roshnak

We don't need a complex damage system. We just need a damage system that is overly simplified. As it is now, planes either work or they explode. We don't need wings and tails to be shot off, but it would be okay if damage to a wing induced a roll, the severity of which was based on damage. Can planes get fuel leaks in Arma 3? It would be cool to allow the engine to be damaged to the point of shutting off without the plane exploding. These aren't simulation level changes to the damage model, just a few changes to bring the fixed wing damage model in line with the damage model of rotary wing and ground vehicles.

Early article detailing the start of the problem all the back in OFP: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131427/postmortem_bohemia_interactive_.php?print=1 Refactoring animation system because devs are now faced with a "complicated 'spaghetti' relationship between game code and animation configs" http://dev.arma3.com/oprep-refactoring-animations Just a couple of examples that I have bookmarks to. There was other stuff posted on these forums that I didn't save the location of. I believe at one point the guy in charge of developing the engine left the company and didn't leave it all that well documented. I'm not saying that Arma is a trainwreck. I'm saying that over a decade of work on a project, stuff tends to get messy -- especially with such a rocky start -- and requires a concentrated effort to clean it up. Don't assume that everything is the way it is for a reason. It's entirely possible that it was completely unintentional and got lost over the course of the development of 3 games and 2 major expansions. Well, you probably don't have any problems with high shadows because you have it backwards. Low shadows are offloaded to the CPU and negatively impact performance in an already CPU bottlenecked game. First of all, you are completely misreading my statement. I am not saying that Arma 3 is milking OFP. I am saying that your claims that Arma 3 has to run poorly in order to have all its features do not hold up against the fact that almost all of the features that make Arma 3 unique were present in OFP a decade ago. Computers have only gotten more powerful in that time. Second, almost all of the features you listed are graphical in nature, which are not the game features you are arguing makes Arma 3 unique among video games. No. It doesn't explain anything, because once again you are misreading the situation. Clients are getting worse performance in multiplayer, not servers. This is a scenario in which much of the workload (AI) should be offloaded to the server, freeing up CPU cycles on the client end. It's very obvious. It's obvious that you have no ability to objectively comment on this topic, as evidenced by the following absurd statement: I can only assume that when you are referring to CE3 and FB2 you are talking about the flagship games on those engines, Crysis and Battlefield. Those games are not arena shooters. I don't know of any arena shooters on Frostbite 2, while CryEngine has been used for a large variety of different games. Those games have almost nothing in common with Quake, mechanically. Anyone who has played the games in question can tell the difference immediately. Despite my repeated pleas for you to recognize that video games cannot be fairly lumped into the categories of "Arma" and "Everything Else" you continue to refuse to acknowledge the strengths of virtually every other game in existence or recognize the challenges that must go into creating them, all the while denigrating them for perceived weaknesses, which really just boil down to "they're not Arma." Since you refuse to allow Arma to be examined in comparison to anything but itself, any discussion is pointless. No one can make any argument that you won't shoot down with, "Yeah, but this is Arma, and Arma is special." Thank God the devs don't think like you do, or this series would have made no progress at all. The effect is parallax.

Yeah, see, this kind of disparity in frame rate is a huge problem. I don't know, maybe they are. There was a post a dev made from 2008 that essentially said they were interested in moving in that direction, but couldn't justify it for Arma 2, since multicore CPUs weren't common enough yet (even though it was pretty clear that was the direction the technology was going). No real progress has been made on this front, and it seems incredibly unlikely that we will see improvements in Arma 3, since it would likely require a huge engine rewrite. Several points here. First, it's not that Arma 3 runs well on low-end hardware, it's that it doesn't scale to high-end hardware that great. Second, your complaints about Battlefield 3's scaling are some of the things that I think are good about it. I like that it scales down it's complexity to run well on low-end hardware. That said, I understand that this type of optimization is really up the the mission designer in Arma 3. Third, I wouldn't bet on there being good reasons for things being the way they are. This series has notoriously been plagued by poor documentation and bloat. They've previously had issues with devs not knowing how certain stuff works and implementing redundant features. This was a big deal with the Arma 3 release as they did a lot of refactoring (still are, according to recent OPREPs) to clean up the engine and remove redundancies. Until that process is complete, I think it's fair to assume that there are areas that aren't as optimized as they can or should be. As a side note regarding performance, there are still some odd behaviors in Arma 3, such as lowering certain settings like shadows causing increased CPU load and decreased performance. Also, there are still a number of objects casting CPU intensive shadows in the game, as opposed to moving fully to GPU drawn shadows. Here is the real crux of the matter, and the reason this discussion isn't really going anywhere. I don't accept your basic premise that we need to sacrifice game mechanics to gain performance. Arma 3 isn't significantly more complex in terms of game mechanics than Arma 2 or Arma 1 or even Operation Flashpoint. All of the basic gameplay elements remain the same, while the scale gets a little larger and graphics are improved. If the reason that Arma 3 runs poorly was that it is too complex, then we wouldn't have had OFP a decade ago. We don't need to do less things, we just need to find ways to do them a little smarter and quicker. Honestly, you're kind of putting Arma on a pedestal becuase it happens to cater to your specific tastes and no other game does. It's evident in the way you put quotes around AI when referring to BF3. BF3's AI isn't necessarily better or worse than Arma 3's; it's just different. They aren't comparable at all because they are designed to do different things and operate in different game environments. Neither game has true artificial intelligence. And really, when it comes down to it, none of this whole argument about sacrificing performance for mechanics and features explains why the game runs worse in multiplayer than it does in single player.

Not really. You have to consider that BIS probably wanted a single-seat aircraft with minimum air-to-air capabilities to match the other two aircraft already in the game. Beyond that, the AC-130 is pretty much a sitting duck when it comes to any kind of air defence at all.

I'm assuming you're unaware of this issue http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?169682-the-houses-and-ruins-are-the-mp-problem/page2 (Linked to page 2 to show screenshots of the problem.) When buildings are damaged, the undamaged version is moved about 40m underground and a second, damaged version is put in it's place. There are now two buildings instead of one. If this has been fixed, I haven't heard about it. It's not another subject at all. The game doesn't properly utilize multicore CPUs. If BIS wants their game to be super CPU intensive, they should make sure it makes full use of the CPU. First of all, Call of Duty is also a terrible game for competition. Second of all, it does not have an uncapped rate-of-fire. Weapons hit their maximum fire rate at 60 FPS, anything over that will not increase the fire rate of weapons, although lower frame rates will decrease it. Finally, I'm not sure how any of this challenges my claim that high FPS is good. I've already stated that game mechanics are often affected by frame rate -- you're just providing more evidence of that fact. 1. This guy straight up acknowledges that lower frame rates provide a worse experience, despite the fact that he feels it is okay to sacrifice that in the name of fun selling his game on outdated consoles. 2. This guy is talking about making compromises when developing for consoles, which I have already stated are significantly less powerful than PCs. Battlefield 4 is capable of running well above 30 FPS on PCs. 3. I don't care if this guy thinks 30 FPS is sufficient; he's wrong. I have a whole series of posts in this thread debunking the whole myth that 30 FPS is sufficient. There are numerous links to articles all over the internet. They're very easy to find for yourself: just google "30 FPS eyes." This is completely unplayable. What do you get in SP?

This doesn't make any kind of sense.

There isn't going to be an F-35. Those screenshots are of the Arma 2 F-35 that was being used as a placeholder in Arma 3. It probably wasn't a good idea for them to release those screenshots without that warning.

Probably not much -- the engine would have to be designed to scale properly to modern hardware, and buildings would have to not sink into the ground instead of being removed when they are replaced by damaged versions. I don't think those are changes that would negatively impact anyone's gaming experience, do you? Why don't we go the other way and you tell me what specific parts of Arma 3 should excuse it from the standards by which I hold every other game? You're the one saying the game is somehow beyond comparison with other games - what makes this the case? Sorry, you're not. I'm really trying not to be offensive here. I am talking about people who take competing in video games very seriously. The very fact that you are saying these things means you are not good enough at whatever game it is you are talking about to recognize the point at which your skill is being limited by the hardware you are using. I don't really understand why we are even talking about this, though, since Arma 3 isn't a good competitive game. First of all, I can't think of any modern game that has an uncapped rate-of-fire on any gun, so I'm not sure what you are talking about there. I didn't bring this up because it has a significant impact on gameplay. I brought it up to demonstrate that the game is not really supposed to run at these low frame rates, since certain aspects of the game (rate-of-fire) don't behave as intended at low frame rates. Also, it would be nice to have some dev input on this, but I would be surpised if ballistics calculations are putting serious strain on the CPU. You need to stop referring to other games as being "simple" and "primitive." The fact that other games do not have the same scope as Arma does not mean they are less complex, they just aren't as complex in the areas that you care about. I'd also like to say that the idea that Arma doesn't have to run as well as other games becuase it ostensibly "has more going on" is not a helpful attitude. We shouldn't just abandon the idea that Arma can have good performance and do all the things it does. No hope of progress lies in that train of thought.

You're really misreading the OP. This isn't a thread about how Arma 3 is too different from previous games, it's a thread about how Arma 3 isn't different enough. While there have been a number of refinements and improvements under the hood, in a lot of ways the game doesn't feel all that improved from Operation Flashpoint, barring a few obvious exceptions (movement, aiming, the new inventory mechanics). The OP is talking specifically about AI, and it's a really good example of something that, despite seeing a lot of changes under the hood, still behaves much the same as it always has. Sure, their aiming and detection has been tweaked a little, and they added really irritating bounding movement in combat in Arma 2, but it's still recognizably the AI from Operation Flashpoint. Then there are the things like the ability to fire from cargo positions that players have been clamoring for since Arma 1 was announced. And the devs have been saying, "We'll try to get it in" in every single release. How could they have not figured out a way to do this in over a decade? So yeah, the game is definitely getting better with each release, but not by leaps and bounds -- it's mostly just a few things that are improved with each new iteration of the game. Over the last decade, the area of the game that has seen the most consistent improvement is graphics, by a wide margin. And it's not like a new game is released every year or two; we're looking at three to four years between releases. I think some people are starting to ask themselves how many years they are willing to wait and how many new games they are willling to buy before their pet issue or feature gets its turn. I really think this is just because there isn't a lot to talk about if you like something, nor is it particularly productive. I mean, I love the changes to movement and aiming in Arma 3, but what else is there really to say but that? I know that it makes the devs feel good to have players say nice things about the game, but there isn't really much utility to it, whereas bringing up things we don't like might get those things changed and then we don't have to talk about them anymore because we will be playing the game. Uh, no he shouldn't. Read the rest of the post.

This isn't fair. This is giving preferential treatment. The fact that Arma is a larger scale game doesn't make poor performance turn into good performance. Now, if Arma weren't a first person shooter, you could make the argument that lower frame rates are acceptable, but that's not the case. For the record, it's the panning of the screen that causes low frame rates to be especially evident, which is a thing in all first person shooters, regardless of the pace of the game itself. You're always going to be looking around your environment, which causes everything on the screen to move at once. Frame rate impacts control input. That's just a fact. If low frame rates aren't negatively impacting your gameplay in competitive shooters, you're probably not good enough at those games that it would make a difference. There's nothing wrong with this; the vast majority of people who play competitive shooters aren't very good at them. Even if you think you're doing pretty good, you're probably playing with a bunch of people who also aren't that great at the game. Console games also aim for you, so there's that. Also, console games are capped at 30 FPS and don't run that great because consoles aren't very powerful. Furthermore, who cares what console games do? There are tons of things wrong with the console market. This is a PC game, and those games that are capped at 30 FPS on consoles almost universally run significantly better on PCs. Here's something that I bet a lot of people aren't considering: If you're averaging 30-35 FPS in Arma, that means your frame rate is probably getting as high as 45 FPS and as low as 20 FPS (I'm being generous, it's probably dipping as low as 15), which is far from playable, and certainly low enough to cause a machine gun to fire slower than it is supposed to. Furthermore, the circumstances in which your frame rate is going to dip to those levels are exactly the circumstances in which you want the best performance -- during scenarios of intense combat.

Eh, I kind of feel like the the front half and back halves of the A-135 belong to two different planes. Kind of like they didn't do much updating to the nose of the A-10.

First of all, I still don't appreciate the subtle digs you are trying to get in, insinuating that I'm playing to many video games -- whereas previously you claimed that I hadn't been playing long enough to have a valid opinion. It takes roughly 15 minutes of gameplay for me to begin to feel the effects of low frame rate. It's also completely natural for flickering images to induce eye strain, although it's less pronounced since we've moved beyond CRT monitors. This is the kind of thing that I take issue with. You are making statements without any evidence or knowledge of the subject, despite my referring you to multiple sources to become more educated on the matter. Actually we are talking about 30 FPS because you made the claim that: Which is a myth that I cannot stand. It's false on a number of levels, not least of which is that a demand for more high frame rates is not a new thing in video games. Furthermore, the idea that it's not worth investing time and resources to try and get games to run at more than 30 FPS is a toxic one, and based on bad interperetions of the reasons for specific frame rates in film. My only goal here has been to make clear that demands for high framerates are not about a bunch of kids trying to brag about buying the most expensive computer. While these attitudes certainly exist, it is also true that humans are more than capable of recognizing flickering images at 60 Hz and beyond, and it's wrong to discount the opinions of a group of people because of your false impression that they are a bunch of spoiled kids fighting over who has a better computer. VVV Edit: 60 Hz was a problem back when people still used CRT monitors, because they basically turn off and back on (this is not fully technically correct, but close enough) each time they refresh, causing the whole screen to flicker. It's similar to the problems caused by old flourescent lights that flickered at 60 Hz. It's not really a problem on LCD monitors because of the screen doesn't "turn off" between refreshes. I don't really need a 120 Hz monitor, nor can I afford one right now, although I don't doubt that they would deliver a smoother experience. 60 FPS doesn't cause me any problems. 40 FPS doesn't cause me any problems. 30 FPS gives me headaches in certain games, notably first person shooters. This is due to the choppy rate at which the entire screen refreshes during turns. It's not particularly uncommon or unexpected, nor is it debilitating or anything. It's also something I rarely experience; I have a pretty good computer and am willing to turn down graphics settings to get a smooth frame rate.

For the record, you're the one who started calling people out for being young, inexperienced, and spoiled. I believe the purpose of the Quake reference was to illustrate that people have been demanding frame rates higher than 30 FPS since at least the late 90s. Furthermore, if you honestly cannot see a difference between 30 and 60 frames per second, then your vision is objectively worse than people who can. In this particular case, that may be an advantage for you, since you do not experience the ill effects of a game running poorly. It doesn't change the fact that your vision is not on par with fighter pilots who can identify images of aircraft that have flashed in front of them for 1/220th of a second. Edit: Dude: You're the one who asked the question. You are also the one who started judging other people's health when you told me there was something wrong with me because low frame rates cause me discomfort. Perhaps you shouldn't say things that you wouldn't like said to you?

If you are responding to j4you, you are misreading his post. He is saying that Arma is not special and that it is not acceptable for Arma to run worse than other games. I've also been posting this whole time that it isn't about FPS counters or some stupid dick waving contest. Low frame rate cause many people to become physically uncomfortable, regardless of whether there is a number displayed in the corner of the screen. Stop trying to trivialize this just because you don't personally experience it. No. It is a scientific fact that low frame rates (how low depends on the person) cause eyestrain and discomfort. For me, personally, the area right around 30 FPS tends to be enough to kick in a motion-sicknees-like feeling when I pan my screen around. Once the FPS drops to around 15-20 FPS, there is enough of a gap between frames that it starts looking more like a slideshow and no longer makes me nauseous, but the game becomes even less playable. I don't understand why you are trying to argue this. Your whole argument hinges on the claim that people aren't really noticing a difference in frame rate, but I've posted evidence that is not the case. Do you want me to find more articles and examples? I can. Google even auto-completes "human eye 30" to "human eye 30 fps myth." More reference: http://xcorr.net/2011/11/20/whats-the-maximal-frame-rate-humans-can-perceive/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ResearchBloggingAllEnglish+%28Research+Blogging+-+English+-+All+Topics%29 http://www.cameratechnica.com/2011/11/21/what-is-the-highest-frame-rate-the-human-eye-can-perceive/ http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm Here is an especially good website for seeing the effects of different frame rates: http://frames-per-second.appspot.com/ (bonus points for quotes from Peter Jackson plugging higher frame rates even in movies -- 48 FPS in this case) Try removing the balls and upping the velocity of the background to 200 px/s (simulating panning your view in a first person shooter) with no motion blur (many games don't have motion blur, and few implement it properly). Try setting the frame rate to 15, 30, and 60 FPS. There is a pretty clear difference between frame rates. The difference between 30 and 60 becomes bigger the higher the velocity of the background, or the faster you move your mouse in game. Edit: Also, this isn't just about what you can see. In this game, machine guns fire slower at lower frame rates. If you are averaging 30 FPS, that means you're probably dipping down to 20-25 FPS fairly regularly, which negatively affects systems in the game that rely on frame rate, for example, firing your gun.

Pretty much everyone I've been playing with has been complaining about the movement since Operation Flashpoint. Granted, it's a relatively small group of people, but it was one of their major complaints. Personal insults, however subtle and vague, are really not necessary. I have no problem with simulating weapon weight. Arma 2's implementation was sloppy. It had a weird negative mouse acceleration thing, whereby moving the mouse too quickly would lock your turnrate kind of like hitting a wall. I believe this was essentially a side effect of the fact that the game was designed around a specific type of free-aim. This behavior is extremely pronounced in the standalone version of DayZ. A good simulation of weapon weight would be to either lower the overall sensitivity of the mouse based on weapon weight, as has been done in countless games in the past -- and hope that people don't use dynamic DPI settings on their mice to cheat (why would they?) -- , or to disconnect the player's weapon from the point of aim, allowing the player to have an unlimited turn rate, while the weapon speed is based on weapon weight, causing the weapon to lag behind the point of aim and forcing the player to wait for their weapon to catch up to their movements.

Everyone is different. People have different tolerances for framerate. For me, personally, right around 30 FPS is a sweet spot that causes me to experience nausea and headaches after about 15 minutes of exposure. Some people do not experience ill effects at 30 FPS, although I find it very hard to believe that anyone could not notice the difference between 25 and 50 FPS in this .gif http://i.minus.com/iuHMClLCinzEh.gif I understand that you guys find 30 FPS to be tolerable. What I'm asking you to do is acknowledge that your experience is not the case for everybody, and then ask yourself this question: Is it better to assume that people have a higher or lower tolerance for low framerates? My opinion is that as far as physical ability to play the game, the game should be as accessible as possible. That means making sure that people who experience physical discomfort at low framerates have optons to make the game more playable. What you are saying is simply not true. The above article, as I have pointed out a number of times, references tests done by the United States Air Force showing that pilots can not only detect images flashed for only 1/220th of a second, but identify the type of aircraft depicted. That's the equivalent of 220 FPS. This. This whole post is good.

I believe that Beagle is referring to the age of the 3D models and textures used in Arma 2, not the designs of the tanks themselves.

I understand what you were saying. The size and scale of the game does not excuse poor performance or make it more palatable for people who are sensitive to low framerates. 30 FPS in a first person shooter gives me a headache whether the game takes place in a narrow corridor or on a massive island. Once again, there is no need for you to be so hostile or try to discredit me by accusing me of being "new" to video games -- as if that would make any difference. I haven't been around since the dawn of PC gaming or anything, but I've been playing since Half-Life. I played video games on a CRT monitor when a 60Hz refresh rate made your eyes (metaphorically) bleed because of screen flicker. In the "old days" a good CRT monitor had a refresh rate of at least 85 Hz (that's 85 times the screen refreshes per second, by the way) in order to avoid eye strain. I remember how even back then there were a bunch of people who thought people can only detect 30 FPS because "that's what movies play at." Perhaps you would like to take a look at the article I linked in my previous post -- published in 2001, in case you think it was written by someone spoiled by "new technology" -- and educate yourself on how humans perceive a series of flashing images and interperate them as motion. And by the way, I never said that there weren't games that run worse than Arma. MY post was strictly meant to debunk your argument that "The real problem began, when players started believing that games are not playable below anything near 50 fps..." A desire for smooth framerates is not a new thing. It was important enough in 2001 to have an article written about it. The only thing that is suprising to me is that, 13 years later, people are as ignorant as ever about the topic.

First of all, I don't see how the size or scale of Arma 3 changes the effect that lower framerates have on me. It's not like I'm sitting there going, "Man, Altis sure is big; suddenly 30 fps doesn't hurt my eyes!" Second of all, here is a .gif of a bar moving from side to side at different framerates. There is a very clear difference between 25 and 50 fps. http://i.minus.com/iuHMClLCinzEh.gif If you would like to learn more about how the brain interacts with the eye do detect and identify flashing images up to 220 FPS, here is an article: http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html Edit: I don't think such a vague suggestion as, "BIS needs to focus on developing their engine for Arma 4" warrants such a hostile and patronizing response. Also, can we please not turn this into another misinformed discussion about game engines?

We had a fairly sizable thread about this a few months back that never really went anywhere and devolved into people arguing about Battlefield 4 for some reason. Basically, we have no idea what the priorites of the dev team are beyond the fact that finishing the campaign -- and now Zeus, I guess -- is presumably on the top of the list. From what I understand, the dev team is pretty small and most of the programmers are working on campaign stuff or Zeus right now. At this point, I'm just waiting until the campaign is finished to see if the dev team pivots towards implementing frequently requested features from the tracker, but they really haven't given any indication that is even in the cards, so I don't have high hopes.

To be fair, things like armor being able to dynamically coordinate with disconnected infantry groups is a pretty difficult thing to make happen. I don't know if we will be seeing that sort of thing for quite a while, if ever, in video games. I also think that post-combat behavior you're describing is just because the AI don't have any more waypoints. It would be cool if there was a garrison or defend position waypoint or something. Either way, I think this is more on the mission designer than the AI. Out of curiosity, though, what kind of behavior would you like to see instead? Finally, the AI yelling "MOVING!" and "COVERING!" and stuff is, hilariously, the devs attempt to show players that the AI is improved over Arma 1. When Arma 2 was first released, a lot of people were complaining that formations were breaking down in combat, and only one or two AI were moving forward at a time. This was actually because the devs had implemented a not very good bounding overwatch routine, so most of the squad was laying prone while one or two dudes ran forward at a time. In response, BIS made the AI a lot more expressive and verbose about what they were doing, to try to make it clear to players that the AI was using those techniques and the behavior was intentional. Personally, I think the bounding routine needs a lot of work. It doesn't seem like it takes the number of units in the squad into account, so you wind up with like ten guys laying prone while one or two guys rush forward and get wrecked by concentrated fire. They also start bounding pretty much every time they are in combat, and it's not always appropriate and can frequently lead to squads getting bogged down and massacred.

The problem with this is that there isn an ideal body type for video games. I'm sure some people would like to RP their character or something, but anyone who wants to have the best chance of not being shot is going to play the smallest character they can. Very few people want to play a really tall guy who can't take cover behind low walls because he's too big.

There might be some kind of language barrier here, but I feel like I should point out that I'm not trying to twist your words or anything. A lot of the statements you made about Arma 2 vs Arma 3 were flat out false. I think you may be confusing features that were present in ACE as being present in base Arma 2. I also think it's relevant to point out that I am immensely disappointed in Arma 3. I think the game is massively overpriced for the state it's in. I'm upset that BIS seemingly bailed on promised features. That doesn't mean I think Arma 2 is a better game, though.

A lot of the voices, on the other hand, sound quite old and gruff, which, to be fair, is a problem with every video game ever.

Wind did not affect ballistics at all in Arma 2. You are thinking of ACE. The only things that Arma 2 did differently regarding wounding are that there is no armor simulation in Arma 2 and Arma 2 also had a wounding module that made it so that units would be knocked unconscious instead of dying. It wasn't particularly advanced. I'm not certain how exaggerated fatigue is in Arma 3, but the penalites in ACE were at least as high as they are in Arma 3, if not higher, since it also made players start blacking out and falling down. It was easy to incur these penalties just by taking too many boxes of ammo along with your machine gun. The only thing I have to say about this is that it is largely a matter of opinion. Bullet penetration wasn't modeled at all in Arma 2 or ACE, with the exception of the fact that ACE enabled bullets to penetrate the armor on some vehicles. Again, Arma 3 isn't significantly more realsitc, but neither is it at all less realistic or more arcadey.