wamingo

It's a different topic of course, but I think without a serious pot of gold waiting at the end, the penalty for death simply can't be too high. And because there isn't a reward, even the most hardcore mil simmers won't play arma for long without a reasonably low fear of death. ie. a stray bullet can end the fun very quickly if the travel time is long. No matter how much one may insist on keeping distance, taking cover and avoiding tactical reloads, at the end of the day, I'm sure we'll find that, at heart, we are, to an extent, all internet rambo's. apologies if I overuse commas.

I won't cry if it remains barren and I try not to get too excited about any one thing, however I do get the impression that there's something being done in this direction. Hence my curiosity. The fact remains, though, that a completely barren landscape, like arma2's infinite space, is pretty much effectively useless. You can add objects of course, so it's not 100% useless. Yet I've certainly never used it, nor ever seen it used in well over 300 user missions. Have you? And I'm not sure you're right about the performance hit. Procedural generation basicly means it's created at runtime - not just the landscape but also trees, rocks, grass and other stuff would be generated when it is needed (ie when you get close enough). This doesn't have to be slow with a fancy enough equation.

Will the procedurally generated landscape be barren in OA?

I quite like the idea of Context Aware features to be honest. We're already half way there with mounting vehicles, ladders, doors, ammo boxes, and possibly a few more, all requiring just aiming your cursor at it and the Use button. That certainly didn't break the game -- although aiming can be tricky sometimes; ladders and dead bodies.. Grrrr!. :) The case for a "Smart" button is a good one I think - ie one you hold while moving up to a context sensitive object and the appropriate action occurs; jump the fence, climb the ladder, kick the door (I know, I'm dreaming), climb the ledge, etc. Maybe you've already seen it, but the upcoming game Brink promises something along these lines. About 2 mins into shows how holding the 'Smart' button while running and looking up or down allows you to either leap over or slide under the metal detector.Of course such manuevers would be silly in arma, but I think the principle is good. I admit though, I have no idea where to fit in any more buttons on my already outrageously busy keyboard setup. ;) It would probably have to be a Space, Ctrl, Shift, Alt, Windows key?... type thing. edit: I linked the wrong video... doh

is the game switching the keyboard language? shift+alt is default in win7 I think. I accidently switch between english/danish sometimes. rather annoying. although your problem sounds more crazy. is it a legal copy?

If you hit Stand Up BEFORE hitting Run/Sprint then the Stand Up animation will finish before letting the soldier move. But if you hit run/sprint before Stand-Up it should make a nice smooth dash. I suspect Evasive Forward is obsolete. No reason to change anything you like, of course. :)

What do you use Evasive Forward for? Only use I found for it was to go from prone to run while crawling foward... But the exact same move can be done, to either run or sprint using 'Stand Up' key, again while crawling forward (W or Ctrl+W respectively for instance). Do you perhaps use "UP/DOWN" binds instead of "Stand Up/Crouch/Prone" or a combo?

I agree 2xW is slow and interrupts the movement both when going to sprint and back to run. Do you use Ctrl for anything important? I assigned sprint to Ctrl+E (kept 2xW as well though) although I'm not sure why I chose ctrl+'E', seing as simply Ctrl+W makes more sense. Oh well. :)

point for hillarity. he's playing at breakneck speeds...

Perhaps something that might help "a little bit" was if BIS supplied a few templates for the editor, it might help ease people into it. Arma's Wizard isn't bad, but it doesn't let you go to the editor and mess with it further, which limits the wizard somewhat. The editor is brilliantly simple in many ways, but starting from scratch can be daunting nonetheless. For instance, something as rudimentary as Task Objectives is suprisingly hard to do, when it really shouldn't be. Any mission released without them is considered a bit sub standard. And I consider myself pretty decent at scripting and such and I spent absolutely hours trying to figure it out (coop taskobj's is a bitch). I know there are a potentially unlimited ways to make task-objectives, but supplying a template for each of the main play modes would not require BIS to part with an arm or leg I think. And while I'm at it, things like the ability to select weapons and ammo for units and crates through lists instead of the init command line may prove to be very appealing to both newbies and veterans alike. In other words: Polish.

That's not really optimization though, that's just dumbing down. BIS said in the OA thread that their OA tree shader ran faster AND looked better. That's optimization.

I do wonder if OA will run better now that it's a desert-like landscape. -- ie not as many trees and stuff. Can only speculate of course.

/me licks trailer. Lots of awesome right there. ~0:50 view shaky view from the littlebird landing is precisely the kind of thing that adds atmosphere. Very cool. Crossing fingers for not being video editing ;)

Goto the Game Options > Difficulty menu and then press Edit and you can see what you get from each mode. Perhaps most notable, on recruit/regular you can take a little more damage and on veteran/expert you lose target info, crosshairs and such. There are no technical benefits from higher difficulty so just choose whatever you're comfortable with.

If the definition of a casual player is a UT/BF2 junkie with no attention span, then fine, weed em out. But, in my opinion, the hard-core 17 year old arrogant techies are at least as annoying... I think the usual definition of casual as being non-fanatical and non-techie typically produces the most enjoyable player. They do tend to need guidance, but are usually quite open minded and willing to try out new things, ie mods, teamplay, etc. But if you don't set the entry bar fairly low, it will, of course, make these people run away. Which is a shame even if it means having more of the first group as well. Join In Progress, for instance, appealed to both, and the extremists never complained about that.

Of course wanting for more is fine and all, but I suspect we should be thankful for what we have really. BIS have said themselves they're just not a big company with big bankrolls. And even if they were, there's a very simple reason why others aren't making simulation-like games -- The graphics-war. It's simply easier to make a sexy, super highly polished game with 50 meter visibility than one with 100 meter visibility... Nevermind then one with more than 1000 meter. But in my opinion, the real answer to your criticism are: Stop trying to do what the game isn't capable of. Instead throw down a few groups of ai in a forrest or a city with a couple of patrol wp's and let's see if you don't have some fun.

Short answer: Very big. Forget about it. But it depends on how much you want to render - the number of polygons, shaders and such. At full detail, and anything less may be unacceptable, you should expect render time to double. Now, doubling render time won't necessarily half your FPS, but it will probably be a very large chunk of it. Big enough that it won't be acceptable. I think it's a wonderland thing.

And my wet dream involves You, a steak down your pants and a pack of starving rottweilers. ;) but seriously, yes, dreams are often quite silly. ;)

I'd thought it was very relevant seing as hordes of servers use mods. And with many of them you're not given a clue until you join. And when you do you're met with gibberish. If you want people to stay past their first try, you need to give them something more appealing than frustrations.

Pretty easy ain't easy enough. In today's age mods are enabled through an interface, not a commandline. This is the type of polish that people expect today. Every corner must be rounded, waxed and polished, then waxed and polished some more.

Who cares about this sort of thing, really.

Who doesn't want to see more? :) hype usually gets backlash though. But I have to say, thus far, OA looks excellent. A solid upgrade that any arma player will want. And thanks deadfast for the translations, you're the man.

Why it takes 6 inventory slots is to me still the biggest puzzle.