sluggCDN

- Somehow they have to fix, smooth out character control - it's very clumsy when it comes to up-close battles. - leaning option to be able to stick out from behind a corner to shoot without stepping out - for the sake of realism there should be animations of people mounting/dismounting vehicles properly especially apc's and tanks with opening hatches etc. now it works like this: u stand next to a vehicle and then u are magically teleported inside the cockpit. Ppl are very vulnerable when they are trying to get in or out of hatches. Getting into a tank will be much more difficult that way. U'd need to climb it, open hatch, slide in - meanwhile u can be shot at. - all sorts of shellshock effects like disappearing hearing, blurring, being knocked down to the ground by an explosion. Blackouts from extrenious physical stress or when being injured. for example when running overloaded with equip. for long periods would evetually cause blackout. - airborne vehicles upon collision with the ground have to be disintegrating in explosion and cloud of fire. now we have some smoke, fire effects and a bouncing piece of slightly crumpled model of the aircraft which looks like a damaged pop can. When planes explode they do explode actually!!! - realistic AI behaviour when being fired upon - bots would have to actually start running or taking cover when being suppressed with lets say an MG as opposed to acting like maniacs that pay no attention to flying bullets. Ghost Recan had it realized real good - in an enemy AI formation u'd have one guy always kneeling laying down covering fire when the rest would are running for cover when u'd fire upon the formation. - AI characters should have voice overdub besides the simple 2-3 cries they make when wounded or being killed. Again as in Ghost Recon they should be shouting commands, cursing, calling for backup, or simply exchanging some phrases. This aspect of gameplay adds to much deeper emersion.

I still can't invision/imagine how they are gonna make realistic animation of character death in a narrow stairwell/staircase of an apt. building without ragdoll or similar effect - bodies will be lying then like rigids planks on top of stairs regardless whether the engine moves the body away from the wall; it will still be "gong show". And the game is promised to feature large urban environment. Also will AI be entering buildings and fight inside of them? There must be a way around animated behaviour. ragdoll ads so much variety into the gaming experience. It's just that by the end of the 3rd hour of playing ArmA a person will already know every single death animation there is. Trying to expend animation library and predict all possible positions and moves can be as laborious as making a ragdoll-like engine be CPU-friendly. Another thing I wish ArmA had besides good ragdoll is good sound/voice overdub of character interaction as for example it was done in Ghost Recon - nothing makes it more realistic than voice recordings of real people shouting commands, screaming in fear or pain, or cursing at enemy or simply crackign a joke after a bulls-eye shot, or simply sneezing, farting, yawning, coughing, etc  You get the idea- whatever makes AI more human.  Right now OFP bots look and act like bots. And there also is that bot-like voice engine... cool thing about ragdoll it does all animation for developers. BIS is full of very stubborn rigid ppl - they've done so many great things and introduced so many innovations unseen before or unrealized by others but then at the same time refuse to do some very simple things which will give their product that extra luster/polish. Don't tell me that with the the talents they have there they can't make ragdoll as good as DoD:Source and force it work for ArmA with little toll on CPU!!!

going back to ragdoll . I also remembered ArmedA will have far more detailed urban environment - that means a lot of fighting in staircases or other uneven multilevel surfaces. In OFP as it stands right now at the end of any death animation a body assumes a static "frozen" position usually flat on a ground. With OFP Resistance introduction of more detailed  multilevel buildings u could usually see corpse basically hovering in the air, parallel to the ground after death simply because its foot would be stuck on a ledge or a top step of a staircase. it would eventually be slowly "sinking" down tho; but things like that would really detract from the sense of emersion. So again whatever they do just static death animation may not be an ideal solution. ragdoll is the closest to the "realistic" thing they ever got. I totally agree - falling-thru-walls bodies don't work well, and that is an frequent occurance in OFP so far. oh, well...

Ragdoll- is the effect when a character model literally starts behaving like a rag doll when the character gets killed. The model's body is divided into separate body parts connected by joints like forearms, shoulder, torso, head, ankle, thigh ets. each body part is assign a weight value. When the character gets killed in the game it's body starts collapsing, falling or flying depending on circumstance in a somewhat natural fashion. So there is really no death animation. the dead body movement is generated by models body parts weight and the force of the impact caused by other objects like bullets, expls. shock wave, vehicle etc. u can see the body flopping and falling to the ground like a rag doll, hence the naming. actually, I absolutely loved death animations of the original OFP - in general they are still the best u can find out there. But the ragdoll would have to be implemented if they plan to have flying corpses. right now in OFP the corpses launched in the air by explosion fly like a piece of plywood and keep on bouncing the most rediculous way upon landing. plus now in OFP dead bodies usually kinda get uplifted by a grenade explosion next to them - it looks like the body just get instantly frozen and move as one piece. So overall the ragdol should be added if dead bodies will be airborne so that they actually flip in the air and land properly. They should either get rid of flying corpses or keep it and introduce ragdoll for airborne characters.