baddo

Hi You can also do administrative tasks in Windows XP by using the "Run As..." command. Usually it can be found by right-clicking the program file/icon in file explorer or in the start menu. Then you get a dialog box where you can select an account with administrator privileges and give password for it. Then the program runs with administrative privileges and you didn't have to log off or switch user. You can type "runas" to the command prompt to use the feature from there. In some version of Windows XP I recall that I had to press the shift key from keyboard before right-clicking the icon to get the "Run As..." option visible to the popup menu so try that if it doesn't work for you. Note that you shouldn't use a user account with administrator privileges all the time, use it only when you really need to do administrative tasks like installing programs etc. This is to make it harder for computer viruses and other such crap created by complete morons from succeeding in an attack towards your computer. Also this is good to prevent you from messing the whole system unusable by for example accidently destroying system files. Give programs only the rights which they need to operate, no more. This is perfectly possible in Windows XP Home Edition too, not just in XP Pro and Vista (which I have not used). Cheers, Baddo.

Yes you are right It would take way too long for a computer game session if we wanted to model real large scale warfare accurately. Edit: I must add that, in my military training I was told that in an event of changing positions during a battle, we should start digging if we stop for little more than a very short break. And I think that's even a good thing to do, you can never know when an enemy charges against you and if you do not have sufficient cover then it's very bad situation to be in. Better start digging right now!

Oh yes... making the grass go flat... ...and one more thing: digging a hole into the ground, where you can lay down and be in cover from enemy fire, would be a killer feature. Dynamic terrain reshaping or something. Everyone wanting to keep their lives on the battleground would have to carry a small shovel. Well that's for BIS to consider into their future products. For sure it would more accurately model what real armed forces do, but would it add enough to the gameplay to be worth implemented? Sorry, this is going too offtopic I will stop here.

@Atelophobia That is exactly what I was talking about. I did a new test run in demo 1.03.5114 today and I think the problem is still there (although I got excited about all the fighting so that I did not concentrate on especially looking for this problem to occur). For sure there is a problem when looking through a scope of the weapon, then the taller grass can block view to the enemies (which can see you). I have no problem in having to crawl around for a better spot, but the problem arises if the enemy has too much advantage because of this (like killing your character when you try to look through weapon scope and can't see the enemy). But I'm sure it'll get better over time when the wonderful people at BIS find a good balance. Baddo

@whisper Oh yes I am indeed not saying that having a pagefile in RAM is a good thing, if you look at my post for a second time It is just an idea to get around the imho stupid way Windows is designed to work. In my first post into this thread I gave an example of what happens in a Linux kernel -based system; no pagefile is used until it is absolutely required. Please have a look at your Windows system and see is all of your RAM used before Windows starts to use a pagefile... well no it isn't I can tell you. Windows likes to keep stuff in a pagefile even if there is a whole lot of free RAM available. Because that's the way Windows is designed. Maybe my suggestion to try and disable the pagefile(s) is a much better thing to try. But I have done no testing with that so I don't know if it really will help, if it even is practically possible to not let Windows have a pagefile. The point is, let us fill our RAM completely before using a pagefile. My suggestions are an attempt to do that, no matter how ideologically right or wrong they are. Using RAM for a pagefile is for sure not ideologically sane but tell us better ideas to force Windows use RAM instead of pagefile and we'll be thankful. Other than disabling pagefiles, that is. Cheers, Baddo

@whisper Oh yes I am indeed not saying that having a pagefile in RAM is a good thing, if you look at my post for a second time It is just an idea to get around the imho stupid way Windows is designed to work. In my first post into this thread I gave an example of what happens in a Linux kernel -based system; no pagefile is used until it is absolutely required. Please have a look at your Windows system and see is all of your RAM used before Windows starts to use a pagefile... well no it isn't I can tell you. Windows likes to keep stuff in a pagefile even if there is a whole lot of free RAM available. Because that's the way Windows is designed. Maybe my suggestion to try and disable the pagefile(s) is a much better thing to try. But I have done no testing with that so I don't know if it really will help, if it even is practically possible to not let Windows have a pagefile. The point is, let us fill our RAM completely before using a pagefile. My suggestions are an attempt to do that, no matter how ideologically right or wrong they are. Using RAM for a pagefile is for sure not ideologically sane but tell us better ideas to force Windows use RAM instead of pagefile and we'll be thankful. Other than disabling pagefiles, that is. Cheers, Baddo

Hmm well I played yesterday the latest demo build and I'm quite sure I had this problem. But maybe I'll go and play it again to be sure, thanks. Baddo

Hi Well the BRDM crew jumps out quite quickly after you have put the whole team fire at it for a couple of seconds. Heavy machine guns are useful. BRDM is not a heavily armored vehicle so it is OK for infantry to target it I think. About the grass. Let's look at a scenario. I have spotted the enemy. I am trying to get into a good firing position. I am crawling over a hill to see the enemy better. When in prone position, I can see a long distance forwards and I think I am now in good position to start aiming at the enemy through the weapon's scope. When I then look through the scope of the sniper rifle for example, I can't see a thing (except the grass). The difference between prone position and looking through the scope of the weapon is quite big. It can be realistic but it appears to the player in a somewhat unfair manner I think. In this scenario my character often gets killed because I have no time to react anymore to the surprise that I can't see the enemies even though I saw them very well when in prone position. This is what needs some thought from BIS. How to balance the obstruction between prone position and weapon scope view. Baddo

Hi Just a thought: if you can't get more RAM used instead of using a pagefile on hard disk drive automatically by Windows, can you try to fool Windows by creating a RAM disk and using that for a pagefile? Is it even possible? If you can only get maximum of 1 or 2 GB out of your 4 GB of RAM used, then in theory this could help (even though it is ideologically totally wrong). Or can the same effect be achieved by disabling the pagefile(s) completely? That could help if Windows can live with it otherwise. Baddo

Hi Just a thought: if you can't get more RAM used instead of using a pagefile on hard disk drive automatically by Windows, can you try to fool Windows by creating a RAM disk and using that for a pagefile? Is it even possible? If you can only get maximum of 1 or 2 GB out of your 4 GB of RAM used, then in theory this could help (even though it is ideologically totally wrong). Or can the same effect be achieved by disabling the pagefile(s) completely? That could help if Windows can live with it otherwise. Baddo

Hi I'm quite sure ArmA does not use the pagefile, it is the operating system that uses pagefiles. You could try to adjust your Windows settings to try and make it behave more like a Linux-kernel based operating system. On a Linux-based system I am using, 768 MB of RAM can be almost totally used up and no pagefile is used (until it is absolutely necessary). I did some programming the other day which included monitoring memory usage: amount of free RAM went down to about 15 MB and no pagefile was used. I recall there are some optimizations for Windows XP to try and force it to not use pagefile for kernel (core of an operating system) at least. I've forgotten about the details of such settings so you need to look them up from a Windows tuning website like tweakxp.com and see if you can get a difference. BR, Baddo.

Hi I'm quite sure ArmA does not use the pagefile, it is the operating system that uses pagefiles. You could try to adjust your Windows settings to try and make it behave more like a Linux-kernel based operating system. On a Linux-based system I am using, 768 MB of RAM can be almost totally used up and no pagefile is used (until it is absolutely necessary). I did some programming the other day which included monitoring memory usage: amount of free RAM went down to about 15 MB and no pagefile was used. I recall there are some optimizations for Windows XP to try and force it to not use pagefile for kernel (core of an operating system) at least. I've forgotten about the details of such settings so you need to look them up from a Windows tuning website like tweakxp.com and see if you can get a difference. BR, Baddo.

Hi, what I meant is, even if you don't know what you are doing, you still can touch the controls of a tank/any other vehicle in real life and so it must be in a game too. Otherwise you are creating artificial restrictions. Of course, it is perfectly fine for a mission maker to do that, it's quite easy to do with the scripting commands if you want to. BR, Baddo.

Yeah I got what you meant my friend but, if we go that route then... ...at least in Finnish Defence Forces (FDF) you are not allowed to drive any motorized vehicle without military training for it. Possessing a military driver's license is required even to drive a UAZ and it is only given after training for those who need it in their military job, not for everyone. And that rule is there for a reason, even if you have a civilian driver's license it won't give you the right to drive any of the motorized vehicles in the military and it is best kept that way I can tell you. I was thinking that if we start to require that the character must have training for the specific vehicle, like in real armed forces, then you are not allowed to drive a car in the game either if your character is not a driver by training. I see what your point is, I understand that tanks are not the same as cars and trucks, but I think it goes too restrictive if we do not allow non-trained people to even touch the controls of a tank (because that's totally unrealistic). What if we look it like this: a trained tank crew member can really make the enemies cry, be a mission-critical thing, but a regular soldier is not able to do anything miraculeous inside a tank because he doesn't know well what he's doing (so there's the lack of training which you mention). Best Regards, Baddo.

Hi, it is possible to break Windows XP installation by changing motherboard, I will quote myself from a couple of pages ago: So, in my case reinstallation of Windows XP was necessary. It did not work at all after changing motherboard. You might be luckier though. If you have partitioned your hard disk drive wisely, so that all your data is not on the same partition as Windows, then it is relatively easy to reinstall since you won't need to touch your data partitions. It just takes time and nerves to go through it all (again).

Hi Sorry but I think that would be very unrealistic if only a tank crew could use a tank. There are people in the militaries who are only driving cars so according to your rule you couldn't drive a car if you are not specifically assigned that job. And for sure even if you are not a car driver by job specification, you can do it at least somehow. Why it wouldn't apply for tanks too? It might be hard to drive a tank without training but simply locking people without proper training out of tanks is far from realistic in my opinion. I agree that from a coop mission point-of-view, if you play in a clan then it can make sense that your clan only has certain people do certain jobs but that's a different matter and will be enforced by the clan rules, no need for the game to enforce such rule. Cheers, Baddo.

What if you lose the keys? The whole team is looking for the keys of your only tank when enemies are approaching? You would have to break in quickly or run for your life! But seriously - yeah that's the problem with public servers, if you don't have a squad leader who will keep people organized then you see the results very quickly... I can only see this getting worse because of join-in-progress. I guess it's what you ask for when you go into a random public server - I learnt this the hard way, too. About being able to lock your vehicle - there is a great risk that the people who go into your vehicle will then lock it so you can't get in anymore. That's not what you are after I am sure. That has to be left for the mission designer, to allow locking vehicles or not. Cheers, Baddo.

...and what about old threads? If the original author hasn't been active around here for ages, then we can't get new mirrors listed because of such rule? I'd say, post the mirror in the thread, after that private message the author to update first post. Then the mirror is there no matter what the author of the addon/tool/mission does.

Yes, do it BIS. Why do you force us to keep a Windows operating system installed, is beyond me... Well to be honest I can't call the Linux distributions for example to be easy enough to use and maintain for them to really become mainstream so that's the catch. But it wouldn't hurt if you looked what you can do for it. Like a wrapper for your DirectX calls, bind them to some other libraries instead. If that's not possible feature-wise then that's bad. I would even buy both Windows and Linux versions of your products, just to support you (and see what differences there are). Thanks for considering. Baddo.

Hi This comment is from my experiences with OFP. About the problem with AI's not able to go to building when you order them. Some good time ago I experimented with scripts and functions to make AI's take all the pre-determined positions in buildings or some of them. I wrote a function to determine the number of pre-determined positions in the buildings to help in this, so you need not to know every building in advance, like it is in Group Link II for example. Indeed I found out that AI were far from good when it came to buildings. Some problems I found and which must have been noticed by many, many other people too by now: - If AI is close to the building already, when you issue a move to buildingPos order, they might not move anywhere. If you first order the AI to go some good 20 or so meters away from the building and then giving the order to go into the building then it can work most of the times. But even then it might happen that the AI can be able to not find the entrance point to the building, and then it can get very annoying because you'd have to repeat the "go away then come back" procedure. In a script you could use an ugly looking setPos if you wish. - AI can go to very weird positions in the building even when you give them the exact buildingPos to go to. They can indeed position themselfs in the basement, when there is no basement in the building. They can indeed go through walls like the ectoplasma or something, in Ghostbusters the movie. - There should be inbuilt functionality in the game to make AI's rush into a building to hunt an enemy player or AI soldier down. It should not have to be made in scripts. I don't know if this is in ArmA, I doubt it is. AI's can use building hallways at least which are at ground level but beyond that I don't know. - There should be a function in the game to give us the number of pre-determined positions in a building. - There should be a function in the game to give us an array of the pre-determined positions in a building. - There could be a function in the game to give us an array of buildings inside a user-determined radius which have pre-determined positions. After playing the ArmA demo coop mission a couple of times I can say the AI's move between the buildings fairly good and I even saw enemy AI's come through hallways in buildings to get me. But I can say nothing how it works when you try to order AI's into a building. I have a distant memory that I saw in an OFP mission AI's coming to second floor of a Nogova building (the big "Town Hall") by themselfs, not ordered but I might remember wrong. Hopefully this is much better in ArmA than in OFP, if not then BIS must seriously do something about it. We should not have to write scripts and functions for getting AI's into buildings for example when they notice that you, the player, are in the building or when you want to garrison a building. Such features should be built into the game. BR, Baddo. Edit: modified a "would" into a "should".

In the coop mission of the demo I have noticed some things. I have played the mission on my own, with AI soldiers as team mates. For two times now the enemy AI soldiers have surprised me by coming to get me through those buildings in the city which have a hallway to walk through the building. In both times I almost pissed in my pants because the suprise was so big. On the first one I was going to go through the building but quickly decided to "back up" because of seeing that I wasn't alone in the building. Using a pistol in such close combat situations seemed to be quite good strategy. Almost pissing in my pants is a positive thing at least for me when I play games. This could happen in OFP too but there it was very rare, according to my memory. I mean, the thing that AI's go through buildings without ordering them to do it. On some of the sessions in the coop mission, I decided to use the pistol to my advantage and it worked quite well. I was behind a brick fence and shot the enemies from a hole in the fence. The enemies were running on the other side of the street and it was easy for me to use the pistol and take them out. To the point when 3 enemies came walking on my side of the road (close to the fence so that I could not see them in time) from that hole to my side of the fence and I had to reload the pistol and got shot. It wasn't the smartest route the enemies took. A much better route for them (which human players would have chosen) would have been to go round some buildings and surprise me behind my back because that side was not covered by my team, and also because I had killed their team mates into that part of the street so it is not the first idea that comes to mind that you walk right into a zone where your team mates are getting killed one after other. Now the AI had some serious casualties, when they could have had none in taking my character out. A BRDM has got stuck in a fountain, or some other similar object in the city for two times now, in separate sessions. In both times the BRDM was positioned exactly similarly. That is a serious problem, even if the mission makers put not-so-good waypoints, the AI's should still be able to avoid objects which cause them to get stuck like that. I might go and get a screenshot of this problem if no one else confirms this (and if I can get such situation arranged again). It might have to do something with my team attacking their troops on the other side of the city and the BRDM decides to turn and come to help but does the turning in a bad location (no junction in that spot, just a little bit wider area with some fountain or similar object). About the AI team mates: they have surprised me with their ability to follow me in between the buildings. I think they are actually quite good in making their way through a city (the city). I might not have seen enough but this far I am positively surprised of the AI soldiers' ability to move between the buildings. It is clear that the AI could be much better when there are lot of AI soldiers close to each other, though. Then it can get too much time for them to figure out which way to go, and then they can take somewhat stupid looking directions when they start to move. I guess when there probably are not so many paths the AI can take, they get serious problems when many of those paths are already taken by someone else. Offtopic, sorry. About the weapon selection in the demo coop mission: I noticed that the M4 is not a good choice for a weapon, I equip the team with sniper rifles and heavy machine guns + pistols and that seems to be the most playable choice, and most "productive". The M4 is simply too hard to use. Looking through its scope feels bulky and, annoying? The red dot is too big as someone said on some other thread (1024x768 resolution). Or then, if it is realistic then keep it that way.

Hi I have never visited the United States of America but I read much about it and am actually quite interested in what exact freedoms and rights they have over there which I don't have over here, which I would need? I'm just curious, please educate me. The Yankees advertise their freedoms and rights so much that I feel like it is a responsibility for me to find out what all the talks are about. This far in my life no one has been stopping me from doing anything I have ever wanted to do but if there is more then let me know please. Best Wishes, Baddo.

Hi all It would be ideal if there were a resource manager in the game which would allow only one copy of resource data to be loaded into memory. From what Suma says we can say there isn't such a strict system in place. One reason I can think of why the system is like it is can be that the resource manager relies only on checking the full path of the resource file, and it is not checking if the particular file is already loaded. When I say full path I mean the path from the game's root directory to the resource file. Then there will be multiple copies of the same resources in memory of course: if you put texture.paa to x.pbo and to y.pbo and load both of those pbo's then texture.paa would be loaded two times because their path is different even though the file has exactly the same name and data. I assume from what Suma said that this is how the resource system in ArmA (and in OFP) works. There could be an unjustifiedly big performance hit during loading of the resources if you wanted to always check if resource data you are about to load is already loaded among the thousands of resource files. ArmA streams resources from hard disk drive when needed and it is easy to say that you don't want to put too many checks in there to slow the streaming. This doesn't still tell much about why there are multiple copies of the same files (equal filename and content or just content) distributed with the game. I happen to have experience in handling very large 3D model assemblies. I'm talking about thousands of 3D model entities combined under one product file. Multiple entities in such an assembly can reference to the same 3D model file. In an ideal data hierarchy we would only have one single file for one single 3D shape. "Why it is not always strictly required in practice, then?" you ask. In practice it is often not a good thing to aim for, let me explain why. After working with large model assemblies for some time it became obvious for me that there can arise serious problems if you try to enforce a strict rule that you must at any one time have only one 3D model file of a certain 3D shape in the data hierarchy. I will tell you what the problem is with such a strict rule. If assemblies A and B contain exactly the same 3D models (the models can be positioned and orientated in the assemblies differently) it sounds ideal to share the same model files between the two assemblies to conserve hard disk drive space, and RAM when loading both of the assemblies in the same time. But what if we need to go and modify a certain 3D model in assembly B, how can we know that the modified model still fits into assembly A? We must open and check assembly A of course! And if the modified model is used in many other assemblies too, we need to check them all. That isn't what you want to do when you only modify a file just a little bit, I am sure of that. Practically this means that you can not go and just modify the model file without knowing all the places where the model is used, and without checking if the model still fits all of those places after the modifications are done. It is much much easier, safer and faster to just make a new file and modify that. Then you can tell for sure that you didn't break any old assemblies with your modifications. And if you use an existing 3D model (which you need not modify) created by someone else, how can you be sure that your model assembly will stay correct over time? You can't! So the problem with sharing data between many entities is that it can create tremendeous dependency problems which can be a nightmare to fix after the damage has been done. Even if you modified a file "just a little bit" it doesn't matter if it breaks the whole thing. In fact, in the industry my experience is from, it is not at all exceptional to create new copies of all the existing model files when creating a new assembly, even if only a few of the files need to be modified. That way maximum safety and flexibility is achieved. Standard model libraries are a way to improve the situation. In standard model libraries no one is allowed to modify a model after it has been accepted into the model library. But I think data files which are never allowed to be modified after initial release doesn't fit well into games, especially if we expect the game to be patched into better. It is very possible that there are duplicate data files in the ArmA distribution just to avoid dependency problems which would create unjustified maintenance workload. I'm sure you can imagine how all this fits into the data hierarchy used in OFP and ArmA. The same problems are there if you require that only one single file of one single shape/texture/whatever data (which is used in many different places) is in the distribution. It would be desirable though if the BIS developers aimed towards the ideal data hierarchy, even if it means more work for them. In my example the files are not distributed to end customers but with BIS products it is so. There might be other main reasons for BIS to do their system like they have done it, but avoiding a data hierarchy with a lot of dependencies between different data tree branches is for sure a good bet. Best Regards, Baddo. Edit: ...identical data in the same directory? Then the theory of avoiding dependencies between different data tree branches is not that likely to be the reason! What is up with that, BIS...?

Thank You! Now that could be a very good thing to have! Sounds like it wouldn't even be hard to do, just more work for BIS if they care to do it. If not for ArmA, then for future products they should consider it. There is a danger that you could ruin the different feeling between a light vehicle and a heavy vehicle then, though. If you, by adjusting controller sensitivity differently for different vehicle types, achieve a feeling that a heavy vehicle has the same inertia as a light vehicle then that's away from realism, but it would be the players' decision then, of course. Best Regards, Baddo.

Hi GBee, could you please give some more information about how you got DirectX games perform much better under Linux than under Windows? What games are you referring to? You must have done some comparisons on both platforms for some games to come up with that argument. I ask only because this is an interesting subject to me as a Linux user. I have used Linux for some years now but I never took it seriously when talking about games written for DirectX because of knowing that there must be an additional layer of indirection (indirection usually doesn't boost performance). Thanks, Baddo. P.S. If anyone has managed to get Armed Assault demo or full version somehow working under Linux then let us know about it. Information about performance against running it under Windows is also welcomed.