Asheara

Greetings! Many of you know that in our damage model's current state the calculation of the damage dealt can be quite unpredictable at times. Therefore, we're really happy to announce the new component system, which will significantly reduce this problem and increase the transparency of the damage dealt. Calculating a round's penetration will be much more precise. Furthermore, there are several smaller features to improve Arma 3's quality-of-life for our dear community creators. The intention is to make their job of implementing the damage model easier. We do this by decreasing the amount of variables they had to take into consideration thus far and which often fell under the category of 'black magic'. However, the number one game-changer when it comes to this feature is the simulation of armor types. This involves the ability to create multiple types of protection, which can even react differently to different ammunition types. This opens the door to many new gameplay possibilities, and gives the player the option to select more efficient ammunition against a certain type of armor. And while we ourselves will be using this in a relatively modest way that is still understandable for the majority of players, the possibilities for the community creators are virtually endless. That being said, I'd like to encourage you to give feedback. The numbers are still a prototype and need to be tweaked - after all, thanks to the component system it will work a bit differently. Things I'd like to bring to your attention are: The component system - simulation of AP rounds should be much more accurate, while the spheres are still there for the explosive damage. Passthrough should also work more deterministic than before The armor simulations - the vehicles have been given passing protection in form of SLAT and ERA armor, while there are currently three types (SLAT, Light ERA and Heavy ERA), which should have some differences between ammunition (we also have 4 types of ammunition - AP, HE, HEAT and Tandem Heat). We're aware that current configuration is not yet ideal, but we'd appreciate your help in pointing out the issues. The damage visuals - compared to previous two it's a minor thing and not a game changer, but I believe that things like destroyed ERA or semi-damaged SLAT would make your Arma immersion a lot better. This should already work correctly in all cases, therefore if you find something which doesn't, let us know!

Greetings Armaholics, it is my pleasure to announce that we've have updated the asset database on community wiki - https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Assets Except the part, where it was expanded for Malden DLC and Jets DLC assets, there is also new script to generate the "Objects" part, and it was split to several smaller pages to fit. Object features are now generated automatically. I'll be happy to hear some feedback, especially if there are other things that the community could use - they can always be added! :) Also, as you see, there are not pictures for everything (and not all might be 100% correct). Therefore I'd like to encourage you to add or update any missing or incorrect pictures. The picture's filename is the object's classname, and it is case sensitive, therefore it might be better to copy the name from the database page itself. Pictures are in jpg format. Enjoy, and I hope this update will be beneficial to you all.

Hello there! I know it's been way too long since my last appearance :) Today, with the release, we shall bring you... answers! 1) Yes, it is 2) Yes, not defining HitFuel class will disable it 3) 0.9 4) Eh, that's a bit complicated... speed of fuel leak can be calculated as: 0.2 * 0.1 * (fuelcapacity ^ 0.8) * (fuelHit) fuelHit return 0 or 1, depending whether HitFuel is smaller or bigger than 0.9 fuelCapacity has 0.8 exponent to make it a logaritmic function, so 100 units (Hunter) of fuel will be leaked in ~2min and 1882 units (MBT_01) will be leaked in ~4min Don't ask me what these constants are :D I'll get back to you soon to sift through the other questions which might be here!

The duplicate light hitpoints should be fixed by now :) Also, the turret hitpoints have been tweaked, it shouldn't give the total damage anymore. However, the values to make them last longer are still WIP

@Strike_NOR I know about the issue with HEAT, TandemHEAT and such, however right at this moment I cannot do anything about it - those weapons are still being worked on by someone else and thus unfinished (teaser: possible submunition!). I've been told to hold on with these and focus on AP balance for now. But thanks for the suggestion! Once we get the green light, it will be very useful :)

Well :D That's quite complicated question. To crush your hopes and dreams from the start: no, we won't do that. However, it's more complicated. You see - most of the times we have 'wreck' p3d for this purpose. It is usually without the turret. Sure, it can be pasted from normal p3d and such, and hiding some parts on some condition is not really a problem. Problem is randomizing it. Although there is randomization in Virtual Garage and Eden, I believe that except the scripting, we have no proper way to randomize this kind of things. It would probably require either programming support, or script it. Scripting we are generally trying to avoid - when it comes to the vehicle functionality, we have configs for that and... we can't just hack everything with scripts, we need to maintain some standards ;) Stability, performance and this kind of things. So all in all - it would require some work from art department to remodel the wrecks. It would require work from programming to give us proper way to randomize things upon destruction. And work of encoding to put it together. That's quite a bit of work for a small visual fluff, don't you think? :) Especially when receiving reports around here how broken the configs of the damage model are :P With the short time given to us, we need to focus on the important things :) @Yoshi_E Damn, the overall protection is weak? And here I thought the tanks are kinda tanking it (well everything except APFSDS). Will try to look into it, but... Turrets first! Started working on it, and yes, we plan to tweak that total damage which gets done. Divide it into the categories of unmanned remote vs. manned turret, and the unmanned ones won't give any total damage (except Angara, because that's one huge ass turret), while the others will be getting some total damage. However, I'll try to tweak it in a way so... hitting a gun barrel doesn't do this kind of stuff :D

Now now, which one? :D There's plenty of tools in there. Either way, all of this is kind of outside of my power and for sure we can't release everything, but some of these you can find in diag exe :) That should have at least limited functionality of this with several diagnostics :)

Tell me about it. *runs around in panic with a fire extinguisher*

It's done! Devbranching inbound :) Aaaand for anyone who asked about those weird reflections, deflections and other movements of the projectiles within the tank - also aware, it has been shown to programming, hopefully it will get somehow fixed or tweaked, but mo promises :) There's still new feature which could use some fixing ;)

1. I believe touching the surface is enough, it still has hit the component. But I can maybe get more detailed answer from programmers 2. Further damage modifiers - whole black magic which worked before works now as well. The sphere hitpoints are still calculated for explosive damage, works the same as before. Damage is affected by size of explosion, size of sphere, how close they are, whether or how much they overlap... Damage via components works exactly the same in terms of config parameters for projectiles. CfgArmorSimulations "hit" parameter only modifies those which have been previously defined. 3. (B) is right! Projectile does calculate penetration normally by .rvmat in firegeo but does ALSO modifiy exit speed by the speed parameter in armorsimulation 4. Hitpointcomponents don't behave in any way for indirect damage - for that, there are still those "memorylod" hitpoints in hitpoints lod. They are still necessary to have there precisely for this reason - indirect hit. 5. I have no idea, would need to ask programming, but I'm not aware of any specific differences. however, i believe it will respect some differencies between those classes as they are there for a reason. But honestly, I don't know, I'd need to ask :) Thanks, I'll definitely take a look. Or well, arrange it. Turrets, their hitpoint and balance are going to be tweaked / fixed in near future, quite possibly this week or start of the next one. @scavenjer Thanks for noticing! It is actually one of the global and more pressing issues we are trying to fix about now. It is on our to do list for programming, but your input is definitely helpful! Better repro and all. But yes, we are aware of this one. The technology of the new feature still doesn't 100% work as intended. I'm not certain who asked about this one, but yes, damage values are still a placeholder, and still not tweaked. We're terribly sorry about that, but now with upcoming devbranch release we've been having our hands full with clearing out as many bugs as possible. It's two encoders against the world! I know it's not ideal and I would rather have it done by now as the release is pretty close, so time for tweaks and feedbacks, but... not there yet. Apologies for taking long time to reply! At least it wasn't fully spammed when I returned :) Following the forums and such can be quite time consuming and the devbranch release robbed us of this time ;)

While personally I would really, really love this, it's unlikely to happen :( I can write it down for nice to have things and try to forward it somewhere, but... I'll be happy if we'll somewhat managed to balance it properly on time. Bugs from devbranch piling up, we have several broken animations reported and way too few people to add in anything new :( Still, loving the suggestion! If we get any room to breathe (unlikely), would be definitely something.

Wow, what the hell! That is something... which shouldn't have happened. I'm not sure whether we can do something about it, I believe significantly changing the penetration at this point would be too risky and expensive, but I'll forward it to programming to investigate. We'll be definitely looking into those ricocheting projectiles, so while we're at it... might ask about this as well, but no promises. If you could send me this repro mission to try it for us, I'd be grateful. Thanks a lot for the feedback! It's exactly what we need! 1) sure, it's a valid suggestion, but this is only naming of selection in hitpoint LOD, not the hitpoint itself, therefore it doesn't have the priority. Sure, I'm with you on this page, the naming is better and makes sense, but we'll be having our hands full with other fixes. I'm afraid we won't get to it, but I'll see if it can be done while working on fixes written below. 2) Thanks for bringing it to my attention! I really need to sift through all hitpoints. This is caused by one of the things I've written in documentation under the "quality of life" updates. In other words, visual = "" vs. visual = "-". And didn't update it everywhere yet. 3) Same as above. We'll get working on it. 4) I believe HitGun never actually blocked the firing from the cannon. I know, it's logical, but this wasn't intended. We don't have the engine soolution for this and it wasn't planned either. HitTurret and HitGun hitpoints are intended to affect the turret rotations and elevations. So yes, even with destroyed hitpoints, you'll be able to fire - but not control well where to fire. If you still can move the turret freely in all directions with destroyed hitpoint, THEN it's a bug :) 5) Well, as far as I can see, you sure are unable to start up and move in any direction. But I see that it's still able to turn on the place, which is logical that it shouldn't. But I'm not certain if this is intended or not. I can ask around, but fixing this might get bit more extensive as... we would have to think thoroughly about the consequences it might cause :) More people and decisions would be involved, whether we would actually want to fix it and how will it affect sandbox. At this point, it's unlikely to happen, as it's certainly not trivial. 6) I see it as, with damaged gun it should lower down as it was. I'm surprised it happened as late as in the point of changing seats, but I didn't see any further elevation. Yes, it moved a little here or there, but in general it appeared that the gun didn't elevate, so i might fail to see the problem. 7) Won't fix, I'm afraid. Many more pressing problems, even visual, to be taken care of earlier. This would require a thorough investigation of the magical particle config and so on. 8) Not a bug, they better, they know what's about to happen! :D Would you want to stay in the vehicle about to explode?

Oh my, what a dedication! Lot to read and reply to on Monday, sorry for the delay and apologies is advance if I overlook anything :) I'm happy you all are so interested! 1) Yes, they can create as many components types and ammo types and define their interaction 2) Yes, they can be stacked and placed freely as in image above. Just adding some more hitpoints, as armorComponent is a hitzone parameter. You can even expand on the existing hitzone we provide. Define specific component type for say... engine and add it. 3) The FireGeometry and materials are still working as they were previously. However, the damage which would be dealt upon penetrating this component will be 'multiplied' by the number in hit parameter, should work the same way with speed :) 4) HitHull can sort of simulate the ammo rack, however the instant destruction might be bit overrated. It's more complicated - if the HitHull is > 0.9, the explosion will occur, in case parameter hullDamageCauseExplosion is set to true. The time, in which the explosion will occur, however, is randomized, so it doesn't lead to instant destruction. It seems the explosion will be delayed by time between 2 and 20 seconds. Nothing I know of. I don't think anything like that will happen. Thank you very much! There was a typo in the named selection. Fixed now. Great work on the damage system! What are those custom parameters, something read by a script? I'll gladly answer your questions if I can, though... do I understand it well those are the two under the video, or I overlooked something? Could you reformulate the first question, not sure I understand it. And as for expensive submunition - I'd love to give you an answer, but I don't know it myself. However, I'll try to get the answer for you, hopefully programmers might point me somewhere. If there are any specific questions, shoot! If I overlooked someone, please tag me again, will sift through the posts once more, but I can tell I've made a mistake by not looking for two whole days :P

Thank you for your service to the community, good sir! Will do, it's a valid suggestion, shame on me this wasn't done already ;)

That is actually sort of in progress. HitHull has the chance of randomly exploding vehicle, therefore this hitzone should be now smaller, harder to reach and basically serve this purpose. @Strike_NOR The damage modules you've proposed are nice and make sense! However, despite the fact that we've been considering these (both optics and ammo rack) and even had some prototype, we've decided to focus on the component system and the armor simulations, as this entire damage enhancement is a gargantuan piece of work. We'll already have our hands full to balance all this on time - as few of you already noted, some of those values are merely a placeholder. We don't have enough people nor enough time till release to actually make it happen. I'm sorry.

Hello again, I've tried to shed the light on how the new upgrades work with this documentation. Enjoy yourself, and if anything is unclear, please let me know!

Thanks for pointing it out! I made a mental note about this before, but we're yet to fix it. I'll definitely put it on my list of thing to be dealt ASAP. Ooops, will need to look into it. Damaging the opposite side is not desirable, thanks for feedback! Uhm, yes, in my tests HE and HEAT were blowing up completely all around the vehicle too Didn't manage to figure it out yet and fix it on time, but it's in progress. About HEAT doing no damage to the side on Slammer UP - also on my to-do list, though honestly not sure yet WHY is this happening. But I'll figure it out! And as for the netting on Kuma - as far as I'm aware, that's not even supposed to happen. The netting gets destroyed mostly due to explosion of ERA and Kuma doesn't have any. Netting is not a separate hitpoint to be destroyed, simply a fluff which goes with destroying other hitpoints. Yes you can! I'll try to write it today, apologies for the delay, I know it would be more ideal to have it ready with the devbranch release :)

Hey, unfortunately, there's nothing that's going to be done about this. I don't know how precisely is the script implemented, however how this works is bit mysterious and would require a lot of reworking. As you said, perhaps in the future :) Hello, glad you're interested! Indeed, there's no link, the accounts are created by dwarden. If you'd like to have an account, write an email to dwarden@bistudio.com, to apply for account on community.bistudio.com and give him the desired username :) Best of luck!

Of course, the function can be found as (BIS_fnc_)exportCfgVehiclesAssetDB :) The use case of the function in in the comment at the beginning of the function.

That's why I'm encouraging everyone to add them, because unfortunately, the script for creating these isn't perfect. Well, the function has been primarily designed to put out the wiki markup, I didn't really think about anything else, however... the wiki markup syntax has parts of the code making the header at the beginning and then taking all variables and putting them into the wiki markup at the very end, so it should be easy to modify :) However, if there's any help you'd need with this, let me know. Yes, they are. As I've been doing sort of overhaul of "features" column i was trying to sift through what was needed, what could be added instead and prevent some features overload (vehicles already have quite a list) and identify what would be more useful things to display. However, as I said, I'm open to feedback - it's community who knows better what do they want or need than I am ;) Yes, it should be in today's release in devbranch :)

Greetings, I've published the documentation on how the dynamic airports are working, so feel free to take a look and (mis)use it for your mods :) https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Dynamic_Airport_Configuration Also, if there are any questions regarding the USS Freedom data, how is it assembled etc., fire at will! I'll be happy to help clear any confusion, so you can make the mods even more awesome :)

Unfortunately, I am not aware of any engine functionality such as this. :( I've verified it with our programmers as well, and I certainly wouldn't mind to pimp the damage model to perfection. However, as far as I know it's not engine based, I don't have any parameters for such shinies, must have happened on the scripting level in the mission itself. However, I agree it would be beautiful. There are still some things I'd like to do with these, but... I'm not good with the firebending ;)

The guide for Jets hitpoints is finally here! \o/ Good luck and enjoy :) https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Jets_Hitpoint_Configuration

I see no problem in these sources to be used elsewhere, depends on the model, therefore it's difficult for me to give pointers, however - it was used only on Wipeout because it was the only one having airbrakes like that. Originally, for the ailerons and subsequently the airbrakes were used following engine sources: aileron aileronT aileronB Those have now also damage variants as written above, because it looked quite strange when you have damaged aileron, but the airbrakes part kept moving as if nothing had happened :D I am not certain whether this reply was helpful, but... the sources exist, they are defined in the engine, and I see no reason why they couldn't be used elsewhere, it wasn't just exactly needed before :) Both sources written in this or previous posts are available for use, depending which one would be more suitable for you. For the gear - no, there is no HitGear hitpoint at all. What is seen in the game as separate hitpoint category and possibility of damaging them is fully handled by the engine. I would compare it a bit to the lights - they are also not in the Hitpoints subclass. I'm not certain how you have it configured, and whether it works, depending whether you have the physX wheels implemented on your plane.

Dear hitpoints enthusiasts, I'm bringing you an update! I've been trying to balance some hitpoint values as I've promised earlier. They'll be coming with the next devbranch, and for now, affecting following planes: Wipeout (Plane_CAS_01) Neophron (Plane_CAS_02) Buzzard (Plane_Fighter_03) The hull shouldn't be as weak as were the objections before, however I'll be happy for more feedback. Remaining planes should be COMING SOON(tm). Next ones I'll focus on are the fighter jets coming with the DLC, Black Wasp, Shikra and Gryphon, so it can be tested all together, but please have patience with me :) Hello, there is one article about hitpoints, https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Damage_Description, however, this one won't be that helpful I'm afraid :) I've been tasked with creating such documentation for community (especially for Jets edition) and I'm really sorry that it's not yet done, seeing you've got the content to be seen in devbranch already. So I'll try to shed as much light as I can here, feel free to ask any questions. Yes, they work the same as other hitpoints. Meaning, they need: - selections in hitpoint LOD ("name" parameter in config) - selections in visual LODs ("visual" parameter in config) - names of selections in visual LODs in model.cfg sections - HitPoints class in config.cpp - change some of the animation sources - no, selection in FireGeometry is not necessary There are several hitpoint class names, which are supported by the engine and are used in the plane upgrades. Some of them have specific naming for the gameplay features. HitHull HitEngine HitEngine2 HitFuel HitFuel2 HitAvionics HitLAileron HitRAileron HitLCRudder HitRRudder HitLCElevator HitRElevator With HitAvionics, you'll need to make the animation for turning off the screen. With any flight controls, you'll need to change some of the animation sources to the damage version. New engine sources for these purpose are following: aileronLeftDamaged aileronRightDamaged aileronTLeftDamaged aileronBLeftDamaged aileronTRightDamaged aileronBRightDamaged rudderLeftCenterDamaged rudderRightDamaged elevatorLeftCenterDamaged elevatorRightDamaged Note: AileronT and AileronB sources were used only for Wipeout for the air brakes, as they are on the ailerons Once I'll have the documentation ready, I'll post the link here, but having my hands full right now, I'm sorry once again :)