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baddo

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Posts posted by baddo

  2. Posted

    I believe the basic problem is that a real time program can not efficiently make use of numbers of vastly different magnitudes. Consider that the earth's diameter is ~12,700,000 m, and a bullet is ~0.00556 m.

    That's why we should get an answer from the programmers of Armed Assault, what do they think would be a maximum world size in the game. Also there could be a system in place in the game which splits the game world into multiple simulation sections. I think we don't know that before we get answers from a BIS programmer. Also I think we are not talking about modeling the Earth on a 1:1 scale anymore as it is very clear that it is out of our reach, it would need to be scaled smaller.

    the world is waaaay to big to achive

    That's why I said make it on a smaller scale. We can have all the continents in the game if we scale them down to a reasonable size. Then put some major cities from all continents in and that would be fun enough. Like for example the continent of America could be fitted into a world equal to Sahrani (and extent it to fit the rest, maybe leaving out some ocean to make it smaller).

  3. Posted

    Not really possible or practical given this issue.

    Care to elaborate more?

    If you mean that the game world would be too big for the floating point data types to simulate accurately. Do you know how does Armed Assault handle the size of the game world? What if it splits the game world into multiple simulation pieces to achieve better accuracy already?

  5. Posted

    A game should be designed so that when better and better hardware become available, the game only gets better and better. More graphic detail, more detailed physics (for visual effects) etc.

    If you start a game development project now, what kind of hardware would you target? Not at all what is sold today, but what is sold when your game is finished and published, also the game should be able to improve when better hardware becomes available as I already said. How will you make a correct guess what kind of hardware will the end users have when the game is published, is a good question.

    I'm playing ArmA demo 1.03.5116 on a very low-spec system compared to what most people tell on these forums, and I acknowledge the fact that the game can't be run on nice graphics or on nice frame rates so I don't complain. I'm happy because the game will get even better in the future when I get better hardware, it is already now enough to impress and make me want to play it.

    Baddo

  6. Posted

    [ZG]BUZZARD, I was talking about the future, not present day. It would surprise us all if the performance of the Internet would halt to the level it is now. Also the system could work so that a client has part of the required information initially installed, but will download more detailed information from a server as, and only if, needed. Also when you would start the application for the first time, you could determine a start position in the world and the program would then download that area so startup from there on would be fast. Textures and 3D models could be pre-installed and only terrain elevation data and information how to place the textures and 3D models could be downloaded (WRP file in BIS products). The selection of textures and 3D models could be limited to a reasonable level. Many more tricks possible to use no doubt about that. Note that this talk is about another possible product, not about products from BIS to this date, of course.

    Some more ideas how a large world could be modelled, also for BIS products.

    Computer program generates the world based on pre-determined rules. A rule could be: make this area desert with no buildings. Another rule would be: make this area urban, with many buildings close to each other. Rules could include limits for maximum and minimum terrain elevation, percentage of water vs. land etc. The generator program would be given categorized textures and 3D models so the program could throw appropriate textures and 3D models into the areas set by your rules. Now the program would go on and generate the world according to the rules you gave. No need to go and model every single bit by hand. Accuracy to the real world would be reduced significantly but that would only make it practically possible to accomplish the task. If there would be a need to model a certain place more accurately, such area could be modelled by hand to the detail level you wish and let the program generate the rest.

    I do not see it practical to try and do all this manually by yourself; there should really be a computer program generating the content based on rules.

    Baddo

  7. Posted

    This kind of project could be doable on a much smaller scale (resize the Earth to 1:100 or something). If someone first makes a program which generates the required world data, based on some real-world terrain, road, city etc. database. Way too much work for anyone to do it by hand, but put a computer to do it and then it might be possible... if there is a streaming engine in place in the game then why would the loading times be too long? Only a very small portion of the world would have to be loaded, no more than your maximum view distance plus a buffer area to allow movement without hicups.

    Problems I see:

    - huge size of data required as input

    - huge size of data as output

    - huge inaccuracy of the output because of practical impossibility of the task of creating accurate result

    Google Earth is pretty impressive nowadays, even most buildings in Manhattan start to have 3D shape! Future could bring games which use a database centre to store the world data and the client application would download it as needed, just like in Google Earth. The required detail would be higher in a game than in Google Earth though. A database centre would solve the problem of client application package being too large to be practical to distribute.

  8. Posted

    I don't know about the full version but the demo 1.03.5116 is definitely very playable for me, I have enjoyed playing the coop mission. Some annoyances and bugs encountered, yes but not often enough to disturb me. Could be better but definitely not unplayable. And I run it on a very low-spec system.

  9. Posted

    Is it not politically correct to talk about an armed assault when there are American troops involved in the game, as the main playable side? First thing which came to my mind is that the name had to be softened so no one will get the impression that the American troops in the game are committing an assault but an "operation" instead.

    I don't know. But that's one possibility.

  10. Posted

    I can say the format

    <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">_unit move (_building buildingPos _i);

    definitely works in a script in OFP 1.96.

    My memory tells me that I didn't get the format

    <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">soldier setPos (buildingPos [house1, 2])

    working at the time when I was playing with these.

  11. Posted

    Do you want your video card to do physics calculations or perhaps do graphics processing? It might be the way to go if there must be additional physics processor, but it shouldn't take anything away from graphics detail and performance imho. If you put physics calculations into a graphics card then it's not only the processing power, it's also about how much data will need to be transferred. I'd rather use a graphics card only for graphics, to the full extent.

    Multi-core processors, yes yes. Very good thing but difficult to develop programs utilizing them properly. Easier to use AGEIA PhysX multithreaded physics engine, and if you want, go even further and install their accelerator card.

    AGEIA will have a hard time getting developers to utilize their PhysX accelerator card (that's why the SDK is now free for everyone). One important thing to notice is that the AGEIA PhysX Software Development Kit does not mean you need to use the accelerator card. So developers are free to ignore the accelerator card and just use the physics engine like before. Or they can require the card but that wouldn't be wise.

    Physics calculations in games are not very advanced. There is so much more that can be done in games. There is much room for improvement, and AGEIA is trying to help developers do that with their SDK and card. I wouldn't write them off just yet.

  12. Posted

    belive me ive been introduced to many tools at work by now so i know what im talking about..

    That is just Great.

    But

    that this app is better than this app is ........ pistols.gif

    I see a big controversy in what you are saying. If you know many tools then you must also know that many tools are not equal in terms of usability, intuitive workflow, interface, speed of development and functionalities. Actually we can't compare Oxygen 2 Light to the professional modeling tools at all, O2L is not anywhere near the same level as the other tools are. It's not meant to be, it's not, it will never be. I didn't mean to insult O2L users here, I just expressed my opinion that it is far from a good 3D modeling tool and one should use better tools if one has such tools available.

    Edit: typos fixed

  14. Posted

    Sorry if I hurt your feelings towards Oxygen 2 Light, AtStWalker. If you argue against my honest opinion about O2L then you have not even seen the other programs I am talking about.

    And stop editing your post towards even more stupid content, please. No need to make personal attacks.

    Maybe you could now give us some useful information instead of spamming.

  15. Posted

    Hi

    Having used state-of-the-art CAD software, I know how hard it can be to adjust to the principle of creating models in a program like Oxygen 2 Light. It is far, far from intuitive workflow or ease of use compared to for example Catia V5 or other such solid modeling programs with intuitive methods to create models.

    For character modeling, one program I came across some time ago is makehuman, read about it at http://www.dedalo-3d.com/. It's not ideal for game model development, I think it creates too detailed models which must be tuned down to be usable in a game. But it's worth checking out, it is definitely a program to create character models fast.

    During a practice run in OFP modeling I found it quite convenient and fast to make a model in my favourite modeling program and then importing the model into Oxygen. There is the necessary tweaking left in Oxygen but it's a good start if you get the model built up rapidly in some other program with more intuitive interface and functionalities.

    I'm not an expert on modeling for OFP, those people will surely come soon to give their advices.

    Baddo

  17. Posted

    Hi

    If Game2 is going to have some role-playing-game aspects, then would it not improve the experience if players could give the game their body dimensions like distances between skeleton joints, and how large stomach etc. they have? The character 3D model would then adjust accordingly to approximate the real shape of the player. This combined into skin textures (head, hands etc.) provided by the player could really make the game feel much more realistic, as the in-game characters would not be copies from each other but would look like individuals, just like in reality.

    One more possibility would be to allow players to give the game their "fitness" values in some form, to allow the in-game characters to be closer to the real physical abilities of the players. This could very well lead to many players cheating by giving super values so it might not be a good idea for gameplay.

    The problem I see with all this is how you prevent players from giving super values, i.e. making their character represent not what they are in reality but instead aim towards a super soldier. Could need some kind of validation procedure like registered players would give their info on some official location, needing to show up themselfs for measurement. Could get difficult to prevent people from cheating their dimensions and physical properties otherwise.

    A way around the cheating possibility could be to not have an effect on gameplay itself (physical ability), just on the visual representation of the in-game characters. That could be enough.

    Baddo

  20. Posted

    Hmm...

    Count how many magazines, then remove the magazines, then give the unit the same number of same kind of magazines back, then get the weapon loaded with a magazine (possibly requires removing the weapon at the start and giving it back after full mags have been given, or with selectWeapon). Oh yes this won't be realistic because the mag with the one round inside will be filled.

    By the way, I think 35 seconds to fill a magazine with 30 rounds is pretty fast action smile_o.gif

  21. Posted

    I agree that this should be dealt somewhere else than these forums.

    Best advice is, keep on trying to contact the person in charge directly, there you have his contact information. No need to bring all this into these forums. If you can't get through to the person, you could take the case to the German police to sort it out, I am sure some friendly German people from these forums can help you do that. Maybe there is just a misunderstanding from either side.

  22. Posted

    If an ammo box which does not contain ammo gets stopped in the border of your country then what is happening to this World? I mean, a box containing a computer game can't be a threat to national safety or can it?

    Not that I could say that is the case now, just wondering how the system works.

  23. Posted

    Hi

    I would not be sure, if all games uses triangular polygons.

    Are you sure that they are calculated faster? Because I believe that BIS had their reasons why they implemented faces...

    I would be very wondering if a model with only triangular polygons has the better performance than a model with a mix of triangular polygons and faces.

    Well I think none of us can tell what primitive types all games in the World use... but what are the hardware manufacturers recommending, that we can discuss more reliably.

    The http://developer.nvidia.com/ and http://ati.amd.com/developer/ websites offer good articles about how to get the best performance out of their graphics cards. It seems to me that triangle strips are favoured. Also the Microsoft DirectX Software Development Kit is, if I recall correctly, pointing out that games should use triangles for best performance.

    Check those references out, they contain a whole lot of interesting information.

    Best Regards,

    Baddo.

  24. Posted

    I´m still undecided on the processor though. As I´m a fan of AMD for years now (yes I am a pencil unlocker) I guess it will we be another AMD, I just don´t know what processor offers best price/value right now.

    ...

    I´m not playing 24h a day so I´m looking for a compromise between performance and price. I don´t need a dual SLI whatever card for 600 or more euros, I want to spend around 300 Euros for the gfx at max.

    Hi,

    since the Commodore 64 days I have been using AMD processors on my home computers. If I'd buy a computer today, I would put a Intel Core 2 Duo processor into it. I'm restraining myself from buying anything though. There are rumours that new processors are coming out from AMD later this year and we should see what we can get then and at what price, also in the graphics card department.

    An Athlon XP 1.4 GHz + 768 MB RAM + Nvidia 6600 GT 128 MB VRAM on a 4xAGP bus plays the ArmA demo sufficiently for now. It goes quite well, I did not expect to get the demo running playably at all. On the first go it seemed like it can't be played at all (all objects crumpled into very weird shape) but after tweaking the graphic settings the demo looks OK to my eyes and has sufficient performance at least in the coop mission. So maybe the full version can be played with this hardware too.

    biggrin_o.gif

    Best Regards,

    Baddo.

  25. Posted

    Hi

    Although I think this thread is in some parts quite amusing and even entertaining to a level where my stomach hurts from laughing so hard, I must say there are some very good points brought up.

    1) Request for better documentation. This is as I recall one of the things I asked for in the past in some thread dedicated to OFP2/Game2 wishes and that wish of mine has not gone anywhere. Bohemia Interactive Studio could raise the quality of their products significantly just by documenting their work properly (I seriously doubt that is happening currently but I apologize if I am wrong) and giving a simplified documentation in an easy to print format along with the game on the DVD. That's an undeniable fact. Doing that could increase the cost to make the products in short-term but in long-term doing that would also improve the internal workings of BIS, thus reducing the cost to make future products and make it easier for BIS to get new workers up to speed (not depending on one or two programmers who know the game engine).

    An important matter to discuss internally at BIS would be, what information really belongs into a publicly released documentation? Every possible parameter and possible values of the configuration files (config.cpp) exhaustively explained? If BIS chooses to give all that information then fine, but I think it is naive to demand to get that much public documentation from their side. The mission editor and the scripting language should have proper documentation on the DVD including a command reference and a how-to guide, because there is an in-game mission editor where that information is invaluable, and can be rightfully demanded by customers who buy the game and find the mission editor not by reverse engineering (like it is for config.cpp files) but by going through the in-game menus.

    The Biki is mostly a good thing to have but I think there are some problems with such a system, like for example many people messing around in there and giving misleading/inaccurate/false information with practically no person in place who would or could observe and fix it all on a regular basis. Takes much of the reliability away, people will still be forced to do their own experiments to find out how things really work. Maybe that's just unavoidable.

    As a counter-argument for a counter-argument of saying that it is not common for entertainment software developers or publishers to give better documentation with their products I say that someone has to show the light for the industry. Aiming for a better overall package through better documentation should not be avoided just because no one else is doing it.

    2) Bug tracking system. Yes I think there could be a better system than the Biki to report bugs. At first when I heard that we could report bugs into the Biki I thought "Yuck! No way I'm going to touch that! It's just too messy and cumbersome!" In my honest opinion it would be best for Bohemia Interactive Studio to implement a proper public bug and wish reporting interface, and integrate that into their internal system somehow so that the people at BIS could with less trouble and hassle have a look at what people are saying about their products, without the need to go into any other place than their own internal bug tracking system.

    Best Regards,

    Baddo.

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