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shinRaiden

Former Developer
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Everything posted by shinRaiden

  1. shinRaiden

    USA 2008 Depression

    There have never been any communist countries. Tell me what kind of atrocities Cuba has committed? When it defended itself against a US and CIA backed invasion at the bay of pigs? Assassination attempts on foreign presidents? Terrorism like shooting tourists from the sea and blowing aeroplanes and harboring those who commited those crimes? The cuban personal liberty record is one of the best in the world. Human Rights Watch It would appear that you would be smoking something more than just the Cubano's, perhaps something supplied by their comrades FARC?
  2. shinRaiden

    Looking for 6-figure map

    You can have however many digits you want arbitrarily configed at any given zoom range with any particular offset, and it can be done in an inherited manner to be automaticly compatible with any other addon. Supported since OFP.
  3. shinRaiden

    I am Canadian

    Canadian facts : * They enjoy vacations in environments that the Taliban thinks are inhospitable. * The chain saw, seal club, and hockey stick ratio to population practically guarantees that they'll survive any zombie apocalypse. * 0W-30 motor gums up the car motors, use Tim Hortons instead. Warms up your insides and works as both antifreeze and motor oil. * A drive to the supermarket involves factoring in the curvature of the earth. * Recommended practice for destroying drug crop fields in deployed areas is by burning. * Home to the vicious predatory baby seal, which will gnaw off your leg given the chance. Evil buggers that must be put down. * Bears gnaw off more than just your leg given the chance, so go for their eyeballs if you get the chance. You just got to hook your thumbs in there good. * To paraphrase CanadianTerror, Manitoba's provincial motto is "hold my beer, watch this..." * Other countries traditionally cut up frozen lakes for ice, Canada cuts up the frozen atmosphere in the summer to keep it cold in the winter. * Canada has unicorns, but they're whales. * Hockey is an audience participation sport for all ages. * Pirates of the Saskatchewan. * Bush planes. * Fire Diving. * Moose. * Nova Scotian trailer park documentaries.
  4. shinRaiden

    Top Ten things for Arma 2

    10 . Do it yourself now, define the support ability in the configs. 9 . Already done before in OFP, if you bring up that subject it inevitably leads to perm bans due to abuse. 8 . If BIS implements it, particularly in a combative setting, it would very likely result in negative publicity and/or bans in certain markets. Business decision. 7 . Priorities. What's more important, a cow, or another M4? Can't always have both. 6 . Gibs leads to product bans in certain markets, also the model/render cost is quite heavy to do with the present design methods. 5 . Script it. They do exactly what you tell them to, so if they're not taking a break that's your job. If it were automatic you'd have people complaining about not being able to control them. 4 . Punching a doughnut in the directx ground plane is not trivial. Nearly every product on the market uses either room teleportation at the 'door', rubble mounds over the outside layout, or top-locked camera. 3 . Rivers / streams fair enough. That could / should be reasonably done even as a stretched plane at a minimum. Waterfalls are another matter though as the dynamics involved are ridiculously complex (super-computer scale particle fluid dynamics) 2 . That's the community's fault for making clobbered addons in the first place. All the docs and support in the world from BIS won't fix that. 1 . Swapping textures only works so far, it doesn't change things such as PASGT<>MICH. For that you need model changes. If you take the hidden selections approach, you're limited to what's in the model at the beginning, and the models are significantly more complex to create. The other method, as was explored a long time ago, was the theory of clipping proxies on to snap-together unit loadouts. That doesn't work or scale, at all.
  5. shinRaiden

    New VBS2 features

    There's no GameSpy browser because 1 - it's obvious not appropriate and 2 - it wouldn't work in an 'offline' military network. VBS can see anything broadcast in a LAN situation, and if you're routed you can manage that as well.
  6. shinRaiden

    USA 2008 Depression

    Ron Paul's also got extensive ties to Neo-Nazi organizations and lots of other screwball groups that ironically run counter to his comments about fiscal policy. Furthermore, his 'solution' is the fiscal equivalent of putting your money in a jar and hiding it under your bed. Commodity-based economic theory is a nice idea at first glance, but if you follow the money you find the proponents having vested interests in it just as much as the people who advocate paper money. Likewise, the past crisis of gold vs silver standards. The benefit of commodity-based models is that at some point, regardless of what happens, there still remains a tangible asset with some intrinsic value. The downside to commodity-based systems is that they tend to discourage liquidity. That idea is that the movement of money generates wealth, as opposed to just the static accumulation of resources. The discord between the two components, ie the tangible commodities and the intangible exchange instruments, is perhaps a principal cause of the instability. Students of US history should be aware that the US has a long and sordid history with real estate speculation. Pre-dating even the National Bank crisis of the Jacksonian administration, real estate speculation has been a constant theme of US domestic economics. The liquidity of paper-based exchange has provided the ability for venturing parties to expand and develop new resources that they otherwise would not be able to. The inter-bank discounting allowed the growth of inter-regional commerce and the industrial capacity to grow the national economy. However, until the socialist Wilson's administration enacted the Federal Reserve system, and the FDR administration's commercial banking regulations, there was insufficient depth and regulatory oversight to both mandate best operating practices, and provide a relief mechanism for the primary banks. For all intents and purposes, you could drive a wagon out into the middle of the prairie, print bills out the back of your wagon, and have people buy and sell land off of that. The catch is if you weren't good with numbers, you might not understand what's a safe debt-to-asset ratio, and if the railroad decides overnight not to build to your town, you're screwed and so's everyone with your paper. The Federal Reserve system and banking regulations are a help, not a hindrance. As proof of that, notice that in the present 'crisis' the primary banks that are subject to those regulations are having less than ideal fiscal calendars, but are doing just fine. It's the commercial and investment banks, which are not subject to those regulations, and which are engaging in historically inadvisable practices that are having 'problems'. The immediate roots of the present mess lay in continued fallout from the junk bond and leveraging models that gained noteriety in the late 70's through 90's, and we're now seeing the second wave of negative consequences from those that are still attempting to profit by griefing the economy. The simplified idea of junk bonds is that by taking a large variety of questionable high-risk investments, and aggregating them together, they then in theory balance each other's risk and have a higher value and lower risk. As they were less regulated with a 'buyer-beware' warning, they are easier to churn over. This allowed for the recent incarnations of industrial mergers, where the buying organization would often issue large risky bonds to finance the purchase of established corporations, and then flip the bonds by liquidating or otherwise restructuring the acquired company. This method has it's uses, but like all good things succumbed to abuse and manipulation. A good analogy of this is a particular game of monopoly I played once. By immediately mortgaging all acquired properties I kept enough cash in play that I controlled the board by 'owning' half of all properties within 5 minutes. Now I didn't actually own all those properties, they were all mortgaged and I had about 5 bucks left over. But betting on the chance of not getting stuck with any nasty penalties that I couldn't cover, I had effectively 'won' because I had 'control', even though technically I didn't 'own' anything. Ironically, I actually got banned from playing monopoly for a while by my parents (pre-teen years) because I played so dirty that they were worried about it affecting my moral character in terms of financial behavior :P The massive cash flows that increased because of this jump in investment significantly increased the speculative interest in differential investing, the kind of which tanked Barclay's bank in Asia. This is where you try to shave non-value-added profits off routine business. In Barclay's case, they were trying capture the difference between multiple parallel markets. Other hucksters in the 90's sold methods that on paper seemed viable, such as attempting to exploit subtle variations by day-trading. In theory, it sounds like an interesting idea, but it runs counter to the fundamental principle of sound investing, that the purpose of investing is to build up the investment, not to bleed it dry. Again, day-trading in moderation has it's place, but in excess led to the absurdity of the dot.com IPO rush. There was a chart I saw once, and unfortunately I didn't have the presence of mind to save it, but it showed a certain tech company's annual sales growing at a modest healthy level for several years, then their annual growth rate tripled in the last pre-Y2k years. They projected that adjusted rate to be the actual baseline because marketing says that next year must be better than last year. They then took a huge hit in the post-Y2K re-normalization that continued on through the post-9/11 freeze. However, their 'massive decline' actually tracked straight through back to the 'normal' prep-boom growth line, they just wouldn't admit that it was in actuality a short-term burst in the middle of long-term stable growth. One of the schemes promoted in the late 90's was that of leveraged real estate speculation. This was targeted at a new generation unacquainted with the historical cases of the spectacular failure of this particular function. The idea is that by using specialized mortgages that have minimal interest-only payments, the investor can then 'control' substantially more capital than they otherwise would qualify for. Again, in moderation there is measure of good business in this, but it rapidly began to be exploited by people with unsound ability. I heard a radio ad the other day about how someone thinks they're rich because they 'own' 36 houses. In all actuality, their name is on the loans for 36 empty houses, and they don't own the one they actually live in. All those mortgages are, like the junk bonds mentioned previously, got bundled up and sold to an investment bank which unlike a commercial bank is not subject to the regulations intended to protect the lenders and lendees. So the investment banks, like Bear Stearns, thought they'd get rich by squeezing off the fees and monthly interest payments, and loaned out all the money they had. Investing in Bear Sterns meant that your money was going to fund those schemes. The latest wrinkle is apparently the investment banks found a method to get around the regulations put in place to prevent insider exploitation like the kind of Enron. Now there are investigations into rigged insider trading, because some people made a pile of money off the fire sale. The summary of this is that there's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Incidentally, I got a notice from my bank stating that they were raising my credit limit because I paid my bills and stayed out of debt, proving my ability to live within my means. If that were adopted as habit instead of speculation, that would fix a lot of things.
  7. shinRaiden

    Binoculars

    This has little to do with the engine. The binoc's branch into a specific anims branch (configs) because they're flagged, probably via the type=WeaponSlotBinocular; property. You just need to make more anims and re-branch the configs. Although, when was the last time you attempted to maintain a stable viewing in real life while walking around? Kinda pointless imho, too much work for a rather trivial little niggly.
  8. shinRaiden

    New VBS2 features

    The UK content is a multi-facet contracted content and functionality update. Functionality updates I expect will be likely be in the VTK related engine updates. Whether the content is approved for general VBS2 user distribution is up to the terms of contract between the MoD and BIA.
  9. shinRaiden

    New VBS2 features

    uh... First off, while trial keys do exist, they're not just handed out on a whim. I'm not aware of any cases where a trial key has gone out that there wasn't the serious expectation of a minimum of 5 to 15 sales, not counting LaserShot, Calytrix, or content development license additions. You can run the numbers on international shipping for your local postal or courier service, but in all cases you're looking at express shipping costs for the key and software to be comparable to what ArmA would cost retail. That doesn't actually cover the cost of procuring the key itself Second, the guy who's phone rings in the middle of the night isn't free either. Phone and shipping bills have to be paid, airlines - hotels - rental cars all need to be paid, and those costs add up. Again, you're free to price those out yourself with any random company off of Google. Airlines don't take Skittles as payment-in-kind. The XAM mod for ArmA does that. Not sure about the aim jumping part, but it wouldn't be too hard to add it if it's not already there. Other upcoming mods will have similar features. Hence both Dslyexci and General_Barron's point about the vast bulk of the goodies can be largely done in content. Just because in theory they can be, doesn't mean that in practicality they can be realized. Citing Ondrej, The last point I want to try and impress here, and I know it's going to go way over the heads of most, but it needs to be emphasized, is the convolutions of the buzzword 'Serious Games'. The traditional approach in training is to use what's called 'Modeling and Simulation', where you are trying to get a visual representation of your proven statistical data. For example, a certification / qualification flight simulator has all the real world equations built in, and is designed using a validated model. The pretty picture is an attempt to visualize the numbers going on behind the scenes. You know what the numbers are, you want to see what they look like. Serious Games goes the other direction, you have a nice pretty picture but have no idea what it's representing. You need to work backwords, and try to extract sample statistical data from the representation, then see if it conforms to validated models. Just because the data conforms however, doesn't mean that the model conforms, so there's the risk of anomalies popping up and spoiling the data. Let's take optics for a random example. With classical M&S, you have all the numbers for what the optical effects are, the challenge is figuring out how to make a picture of the numbers. With Serious Games, you have a nice pretty picture, but no idea and no numbers to prove that it conforms to reality. However, there is argued to be a middle ground where perfect fidelity is non-critical, that representative data is sufficient. That's where VBS comes in. 'Corridor shooter' type engine design inherently doesn't allow for the reconfigurability and fidelity required in a dynamic FPS setting, and they seldom scale well to vehicle capacity. Flight Sims on the other end lack the fidelity and functionality to make FPS level activities visually appealing, and event data is often insufficient.
  10. shinRaiden

    New VBS2 features

    None of the above. My professional real-life job involves VBS2. I do scenario design for a simulation company that uses VBS2 as the basis for live-fire and virtual (laser-based) firearms training. In a completely unrelated note, I also participate in the ACE development as a hobby. There is no relation between ACE and VBS2, no shared development, nothing. ACE is for ArmA and ArmA2, VBS2 is for the military, and VTK is for VBS2 and has absolutely no association to ACE. The point is that much of the content in VBS2 is just that, it's content, that could be done largely (but not always completely or simply) in ArmA. The difference is that BIA has the ability to make engine changes as required to implement non-existent capabilities (eg thermal, engine-side AI behavioral hooks, etc) as required. As for any collaboration, while various Bohemia Interactive and partner company employees may be privately involved with various community projects, this is an individual and private matter, and has nothing to do with Bohemia Interactive or any BI product.
  11. shinRaiden

    New VBS2 features

    To follow up with what Dslyexci said... Some bits in VBS(2) are code that is/was/will be in the engine that goes into the game products, but for various reasons (such as those recently mentioned by ondrej) were not practical to finish and release. Some bits are developed and managed entirely by the BIA development team, completely outside any relation to the entertainment development teams. Other parts, though similar in function, may be vastly different in actual implementation. A case in point is the destructible building prototype for VBS1. It worked, based on modifications done by BIA, but the ArmA2 approach as publicly explained differs radically in actual implementation, for the same net effect. Many of the differences are due to the overlap and separation of the product development. Again, referencing Ondrej's remarks about the development cycle, engine development and content development are never perfectly in-sync. As a result, engine capabilities developed for future projected gaming products may be stabilized in time for VBS2 releases, which do not conform to the entertainment calendar. Additionally, VBS2 project development started well after ArmA development was underway, and thus had a 'clean slate' to learn from and compensate for many of the lessons learned from the ArmA development process. Another aspect is that VBS2 is marketed as a multi-year platform, while Armed Assault necessarily follows the whims of the entertainment market. Without access to actual numbers from either product, I'd guess that the bulk of ArmA sales were made within the first six months of release, with a steady decline in sales following that, with a bump from the QG expansion. That's how the game market works. Conversely, in the VBS2 market, initial sales would have been consciously limited to 'launch customers', with sales and installed base increasing as time goes on, rather than decreasing as an entertainment product does. As a result, the volume of financed development increases as time goes on for products in VBS2's market, while the entertainment market requires a new product for the new year. This is why BIS saves 'new stuff' for revenue-generating 'new products' and only releases non-revenue bug fixes to provide warranty service and maintain goodwill. Same here, and I can think of countless experiences I've had from the support side as an observer. I've seen a field exercise replicated in 15 minutes and run so well that nothing short of ordering KFC would slow down the success. Perhaps the best complement to the work of others is one remark made at a trade show by the spouse of someone in the industry : In regards to specific applications however, I would caution folks that it can be very hazardous to your health to take the helm of the boat when Dslyexci decides to toss you an LGB. There's a reason they put seat belts in the Mark V's, would be nice to have on the Sea Arc's.
  12. shinRaiden

    Help with High-Resolution Maps

    ATI decided to cut corners to try and make their cards faster. Also part of the reason why ATI's can't support multi-output display spanning. Part of DX10 was a management decision mandating that the device mfgr's stick to the script and implement the DX spec as-is, instead of making private modifications.
  13. shinRaiden

    Operation Flashpoint 2 officially announced

    iirc, (so take it as it is) I read somewhere that the released pictures were implied to be 'concept art' so that the design team could get a feel for what their targeted objectives are. If that is the case, then that is a very concerning - for them - attitude.
  14. shinRaiden

    The death of freedom

    This is a very very controversial bees nest you are hitting with that stick. I believe that parents say one thing but mean another thing , for example they say we are doing this for you're best interest but it is their opinion of best interest not you'res. Russian parents are especially a bad example of parenting because it is frequent that you will encounter their "stalin" style of ruling/administration , heck I have even experienced it from my own parents. I don't know what more I can write at the moment. And I'm sure that the disciplined consumption for medicinal uses of traditional, therapeutic, and patriotic tonics had no factor either in their less than illustrious parenting. My point, made in sarcasm, was in rebuttal to the "waaa, mommy doesn't want me looking at pr0n" comments made previously. I was trying to make the point that there is the remote possibility that just maybe others have a different world-view than he does (as incredulous as that may seem), and it would be quite beneficial to understand why different people see things differently, instead of whining about how everyone is out to make his life miserable.
  15. shinRaiden

    The death of freedom

    There's two reasons, both of which I do not expect you to either understand or accept, but which I will mention anyway. I presume that your context applies to ISP's, however similar contexts apply to employer-provided access at work etc. 1 - The providers have to them an unacceptable exposure to litigation resulting from usage activities that are not protected as free speech. 2 - Customers actually want those kind of restrictions. From an IT administrative standpoint, it is far simpler and cheaper to implement an open, un-monitored, and un-filtered connection. However, the potential risk in terms of exposure to litigation by personnel believing that the provider contributed in part by negligence to the actual harassment actions of other personnel, combined with the negative publicity and costs of lost productivity is substantially less than the costs of implementing 'restrictions'. Similarly, history of past litigation has set a precedent of risk of litigation if the provider allows access to content illegal in the relevant jurisdiction. This has nothing to do with whether the litigation is generally tossed out or not, the very existence of risk of exposure is sufficient for the provider to take preemptive action to reduce exposure to risk. "It's just good business." At the end user level, it may be unfathomable for you, but there are actually politically and commercially viable sections of the general populace that view assisted self-discipline as a virtue, and not a vice. While on a strictly technical it may seem laughable to attempt to block everything objectionable (take for example a false positive block on a variety of edible Japanese mushrooms, or abuse of html/bbCode to pass content past censoring scripts), that does not reduce the fact that many people do want those filters for reasons that are not negotiable. Unfortunately, every time this subject comes up, it rapidly devolves into an ugly and insulting flame war. Yes, there are valid points about who gets to determine if there should be limits, and if so, what they should be. By and large, the implementations I have seen have been matters of personal choice. If you do not like your internet provider's choice of access policies, perhaps it is time you either moved out of your parent's basement, or sincerely listened to their reasons for concern for your welfare. You don't have to accept them, I'm just saying it would be highly advantageous in the long run to understand them. There is always another provider willing to give you anything you want. Whether that is actually in your best interest, is a determination you should give more than just a passing consideration.
  16. Episode section listing here. VBS2 information here. Also checkout the recent news regarding the VTK capabilities here. Featuring : * Adaptive, dynamic thermal imaging * Deformable terrain * Destructible structure support * Academically modeled fatigue and morale system * Non-lethal and Active Denial System modeling And much more...
  17. shinRaiden

    AK47 vs M16

    AK for the win Child-friendly too :
  18. shinRaiden

    416 vs G36

    While the 416 is a much more capable platform due to it's out-of-the-box reconfigurability, the G36 wins for actual usage seeing how the 416 was just pulled from AWG's inventory. Furthermore, while Delta may have deployed the 416, USSOCOM deployed the FN SCAR instead of the 416. It's a fairly clear synopsis : 1 - AWG has limited budgetary discretion to buy 'toys' for 'evaluation'. 2 - AWG is mandated to train units not equipped with 'evaluation toys'. 3 - Army procurement determined that AWG attempted to short-circuit procurement by allocating 'evaluation toys' into the operational pool.
  19. shinRaiden

    March 6th Update on Patch Status

    Thank you kindly for misrepresenting my comments so completely. As this thread is spiraling into the oblivion of becoming a slap-fight over whining about subjects of which the posters have absolutely no basis in reality over, I hereby add my cheese to the spilled whine and exercise my tenured prerogative to have an exclusive monopoly on being annoyed with Dslyexci for strictly private reasons which must not be named here. All in jest, things are going reasonably swimmingly. The facts of public knowledge are these : 1 - BIS is continuing to support ArmA, and is still working on 'a' patch for ArmA. It could reasonablely be argued that the scope and scale of the engine re-work in the patch are substantially more than what was projected, although observed impact may be less to those unfamiliar with development cycles. 2 - Testing of said mystical patch is being conducted by a swarm of allegedly sycophantic minions who according to internet legends sold their souls to nibble at the crumbs of Prague's table. It is publicly obvious that selected members of the ShackTac organization and other community members are among this group of alleged 'traitors' who insult the zombies by not sharing the premature spoils. Therefore, we can with utmost certainly and with infallible self-confidence discern that Dsylexci (among others who have no life outside of the dark caves they cower in) either are trying to buy favors of the patronage of BIS, or they have an unquenchable confidence in whatever tasty nugget they claim to have privileges to. Their reputations, and other trivial and mundane things, hang in the balance dependent on the reception of the future patch BIS has publicly committed to. A seasoned troll among n00blings would well recognize that the rewards of heaping hot coals upon the heads of a certain fallacy is fair more rewarding, and safer for one's own reputation, than taking the gamble to with malice return a STFU amidst the banter of t3h intardnets. A measure of prudence is highly advisable to avoid future pillorying when the impatient insults of the inane are exposed as the self-abusing and narcissistic absurdities that they are.
  20. shinRaiden

    March 6th Update on Patch Status

    From a programming perspective, this is exactly what BIS should NOT do. It's the compartmentalization between 'SP' and 'MP' that introduces faults and problems and chaos.
  21. shinRaiden

    Terrain Deformation

    Well the terrainGrid isn't "too bad", only several dozen megabytes, and changes can be pushed around on demand, and you would only giet significant delays when you JIP in and need the updates. Objects on the other hand is a different matter. My understanding is that the terrain grid is all loaded, but objects are not. Whether that means the indexes are loaded or no, I don't know. Regardless, you can have a ton of objects out there that need correlated updates, and thus can't effectively be streamed from disk.
  22. shinRaiden

    Terrain Deformation

    With caveat's of course. If your terrainGrid is a very low resolution, you'll end up with ugly blocky holes. High-resolution terrainGrid gives you prettier holes, but at lots of other costs. Furthermore, you have a lot of map changes to push to all the network clients to keep maintained as well. BTW, in the prior version of the product which shall not be named here, it was tested and worked nicely in theory, though with the issues described above.
  23. shinRaiden

    ArmA 2 Press Coverage

    Uh, re the 'fluid animations', if you look closely, it's actually a video of a video of a demo tape from the Motion Capture division, highlighting work they've done for other customers.
  24. shinRaiden

    Overwriting configs.

    Deleting could actually introduce more errors than it would fix. This is because if you delete the bogus class in your addon, but the class is not actually introduced until after your addon, it's a moot point. As an aside, stringtables loading is completely independent of this whole mess. Stringtables files are loaded strictly by addon file name, independent of the config cfgPatches hierarchy.
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