Baphomet

I have mentioned this many, many, many, many (to the power of 100) times before. I have as of the last year and a half had been exposed to the experience of firing a wide variety of firearms. What OFP needs now is take that vection based aiming system to a new level and simulate human error even more accurately. As it stands. It's pretty ridiculous that you can just crack off 300/400m shots as if they were nothing. Yes. There is an up/down left/right wobble when holding a gun. As far as full auto fire goes, if you've ever fired a fully automatic weapon. When you've supported the weapon from moving back any further while it's firing... the next thing it wants to do instead of climb is move to the side. Then you try compensating for it and it's not at all uncommon (in cases where weapons are unfixed or unbraced on something, ie: standing up... or even crouching with your support arm's elbow resting on your your knee... or something else... etc) for the gun to slightly drift (by slightly I mean by visual standards it's not much, but an inch of movement accounts for yards of inaccuracy at longer ranges) back to the other side and erratically so on and so forth. The more forceful the recoil, the more it wants to do this. More experienced shooters I have seen... deal with this better. But the average guy will always have that trademark (if I can't recoil up... I'm going to sway sideways) weapon behavior. One of the greatest things about OFP is the vection based aiming system, instead of some abyssmally inaccurate expanding ring system. I cannot ever say that enough. However I think I would like to see inaccuracy modeled, but instead of picking a random vector within an expanding circle, do it right. Simulate the human movement and point of origin on the weapon that actually made the bullet fly off in that direction. Not just leave it to random number generation. That's lazy. Anyhow. Iron sights. With a 2d system, that's impossible. However even with 3d iron sights, as most people have lauded as being vastly superior, are no better than 2d sights because as you mentioned Void_false. YOU DON'T LINE UP THE SIGHTS YOURSELF. They're pre-configured to be always lined up. Even if say the game does it for you, and simulates the time it takes to hold the gun up to your shoulder and hold it steady and proper. That would be fine. Then you could just scale it as an integer based on the skill of the unit. More skilled units take less time, less inefficient compensation for wobbly weapon handling. However I'm digressing. One of the critically and commercially worst games made, was Dreamworks' Trespasser. In that, when you moved your gun around (albeit unrealistically with one hand missing) there was a realistic weight to the gun that made it move about and sort of waver before going properly into place, as a real weapon if handled that way would. You could also again, use REAL IRONSIGHTS and adjust your gun on X,Y,Z axes to get the sights the way you wanted them, and when you put the gun away and brought it back out, the computer would remember and go through the actions of bringing out the weapon and putting it in that position again. However albeit not instantaneously as we have it in OFP where you press V and get iron sights instantly. As you can see. I'm a die hard proponent of such a thing. Sadly. I think any basic framework for OFP that has already been laid will determine what kind of ballistics and weapon handling system we get. Still. It's nice to see there's other people out there who agree with my crazy notions of what OFP 2 (or any military shooter) should be like.

A plot is nice, but. If it restricts your ability to create your -own- experiences, I really don't care much for it. Daggerfall, Fallout, and Jagged Alliance 2 were my all time favorite RPGs, they all had gameplay that I could really engage myself in that didn't result in a bunch of monotonous clicking and redundant battles that were resolved by selecting attacks from a menu or whatnot. (*coughfinalfantagaycoughcoughcough*) You can still play a role and not be hindered or constrained by a rigid plot, and I think a lot of the time the emphasis of story versus gameplay is just an overcompensatory defense for a lack of good design. There's nothing saying you can't have a reasonably good story and actually have fun while playing the game. In my opinion, a story should complement what you choose to do. Not force you to constantly make comprimises with the game just so you can see the next cinematic.

A story is just something that makes the bits in between gameplay more enjoyable. I still say the animations were cockeyed and something felt just not quite right about them.

The game could have been good. However as I recall I really hated the fact that the animations sucked... the controls sucked and the combat although better than something like Diablo... still sucked. I recall something about my not liking the camera either... but either way. The weird character animations which looked almost stop-motion'y to me at times and the weird controls left a bad taste in my mouth. Couldn't enjoy it. As a side note. The weird animation problems weren't an issue of performance, as the game itself ran at decent frames. It just had really lousy animation.

It's rumored that a private security contracting firm like Blackwater or Dyneco (sp?) had a hand in the Abu Ghraib incident. If you don't know who those are... well I'll just take Zack Parsons' description of them from SomethingAwful. Blackwater USA is a corporation devoted to military and paramilitary training and it is the leading provider of armed "civilian contractors" for the United States in Iraq. Blackwater has provided security for VIPs, has gone on combat missions normally executed by the US armed forces, and the death of four of its operatives and the abuse of their corpses by an angry mob prompted the United States Marine Corps to storm Fallujah. They operate outside US military law, have participated in interrogation of detainees, and have probably been responsible for an unknown number of civilian deaths in Iraq You'll fit right in with the scores of other journalists who can't say or spell Abu Ghraib. Hm. You wouldn't by any chance be hoping for an appointment at Fox, would you? As a side note. How about not switching one regime of torture for another? It seems Iraqis are the enemies of people with power to abuse. Poor bastards.

It's entirely too convenient for the military to take a grainy sattelite image and say "Yeah, we have sattelite images, but we're not going to show you. You'll just have to trust us. Like you did when the U.S government told you all that Saddam had WMD... You'll just have to take it on faith, that we wouldn't lie or exercise overzealous undisciplined force". How many insurgent attacks happen per month? How many individuals are killed at checkpoints in iraq per month? Taking the report from avon as an unchallenged fact is a little more than irresponsible being as that it's more or less known that the goverment and military have shown they'll lie to get their way. However denior has, a point. In the course of three seconds. There was no time to warn anyone adequately.

I don't think OFP itself is dead, but I think a community that has cranked out so many addons and has nothing better to do than test the limitations of their artistic abilities and in conjunction, the processing power of the newest pcs available aren't doing the actual gaming community any favors. It's turned more into an art fanciers community from my standpoint.

Has anyone seen this? I briefly perused the forum to see if anyone had posted this before. Apologies if it is. The article I found it both interesting, and heartening to know where Marek's priorities and opinions lie on the issue of the future of gaming. As they coincide on key issues with my own. Too true. I'm very glad to see that perspective coincides with my own. I kind of feel this comment appropriately describes my viewpoint on where the addon community has gone: "But let’s hope that this “need†for better visuals will not entirely destroy the need for better gameplay. " Only... it's already happened. Again. I'm glad to see that there's a rational mind amongst the morass of individuals decrying realism in games as something of an impossibility or undesirable. I wholeheartedly agree with the question. That's just me though. But I'm glad Marek seems aware of it, and that he's not willing to sell his soul so to speak to make a few extra bucks by shortchanging what us OFP'ers have come to expect. As it stands there are few games left that I even enjoy anymore. OFP 2 will be worth buying a new system for. Definitely. It seems funny that some of the interviews I've read have been overly diplomatic and glossed over the last question with a positive spin instead of basically coming out with it. So it's really good to know that there's still at least one company worth looking out for.

Fuck yes. There are certain addons... well most if you count recent ones. I simply refuse to use. So if they're used in a dynamic mission which relies heavily on scripting. Then I'm fucked. I think it'd be a simple gesture of courtesy for a mission maker to release a version with stock units. It's not that hard to change it from there on to use a myriad of addons.

I never said I ever wanted anything high detail. I've always been a proponent of balance between form and function. 2000 polys is not a lot compared to what? Stock units? In the end that's what matters. To me at least. In the end I'm assuming people still actually use addons in missions instead of sitting there marveling at the intricate 3d details on rivets, etc. I would honestly have been happy if someone made bastler's dropship functional and just put a skin on it... and that's it. Either way, that's just my personal view on it.

One thing I wish OFP supported right out of the box was better stealth oriented gameplay. Seeing a mission in which units actively patrol for enemies and dispatch support accordingly would be interesting. I was thinking of trying to scrape together a mission like this myself. Only less geared towards combat and more towards survival.

Holy shit. Apparently the game is going to be realtime with pause For fuck sakes. Anyhow. I'm looking forward to a dynamic SOW campaign. As long as it doesn't require many addons.

All that's done in 3d? That's a bit much I think.

Totally lazy in my opinion. Yeah the original team from sir tech isn't in on this, it's some crazy russian developer I think. The fact that it's not a dynamic campain completely annihilates my interest in it. I fucking hate limitations imposed by making a story centric game. First of all if it's anything like silent storm then I'd be annoyed. Silent storm for all it's potentially useful 3d graphics had the WORST camera ever. With the advent of 3d technology in a genre like that you'd expect three dimensional graphics would enable you to see the battlefield better. OHHH NO. Says Nival!

I was toying with the concept of a scripted multiplay adversarial mission in which you have two bases, consisting of the Triads at the chinese restaurant and the bikers and perhaps you have to go around picking up unaligned civilian "workers" that are changed to whichever side your team is on. They then work the streets and make you money to buy arms. Perhaps stealing cars that spawn for money as well. Doolittle's multiplayer adversarial on a smaller scale I guess is what I was thinking. Only with the ability to pick up things like illegal booze or drugs and sell them all whilst competing with a rival faction or something. That would be cool. Something a little more subtle than just running to a rival base and stealing a flag or something. For indirect conflicts that culminate in smaller random attacks at economic targets instead of just rushing an enemy base.

I just noticed that after installing the map and playing it, and I must say. Bloody good show.

So far what pappy has done seems pretty good. A giant city in concept seems cool, however if it barely runs on an average machine how are you supposed to actually play it? After looking over what you've done so far Pappy. I'm surprised it wasn't a larger project. I'm kinda glad it turned out to be a bit more modestly sized to be honest. I think it has been refined and improved on the general design but without taking it in a completely different direction. Which is just right in my opinion. I'm assuming the car-park and the large scraper still have yet to be fixed though.

Any chance of a modder fixing certain buildings?

The weapon jamming thing sounds interesting. However I personally would like to see someone simply do the bare minimum required to make some of the units standalone. Particularly the personnel.

Saying Soldner was a failure was an understatement. I have an open mind, however I must say this: No vection based aiming system? No chance.

Actually all the trucks and cars in OFP have pretty much ridiculously low fuel capacities as compared to their real world counterparts. I HAVE had to use fueltrucks in OFP multiplay as a result of this. It's kind of a pain in the ass when in less than an hour's drive your vehicle starts to run out of fuel.

Alright. I've always been really sick of this and now I'm doing something about it. I'm customizing my config.cpp and I want to somehow reduce the visual and aural acuity of armored vehicles. I'm tired of being effortlessly spotted by a tank as a soldier nearly 600m away and being "sniped" with it's main or coaxial gun. Can anyone give me any tips as to what I need to modify so that tanks arent superhuman in their visual abilities?

This is all too common a problem with OFP these days. People making MODS. Mods are overrated. Create a series of addons with a general theme and make some maps for it. That's the beauty of OFP. You don't have to make a mod. We could have been using these ages ago it seems. I really don't think anyone would have cared if it was released as a mod or not. Still it looks good. I'll give it a shot. Especially if it's got older infantry units.

He mentions in the readme I think, that the building is missing it's lobby. I think someone should make an interim update to the map that just removes the parking garage, that unfinished building and any other half-finished objects so it can operate as a small yet unique and "functional" DM, CTF, etc map. I've been playing the map some more. It's just really really fun. Only the fence surrounding the biker bar doesn't stop personnel from passing straight through it. One more thing to fix, but this map even bugged as it is has proved to be very fun.

Do these things work in multiplay yet?