

There is not really any one thing you can do sadly to just get rid of it, its an over all mitigation issue.

[celery 8]

Oh, and proof I've shared my insights:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Biki2.0:Performance_Considerations#Scheduler

In terms of practical applications that article seems like a stub. Could you explain in simple terms how a mission should be scripted in order for it to fall among the lucky 2%?

[xeno 230]

Totally funny to read some things in here.

Specially people who think they are better than others.

Edit: And to be on topic why this game is not more popular in MP. Simple answer, it's missing: polishing, polishing, polishing.

In all aspects, but specially MP. So much MP bugs, so much MP problems, so much MP features missing that other games have for years

AI warping is just one problem. Another problem, connect to a server which uses addons and you don't have those addons... What does the game tell you what is missing? Basically nothing. The game does not help you at all. Good admin tools, systems which help to improve public playing, they simply do not exist.

We have servers today with 8 cores or even more, but the A2/OA server uses only 1 core and a little bit of a second core, lots of CPU power wasted (I know, not that easy to implement).

Non MP related, just take a feature like ATOC, now go and tell a new OA buyer that he has to fiddle around with some config file somehwere on his harddisk instead of changing this option ingame.

It's just so many things that could be improved, those things above are just examples.

We have improved signature checking since 1.59, 1.59 is almost 4 weeks old, the new sign tools, where are they...

Concerning missions in MP. The whole public MP relates on missions made by a handfull of com members. Not BIS.

Those people could make any kind of MP missions, because they have build up quite a lot of knowledge regarding mission making for dedi servers, just take Benny as an example.

But, those are the only guys left who know how to make missions which work in public playing too (everybody can make simple missions for non public playing, if there were no tasks it would take just a few minutes). Which indeed includes JIP and all its workarounds, keeping a mission running even if there is no admin available and some retards connect (things like nowaydays kicking idiots or teamkillers back to the lobby are all custom made scripts, BIS doesn't do anything in this direction).

I do not say that the game is not playable in MP, it is, I've played often enough with 50-100 people myself, PvP or coop, 40-64 people already during ArmA 1 times.

But it is only cool if you have a closed group you can play with. Which is sad, because the game is great in MP.

It's just the publisher of the game who has other priorities (I do not have a problem with it because I've learned to work around issues myself as best as I can in the last years).

But some people simply have to understand that things may take a loooong time in BIS land till we get it.

PvP is not much played because the average PvP player (which limites himself to just one game mode) thinks that the arma series is just another FPS shooter like any of those other FPS shooters out there. It's not.

ArmA is not BF2, ArmA is not COD, ArmA is not <add your personal preference here> and, ArmA is not OFP anymore. The OFP times are gone.

OA has about 1800-1900 players sometimes, at weekends when some closed groups are playing with 50-100+ players (only talking about dedi servers).

But there are also times when only 200 players or less are online.

Currently, while writing this, 795 players, 821 servers and 26962 slots available. Even more servers than players.

Public playing is one of the most important things, yet it is up to BIS to finally improve it. Not only public playing but all MP aspects.

MP does not mean some hosted game, like BIS content developers think, the whole glory of this game is playing on MP servers with tens of players.

But I know what will happen during the year. Some really nice MP games hit the market later this year, RO2, BF3, maybe not as deep as BIS games are but then many people will simply vanish.

Xeno

Edited April 24, 2011 by Xeno

[LJF 0]

I've only tried a few times to play ArmA MP, basically it boils down to:

1. I don't have the particular mod setup the server is running (99% of the time despite having a 40gb ArmA folder).

2. I can't play without ACE/sound mods and some others like the PVP animation pack. After playing with mods standard A2 is impossible to play for me.

In the end ArmA2 is a strictly SP game for me, which is sad because it has so much potential.

[Lonestar 11]

I can't remember UO released a mission pack.

Why don't you show stupid mission-makers how to do?

I agree many MM are lazy and just basically duct tape shit together but a large portion of them are eager to learn good practices.

Sharing is caring.

Edited April 24, 2011 by Lonestar

[noubernou 77]

I can't remember UO released a mission pack.

Why don't you show stupid mission-makers how to do?

I agree many MM are lazy and just basically duct tape shit together but a large portion of them are eager to learn good practices.

Sharing is caring.

We do not release mission packs really because they are designed around our mod suite.

Also, even at UO the mission makers aren't perfect. There is a lot of things they could improve on!