PTV-Jobo

Heh. Telling me to get over myself and coming off pissy in response....hmm, someone should have put to use his own words of wisdom about not getting so touchy about what someone has to say in their post. Granted my long-winded post could have given the impression of being super salty (perhaps I should have tossed in a few :) at the end?). I tend to be one of those who inadvertently posts long posts even when I tell myself I'm not going to. It's like trying to hold in a giant fart, eventually it just finds a way out no matter how hard you try, lol. ;) :p <---- (just to show you I'm not as salty as you might think, I even did two different smilies) Yes, I did see your point concerning accuracy. We can both agree on that, congrats. But also I've noticed an increase of frequency (i.e. spam) as well that is both sudden and more than what I typically have seen from AI using ASR up until now on our servers. One mission I played the other night, it was like every grenadier in the area fired at the same time. It wasn't a case of the usual shit your pants moments of hearing "Bloop! Bloop! Bloop! Boom, boom, boom!" but more like "Bl-bl-bl-bl-bloop! Boomboomboomboomboom!!!". Hard to explain (let alone type out sounds, heh), but regardless there was also a bit of an odd change in frequency as well that goes a bit beyond your very informative Grenade Use 101 insight. An oddity of sorts that so far only a few people randomly are encountering it seems, while the majority of ASR users have not--which stumps me even further as to what the hell could be doing it??? The only thing that changed was the Malden update, CBA update and ACE. The server/difficulty settings never changed or reverted or anything. So, the only things I can think of personally is either something with the ACE_AI or some sort of change BIS made recently with the update that for whatever reason, one or two people here and there are experiencing the weird increase in grenade rate in addition to the terminator-like accuracy. That's why I'm actually relieved to see one or two others who have mentioned also the sudden frequency increase compared to what people typically experience on their server with ASR running. It appears to be a bit of a very rare anomaly that only a few people here are randomly seeing suddenly. It might just be one of those "ArmA things" that has no rhyme or reason to it happening. We all know ArmA is one of those games where it can run good one day and overnight suddenly start doing some really weird crap that stumps the hell out of people. Even so, I'll at least toss it out there to Robalo that, while even he himself has mentioned not noticing any weirdness in terms of frequency, there are a few out there that have suddenly noticed it with AI that is slightly increased beyond what you would normally expect from the AI that is making playing with AI suddenly less enjoyable and more teeth-grinding frustrating. Human-like increase isn't an issue. This is more of "Ok something is wrong. It was literally not doing this last night." increase on the same exact missions with the same exact mods and settings running. Perhaps in time a few suggestions could be offered by Robalo to help those of us who are experiencing this weirdness. Only time and patience will tell. But hey, like I said. It's ArmA. It might end up behaving itself suddenly all on its own. ArmA and random weirdness seem to go hand-in-hand. At any rate, I'm not going to keep derailing Robalo's thread with this little pissing contest. I'll keep experimenting and trying to figure things out, while patiently sitting back to see if some sort of remedy could be found to either of these "issues" in the future. If the accuracy aspect could be at least addressed with in a future patch, I'll be happy. The AI could grenade my ass until doomsday for all I care in that case as long as the AI stops perfectly landing every grenade between our feet or launching 40mm directly at our heads 100% of the time in our co-ops in the future.

No one is asking for easy mode... It's not about "easy mode" or because people just want everything easy and without a challenge--which to be honest comes off a teeny tiny bit condescending. Just because you might not be experiencing some of their weird behavior some of us are experiencing and trying to figure out, it's a bit disappointing to see it just get written it off as we all just want everything "easy mode". I play with the Casual ArmA group, and our "leader" is a bit of a masochist, especially as Zeus, lol, so trust me I am far from merely wanting to live on easy street with dumb as bricks ai so I can feel better about myself or something stupid like that. Also my preferred role is Grenadier, so when I get 40mm'ed in the head back by a pissed off aggressive opfor grenadier, it almost makes me smile in a twisted sort of way. I have absolutely no issues with being challenged by tough ai and skilled grenadier's. But this recent shift is a totally different beast all together that we are experiencing and what I posted about. A type of behavior and extreme accuracy we've not had to deal with on our servers for ages (because up until now ASR fixed the unfun and often times terminator bullshittery of ArmA's vanilla AI and brought back the enjoyment of playing ArmA 3 with almost human-like AI). I think it's a safe assumption that many of us here playing ArmA understand the whole mentality behind grenades and 40mm and making use of it. That's a non-issue here. What is an issue is that some of us finding suddenly that you're going to get spammed with super, super accurate grenades that happen to land near your feet without a single miss, for one thing. Something perhaps that some of us have not experienced until recently when playing with ASR running. I've seen first hand splitting up into groups of 2 or 3 guys going in different directions to get into buildings getting instantly taken out with just grenades. Even now AI seem to rarely use smokes anymore, now it's 98% all frag. I've seen a group or two of AI turn towards a building and take turns to throw frags against the walls and windows of the buildings our guys are hiding inside of because someone upstairs fired a single shot. Kind of hilarious on one hand, but something we've not experienced to such an extend until recently. Again, making use of grenades are not the issue--in fact I was one of those weirdo's that absolutely loved in A2 OA on Takistan having OPFOR chuck rpg's at buildings we were either inside of or missing and hitting surrounding buildings to let us know they know we're there, or over our heads up in the mountains, haha. But the sudden god-like accuracy of the things being tossed at the moment is just making ArmA feel less fun and more of a headache again like it was before ASR fixed the AI. Which is why I'm wondering if something somewhere since the update is letting ASR kick in to an extent, and then shoving it off to the side to go ham with the insanely accurate spamfest. Again, something at least myself and my group I play with have not experienced until right around when Malden released and things got updated. We've died to many a poor decision and grenades in the past, and gladly accepted it with smiles and laughs. It was exciting and often times hilarious, but this? This.....is something all together different and giving us the impression ASR isn't fully working for us and our AI like it was before the Malden update. I can't explain it. I really wish I could. Things just feel.......weird. I do wonder though, since we use also ACE, could maybe something have changed recently (ace_ai) that is sort of muscling into ASR's territory so to speak and causing some of this weirdness at all? Could that be? Ugh, I dunno....like I said, I wish I could explain it. All I know is, it feels like overnight something changed somehow to the point that the AI are just mortaring us with accurate as hell spam that never miss at all. Before this "weird shift", we had AI make us crap our pants with grenades, but many times miss us and start to hone into our positions. You know, the whole human-like "room for error" since even the best trained guy in a real battle is never 100% accurate 100% of the time? The ai up until now kept us crapping ourselves and kept us on our toes. But now, it's just a slaughter-fest with grenades, period. That's why at least myself (and I'm sure the others aside from me who also have not experienced this until now suddenly) made the effort to post here to try getting to the bottom of "why" this could possibly be happening suddenly. So please next time try not writing us all off as merely lazy players who just want everything handed to us via easy mode with no challenge. Something weird is going on for some of us, and we're just trying to scratch our heads and figure out what could be possibly causing this sudden shift.

Y'know that's what I'm experiencing on our server running ASR. A lot....and I mean a LOT of grenade spam. I'm wondering if the new BIS update did something screwy, because everything worked better until the free dlc update and now we're once again getting headshotted by opfor firing a single round while going prone, and grenade spam--which in itself isn't too terrible of an issue, but they never miss unless they try to get a frag through the window into the building we're hiding in from all the grenade spam, haha. Someone fire's a shot, and suddenly any ai nearby start chucking frag's at you at the same time. I can't help but wonder if something somehow changed. We especially saw this in those Malden missions. It's raining grenades in those damn missions. I can now officially tell you what a 40mm looks like coming at your nose full speed, lol. During the next few days, I'm going to test ASR on another server to see if it's the same thing, just to make double sure.

TBH, I'm waiting eagerly for the day it (hopefully) gets integrated and released as well.

Just a heads up notification. Due to unforeseen circumstances we are in need of someone creative enough to come in as a replacement "Lore Guy". We have plenty of documentation and such to get anyone up to speed to help, but willing to consider suggestions and alterations. Military experience not a requirement, but certainly helps a bit. Especially when helping to figure out certain things. Any interested parties in the future can freely write me personally about it.

Lil more progress on the Pasi!

Back in 2009-2010 when I started ASTFOR with StalkerGB, experimenting: Every few weeks or months everyone always ends up suggesting their nation's camo. Norwegian friends and supporters suggest their pattern, a few Finnish guy suggested theirs, we toyed with Swedish awhile ago until we saw the CTRG in A3....and I have 1 Danish friend that keeps requesting Danish Flecktarn. The requests for these patterns tend to take turns throughout our development time. An issue with using the aforementioned patterns is then people confuse us right away for those nations, etc. And with the color of our flag sporting M/98, we might also get confused a tiny bit with Iceland funny enough, because when they were helping out in Afghanistan they also sported Norwegian camo: Now don't get me wrong, I personally love m/98. It's a very simple yet very effective pattern, but this swing back around to what I've said a lot to people, even recently--it's pretty much impossible to get a pattern that will not only please everyone, but not get confused with another nation, or is unique, etc, etc, etc. I've tried soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many times, and have annoyed the hell out of my team equally every time always testing new patterns. I will give credit to our version of ESTDCU, it works fairly well on Chernarus, Tanoa, etc. So at least it's kind of functional, heheh. Thanks for being a fan of ASTFOR and following our project, btw! Very much appreciated! :)

Absolutely, man. Like I said, trust me when I say I've banged my head on the wall and drove my team crazy at times experimenting with stuff like patterns, etc. lol :D I've experimented with Fleck, ESTDCU, Hex, Splinter, etc. I mean all of them had their pro's and con's. I will say though, I have to hand it to the CSAT pattern. If it wasn't for the fact that it's for CSAT already (obviously, heheh) it reminded me a taaaaaaaad wee bit of like the Finnish-style and could have been an interesting one to mess with. But again, even then it's pretty much right back to "it's not a 100% unique pattern where only 1 nation in the entire world--both real or fictional--uses it". We even had one guy kinda-sorta complain about the pattern on FB and we basically responded with, "Welp if you can do something better and unique, be our guest. We're totally up for it." And pretty much got handed a library of already known patterns around the world just tweaked color values. So I pretty much had to face palm a tiny bit at that point because it proved my point how ass it is to try getting something 100% unique. I was being driven crazy to the point I was saying to myself, "Just screw it, take a page out of the Austrian's and go a single solid color!", haha. But yeah, to each their own. No ill or hurt feelings here. To be honest, it's kind of nice having a little community interaction again as things have been mega quiet from our side for awhile. So while this is certainly a conversation subject we've often had with people, it's still nice having a discussion here nonetheless. ;)

Not sure how long you've lurked the forums and our thread. So I'll try my best to sum up an answer to your "Why?" in case if you haven't really followed our project or thread for very long... Like with weaponry, we've had several discussions even on here about such things. It's virtually impossible to do something 100% on its own that some other real-world nation doesn't have in common. Especially in the world of camo. We've had people even complain about the patterns on our FB page like 2 years back. We've even held a poll here showing a few patterns and which pattern the community was more inclined to prefer and ESTDCU-style pattern still won. At the end of the day, I've grown to have one singular answer that seems to perfectly answer every single immeasurable "Why...?" question we get posed over the past several years of development: "Because that is what we want to do." That's pretty much the core answer that applies to everything we have done and will do in the future with molding and shaping Asteland. At the end of the day, I do what I do because its apart of my vision of what I like and/or want in my vision for my fictive nation. I'd rather a group of people not always like my decisions and than sacrificing my vision to try and please every single person in the community--who also have their own tastes and vision--which is why mod teams get literally bombarded with people wanting them to change every...tiny...thing several hundred times to meet their own vision or creative ideas. Also why soundmod makers have to make hundreds of versions of 1 rifle sound, because everyone has their own interpretation or taste in how that one rifle should sound). We've changed things and experimented with dozens of patterns and variants of patterns, same with constantly changing directions with weapons and vehicles. At the end of the day, I need to make a decision and not be stuck in a creative limbo spending year after year of just testing things and then holding polls for community members to vote on, and then have to do a re-vote months or a year later because a batch of new people join and have suggestions for changes themselves. lol. We're getting closer to an Alpha release at it is, I have no intention on changing anything. My own focus right now is to see things are the best they possibly can before the release. Sorry if my response comes off a little harsh. It's not meant to be in any way. However, for those out there reading this, keep in mind every project team gets asked constantly "Why did you go A instead of B, or why does X look like Y, shouldn't you go with Z instead to be more interesting/unique/cooler/etc?". It's nothing personal and completely logical to expect, especially if people come asking these same "why" questions who haven't really been following the threads long or relatively new to those forums. But even so, at the end of the day, one message needs to always be made clear and to the point: that at the end of the day we do what we do and even how we do it--because it is our desire to do so.

Close, and yet wrong. ESTDCU, or what I just call 2nd gen, as the original ESTDCU seemed a little more on the warmer side of green tones, to the new ones which seem like a deeper and cooler green. But alas how "so...CADPAT" pertains to our asking for scripters, I'll have to ponder that one. lol. But thanks for observation of what our pattern is, although a wee bit on the wrong end. ;)

Hey all, we're just sending out a message to the community that if there are any good scripters out there, we could use one for the team for effects and features we would love to explore to make Project ASTFOR as awesome as we can for the community to play with. We have one who knows his way around some scripting, but due to being already having a massive to-do list with vehicles and other modeling-related work for ASTFOR, I feel it would be more beneficial to the team to have someone come in as a dedicated script guru to avoid a backlog of work for the 3d modelers on the team. So if you know your way around scripting/coding to do things like help ensure we are fully ACE supported, integrate some of the ACE features (3d pip optics, etc), particle effects, or animations, etc.....basically all those kinds of neat little details kinda things to get the most features and abilities squeezed out of ArmA's engine, feel free to contact me via PM and we'll go from there.

Astelandic AFS Viper (part of the Astelandic Future Soldier Program / Astelandic Framtid Soldat ) CREDITS: Model: Tasksoldier121 & ThePugLife Textures: RobertHammer

Just a non-official WIP to show we're still alive. Just people's time is very limited at the moment, thus why it took awhile. Aimpoint 3X Magnifier DONE Original HP model made and donated by - Enrico "rubixlight" Santi Low Poly & Baking by - ThePugLife IMI Negev LMG 5.56 DONE Original HP model made and donated by - Ognjen Saponja Low Poly & Baking by - ThePugLife .50 Cal HMG WIP Model being made by - Jones (AstFor) IN OTHER NEWS... So aside from the above, we're still chipping away little by ever-so-little when time can. We would love to get things pushing forward at a quicker pace, but unfortunately we just don't have the manpower, and after posting several please for help on here and on our FB page, never got anything out of it other than a few pats on the back and people asking again if we can release certain weapons and vehicles now so their squads/clans/groups can gut our mod for their own stuff, lol. So, while I contemplated numerous times of closing ASTFOR down for good after having 6 years of discouragement building up, I decided to just keep pushing forwards and see where things take us. So, our apologies if things are a little too slow for the community's taste. We all want to see things kicking out left and right, but we're tiny and too few. C'est la vie and all that.... ;) Also, I would like to take a moment and thank personally and publicly a very awesome member of our ArmA community--Adacas. We had some unfortunate issues surrounding our uniforms that risked ASTFOR's development to be halted. Adacas was very kind in allowing Project ASTFOR to integrate his base uniform that will be a pretty sexy placeholder until we can sort our own finally. After which case, the uniform will be passed down for Asteland's Special Forces units to use. Finally in regards to weapons, our weapons pack is pretty close to be considered done and ready for Alpha Release. Our talented weapons modeler, ThePugLife, is laying down the groundwork for what will eventually become our Astelandic Carl-Gustaf M4. We're not sure if it'll make it into our Alpha release, but it's quite probable. This way aside from the usual rifles/smg/sniper and lmg classes, we can provide the community with something that has a little more bang (or Boom!) for dealing with those pesky enemy vehicles at the get-go in our Alpha release. Right now the biggest thing I'm waiting on is a response back from LAxman in regards to sounds/framework. I'm a personal fan of Dynasound, but also want to ensure that our mod "plugs in" with other mods like RHS, 3CB, etc that communities typically use a lot without causing a conflict in terms of soundscape experience, so to speak. I'd like for everything to flow nicely, without our sounds conflicting with the style of everything else. And for those in the community who are JSRS users, don't worry as I have your backs as well. We also have a self contained JSRS system of sounds for our weapons as well so it also provides a consistent sound experience for those who prefer to use JSRS. While impossible to cover every single possible scenario, I'm doing my best to keep the community in mind and have a few bases covered in terms of compatibility with different tastes, mods, etc. Thus why I am making sure users/fans of JSRS and (hopefully) Dynasound are covered. That about covers it for this report, folks. While not technically an officially planned WIP report--it was overdue. We can't have the community thinking we're dead, now can we? Rest assured, our tiny band of misfits and mental asylum escapee's are doing everything we can to keep Project ASTFOR moving forward and closer towards Alpha Release. It's just due to not enough manpower, things are going to take a lot of time to get there. But we will get there--come hell or high water, so to speak! lol

Awesome, looking forward to it! :)

Have you been able to break through with some progress with the whole static poses is not working in MP?

Funny enough I too am experiencing this interesting thing. I downloaded it twice from Armaholic, as well as moved around loading orders, also launched it in its own mod folder as well as tried throwing it into the Dynasound modfolder itself, etc., and still not noticing anything past what Dynasound itself delivered. Whereas one friend was telling how much better everything comes together since he also downloaded and used this mod with Dynasound, which stumped me. But then again, as long as I've played Bohemia's games I've come to expect the unexpected. No matter how pristine and flawless something made is, ArmA will never fail to choose a few people at random for all sorts of random buggery and "WTF?!" moments, lol.

LAx, really, really well done. Loving the sounds and feeling of immersion when pairing the new Dynasound with all of your other released mods. Couldn't be any more pleased, nor can my ears! :)

There's a method to my madness. What it is, people still can't figure out--nor even I half the time for that matter, lol. But it works, otherwise we wouldn't still be supported all these many years through thick and thin. I like taking creative license, but there needs to be some legitimacy behind from my perspective it to both justify and make it sound plausible. The Galil's worked since Sweden almost ended up with them back in what, the 80's during trials? In addition to the Galil being generally of the same family tree as the RK series rifles of Finland, so there was enough legitimacy behind my choice of keeping the Galil's and turning them into ffv890's and running with the idea further. At the end of the day, everyone and their uncles will have their own ideas for ASTFOR and how they think it should be and look. Some will want more Swedish vehicles than Norwegian, others will want more Norwegian influence, others will suggest more Finnish feel. Even my own team doesn't always agree with my choices at times, but at the end of the day we all understand it's my baby. Even if the community decided, "Eh, not my cup of tea", I guarantee you ASTFOR would not stop production. Sounds slightly harsh, but while truly not meant to be, every mod here has people posting endless personal want's and requests. That's just part of the modding world around here, lol. So the project owners who put all the love, blood, and sweat into it needs to decide the point when it stops being their baby. They start losing that feeling of "That's my baby taking shape!" while trying to ultimately give everyone else what they want or suggest. It's no longer yours. It becomes everyone else's but yours. That's all while also being constantly contacted by people who "praise your work and design choices", but then ask if they can completely throw away everything and have you gut everything just for 1 rifle or vehicle for their clans to use. You appreciate all the support from the community, but also need to find the strength to go--"I appreciate your support and ideas, but.....I think I got it from here, thanks." heh. Put it this way, while we appreciate suggestions from the community...at the end of the day, we've already planned out a ton. There's entire reasons, as well as actual written history and lore for our choices that span back literal years and even centuries (thanks to our lore guru, Wildcat, for planning out and actually writing all the individual history, lore, outlines, etc). ;)

Don't worry I'll give you as much mean comments as you need next co-op, lol.

Yeah I was hoping to break the news to you gently someday, oops! Don't worry we'll make all comfy for you, maybe add a bucket to catch all the tears in the back when Dan places them down in a mission to use, lol.

PPPPPPPPPppppppppppasi! *jazz hands* Our very own Jones, making much progress on the project lead's favorite vehicle. <3

Agreed. Heart was somewhat in the right place, just the mind was not in synch and thus didn't come out the right and constructive way that it could (and SHOULD) have. Regardless, I will just state about the whole HP to LP structure thing, that it was definitely something we at Project ASTFOR had to learn the hard way after years of on and off work along the way, but once things were explained as to the why's and the how's (Which is what people NEED, not "that sucks, do it better like dis..." so-called "tips"), things went from painful (for having to go back to square one) to that of amazement because you really start seeing the hard work and time (and oh god does it take a crap-ton of time lol) pay off. Things go from "Wow pretty nice..." to "HOLY CRAP!" panty-dropping excitement haha. But overall nice job on the Colt, man! Look forward to seeing more in the future. :)

No set date, as we're a very, VERY small team and it takes a lot of time to ensure the best quality we can. Some have been waiting months for us, I've been waiting 5 years.....and I'm the project lead. lol :P

The problem is it is there, but for some reason in arma especially with the lighting you don't notice it as much compared to say a standard black paint. We're going to try bringing it out more and see what happens.