baddo

I chose T-72. The Shilka is also causing lots of fear but I play as an infantryman most of the time so the T-72 is more familiar to me as a cause of panic. So we can say the heavy tanks do their job; they scare the hell out of infantry, as they are supposed to do in real life. While I was in the FDF it was fun to watch the Armour Jaegers (I'm one too but my duty was not to fight against tanks) getting psychological training to face a T-72. For example lie on the ground in front of the tank while the tank drives closer and closer towards you. You are not allowed to move until your instructor tells you so. Always when I hear a heavy tank approaching, I start to look for a place to hide as first priority. It's better to observe the tank first from a safe place than to confront it on wide open ground, as you are likely to lose if you meet a T-72 face-to-face with a rifle and a couple of grenades. Even if you have anti-tank weapons the chances are not high for you to walk out of it if you have no cover. In the good old OFP times I loved to use satchel charges to blow up the tanks by sneaking up to them, placing the satchel charge near them and getting out of there fast! And watching the tanks jump to the air and land upside down. Edit: A quote regarding battle tanks from the FDF website. http://www.mil.fi/maavoimat/kalustoesittely/00052_en.dsp So it is nothing new what we do in OFP/ArmA for the battle tanks with satchel charges. I think the reason why Finland was using Molotov cocktails and charges against the Soviet tanks in WW II was more because we virtually did not have any better equipment, until the Germans provided us with good anti-tank weapons. I'm sure most people will choose to fire an anti-tank weapon from distance than walk up to the tank. I must also note that wood was used to jam the tracks of the tanks by Finns in WW II against the Red Army. I think that is even more courageous thing to do than the other means to stop a tank.

Well yeah my brother noticed this stuck-in-ladders bug in ArmA 1.08 too. I hadn't had it before but he started playing the campaign from the start in 1.08 and faced this bug quite early on. Also another oddity probably still present is that the footprints appear into the ground right below your feet even when you are high up in ladders. It's probably a feature and not a bug, and really has a very very low priority to fix compared to many other things.

I have professional experience from the field of CAE/CAD and I have worked with very large 3D assemblies. I have used computers at work with 1 GB, 2 GB and 4 GB of RAM. If you are not creating anything of large industrial scale, then 2 GB of RAM is enough. You can buy more RAM than 2 GB but I'm telling you you won't need it for most of the work I can imagine you doing if you are doing CAD/CAM. The memory requirement starts to affect you if your 3D model assemblies grow big, which is very unlikely if you are not doing an industrial project of something complex. For CAM I guess you would most of the time handle only one 3D model at a time, or small assemblies. If you are in some Engineering School and taking CAD/CAM classes then you will be absolutely fine with 2 GB of RAM. The available time and the scope of the classes is not enough to put you working on a project that would justify more than 2 GB of RAM. I'm not saying don't buy 4 GB of RAM, I'm saying know if you really need it. Based on my experiences I have a feeling that you don't actually need that much. It could be worthwhile for you to check first what kind of computers are used to design the parts. About dual-booting. Yes you can do it, but I think you could be better of not doing it. Might be overly complicated to your situation. I myself have WinXP and Linux on the same computer, but that's only because I want to use Linux most of the time, and WinXP for playing games. I wouldn't put two Windows operating systems into the same computer as I think there is not enough benefits.

Well if you look at the function aliveGroup, it actually helps you do exactly that. Example (I promise it works in OFP as I haven't used this in ArmA): Into a trigger's condition field: (group player) call aliveGroup That would then give you either true or false. If this has to be done by scripting then I don't know how much more simple it can get. I wrote the function as it is easier to remember how to call it than to think how the syntax went for the function itself. Maybe there is some shorter way to do it in ArmA's triggers (without writing any code) but I didn't look into it yet and can't do it now either.

I have no personal experiences with 64-bit Windows XP but I only remember reading about problems. I wouldn't really buy 64-bit XP at all, I'd buy Vista 64-bit but that's either not promised to work with OFP/ArmA. A safe bet is to use 32-bit Windows XP with OFP & ArmA. You can use 32-bit XP on the new 64-bit AMD/Intel hardware. You can then at later time upgrade your operating system to a 64-bit version when the rest of the software, like games, have catched up. This is what I have planned to do if I end up buying a new computer in the near future, I'll not buy an operating system at all for now but will use my old 32-bit XP on the new 64-bit hardware. The basic difference between 32-bit and 64-bit is how much memory (2^32 or 2^64) your computer can address. If you don't need to address more than 4 GB of memory then don't worry about having a 64-bit operating system. Over 4 GB of addressable memory is useful for professional 3D modelling (large assemblies of large 3D models), servers and such. For a gaming computer you don't need that much.

Well I should maybe correct the word 'often' into 'sometimes', to soften my statement a bit. It really depends on the mission. In some missions using the AI soldiers at first and then on later stage being a lone wolf by yourself can be just the right tactic if the purpose is to keep the whole team alive to the end of the mission. But I won't leave my AI team mates out of the battle right in the beginning, as I see they can provide so much more firepower than a lone human player, when properly utilized. For example think about clearing a town. You approach the town from a far distance and spot enemy groups around the town in open fields. Now you can use your AI team mates in prone position, line formation, targets assigned to all of them, to clear all of the enemy groups around the town from a relatively safe distance, by quickly retreating to a safe location after a hit and repeating the same careful procedure of approaching, targeting and shooting as many times as needed. In this phase we need maximum firepower directed against the whole enemy group to eliminate them before they are able to react and flank you. Maximum firepower is what your AI team mates can provide. If you try to do it all alone then you are likely to get killed. When you go into the town, then your AI team mates are not nearly as useful. Then it easily becomes too much of a hassle to control each individual AI team mate effectively. At that point it is likely that I begin to act almost as a lone wolf, leaving the AI soldiers as backup, watching main roads and so on. If you try to take all of the AI soldiers with you into tight spaces and keep them all alive then it's going to be difficult. If the AI team mates are following you in formation into a town where enemies are hiding behind unknown corners, it is very likely according to my experiences that most of your AI team mates will be dead soon after entering the town. As it would at this point be too much of a hassle to control all of them effectively, it is easier to just leave them as backup and providing fire support into main roads. If you want them to stay alive instead of dying when in formation with you, that is. If you don't care about them staying alive then you can as well let them run in formation with you. You are right, we are babysitting the AI soldiers. But unfortunately that's how it is in computer games. A machine only does what it was programmed to do, and what you ask it to do. As I already said, it is slow to use the tactics I am using when commanding AI soldiers. Actually, I've been to many multiplayer sessions where human players needed to be constantly babysitted, and still the teamwork was almost non-existant. So there's certainly a lot of problems with human beings too, not just with AI's.

Well I think it really pays off to practice commanding an AI team. You must give them plenty of orders, or they won't be effective. What I do when I'm a leader of an AI team is that I always try to put them into a formation which I think is most effective in the specific situation. When moving a longer distance the formation is more spread-out. When engaging an enemy team directly in an open field I put the AI soldiers into line formation, as that gives in my opinion the maximum firepower. I usually use at least "danger" and often "stealth" modes for the AI as those make them more likely to stay alive. If the 'starting moment' of the battle is still in my control, I have the AI soldiers on "hold fire" most likely. I wait that the AI team mates get into good positions (in formation or I specifically give them a good spot). Then I give them targets, sometimes the same target for many of my soldiers (like 2 LAW soldiers target one enemy tank at the same time to ensure a kill, same goes when targeting infantry if you have enough men). Then I pick a target for myself too, and give the AI's the order to get shooting. Doing all that takes time and that is the reason why I think many people won't bother commanding an AI team. But I find it great when I am able to command an AI team so that all of them are alive in the end of the mission. Often missions go so that I'm not getting much, or any, kills myself, as I have just been busy commanding my men to do the job for me. That doesn't bother me as it is a team at work and not an individual. You can guess from this that I prefer to play cooperative multiplayer missions instead of the other mission types. You can use an AI team very effectively against an enemy AI team positioned stationary in an open field. You just choose line formation, order your men to hold fire, then walk closer, put them to prone position, crawl to maybe 300 meters from the enemy team, give all your team members a target, tell them to open fire, and you'll quite likely see that all of the enemy team gets wiped out without being able to respond (if you had enough men compared to the enemy team, so your team could target every individual enemy soldier). All this takes time and effort but you can keep your team alive doing so, and it helps when the missions advance further and maybe becomes more difficult towards the end. As I said it's a slow way of working but it gives good results. Take your time to prepare your attacks, don't just rush ahead. It would certainly be more convenient if the AI soldiers could 'sense' what I want them to do next but as long as that is not possible then I just have to give them explicit orders. The AI team leaders are much faster in giving orders than we are, that's why the AI team speeds up when you are not in the lead anymore.

An example function I made for OFP: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">private "_grpAlive"; _grpAlive = false; if ( {alive _x} count units _this > 0 ) then { _grpAlive = true; }; _grpAlive It takes the group as an argument. Returns true if group has at least 1 alive member, false if all are dead I think it should work in ArmA too but I haven't tried it in ArmA. Edit: oh yes, forgot to say that in these cases it could be worthwhile to check the functions available at the Editors Depot of http://www.ofpec.com/ as this example is listed there and many others.

Well I think both positive and negative feedback can be given in a friendly, non-blunt manner. I've done that succesfully where I have worked and it worked very well everytime when I had something negative to say. People didn't take offense but they listened to my advise. On the rare occasions I have used a blunt style to tell my opinion the result has not been good. I admit being blunt is sometimes needed to put a 'difficult' member of a team back into line, but I see nothing like that is needed here in this thread. Also take in notice this is a forum about a computer game. Do people really need to be blunt when speaking about a game to other players? I don't think so. This is all play for most of us. Anyways, this is steering off-topic so I'll stop here

For sure the point of the off-road trucks being slowed too fast when driving from tarmac to grass is a valid point. As someone said, it's like the brakes are used when in fact they are not. And of course off-road performance should not be equal to decent road performance. But it really depends on what kind of surface you are driving, for example driving over a frozen lake which has only little bit of snow it's the same as driving in a frozen road. Other examples you can probably imagine. The fact is, there are some annoyances in ArmA regarding how wheeled vehicles are slowed down when they go off from a road, and in my opinion it could be made smaller by BIS by not slowing the wheeled vehicles so drastically when they steer a little bit off from a road. That would help quite a bit already in my opinion as I think it annoys people the most that if they go just a little bit off then the strong braking effect hits them quickly, which certainly feels unrealistic to a real-life military off-road truck driver *waves hand*. I'm not so sure how a fix could be done, as I think there is some certain material value assigned to the ground, road versus grass and so on, and if a vehicle is on grass it has a certain "braking" factor and on tarmac another one and so on. So I think there are precise limits for this in the terrain and that is not easily changed I think. Except changing the materials/config so that the values for different surfaces are nearly the same.

Hey don't care, it's just the way this forum community is. You will receive blunt comments as default here. It shouldn't be like that but that's how it is. I think it's great you did your little modification, even though some people come and tell a better way to do it. They could tell it to you in a friendlier manner, that is certain. Telling people things in a friendly manner is unfortunately not how many of the older members of this community behave (I didn't name anyone). That's how it goes around here. As an alternative place, there is for example http://www.ofpec.com/ where you will immediately notice a huge difference to this place regarding how people treat you and your ideas. Try it and you'll see what I mean. Anyway, don't let them pull you down, your time is more precious than arguing here I am sure of that

Well I heard from a reliable source, a Motorcycle Scout in the Finnish Defence Forces driving a 640 cm(3) KTM, that he could get up to 150 km/h in a sand field in a Finnish military training area. It is off-road driving certainly, and not flat enough to call it flat. I've been to the same area myself too and from what I can tell, that kind of speed there is crazy! But possible though, for some crazy people. Yes that what I said too, if you get into a battle and it is either you being shot to pieces or your vehicle getting damaged, then I'll certainly choose to damage the vehicle. If that ever happens I just hope no one is on the back of the truck as there it's likely people will get injuries if the driver drives like 'hanging on to the steering wheel, pedal pressed to the metal and not being able to sit on the driver's seat'. At least the driver has the steering wheel to hold onto. We in the FDF specifically practiced driving as fast as possible in off-road conditions. Of course that's not what we normally did, as it is way too wearysome for both the machines and the men. Normal speed in rough terrain with obstacles like rocks, holes and ditches etc. is slow, a man on foot should easily be able to keep up with a truck. On off-road but flat-enough and hard-enough terrain it is possible to maintain quite a high speed though. ArmA's terrain just isn't simulated roughly enough to justify the major slowdown. Solution could very well be to reduce the rate of speed reduction when driving from tarmac to grass. So that if you only drive a little bit off-road, the speed wouldn't practically drop noticeably. That's what happens in real life too, most roads have level and hard terrain right next to the tarmac so it won't cause a slowdown. Only if you go further away from the road, the speed would drop more. This could be based on a time limit, for how long have you been off-road.

Hi Remember also that there are free, open-source alternatives to the commercial 3D modelling applications. One example is http://www.blender.org/ I'll say something about hardware too. If you are serious about 3D modelling then familiarize yourself with 3D navigation devices. Look for example at http://www.3dconnexion.com/ In my opinion a 3D navigation device is a must for anyone who is going to spend a lot of time using a 3D modelling program. The cheapest model from 3dconnexion is sold in Finland for around 60 euros. It is a low price for this kind of device, as it really helps you work more effectively and it significantly reduces the burden on your mouse hand, if that is normally used for navigation in the 3D view. Unfortunately Blender doesn't officially support a 3D navigation device, but I read there is some sort of unofficial support for it (most likely difficult to get working). This is one point where the commercial applications are better. Best Regards, Baddo.

Hi I can recommend familiarizing yourself with the AGEIA PhysX SDK even if you are not going to use it. I think the documentation that comes with it is definitely worth a read if you are new to this kind of stuff like me. I certainly got quite a good amount of information out of it. You can get the SDK from AGEIA simply by registering at their website. They will then approve your registration and then you can get to an area where you can download different versions of their SDK. Their SDK also comes with plenty of example applications. I think I got all of them running fine on Windows and most of them worked also on Linux (Linux SDK is little bit behind compared to Windows SDK). PhysX SDK seems to be actively developed. I have personally no trouble with the fact that it is not open-source. Notice also that the PhysX engine is multithreaded. One good place where you can learn is http://www.ogre3d.org/ Ogre3D is an open-source, LGPL licensed graphics engine (suitable for free and commercial projects, no money needed). If you dvelve into their forums you find a lot of discussions about physics engines too. Comparisons between physics engines can be found from their forums. I think it could be best at first to use existing libraries like Ogre and others to do a small game project so you'll learn what components are needed and if you could maybe code some of the components by yourself. I believe writing a full-blown graphics/physics engine will take many years from a single individual so you might want to make some shortcuts to get something playable on the screen fast. I'm on a studying phase of these things too. My field is also engineering and not computer science but for some reason I have a need to study computer programming, not for utilizing it commercially but to understand. Best regards, Baddo.

AGEIA PhysX is free for all projects since version 2.6. AGEIA Press release: http://ageia.vnewscenter.com/press.jsp?id=1163672411186

Right... http://www.sec.gov/edgar/edgartlistfilings.htm Nokia Corporation http://www.sec.gov/edgar/tlist/iran/nokia924613-i.htm I think they should actually have some proof that those companies they listed are actually supporting terrorism, which I am quite sure they are completely unable to prove into any direction. This list is a 'guilty until proven not guilty' list. If you operate on said countries, you are implied to be supporting terrorism. It is of course not that simple but that's exactly why you shouldn't come up with a simple list like that. Also why would all those companies follow the U.S. foreign policy? Does the U.S. think that in order to fight terrorism, Nokia should not sell any mobile phone network technology or mobile phones to the said "State sponsors of Terrorism" countries? Does that reduce terrorism? Or could it be that it reduces the likelyhood of terrorism as the said countries develop their infrastructure and their citizens get more up-to-date technology, thus improving the quality of life of their citizens? Isn't it wonderful? I think a list of all companies and institutions that have supported the illegal acts of war started by the G.W.B. administration should be made too. Baddo

I voted 'this is a real problem for the future' But it's not that clear. Some facts: - There has been ice age when my current place of living has been under kilometers of ice, now I can't see ice anywhere except in my freezer and outside during Winters in relatively small amounts. - Ice age ended, so climate became warmer obviously. So it is true what the scientists say: climate has warmed, and as they say, it is still warming. - But even though climate has in general warmed, every year during the Winter we get very cold weather, snow and ice. It has happened this far in every Winter that I remember during the almost 29 years that I have lived. Now, to my personal views on the subject. - 29 years or so is very short time to look at how the temperature in the Earth changes. This is, I think, a mistake that is done by many many people, also scientists. The problem is with us human beings, we tend to know what we have lived through, what we have read, what we have seen on TV etc. All that learning happens on a relatively very small time frame and from limited amount of material which was made on short time frame. As such, our understanding of the Earth's climate is very limited. This is no argument for or against global warming, just a worried opinion that people usually only look at some very short time frame (compared to how old Earth is), as that is what we usually are capable of understanding. - Burning carbon-based fuels and letting the pollution go to the sky is a very, very bad thing to do. I choose nuclear energy instead of burning carbon-based fuels. In properly operated nuclear energy production you don't let pollution to the sky, but you put it to a container and bury it underground in which it slowly, but surely becomes harmless. This waste does not go into peoples' and the nature's lungs unlike in the case of burning carbon-based fuels. Of the dangers of nuclear energy: it is not the techonology's fault if people misuse it like in the case of Chernobyl. The region I live in (in and around Tampere, Finland) received radioactive pollution from Chernobyl. It was raining here back then and many people received a dose of radioactive rain and had no idea it was dangerous. Situation was not any better because the stupid Soviets tried to hide their accident. We need to make sure the people operating nuclear power plants actually know what they are doing, exactly the opposite to Chernobyl. In a country like Finland, I have absolutely no problem with nuclear power plants. - If burning carbon-based fuels is impossible to avoid in the near future, I would order all American-style gaz guzzler vehicles to be recycled and to be replaced with at least the level of vehicles as the European-style vehicles which are most often both smaller in size (less material used, less pollution from manufacturing) and also consume significantly less fuel. - I would ban all hip-hop videos where Escalades and other gas guzzlers are advertized I would order hip-hop artists to advertize only bicycles in their videos. Okay that's enough before I get too excited Baddo

Argh, just when I am planning to travel to London with my family this comes up! But you know what? This is not going to stop us. I mean, I could die here in Finland as well any moment. I'm going to go drive my car in a couple of minutes and I think I have a much bigger chance to get killed in a road accident than in terrorist attacks even if in London. So as long as that remains true, I might as well continue our plan to travel to London. About jeftec's comment: well yes it is only a natural consequence that you get attacked if you go on rampage elsewhere in the World, like in the Middle East. What goes around comes back or how the saying goes. It's true for every one of us, I believe. United Kingdom and ESPECIALLY USA must choose their leaders and politics wisely, there are the key to success, not in wars. The war in Iraq has been very, very questionable right from the beginning in my eyes, and over time I have become even more convinced that it was a horrible mistake from some people to start it. Or it is part of a much bigger plan, which should be brought to halt as soon as possible. If USA and its allies become too powerful throughout the World, it is only a question of time then when other big countries simply get too much pissed of the situation and put a stop to it violently. Well I must say I hope things get sorted out for better some day and all this is not necessary anymore. It's just very sad that the war in Iraq has been so badly f***** up right from the beginning. For the sake of USA and its great citizens, I'd trial G.W.B. and his minions in court to force them really explain what exactly have they been doing while in power. Best Wishes to all, Baddo.

I think it would be absolutely horrible if it wasn't like that Vilas, the tripod PKM looks good

Yes it does not feel like normal. I've had the pleasure of driving a Soviet-manufactured 6-wheel-drive military off-road truck for a couple of months as my duty in various conditions, grass, sand, ice and in over 50 centimeters of snow. I've also driven the UAZ 4-wheel-drive vehicle, plus Finnish-manufactured 4- and 6- wheel-drive military trucks. Compared to my real life experiences with military wheeled vehicles I say that the vehicles slow too much when not over tarmac in ArmA. I drove the 6-wheel-drive vehicle on many occasions as fast as was possible in quite harsh conditions and I think ArmA really slows the vehicles too much when not on tarmac. I know from experience that quite a good speed can be maintained on non-tarmac surfaces also, if the vehicle does not sink significantly to the terrain and the surface is level enough. Often I drove practically flat out in a level but somewhat muddy grass field, being careful that my head doesn't hit the roof of the cabin. You get the picture when I say that I could not, at those speeds, sit on the seat, I was just hanging onto the steering wheel with a foot on the gas pedal and tried to avoid hurting myself in the process. This kind of driving, I can imagine, can happen in an event of war so it was good to practice it too. One condition in which I had problems to keep the vehicle up to speed was when I had to follow a group of BMP's into a very muddy groove (tank groove as we used to say) in a forest, there the tanks had not much problems but my wheeled vehicle started to really struggle to keep up with the tracked vehicles. I had full power but could only barely keep up with the tanks and the speed was not high. I think this situation equals to how ArmA simulates the vehicle speeds on a surface like what visually looks like a grass field, the vehicle seems to be slowed down like the deep mud in the tank groove did. One possibility is that BIS actually wants to simulate a worse terrain than is visible for us in the game. If they want us to think that the terrain is so soft that the vehicle actually sinks into it enough to slow it down significantly (like in mud or snow). But when the ground looks to be just a level grass field and the vehicle doesn't seem to sink into it then it doesn't feel right at all.

Yes, yes... it is very controversial that a country that drives its ideology of democracy and freedom to others is actually doing this kind of things. For starters keeping people locked away for years so that they have practically no chance to even try defending themselfs. One of the most disgusting things I have ever seen is the spreading of democracy with acts of war, even if it is said to come as a side effect. In my opinion such a system spreads by itself if it is truly worth it. Forcing it upon others with the 'help' of acts of war is not going to be succesful, no matter how brilliant you claim the system is. A lot of compassion and support was given for USA after the incidents of 9/11/2001. It is sad that some relatively small group of people have so effectively blewn it all away.

Great! Well I'm just saying how things are. You either like it or you don't.

Any kind of agreement that doesn't follow our local legislation is an invalid agreement. To make one thing clear: the legislation of my country does not allow distribution of content that was ripped from a game which license does not permit it. Last time I checked I am allowed to rip the game apart and modify/improve it for my personal use as long as no distribution happens. EULA is just words someone made up somewhere. It must be in line with legislation still, to be effective.

Sorry a bit offtopic but as response to earlier posts. A law from for example the U.S.A. has no meaning to me. I am asked to obey the laws of my country and if I fulfill that requirement everything is fine. No U.S. police officer can require me to follow their rules in my own country, and vice versa. This is very simple if you really think about it. Who controls your country? My country is not controlled by U.S.A. "International laws" are only in effect if our local legislation has decided to apply them.

heh well you know what? I was thinking about this some time ago too! And indeed I think that there is something unnatural in the way the missiles fly in ArmA... I think the problem is that the programmers can't simulate the missiles like they behave in real life regarding laws of physics, aerodynamics and so on, as that would likely be way too much processing power consuming. So they have to cheat a little bit. Maybe the cheating goes too far in some situations.