oktNoBlur - Signed Blur Remover Addon

[seba1976 98]

Seba, your name seems familiar maybe we used to play OFP a long time ago. I can hardly remember though. :D

I don't think so mate. Maybe another Seba. I've never played online because of my crappy connection. Did it a lot on LAN, though :cool:.

Good luck with the RAID, very bad timing for buying drives.

PS: Nevermind the betas ;).

[oktane 0]

okay raid is back.. "rebuilt a four drive raid array's metadata by hand and can access the data again! One of the disks had developed a bad sector right on the second to last sector of the drive, where the metadata is stored. But before that happened, the metadata had gotten corrupted on all disks by the intel drivers, which happens sometimes very rarely to people. It could have been caused by the weak sector itself, since it is updated frequently, propagated to the rest, dunno. But anyways, since that disk was then unusable because the sector could not be written to(it got kicked out of the array), yet 99.99% of the rest of the disk was ok and had 1/4 of my data striped on it, i did the only thing i could think of. I did a byte by byte transfer from the bad disk to an identical type drive (i had a few of these lousy wd raptor 80gb 10k drives, they are shit but they were free) then I figured out how to rebuild the metadata, using documented linux structs and metadata from a test array, changed the drive serial to reflect the 'new' old drive replacing the junk one, corrected the checksum (prob spent a whole day off on just that checksum part) and wrote it to all 4 disks. Booted up and viola!" Only took a week to do, after manual labor turning wrenches all day I get to reverse engineer my own computer to get my data back. Actually I didn't lose anything important except my games, which are a bitch to reinstall. (steam, gtaiv, arma2, etc.. like 100gb of shit) Nobody sane puts anything important on 4 shitty old 10k raptors known to frequently fail, raid0 striped for speed, that already have probably 4 years 24/7 operation on them. (before I got them!) They make funny noises all the time, but hey they were free and they are fast. :D Anyways, I updated the latest 3 betas. I will look at the bikey thing after I move all this data to another disk and remake this array on different disks.. wanted to change the stripe size anyways. I need to get some sleep.

I already did a2 1.11 when it came out, don't know what you mean there, unless you are talking about the v2 sigs.

Edited December 31, 2011 by oktane

[jedra 11]

Man, getting back a failed RAID array is always tricky. After spending a week getting back important data the last time it happened to me, I have stopped using RAID altogether!

Anyway, nice one and well done!

[kroky 1]

Thank you for the continous support of the noblur mod. Very appreciated addon!

(Really improves framerate significantly)

[exikutioner 10]

Great work! Looking forward to the update for 1.6!

[kroky 1]

There is already an update for the stable version for 1.60.

[oktane 0]

There is already an update for the stable version for 1.60.

Yep, the updates are all stored here http://506.jestservers.com/scripts/oktane/noblur/

Everything should be up to date as far as I know.

[kroky 1]

You are one beta behind.

Last is 87816.

[oktane 0]

You are one beta behind.

Last is 87816.

Doh haha, I need to make this automatic again.. I have been relying on the beta feed emailer, but I sometimes miss the emails because I think I already did that one. Thank you for telling me, I appreciate it.

Kevin, the owner of Jest Servers who is the nicest guy on the planet, he gave me a virtual server for my mods and scripts, I just need to set it all up. (install apache, php, lock it down, etc.) but when that's up it will be automatic again. What would be super is if I redid all the scripts as bash for linux (which is what the server Jest gave me runs) and then it could do it all without my local arma install on windows.. but the scripts are currently in powershell and they took a loooong time to write, it pains me to think about rewriting them. And they rely on another app I wrote, https://github.com/oktane/rssRunCmd

It's a lot of work for a game I hardly play anymore except small coops on the lan. Hell lately I've just gone back to old OFP, nothing has ever came close to the action in crCTI 1.0.. I have never seen it replicated in the ArmA 1/2 engines, I wish it was because I would play ArmA2 a lot more then I bet. It's all pretty complicated SQS that was made over the course of many years, based on Mike Melvins mfCTI.

Anyways, beta's done processing and uploading in the time it took to write this. Cheers.

[.kju 3245]

What about CRcti Proman?

[kroky 1]

Thanks!

Amazing you still playing OFP!:j:

[DieselJC 196]

Dumb question but does this need to be installed server side as well? I'd like to use it and allow it on my server...

JC

[oktane 0]

Dumb question but does this need to be installed server side as well? I'd like to use it and allow it on my server...

JC

Nope, its just a client side modification.

---------- Post added at 06:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:08 PM ----------

What about CRcti Proman?

Hmm I will have to check that out. My buddy and I did try a few of the cti conversions to arma, but the gameplay was not the same at all.. I miss the huge amounts of tanks, attack choppers coming at you, para drops of guys on contested towns.. mind you this was all done by AI dynamically. My friends and I would play crCTI offline on the lan, with all of us on the same side plus some ai group leaders, against a whole AI side. For years... and we would put addons we liked into it.. like the 249acog, kowalalski's dodge challenger from vanishing point loaded with mines and satchels.. LOL it was great fun modding it and putting it on new islands. Jetpack with Uzi's, Russian attack Balloons, Leonardo's AirScrew (don't ask, just know there were lots of chemical & plant enhancements involved with our monthly war fantasies.. :j:) But the core gameplay, the way it was balanced and the aggression of the enemy, their efficiency.. I have never seen it replicated in arma. I'm sure it worked for players, but the AI commander and teams were what we really needed because we're a small anti-social lot.. :D We played BWcti@DVD too, great stuff there.

I've tried real hard for MP to work in ArmA but JIP ruined it(it is a good addition but you can't just add it and that's that), and the devs haven't cared to listen to all the smart people that suggested solutions to make public MP a bit more workable so people stick around. I give up. This game has been my life for 10 years, I miss playing online with people without hacks + low player counts, etc. BIS is great company close to its community, but its not like that can replace the need for focus testing/usability testing.. and if you are going to have programmers design bad interfaces, you better fucking listen to your community when they tell you it sucks and it's driving people away. but it takes them years to implement changes, after they've been explained 600 different ways and all except the hardcore people like us have given up and moved on to some other game.

Anyways, there's things outside that are great.. a game is not a substitute for interacting with the world. Even a great one. In order for ArmA to replace my life again(lol), I will need some more people playing it, and people aren't going to play it when things are sub-par. There are lots of discussions on it, but the really in depth ones from old farts like me are lost in the noise of 'we need bayonets', it isn't worth getting in to. Even the CIT.. it has helped but still core issues are ignored by the developers, even after their 'fans' have spent hours debugging or analyzing issues.. that's no fun for them.

That's BIS.. really good, genius ideas, talented folks, forever caring about its fans. But not quite AAA quality. Fans should not be your core game designers fixing the mistakes you made.. :j:

Christ, look at what thread you are in... a mod that crudely removes a shader because they won't put a simple ini option in to individually disable shaders. It's really shitty the way the whole game config has to be repackaged with it making it version dependent, they never intended anyone to modify their shaders. All of the 'official' paths to request changes have been fulfilled. They have said they'll look into it.. bugs are filed. People vote. Nothing happens. Years have passed... Maybe a turd sent in the mail to BIS would be more effective? This all sounds dramatic probably, but lots of problems with the game are ignored like this, even after volunteers have spent free manhours doing things the 'official' ways. This is just one marble in the jar.

I only keep this mod up for the people that use it. I've stopped doing work for BIS, it gets you nowhere. It would be different if I worked for them, (I was in the US games industry for the last 6 years) but not as a fan, it breaks your spirit.

People like sickboy, kju (and many others, those are just off the top of my head) should likely be employees by now.. I don't know how they justify the amount of time they spend helping BIS without anything in return, while their life goes by.. maybe they haven't thought about it too much. How is the game still fun for them, do they even play it anymore? Just for bug hunting?

sigh.

Edited January 8, 2012 by oktane

[.kju 3245]

Good rant. Not disagreeing overall. Many good points made there.

However without the inside picture or view, you cannot really judge why that situation is like it is.

And to be fair there is change - just slow, too slow in your view and most others.

However you may wanna give people a 2nd (or xth) chance:

Especially the recent 1.60 patch with Suma's upswing in activity in tackling CIT tickets.

Take a look at the changelog, if you haven't done so. There are many good fixes and

improvements in there. The video configuration also get expanded for example.

There is even an API in the works now for 1.61 - already in use by ACRE/JayLib.

So again I don't disagree, however without the full / a more complete picture, one

cannot understand the events and situation.

In the end most people do not care and should not care - the end result has to be better.

If it will, ArmA 3 and the time until its release will tell.

[oktane 0]

Yeah I don't expect people to understand unless they've been here for quite a while.. to explain everything from scratch is nearly impossible for me to do coherently.. :D I joined here when I was 21, I am now almost 32. (old fart, you kids get off my lawn!)

I am ecstatic they implemented the API I requested. But that is an advanced user/server admin/mission maker tool.. there were more important things to do also that have been neglected. First and foremost making the game more usable to novice users in MP, bar none, most important thing. Without improvements there, the player count rises up when a new major version is released, and slowly crawls back to nearly nothing after 6-12 months. It's been happening since ArmA came out. (A1, A2, OA... next A3) The shit is so untenable that people have to join groups to even get a good game going, public play is realistically dead. And it will be dead again, a year after A3 comes out, there is nothing drastically different I've seen that will change that. I take it you are or were a server admin as I was, and you can see the bigger picture.. having to give support to players really shows you quickly what is wrong with their games. And it is very difficult to express those issues and get community support behind them, because the average joe does not know about usability, and they think because they could figure XYZ issue/mod install/config out, that anyone can. People here nitpick over everything, everyone has their own way they want the game to be with meaningless little feature requests and cannot seem to see the larger picture.. player LOSS over time. Or they have the BIS are gods and can do no wrong attitude, that's not helpful. These issues even occur on the CIT sometimes, which is supposed to be the opposite of this forum. The reality is that most players do not have endless patience, and it's 2012.. the game needs modern MP features like favorite servers, online friends, mission subdirectories or sorting, and other usability improvements to retain players and remove the 'pain in the balls' aspect of playing online. It's a ton of tiny little things that people dismiss as quirks.. but people aren't going to put up with crap, like getting kicked from a server with an unreadable error message about missing blah.pbo, they haven't with the previous releases and I doubt they will this time around. New players don't even know what PBO's are! Cue some idiot that says 'we don't need those noobs anyways! they can go play BF3!!' or 'they need to use YOMAs!'.. okay how do you tell them to download yomas? Oh right, no way to do that unless they are on your 3rd party comms! sigh.. server count: 1000's players: 400

And I don't have to say it, but they really screwed the pooch with the whole A2/OA CO/Standalone debacle, out of greed?! (I know they probably need the money, but have some foresight?!) And that took what, a year to fix with the 'lite' stuff? The MP community was already sharded, people said WTF, screw this. It's like they made their own official BIS 'mod hell'. The outlook is grim if such things like that can occur. Arrogant community managers that basically tell you to stick it or throw their hands up when you try to explain major game issues don't help. I'm all for rectifying problems, making things better, I had a totally different attitude before... But for me after 4 years or something with ArmA MP, it's too little, too late. I greatly admire the people that stick with it, doing so much work for them, and get nothing in return. (except probably disrespect on the forums, lawl)

I do hope that BIS fixes MP for A3. The problem is I don't think they know what the issues actually are, or they see them as little ones that don't matter.. but they all come together to make for a sub-par experience online, especially for new players.

I do read the changelogs, since I get them every time I need to make a noBlur. :) There has traditionally always been an upswing in drastic/major changes before a major release, which I think is ArmA3 in this case.

Edited January 8, 2012 by oktane

[.kju 3245]

Again good points made there. Accessibility is key - however OA is mostly a lost cause at this point.

What really matters is the state of ArmA 3 at release. Can it attract a bigger crowd and can it maintain it (better) this time.

Still you probably agree that major UI/interface/accessibility improvements may need a total revamp at times.

So it may not (have) be(en) worth it to try to tackle this post release on OA.

That said there have been some UI tweaks for the better.

If ArmA 3 will handle addons, mission and can be integrated (more) easily with OA/CO content,

we will have to wait and see, right?

[oktane 0]

Again good points made there. Accessibility is key - however OA is mostly a lost cause at this point.

What really matters is the state of ArmA 3 at release. Can it attract a bigger crowd and can it maintain it (better) this time.

[/Quote]

I agree there, didn't mean to imply otherwise. I know from experience what drives people away is the millions of small frustrations, and the overall experience. But when I was bitching about all of this before OA came out, the same attiudes where there.. A2 doesn't matter. Everything matters IMO.. only because all of the games are iterations of each other, they have a stupid number on the box but they are the same exact game. They have even back ported features to older engines! So the sooner the issues are fixed, the less money they will be wasting making games that fizzle out in a year.

They'll think the game is brand new if it has a new number on the box! Now with ragdolls!! (what's the point of ragdolls if people can't get online to enjoy them, or there's only 200 people playing on a weekday???)

Still you probably agree that major UI/interface/accessibility improvements may need a total revamp at times.

So it may not (have) be(en) worth it to try to tackle this post release on OA.

That said there have been some UI tweaks for the better.

If ArmA 3 will handle addons, mission and can be integrated (more) easily with OA/CO content,

we will have to wait and see, right?

The issue is that each new version of the game, say arma3 in this case, should probably have the rest of the previous games as 'lite' content. Not campaigns, just addons. Consistency, and standardization is key. Any arma3 player should be able to join any other arma3 server, provided they are using all BIS official addons ideally. But anyways, that's a whole other ball of wax, there are many other nagging little issues like the ones I mentioned.. crummy server browser, lobby, mission select, error/kick messages, no MOTD before getting kicked, no way to inform new player where to get help if he can't join. And most important, for a game that is MADE for modders and it's actively encouraged, for the last 3 years it's needed addon syncronization. Obviously. People (other than techy mod makers) messing with their game directories is so 2002.

BIS would have all this information with one focus group/usability session with kids off the street that are new to the game, yet are interested in military FPS's.. and just concentrate on the MP nuances. Not necessarily gameplay though! Because that can change per the mission designer.. just the overall flow using a simple and non-frustrating mission, like a firing range. The issue will be in simulating all the join errors and problems, if they could do that and identify those then why have the usability session to begin with? It's a chicken and egg problem. The only thing they can do is listen to the community and have a proactive positive approach to solving common issues that occur with joining servers. Or play their own damn game and see them.. :D (That's difficult, because like us, we have been doing it so long we just skip that error or know exactly what it means.. a new person is bewildered) Maybe the focus group could come in and try to join various servers online while they watched, and asked them how they could improve it. I used to design and set up the equipment for these usability tests, they put ad in classifieds, they give the kids some soda and chips, and 10 bucks for the hour. The screen is recorded, the overall players upper body, the hands, and the face. Each subject ran thru identical senario or mission to gauge an average response and ID problem areas. In this case it is more difficult, testing a UI.. but man it HAS TO BE DONE. Unless you want your game to wind up in the value bin at the local supermarket. BIS is no longer 15-20 guys in a funny house! They own multiple studios filled with people, a couple hundred I think! You can make a AAA quality game with those resources, but you need to pull in new designers that will tell you what sucks and you can't just dismiss that as 'new guy' disease who wants to fix everything.

I don't want to be 'that guy' that is cynical about anything they do now, so I should just stop.. besides this thread is about noBlur right? (yet why is this mod needed? ...everything is connected)

Pardon for shitting up my own thread here. Who are you really may I ask? A certain long time volunteer/mod at the place bugs go to die?

Of all the broken hacked together parts of the game, we get goddamn ragdolls. They better have constraints so they don't look like shit. I hope it isn't havok. (bad history with me) :D

Edited January 8, 2012 by oktane

[BigMorgan 11]

BIS would have all this information with one focus group/usability session with kids off the street that are new to the game, yet are interested in military FPS's..

But that sample would probably just cry about not having a knife attack and the rounds taking too long and the game being too hard...

What BIS ought to do is fly some of you fine addon devs out to Czech for a week of focus grouping, and really listen to the people that have been in this community, developing content for (and fixing) these games for a decade now.

Thanks for noBlur, by the way. Can't play without it. :D

[katipo66 94]

Nice read/rant Octane :)

[boglav 1]

Hi, new armafan here.

I would like to report that the latest beta version (88207) doesn't seem to work for me.

Mod is installed and activated properly (i get the okt_noblur icon in the main menu and expansions). With PP set to "very low" it woks ok, but when I use my default "low" setting I get the nasty blur back.

The only mod to my cfg was the FXAAsharp value set to 6, but that shouldn't interfere.

This is my very first post, and I'd like to use it to tank you Oktane and congratulate you both for your work and for trying to make this great adventure better for all of us. Don't give up hope!

later edit: well, apparently FXAA Sharp does have an influence on blur. I set it to 0 in arma2ao.cfg and also disabled fxaa (previously on 17) and all is good.

much later edit: apparently i was wrong again, the blur seems to appear/disappear randomly (after reloading saves, new missions, etc.). Must be a beta thing, I have no idea, until the next final release i will have to get used to it.

Edited January 19, 2012 by boglav

[BigMorgan 11]

I confirm that with latest (88279) beta, noBlur is fairly broken.

I promise you a reward of great riches in the afterlife if you could fix it Oktane. :D

Edit: 88147 is the last build that noBlur is fully working, for me. That was after they introduced the sharpness filter, but one build before they had problems with addons loading before/after betas (not really sure of the details of that issue, sorry). Hope that helps.

Edited January 21, 2012 by BigMorgan

[BobcatBob 10]

Wow octane, that truly was a great inspiring read! I hope the devs end up reading this (and maybe even taking it seriously)! I know they may think it sounds harsh but, unfortunately, the wider market is not going to be so kind as to buy a game just because the developers (who they do not know or appreciate at all right now) work very hard as it is! As much as I hate to say it, they just NEED to do these things already!

[jedra 11]

Oktane, you said "(yet why is this mod needed? ...everything is connected)", and I have to say that it's probably needed more than ever now. The sharpness filter BI have applied is excellent, but it does need a little PP to take the edge off (if you will forgive the pun).

The fact you can't add any PP without the blur is a real shame, and for this your mod has always been the one I added first to any of my SixUpdater profiles.

BI are never going to fix everything, they just haven't got the resources. I am amazed they fix what they do actually compared to companies that do have the resources but just don't bother. It's for this reason that people like you are important to the community as you fix the stuff that never gets fixed. In some respects maybe you are a victim of your own success in that stuff like this doesn't get fixed because there is a mod to do it !!!

As for rag-dolls, I hope they do it well as done badly they do look utter rubbish!!

[BigMorgan 11]

The latest beta - 88738 - also does not work with oktNoBlur.

As I said above, last working version remains 88147.

Not demanding you take action, merely reporting. :)

[domokun 515]

The latest beta - 88738 - also does not work with oktNoBlur.

As I said above, last working version remains 88147.

Not demanding you take action, merely reporting. :)

I'm happy to report the contrary - the latest beta (88738) works fine on my machine with it's oktNoBlur counterpart.