baddo

Well anyways, it's up to the BIS developers to consider what features they want to implement into ArmA 2... ...if a gasmask fits in, then fine. If it doesn't, then no problems from my side expected. I just don't understand why people who are not ArmA developers, shoot this kind of suggestion down. On one hand, they like the idea of playing the most realistic military simulation game available, but on the other hand, they talk against realistic features like a gasmask which would open lots of scenario possibilities. Better it would be if it was implemented in the game by default and not 'modded in'. Maybe it's just me, but I don't get it Â

If it's too costly to have realistically looking ragdoll physics in these kinds of games. Then how about this. Let animation system handle a death of a character up to the point it does currently in ArmA. Then enable ragdoll physics mode and thus let the character follow the shape of the terrain that way. One of the ugliest things I see in ArmA is the way the characters often have their body up in the air after death... because they stay in the position of the last animation frame. This could be solved by having at least a little bit of ragdoll physics in there.

http://www.ofpec.com/ it's where the really interesting discussions about mission editing happen. So that's the website I have to say is #1. This place is sometimes good, but too often not.

People seem to have this idea that ragdoll physics means that? Where did you get that idea from? You will have both animation and ragdoll physics. Ragdoll physics takes over at some point. When it does take over, you can actually have control how much there is movement of the limbs, and at what rate and dampening they move. It is all on the developers' responsibility to make it look realistic. It is not the fault of the technology if it is used in unrealistic ways.

I go as far as saying that the CWR team should ignore for now what people wish to be 'fixed'. I mean how are they going to get the thing done if they listen to your suggestions? To me it has been clear that the goal of the CWR project is to bring OFP CWC into ArmA. I think that changing the goal of the project from bringing OFP content into ArmA into fixing what are errors in OFP in your opinion at this stage could be a costly mistake regarding project schedule.

If nothing in the scripting seems to help, there is something I think could work. Maybe this has even been done already in OFP? Might be worth checking how some smokescreen addons, which supposedly blocks the AI's view, were done for OFP. Create an addon which is invisible to you, but not to the AI. A wall which blocks their view but doesn't affect collision calculations. I'm thinking in the 3D model files there is possibility to do this, as I recall the 'level-of-details' are separated so that you can have the physics geometry, visual geometry and 'view' geometry separately. This leads me to thinking this could be exploited to make an invisible wall which blocks only the view of the AI. I could be wrong though, as I never tried to do it. It could block also your view. You would then put such walls around them into the distance you want. Not really good, but I think if you want to achieve it, this way you could. Maybe.

Reminds me of how I asked the FDF Mod folks for a gasmask, and they (well the one person at the IRC channel) ridiculed the idea  Also at their forums this idea didn't really get much serious support... Why not have a gasmask in a game? I have good memories from the army using it! Running in the icy, snowy steep hills of Hämeenlinna with the gasmask on was fun! Especially as my breathing technique was obviously not perfect, as the visibility lowered quite substantially due to the moisture inside the mask... I was surprised to make it out unhurt of that training! Not all did by the way. Creating an overlay to block visibility like a gasmask does to you would be easy to implement wouldn't it. Also the 3D model, technically possible too isn't it. And why not have some scripts to make characters die in a gas cloud if they don't have their mask on. This opens so much possibilities scenario-wise, that why not do it.

Well it was a right decision to cancel the race. Think about organizing it... how do you change your plans as drastically as changing the special stages to another country in the last moment? Better just drop it and have a look again for next year.

Uh, what? ArmA runs stable when I use a restricted account... I know not all games work well if they are not used by admin account, but all of those which I know are old games and their developers probably never were thinking that users might actually have accounts and different permissions.

Why do you ask here about it. Contact the publisher of the game directly.

You did not sound rude

Before you shoot down an idea, please understand not everyone knows even the existence of a "Print Screen" button... I've met enough people who didn't so I thought why not make sure this guy here knows about it. Surprisingly often people don't know it can be used to take screenshots. But I'm sure Deusrexmachina now knows enough options.

"Print Screen" button on your keyboard is also worth a try for the screenshots. If you bother to switch to a graphics editing program to do a "paste" and "save" before taking another screenshot.

It would be an interesting game indeed. It would be even more interesting to see if such game is allowed to be sold in the USA? In the country of Freedom? Would they allow that kind of games? Have there been any such games in their markets?

ofpdeadeye how did you get my family photo? Â I'm the one with the snout.

Yeah... happy new year! The year I will turn 30 years old!   Should I go  or  I don't know yet about that. But I have an odd feeling inside me that this is going to be a much better year for me than the last one Â

Well yeah... if you look only at what kind of equipment an army has... the Finnish Defence Forces have lots of Soviet equipment. BMP-1, BMP-2, T-55 T-72, BTR, ZIL, UAZ, GAZ, MtLb, AK, PKM, Dragunov, helicopters, well the list goes on and on... if you look at that huge pile of Soviet equipment we have, you could think it's a Soviet/Russian army when it certainly is not... We have made lots of equipment on our own too. Mortars, artillery guns, rifles, APC's, Nasu, trucks, come to mind now. And purchased lots of stuff from Western countries. Weapons, AT launchers, Leopard tanks, American jet fighters, European transport helicopters (well if only the manufacturer would deliver them! )... The point is, the equipment just doesn't tell what nationality a game is portraying, if it isn't explicitly pointed by the game developers to a certain nation. In ArmA it isn't. Soviet equipment is so wide-spread that many nationalities have it in significant amounts. It's then up to your imagination to choose the side of a game as you wish. Also, I have no morality problems playing any side in games like OFP/ArmA. I can play as a Russian soldier and shoot at the FDF. Because it's a game. In reality I would not do that of course, being my patriotic self, but in a game it is richness to be able to play other sides too.

Eh  we got different GOTY's  ? ? ? ? ? Edit: FFUR distributing Apocalyptica? How niceÂ

Well did you check if it is on the GOTY #3 CD?

Yeah it would be cool... How about textures? Does your tool generate those too? Well maybe some common textures could be used for the many different models. There is going to be lots of work for this. If you take a look at the building 3D model files, you will notice it is not just the simple shape of the building which makes up an OFP/ArmA building model file.

Yes I agree, if you are about to write tools then XML is nice. I've done that myself and reading/writing XML is very easy to program. Even in C++ if you use TinyXML. But there are drawbacks also, ones I mentioned already are readability problem and performance penalty. If XML is going to be used, I suggest BIS should have a converter program which converts between their internal "pre-parsed, compiled" binary format and XML. That tool of course would be given to community. This way we can have the files loaded into the engine in an optimal format, but also have the files in XML if wanted so. The binary file format should be BIS' "secret", other people would then not need to do anything with it but just use the XML. This way BIS could change their binary file format and not break other peoples' tools from working. Because their binary<-->XML converter would handle the changes.

You know, there's a very good website offering beta testing services for mission authors... by the community for the community... http://www.ofpec.com/ of course... Â

Wait... aren't the music tracks on one of the GOTY CD's ? Try GOTY disk #3 in your music player and see what happens. My GOTY CD #3 says "Game Disc/Audio CD" I just tested and it has 18 tracks.

Does stacking parts of a building work? I guess it should have to be done with a script, not in World editor program? I'm fearing the parts could not be stable.

Uh it's a bit old comment but I must say this: XML is relatively slow to process! While it would be fine to have it as development-phase format, I would say some other format for a released product would be better. I'm not sure if the BIS config files are much better when in ASCII, but if they are pre-parsed and "compiled" then its performance easily outperforms XML I would say. Also, XML is meant to be processed by programs, not by humans. Readability-wise it is far from a good choice. Just wanted to point out some negatives in XML, as you said 'most fantastic thing' which is... well... a slight exaggeration? Â