baddo
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Posts posted by baddo
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Hi all,
I have to say I completely agree with karantan about the post counts etc. garbage. I have a distant memory that I brought this up here some time ago by the way...
One good article directly related to this subject:
I will quote the article here in its entirety so it will stay readable over time on this forum.
Quote[/b] ]<span style='font-size:19pt;line-height:100%'>Setting Up Useful Forums</span>As well as working on Stick Soldiers 3 directly, I spend some of my time working on fan-base-related activities. I recently spent half a day making last-second changes to the new Stick Soldiers Forum. In this article, I am going to explain some quick, but very important changes that you should make if you are running (or planning to run) a public forum using off-the-shelf software.
Joel (on Software) has already written an article in a similar vein. He writes:
Small software implementation details result in big differences in the way the community develops, behaves and feels.
If a forum administrator is limited to setting an example and enforcing rules, then trying to generate a particular kind of forum culture requires ongoing effort, with generally little success. By making the right changes to the forum software itself, long-term changes can be made to community culture that don’t require constant upkeep.
My knowledge about setting up a forum comes from two successful forums. I’ve been a moderator at the large GameDev.net Forum for 4.5 years and I’ve been running the Stick Soldiers Forum for about two years. On both these forums I’ve been able to explore how decisions about forum setup impact the community.
This article is based upon these two forums, so the forums you are setting up or running may have differing goals and require a different setup. However the primary goals I focus on are fairly universal. They are:
* Reduced ongoing cost for administrators (â€self managingâ€)
* Improved signal-to-noise ratio (â€high quality/valueâ€)
* Emphasis on the content that users write
These goals are well suited to most forums. It is unfortunate that most off-the-shelf forum software comes with default settings that leave every feature enabled (sometimes with no easy way to disable them), despite their negative consequences for the average forum. This means that much of this article explains what you should turn off - at least until you are able to make an informed decision about what features your forum actually needs.
<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>Post Counters and User Titles</span>
The first issue is a simple and obvious one. Most forum software will display the number of posts a user has made in a “mini-profile†next to each post. Unfortunately this only conveys information about the quantity of posting, not the quality. When displayed with such prominence it encourages people to post for sole reason of increasing the number.
Newer software makes this worse with the addition of “user titlesâ€. This is a textual label and sometimes a number of stars that are displayed in the mini-profile based upon the number of posts a user makes. A person with a single post might have one star and given the much-despised title of “newbieâ€. Someone with 500 posts might have five stars and be labelled a “super memberâ€.
This gives new users a huge incentive to post as much as possible (while still giving existing members plenty of encouragement). When these features are active, it usually presents itself as (mostly new) users replying to every post on the front page of each forum with very content-sparse responses, often a simple “lol†or “yesâ€. Depending on your users, this can be anything from an occasional annoyance to the majority of your forum’s posts.
The easiest way to disable user titles is to simply delete all but the base-level one (and then giving it a better name than “newbieâ€). To disable the display of post counts will often require removing it from your forum’s template or skin.
<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>Signatures</span>
In theory, signatures are supposed to be a small bit of text, or a politely sized image, attached to meaningful posts (not one-line responses) that give a user space to give information about themselves (such as their website and email address) and add a little personalisation.
In reality signatures are often large, garish, attention-grabbing images (or *shudder* animations) attached indiscriminately to every single post and are tantamount to large banner advertisements that advertise little more than the fact “CoolGuy203″ just made a post.
If you were to give advertisers unlimited, free advertising space between every post, then only advertisers would want to use your forum.
While virtually all software supports signatures, very few provide technical measures to reduce signature obnoxiousness. Without ongoing manual regulation, a forum can quickly turn into an arms race to see who can create the most excessive signature. By disabling them you can save yourself a great deal of time and vastly improve the quality of your forum.
Quality, in this case, can be expressed as the “signal-to-noise ratio†of your forum. The most obvious way that signatures obliterate this ratio is the huge amount of repetitive, unnecessary cruft they add - it is not unusual for a signature to be repeated several times per page, hundreds of times over a forum. Another way is that they encourage people to post for the sake of showing off their signature (or spamming it, to use an advertising “termâ€).
Most importantly, though, is the fact that people will write content that matches an existing signal-to-noise ratio. This could either be from people mentally matching what they see on the forum or that noise-adverse people, who would write high-quality posts that improve the average, take one look at your forum and run away screaming.
On many forums, signatures are applied on a per-post basis at the user’s option. Both GameDev.net and the previous Stick Soldiers Forum have this setup. The checkbox to display a signature was on by default, and the result was that no one would bother to turn it off.
On GameDev.net, we decided to experiment with changing the initial value for this checkbox to “offâ€, so that adding a signature to a post involved a deliberate action. It was interesting to observe that after this change almost no one attached a signature to their post manually (which greatly improved forum quality). This means that the value people get from having a signature attached to a post, is less than the effort that is required to click a single checkbox.
I made a similar change on the previous Stick Soldiers Forum (which involved editing the template to force the checkbox to default off) with the same result, greatly reducing the need to run around deleting very large signatures.
The software that runs the new Stick Soldiers Forum doesn’t have any per-post signature options - a user’s signature is indiscriminately attached to every single post. The easiest way to stop excessive signatures was to simply remove signatures from the forum’s template. This is a workable alternative that provides almost identical results.
If you do disable signatures on your forum, you should try to provide another method of displaying a user’s information (website, email, etc). Most forums give the user a set of predefined fields that will be displayed as appropriate buttons with each of their posts. Avatars are a superior way to allow personalisation that I will discuss later.
<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>Side-box Mini-Profile</span>
This is the box you find to the left of each post that generally contains the user’s name, avatar, and other (often useless) information, such as their post-count.
The problem of side-boxes is that they impose a lower-limit on the on-screen size of a post. This means that very short posts (assuming you’ve not got obnoxious signatures) will be given the same page real-estate as a medium-sized post, as well as additional whitespace.
By making the side-box as small as possible (by removing excess information and limiting the size of avatars), you will ensure that posts are given a visual importance to match their length. This makes the forum easier to read, and it provides a small incentive to put the time into creating a longer post.
On GameDev.net we turned the side-box into a small, aesthetically pleasing bar above each post. This means that a post will never be given excess whitespace. It also provides greater visual emphasis on the post’s content.
<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>Avatars</span>
An avatar is generally a custom image that is displayed next to each user’s post in their mini-profile. Providing they are not huge or animated, I find that they provide a positive benefit to the social environment of a forum.
As well as taking up the signature’s function of providing space for a user to personalise, they provide a good visual indicator of the author of a post. As users spend more time on a forum, they can quickly identify the author of a post without having to stop to read the poster’s name.
On the technical side, I recommend a forum that allows users to upload avatars and allows administrators to set limits on their dimensions and file size. A maximum height of 64 pixels is plenty, much bigger starts to draw attention away from the content of posts and causes the large side-box issue. Being able to block animated images is a useful feature, but I am yet to see any off-the-shelf software that supports this (GameDev.net does, but it is custom software).
<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>Rating System</span>
GameDev.net added a (very fancy) rating system in the last big update; the software that runs the Stick Soldiers Forum comes with a (less fancy) rating system. Adding a rating system to both of these forums has had a generally positive impact.
A rating system’s primary use is to encourage good forum behaviour and discourage bad. It acts as a reward for people who are helpful and friendly, while letting other users know when they are being irritating and annoying. Users who find their rating dropping will hopefully change their behaviour or leave.
The biggest problem with rating systems is that they can generate complaints, particularly from the most annoying members with the lowest ratings. The best way to deal with these is to explain why you have a rating system, and that it is entirely possible to reverse a bad rating with a little effort (there have been several examples on GameDev.net).
Another potential issue is people creating fake accounts to boost ratings. GameDev.net’s software prevents users with similar ratings from affecting each other as well having extensive administration tools. The New Stick Soldiers Forum prevents people from making ratings unless they have posted something. How you combat this will depend on your own forum software.
Because the general community determines the assignment of ratings, a rating system will only be successful if the majority of your community share your goals for the forum. Therefore it is best to add a rating system after your forum is running successfully.
Follow Up: Read about about GameDev.net’s study into the effects of The Lounge (the off-topic forum) on ratings.
<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>Mis-Features and Miscellaneous</span>
The very first “feature†to be removed from the new Stick Soldiers Forums was “personal textâ€. This is like a textual avatar, with no advantage of quick, visual identification. The reason to remove this should be obvious from these first few examples I came across in the new forum when it was opened:
* Badadada its Mr.Plow!
* !1!1shift+1buttonlol!two!1
* Hm.
* ph34r moi
* (>^(>O_O)>
If your users have a personalisation option (be it signatures, avatars or personal text), then they will feel compelled to put something into it. Therefore it is important that such an option provides value regardless of its content (eg: avatars), or it requires that users enter only useful information (eg: “my website†links).
Another “feature†to remove is text effects. The worst is marquee, which is animated. Glow and Shadow are still available in the new Stick Soldiers Forum, and time will tell if they need to be removed (I have seen forums where people write entire posts with these turned on).
One option that can sometimes be good and sometimes bad is “Quick Reply†or “Fast Reply†- a reply box located below the thread listing. These make it easier to post, especially smaller impulsive posts. Whether this is good or bad depends on your forum’s community and if you have taken steps to discourage “lol yes†posts. It is best to turn this off to begin with, and add it once you think it would be useful.
<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>Complaints</span>
It would be unfair of me to write this article without giving you this fair warning: People will complain. Most complaints will come immediately after you make a change (especially when you turn something off). So, if you are starting a new forum, make these changes first to avoid a barrage of complaints later. If you’re already running a forum, be aware that complaints will happen for a few days after a change, and be available to handle them.
You will find that, soon, most people will not miss the old features, and many who complained will actually appreciate the changes.
You will sometimes get complaints out-of-the-blue (â€why don’t we have signatures?â€), particularly about rating systems (â€ne1 tel me y my ratings low?â€). Depending on how successful you are at making your forum self-managing and explaining why your particular setup exists, these will often be dealt with by your existing user base.
The important thing to remember is that it is your forum. You should make a conscious decision about the goals you have and what steps you can take to guide it in that direction. These are choices that shouldn’t be left up to software developers who like to add “cool stuff†or complaints from vocal forum members.
Good luck, forum administrators!
I think this article hit the nail in the head multiple times. Administrators of this forum could use the measures mentioned in this article to improve this forum, but of course, only if they want to do so.
Best Regards,
Baddo.
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As a starting point you could read through the configuration files written by Bohemia Interactive Studio.
Goto
and download "ArmA Tools" package. Inside that package are two tools that can help you: cpbo and unRap.
You can then take an original PBO file from Armed Assault, unpbo it with cpbo and unrap the config.bin file found from the PBO to make the config.bin become a config.cpp which you can read with any text editor.
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Laughing too hard at the bobbo or bozo or whatever his nick is has the texture bug after using a nuke but claims no scripts were running (how did the nuke happen then?)Hi big boy
Ah... I should've known that there comes someone who doesn't understand that I was joking... I am sorry if I wrote my post so that it isn't clear that the nuclear warhead attack was a joke. I will never ever joke again here if I sense that you might be around.
And if you had taken the time needed to read and understand my post in whole, you could have noticed that I did not say that the visual problem visible in the screenshot I posted is a bug, as I said for two times in my post that the hardware I am using has insufficient performance for ArmA (and thus I can't say it is a bug). The screenshot is a good demonstration of what can happen if the performance of the hardware and ArmA's requirements don't match and that is the reason for the whole post, I wanted to show how ugly it can get when the computer is unable to provide the needed performance. Also I think it was a scene looking like it had been attacked by some big missile, which lead to the joke.
This is a forums for a highly technical simulation.Armed Assault is a computer game, I am sure you noticed that...? If you look closely at the front page of these forums, you will find text:
Quote[/b] ]BOHEMIA INTERACTIVE GAMES FORUMSArmA is not professional software like for example Computer Aided Design (CAD) software, which can be quite big and complex monsters to use and to maintain, not even very experienced people can master those programs completely. If you are trying to say that Armed Assault is such a piece of software that it is only meant for some... hmm... big boy? user group then I think you are quite lost somewhere... as Armed Assault is, after all, a computer game only.
You must not have been talking about me when you talk about whining people, as I did not do so in my post and I tried to clearly indicate that my post is not a bug report and not whining, just a post about my experiences directly related to the topic.
Best Wishes,
Baddo.
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Could you please explain what you are trying to achieve by putting a config file into a mission PBO?
Edit: A-ha. That does not make sense if you don't have the whole addon in the mission PBO, right?
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I for sure eat the chocolate Easter eggs given for me.
But Easter is not an important celebration for me as I would need to see some serious proof about the resurrection of Jesus until I believe it. If it's just written in some book is really not proof, many kinds of fairy tales have been written.
Instead of the resurrection of Jesus, I am much more keen to believe that if Jesus was a real person, and was put into a "grave" of some sort, he then was moved elsewhere from the "grave" and the people who went to look for him came up with a fairy tale of resurrection when they did not find him anymore. That sounds a whole lot more likely to me.
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I can understand very well why people are frustrated and angry about not getting Arma to run well on their new computers. If I had spent large amounts of money into new hardware I would have gone mad if the only reason for buying the new hardware, ArmA would then not have worked! Thank God I did not buy new hardware because ArmA would have been the only reason why I would have done that, as I don't play games that much... only these BIS products have somehow managed to keep me as a computer game player. Maybe it happens so that I lose interest in even BIS products and stop playing games altogether, then what would I do with the new hardware?
As I have old hardware, I have no problem seeing ArmA not work well and I can live with it, as my expectations were quite low and ArmA actually surprised me positively that I could even get it running on my computer.
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If you want the real scoop about why SQS is being phased away, I suggest you start here and rather than ignore the details you don't understand, ask in a new thread...Thank You very much. So that's where one can learn SQF... Christmas came early this year!
Of course of course, it's not just the syntax and the commands that can be used. I think you missed the most important point: often it does not matter one bit which one you use of these two tools, it is the goal we are trying to achieve that actually matters. Practice against theory etc. etc. that talk you know what I am saying. Some people drive a BMW some people drive a Lada but all are happy, why?
Cheers.
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Yes yes, teach people SQF by all means
I have absolutely no objections to that.I agree learning SQF is not any harder than learning SQS, even though many people have said so in the past. I don't understand why they said so, maybe all the ; made them think SQF is closer to some real programming language and not a toy language like SQS...
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SQS is messy? That depends on how you write it doesn't it? It surely is not the syntax or commands that you can use that makes scripts messy... it is HOW you use them.
To quote a good old rock'n'roll band:
Quote[/b] ]it ain't what you do, it's how you doit ain't what you've been through
it's how you've been through
Cheers.
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Ensure you are running the patch installer as a user who is allowed to write into that location.
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Hi
I've got a nice screenshot from Hunapu, Sara after a nuclear warhead attack:
In this picture I was testing a mission. There are a total of around 10 standard size infantry groups and 3 tanks in the mission. There are no scripts in the mission. Previously I had tested this mission during the same session as a regular rifleman, on foot. I then decided to try to be a gunner in the T-72 and previewed the mission, and quickly the view changed into like it is in the screenshot. I assume it had something to do with the fact that I changed into a gunner. I had previously no problems while testing the mission as the rifleman.
In order to be fair towards BIS, the computer I am using is below the minimum requirements so I can't say this is a bug. I know my computer is outdated and has trouble coping with Armed Assault.
ArmA settings and computer specs:
Armed Assault 1.05.5136
Resolution: 1024x768x32
Aspect ratio: 4:3 - Normal
Refresh rate: 75 MHz
Visibility: 803
Brightness: 1.0
Gamma correction: 1.0
Terrain detail: Very low
Objects detail: Normal
Texture detail: Low
Shading detail: Very low
Postprocess effects: Low
Anisotropic filtering: Disabled
Shadow detail: Disabled
Antialiasing: Disabled
Blood: Low
WinXP Home 32-bit
Athlon 1.4 GHz CPU
768 MB 133 MHz SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB VRAM on AGP 4x bus
NVIDIA Forceware version 93.71
3 x Samsung SP0802N IDE ATA hard disk drives, UltraDMA mode 5
DirectX 9.0c December 2006
I start ArmA in high priority (Windows XP setting) and minimize the number of other programs running at the same time. The hard disk drives have been defragmented and the pagefile is not on the same hard disk drive as Armed Assault or Windows XP.
As I already said, this computer is clearly too slow for ArmA. But most of the time I can play ArmA with no problems. I played recently the second mission of the campaign and had no performance problems and graphical errors were not noticeable most of the time. There were at some point low level-of-detail in some objects but it lasted only a short time and was bearable. I played the mission using the public beta patch 1.05.5143. When I bought the game in February and tried the campaign for the first time on this very same computer and ArmA had quite the same settings, there were serious problems during the introduction into the campaign. Most objects were on low level-of-detail (for example the female news reporter had no face) and at that time I just stopped and decided to wait for a better time to try it again. Now it seems the campaign runs okay when taking in notice how low-spec this computer is.
Best Regards,
Baddo.
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Hi
I've got a nice screenshot from Hunapu, Sara after a nuclear warhead attack:
In this picture I was testing a mission. There are a total of around 10 standard size infantry groups and 3 tanks in the mission. There are no scripts in the mission. Previously I had tested this mission during the same session as a regular rifleman, on foot. I then decided to try to be a gunner in the T-72 and previewed the mission, and quickly the view changed into like it is in the screenshot. I assume it had something to do with the fact that I changed into a gunner. I had previously no problems while testing the mission as the rifleman.
In order to be fair towards BIS, the computer I am using is below the minimum requirements so I can't say this is a bug. I know my computer is outdated and has trouble coping with Armed Assault.
ArmA settings and computer specs:
Armed Assault 1.05.5136
Resolution: 1024x768x32
Aspect ratio: 4:3 - Normal
Refresh rate: 75 MHz
Visibility: 803
Brightness: 1.0
Gamma correction: 1.0
Terrain detail: Very low
Objects detail: Normal
Texture detail: Low
Shading detail: Very low
Postprocess effects: Low
Anisotropic filtering: Disabled
Shadow detail: Disabled
Antialiasing: Disabled
Blood: Low
WinXP Home 32-bit
Athlon 1.4 GHz CPU
768 MB 133 MHz SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB VRAM on AGP 4x bus
NVIDIA Forceware version 93.71
3 x Samsung SP0802N IDE ATA hard disk drives, UltraDMA mode 5
DirectX 9.0c December 2006
I start ArmA in high priority (Windows XP setting) and minimize the number of other programs running at the same time. The hard disk drives have been defragmented and the pagefile is not on the same hard disk drive as Armed Assault or Windows XP.
As I already said, this computer is clearly too slow for ArmA. But most of the time I can play ArmA with no problems. I played recently the second mission of the campaign and had no performance problems and graphical errors were not noticeable most of the time. There were at some point low level-of-detail in some objects but it lasted only a short time and was bearable. I played the mission using the public beta patch 1.05.5143. When I bought the game in February and tried the campaign for the first time on this very same computer and ArmA had quite the same settings, there were serious problems during the introduction into the campaign. Most objects were on low level-of-detail (for example the female news reporter had no face) and at that time I just stopped and decided to wait for a better time to try it again. Now it seems the campaign runs okay when taking in notice how low-spec this computer is.
Best Regards,
Baddo.
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There are women serving in militaries of many countries. Could be in ArmA too, there is no moral problem.
Civilian women are of course needed too, lots of different sizes and shapes and colours thank you.
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Hmm I doubt BIS controls the Windows pagefiles, I think they let the operating system handle that... would be much easier programming that way I think
By the way, if you want to see how RAM is properly utilized, try a Linux-kernel based operating system and watch how your swap partition (or "pagefile") is not used until as a last resort.
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This is in fact just a matter of belive...!A new DX runtime never made something "older" faster as it was before.
Show us your proof.
Or is it just a matter of believe?
Applications link to specific release dll, like in ArmA's case d3d9_29.dll (or whatever it was), which is October 2006 release of DirectX. Newer versions have different DLL's, latest one being _32 I think.
So updating DirectX won't help at all with ArmA?
To add, could that linking not change via patches made for Armed Assault?
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The last one made my game go a bit faster I believe...This is in fact just a matter of belive...!
A new DX runtime never made something "older" faster as it was before.
Show us your proof.
Or is it just a matter of belief?
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But it should still work for an AI-squad which is groupnamed in mp?Well yes if the group is all-AI so that the players can't have any effect on if the AI unit with the variable initialization ends up into the mission. Ask yourself a question: will the unit with the variable initialization code be always present in the mission, regardless of what people choose in the multiplayer lobby? If the answer is positive, then you have no problem with this.
Can you assign a group for MP by adding that init line for the group you are interested in? Like if you had 32 players on OPFOR and wanted them all grouped add this line for each of the player objects"squad_11 = group this"
Would that solve the MP issue by not missing any?
That should do it, yes. Even if there is only one player in the session, no matter which one of the units is selected by the player, the variable is always initialized.
Take in notice that there can also be a situation where players do not select any units from a group with playable units, and AI units are disabled. This would mean no units from that group is present in the mission, and your mission should still go on error-free. In other words, if you have multiple groups with playable units in a multiplayer mission, do not expect all of them to be present in the mission (one player is enough to start a multiplayer mission). If you absolutely must have a certain group present in the mission, you must somehow force the players to choose characters from that group. In such case you may need to prevent wrong logical behaviour of the mission by stopping the mission right after start and telling the players to choose the required characters in order to proceed with the mission.
Multiplayer mission editing has lots of gotchas like these, it's not even near as simple as single player mission editing.
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Maybe it could be fair to have "Arcade" and "Simulation" flight models in ArmA. For multiplayer it should be possible by the server admin or by the mission designer to say which flight model is used for all players, so that the playground is level for all participants. So that in a hardcore coop missions the persons who have extensively trained to be good pilots will get to put their skills into use, and be an important factor in the missions. Lose your pilot and you're screwed as so to speak...
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Maybe people need to stop playing stupid, boring, life-wasting computer games and get a life!
Edit: Added "life-wasting" as it really belongs to the same group.
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On an up note, I do have to thank BIS and OFP for the loss of a girlfriend. Not that its a bad thing. It turned out she was a psycho-hose-beast with real mental issues. If you want a further explination on how OFP caused me to see her "off-meds" then I should start a thread on "psycho girlfriend stories" ~!If she had not gone completely mental I would have never gone on to meet the one I would marry. Dose this mean I have to invite BIS to the wedding?
Thanks for making me laugh real hard, mate.
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just as jackass888 said.. but instead of doing that on the hole squad.. just do it on the squad leaderThere is a problem in multiplayer if you name groups like that (only in one unit's initialization field).
If the unit which has the "squad_11 = group this" on its initialization field does not end up into the mission (doesn't get selected in the multiplayer lobby to be either a human player or an AI unit) then the squad_11 variable will not be initialized and the mission will fail to work correctly.
So when editing multiplayer missions make sure the mission will not get broken if players will not select a unit to be in the mission.
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btw is it just me or does everything look more contrasty now?Well I had an odd feeling that something had changed in the graphics, I don't know what it is. Maybe the green ground (grass is disabled) looked better when looking from a distance, I think it was somehow smoother or softer than previously. But I might be just imagining.
Performance might have been improved. I have to play more and try better settings to confirm this.
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I am sure BIS will welcome any actual research done by you on the subject of how easy it is to destroy a tank in real life.
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I hope you get it done, I am looking forward to play this mod.
There is nothing wrong with creating German WW II era playable troops into a game. People who have a problem with that really should look into a mirror and ask themselfs if everything is okay. It is very boring to see the Americans as the only or main playable side, as the "good side", in most games. Maybe it is only for financial profit reasons but there must be some "political correctness" in there also, which I find hypocritical. I hoped that BIS would have been done something different for Armed Assault but no, it's again the Americans who get to be on the spotlights. Czech Republic's army would have been a better choice for example.
I wish good luck for this mod and hopefully you will have the motivation to finish it.
Cheers,
Baddo.
DXDLL
in GENERAL
Posted
Instructions for doing this are in the readme file of dxdll... does this ChernMod give you no dxdll readme?
Just move the file away from that location if you want to just disable it temporarily.