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very nice. Yet I wonder if that mini-game isn't misplaced. Once you're logged in, managing the generators should be straightforward. If you insist on having a mini-game, why not have it for hacking the thing?

Even with doMove (or moveTo down on fsm level), making the AI run as long as known threats are around is a hard one. You'll probably have to experiment with disableAI (e.g. targeting) in an attempt to make them ignore enemies and concentrate on running, and even then... (maybe continously reseting/earsing knownTargets helps, since that's an option now?) I'm not sure if people ever managed to do this properly/in a satisfactory way.

Could someone please either confirm, or deny that the following is still a problem on the devel branch? https://feedback.bistudio.com/T128002 1) doStop all units (with scripting) 2) try to make them follow you again with direct commanding (radio 1-1) Does it work/do AI units follow you again? For if not, this kind of AI direct command deadlocking seems to be pretty game breaking to me.

oh... of course, it's Arma afterall. You do what you gotta do... sure, sure.

Sure. For one duplication: if you actually go on and do translate your strings to multiple languages, you're going to duplicate all your styling, which is a mess to manage. And for two, flexibility: you might wanna use the very same string in a different context, maybe with, maybe without, or different styling alltogether. In the end, styling can be considered "code" and doesn't need to be translated. It's not "language" (or "data").

Might just be me, but I don't think you really should put style into a stringtable. Just pure strings. Then apply the styling (an extra call to format, or simple string concatenation/appending) just before you call createDiaryRecord (or whatever).

From what I understand: no, not really. The models are all fine. It's just that certain LODs (memory lod I think?) should not be considered while computing the bounds. But of course, that might only be half of the truth (maybe stuff has all to be rebacked/repbo'd or what not), I don't know... all I saw was just another opportunity to mention the bb-problem again (while pulling of a shitty box in, wait no, outside the box joke at the same time, I'm deeply sorry for that ). This is true, and most likely the reasonable thing to do. But is it really the same? Semantically? I'd argue no, and the difference might be significant. Locking to a well (or explicitly) defined position in a model assumes some prior knowledge of the target vehicle, while the center of a bounding box is an implicit definition: something that can be easily observed without prior knowledge (e.g. by the targeting mechanic). And secondly the bounding box center (if computed correctly) might be the more robust target, for maybe that "aimpos" isn't well configured on all(!) models, or [0,0,0] might be way of in another. But I don't really know, so I'll better shut up now.

it sure does, but shhhhh... Let's think a bit outside the box for a second here: how about the bounding box (i.e. boundingBoxReal) gets finally fixed after all these years? How about that? Too radical?

Broken shuffle reported in 2016. No big deal. Still not fixed in 2018... I'm not exactly sure why at least the simple stuff can't get fixed in a timely manner, but something (organisation? processes? ...) is just broken/not functional over at BIS. Isn't it?

Not that I'm a mod, but first things first. You might wanna check out (and use): and/or for such ideas/suggestions. Anyhow, as to your first point. Yes the damn radio-menu is ancient, and not very user-friendly, nor really effective at many things. One of those things is the management of your AI and its loadout. So that's not really a new suggestion, and probably needs to be fleshed out quite a bit (that is also consider all the other actions hidden in the radio menu). In the meantime, you're probably best served by: Order your AI to move to where new weapon/ammo (most likely someone dead) is situated. Pray that not much else is laying around there with an inventory. Order your AI to open its inventory and pick up stuff for it manually. If the second point fails, you have to either remove the other crap, or pick out the good stuff and move it somewhere else, then repeat. Yeah, it's all fucking annoying, so I suggest to build/play missions, where looting isn't necessary/big of a deal. Certainly not for AI. Or... or just switch to your AI unit if that's possible. As for your second point: you can try to adjust the AI skills, which should do the trick. Other than that: no, the AI isn't really cheating. But there are certainly edge-cases, where a human might not be able to spot anything, while the AI still gets a ray of vision through... or the AI might just have heard you.

Oh...

Yeahh.. but with this kind of reasoning a jeep is also a pretty balanced tank.

You can retrieve a pointer to the gates with https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/nearestObject or https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/nearestObjects. I think the latter command is the preferred way to do this. You know the class of the gates right? If not, you can point at them, then use https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/cursorTarget and print em with diag_log.

Have you tried: https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Category:Scripting_Commands_Arma_3 already?

This mini-campaign was really lovely, creative and extremely well done. You guys should indeed consider publishing such content on a more regular basis. I've already made a comment with respect to this in the Tac-Ops thread, but whatever, I'll gladly repeat myself: why not stop doing one huge main campaign for the release of an Arma title, and instead have more such mini-campaigns/operations(!) continuously released on a regular basis. Having a huge campaign (traditionally focusing on a single faction) right at the start of a new Arma adventure isn't doing anyone (developers and players alike) any favors, considering its rather long life-cycle, and all the improvements (not necessarily backwards compatible) and new assets that usually follow (and never are "officially" used much, if at all...). Ideally there should be always some "Team Orange" around working on the next SP/MP missions to be released soon, for as long as the current Arma title is still being maintained. I obviously don't have the (sales) numbers, but I'd imagine this could work just nicely with the introduced DLC system. Some other points: In "The Survivor": While the storytelling with the memories is awesome and all: there was IMHO not enough raw gameplay in relation to the firmer. Eh, it's probably okay, if it's a bit more on the storytelling side of things this time (considering it's done so well). For once. ;) "The Redacted":

Yeah, yeah, I'm a bit late to the party, but here we go anyways: Operations. The concept of these "operations" is ideal for Arma, and it works fantastic on multiple levels. And it's indeed a clever thing to do: laying out a scenario with multiple missions (that all reuse the same scenario) is efficient and damn interesting too: the scenarios can be larger (yet play out only partially each go/mission, which is also nice to work with from a performance POV, I can imagine), yet aren't "wasted" on a single mission. Getting to experience that same scenario from multiple POVs is fun (especially with such diverse missions one can chose from). Great replay value. Straight to action too (you watch the introduction/setup once, and are good to go for other missions). I'd even suggest to make this setup the default/standard for Arma. E.g. this way you can easily offer very special missions only a fraction of the player base will ever complete (e.g. flying, some of us just aren't ment to be pilots, he. Or tank missions, or what not.). The format of a mini-campaign is nice, but not absolutely necessary (hm, then again, technically they just might be, eh?). I hope you guys think about releasing such "operations" on a regular basis in the future. Each month or two a new SP scenario/operation like this? Man, that would rock. And sure, make it DLC like Tac-Ops, offer an abonnement/bundle too, and that should be just lovely for all of us. From what I can tell you guys also enjoy creating these operations, with all the lovely details put in there. And I can imagine it's more fun to do a variety of such operations from time to time, than having to come up with a huge campaign during a long and probably stressful period when the game isn't even finished yet and still shit has to be ready for when it launches... IMHO screw the campaign, and just release "operations" on a regular basis (already included/free for the first year or something). Arma will always be an ongoing project, never really finished. Just look at all the things that got introduced at some later point, and hence never really used in official missions. A damn shame, isn't it. I think such a continuous release cycle for SP content would fit this sandbox much better. Pacing and execution. I'm not sure for what fraction of the Arma community I'm speaking, but please, for the love of god, tone it down a notch. I don't need to kill some dude every other second in order to have fun. Things are going so fast, I usually have to restart the mission after a few minutes, once I've figured out what's actually going on, and what I'm supposed to do. That's quite the contrast after the lovely selection scenes/setups (those are really great). And sure, there is always an exposition part, currently on the map, but that doesn't cut it. The player needs to orient himself ingame, and generally there should be time to do so (sure, sure, some missions are "right in your face" for good reasons). Unfortunately you guys seem to prefer a quick cut, "2 hours later...", spongebob trick, instead of taking your time, and letting us drive (yeah, yeah AI driving...) or walk somewhere. There might not much be going on in such moments, but as a player you get to acclimate and orient yourself, which is needed. Besides, tension is always there, enemies could be anywhere. Who knows? Just like a good horror movie, we don't need a jump scare every other moment, and just like a really good action movie, we don't need a stupid stunt each other scene. But if/when! BOOM! This doesn't really work if it's "one hell of a ride" from start to the bitter end. That's how you end up with Transformers. Give us some air to breath and time to make a (stupid) decision. This isn't just a quick action shooter. ...or is it? At the end of each Tac-Ops mission I see my stats/kills, and that's always bit of a *JUST* moment. Let's see, what have we killed this time? Two APCs, some tank maybe, a bunch of officers, 8 teamleaders, 29 simple riflemen, 12 AT dudes, 13 machine gunners, 9 medics, ... It's ridiculous. I don't want to play Rambo. I want to be part of my fire team, my squad, my unit. I'm just one simple man. Okay? Sure, a "realistic" degree of action might also not be optimal (then again, one of my favorite missions was always that small patrol duty into the forest, early in the OFP campaign, not firing a single shot, because my AI mates got em first. Just a few. Simple missions can be amazing too, especially if nicely presented), but there has to be some middle ground. Also raise enemy skills (but reduce their numbers; less is more, and maybe then you don't have to magically clean up dead dudes, which is annoying; magic doesn't work if the trick is visible). An enemy should be a real threat. Especially during Steel Pegasus I regularly had enemies shooting at me not from too far, not hitting anything (while they really should have). It was comical at times. You reload. They shoot at you. You're done reloading. They're still shooting. Bullets fly around you, but never hit. Finally, you take a shot. You laugh... Display and Production. Lovely. Especially the already mentioned setup/pick mission scenes are super comfy. The arrangements of the (small) objects amaze me also time and again: what you guys come up with (using just the few available objects) is always super nice. Building interiors, fortifications, various other scenes. Great stuff. All the little things that set the mood. Voicing is also great, always adds a lot to a mission. Map screen animation is solid stuff, and the integration of these operations (with multiple missions/branches) is nicely done too.

While clearly another rant of yours, , I see where you're coming from. Personally I just came back after a longer pause to continue working on my stuff, and then I remembered why I just sort of tuned out (besides just having other priorities): my "trigger" are those fucking bounding boxes (they're all wrong in case you haven't noticed). What especially sucks is that some of this stuff could be *easily* fixed (hint: bounding boxes that don't take arbitrary lods into account), yet it's "all" broken (or missing) since years. Years. No hyperbole. Priorities, eh... of course, not all is broken, and so much stuff got better in the meantime. But sometimes (depending on what you'd like to be doing) all it takes is a bad apple to spoil the bunch, isn't it. Well, I've settled for the following coping mechanism: if an idea requires too much ugly work and hacks or other stupid shit, then I'm out. Keep to things that work just fine, ignore/abort anything else. No convoys, generally no (mission critical) AI driving, no this, no that. No, no, no. ...doesn't really make me happy though, so it remains to be a constant struggle. BIS's coping mechanism (with respect to driving) seems to be the ol' spongebob "5 hours later..." cutscene, while I'm pretty sure, back in OFP/Resistance days you'd be driving around in the back of a truck for minutes... Similarly we have video-action sequences, as opposed to pure kick ass ingame machinima. And we now also have those stupid quick-action hit SPACE events... okay, those are maybe not too bad for super specific stuff. But I don't like the overall direction and smell of more and more smokes and mirrors. Or do I imagine things now? Probably off-topic anyways, so... item.

The problem here is that there is (next to?) no AI role specialization. Clearly the machine gunner behaves significantly differently than the assitant gunner dude. The anti tank dude has a completly different role than a rifleman. The medic. The combat engineer. The sniper and his spotter... All this stuff has to be tacked on with custom FSM (or similar), otherwise all our toy soldiers are just differently dressed, stupid, generic(!) grunts. The medic doesn't heal. The machine gunner doesn't suppress the enemy. The anti tank dude uses his pistol to shoot some other jackass while tanks are rolling in. Not ours. The medic doesn't give two fucks about his mates, everyone is on his own. The combat engineer couldn't be bothered to repair the gang's vehicle, or disarm a mine or what not. Probably is french and wants more bucks first. And the sniper.. guess pistol again, and his spotter... well, I don't know... but he isn't talking much to his sniper, from what I can tell. Maybe we should split them up again? Now, don't jump to conclusions here. Nobody wants this stuff hardcoded for us. A plain soldier is a good, programmable soldier afterall. But coming up with good specialized behaviour is a pain, and nobody has the expertise, nor patience to do all this as a hobby. Maybe for Arma 4 BIS should consider offering many predefined and specialized AI, with all roles having their appropriate special and fleshed out preset assigned already. Scripters are free to define their own and swap in something else. Something along those lines...

No, not instead of. But you can easily combined them to find a nice landing position: 1) find meadow with selectBestPlaces, then 2) make sure to get a flat and empty spot there. You could also favor positions with meadows and houses in step one, to make sure there's some hard cover around... or if you prefer hills.

You can do this with a single call to selectBestPlaces and a small radius (e.g. 6m). I often use the following script for such "point" evaluations of selectBestPlaces expressions (where I'm interested in the returned score, not so much about random places. In your case just use the expression "forest" and demand a score of at least 0.95 or something): You can take e.g 3-4 more samples/probes around the actual position (and at a certain distance) and require them also to be considered inside the forest. Shouldn't cost too much as long as you maybe don't run the check every frame. You could spread out the individual samples/probes over some frames too (with a sleep inbetween each call), if you're concerned about performance. I take it the dog doesn't move *that* fast.

To give an example I'm currently working on: find forest position (selectBestPlaces with "(10*forest) + (5*trees) - (50*houses) - (100*meadow) - (999*sea)", requiring a min. score of 9.0) make sure the forest is of a certain min. size/area (since the player will have to search for this thing) find (multiple nearby) flat spot(s) inside that forest area (isFlatEmpty not regarding any objects on the map) delete all existing objects at these positions and spawn my own stuff, e.g. a camp, a hidden research facility, or what not This also incorporates min. distance checks to locations and roads, and so I can only conditionally agree with Grumps: ...since, all too often I run into the problem of having such strong requirements (with all the filters and checks), that I end up with only a few and always the same positions in certain areas... and then it's a battle of weakening my requirements (they exist for a reason...). Spawning a bit larger structures on Tanoa can be rather hard if you want them to be next to each other too, since it's all so terribly steep and cliffy (don't get me wrong; I love it!!). Well, at least if you want to spawn something deep in the forest, that is. But maybe the best example is the wildlife in Arma. All animals are spawned according to such selectBestPlaces expressions (note the available "rain", "windy", "deadBody", or "night" variables). In conclusion the lesson to learn here is to keep it simple stupid, and don't try to be way too fucking clever, or you'll end up like me, fighting one stupid battle (no, not with guns ) after the other.

hehe, nice. As said, always do a little experiment if you're about to use these commands (in particular with some fancy requirements (or just a gradient/isFlatEmpty check. gradients are the worst), or just a different map; e.g. messing around with some "forest" expression on Altis vs. Tanoa will yield quite different results for obvious reasons). But you clearly got this.

No, it's not that bounding boxes weren't too precise, they're outright wrong. So is boundingBoxReal (i.e. we'd need a boundingBoxRealForReal). They're all excessive in size, since they factor in the wrong/additional LODs for some funny reason. See: https://feedback.bistudio.com/T81462 https://feedback.bistudio.com/T83132 https://feedback.bistudio.com/T84418 ... It's IMHO one of the worst things that should have been fixed a long fucking time ago. For A2 I used to manually measure objects and keep my own bounding box lists. For A3 I said fuck it, not again. Shit makes me angry only thinking about it.

In my experience you always want to double-check and filter results returned by selectBestPlaces, a surfaceIsWater test in particular. Even if you penalize "sea" as you suggest (or even heavier), you still might end up with a rather wet position on a funny dice roll... (at least in A3 we don't have to check for ponds any longer... ). And once you start filtering with more and more restrictions (e.g. min. distance to a location, or a road, or what not), you probably also want to have a retry-loop (with weaker and weaker restrictions) or some other kind of failsafe. Anyways... always cook up a tiny test-mission only for such commands, and see how they work in action (onMapSingleClick comes in handy here). Problems should become obvious pretty quickly. Depending on the map, tiny islands, or just badly connected landmasses could also pose a problem for your idea.

@fn_Quiksilver: these are all punctual decision mechanisms, nothing that has to be run/checked every frame. And this stuff is really cheap to read out/compute/evaluate too, so I doubt a more elaborate model of these things would hurt overall performance in a meaningful way. Besides, I think that a more "human-like" behaviour (especially on the tactical/reaction side of things) can easily add a lot of value to the "fun" departement.