Boborish

Simply... wow! You guys are very talented!

Nice interview. It had to be exhausting, so many questions... Thanks for asking and answering my question. And yes, the answer was satisfying, thanks Ivan.

To open O2 model in 3ds Max you need the old version of ArmA O2 (link here, thanks to MehMan). There you can export the .p3d to .3ds file and then import it to 3ds Max. Not sure what exactly you mean by "drawing" but yes, you can model in O2, its not just a converter. I suggest you to search some tutorials (most are for OFP O2 but its almost the same anyway). Basically you just place vertexes using Insert key and connect them (must be 3 or 4 vertexes) by pressing F6 and creating a new face. The rest you either find in tutorials or try yourself (the best way IMO ). Make sure to set up the Buldozer viewer to see, what youre actually creating.

Panda[PL]: What you say (write) seems to be logical but the flames are indeed yellow from what I saw. Perhaps it cools down too quickly to be noticed. Id say the shape is usually very similar with each shot, in real its just "animated", thats why it might look its random. Never seen muzzle flash in real though (not even fired or saw somebody firing a gun) so I might be wrong.

Q: Will you implement the Per Pixel Lightning? You said you plan to, so how did you decide?

Not bad but honestly, it doesnt look very realistic. Muzzle flash is yellowish, not redish, also it usually is always almost the same with just small changes (every round is the same, the holes remain the same, so theres no reason why it should change any dramatically). Check this video, its a good example how the real muzzle flash should look Good luck m8.

Scroll down.

Thanks guys.

Looks nice, though the civ movement should be improved a bit and muzzle flash too (and recoil maybe). But I like those enterable buildings. Hope theres much more of em.

Yeah, also being hidden in shadows, thus lowering the chance youll be spotted (if its not the case for AI then at least in MP it helps) is useless in ArmA since the shadows arent viewed.

First of all we would need some enterable buildings tho. I heard there wont be many in Arma2.

Calm down, I dont think they were offensive that much. The accuracy is fine, one just has to find out ArmA behaviour. For example, the hold breath thing is nice, but it seems that the longer you hold it, the higher dispersion bullet gets, even if youre aiming directly on the target with a zeroed scope. So if you aim, click to hold breath and shoot 1 second later, the bullet should fly right on the place youre aiming at. If you shoot 5 seconds later, you most likely wont hit the target. (dont think youll notice this on such a short range but when you try to hit a target 1000m far with a M107, its an issue) Another reason why you had problems to hit the enemy might be zeroing of the M24. Im really not sure now, but to a certain distance you have to aim even below the enemy to hit it. Also, did you count with the bullet drop? I guess you did, but one never knows.

One more thing - AIs head movement needs to be redone. They always move their heads at the same speed, they always look at certain direction for the same amount of time. I guess it wouldnt be that hard to fix, would it?

One thing just came up to my mind... is there a chance youre going to make more idle animations? It would make AIs look a little more human - things like putting the weapon on their shoulder when idle, sit down, crouch or drinking even (if he has the field bottle), crouching after a while of running/sprinting when he stops (assuming hes not in combat), wipe his face from the sweat etc. Would be really nice, though a bit complicated but if there are people for this kind of things in your team and dont have anything to do, would be great. EDIT: Oh and what about animated breathing? Imagine this - you and your squad had to run for a while and everyones tired now. Some of them crouch, moving their breast up and down, open mouth and making noise as they try to take a breath. (its too silent in ArmA) Would for sure look cool (but there would need to be more variations (sound (defined by radio voice), animations) and different endurance for each soldier to make it look human-like. Its not very important of course, take this as an idea for inspiration.

Another question: is it possible to export .p3d to .3ds? I tried to google it but couldnt find anything but theres some kind of an "export version of O2PE" that can do it. Cant find it though.

This already IS implemented. Watch the videos.

Looking pretty good! Did you notice the new tracers?

I wouldnt call it a missing feature since ArmA can handle those shadows without any problem, its childs play to fix it and theres actually no reason to not being implemented. Missing feature would be for example few posts back mentioned working bipod. These shadows arent there, because BI didnt notice it or forgot. Verbalism... (hope its a good translation) (edit: sorry if my previous post looked offensive, I should have added some emoticons)

Thats not so much a bug as much as adding another LOD, you can have shadows casting from objects from all interior views, http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Oxygen_2_-_Manual Bug doesnt have to be engine-related. It isnt casting shadows while it should, so its a bug.

Vids look good. But I wonder if theyre going to fix that bug with interior shadows. (interior parts dont cast shadows in normal ArmA and yet not in Arma2 either)

Very nice work! I love the new GUI, F16 sound, units replacements. Although the fov is really annoying. Why not staying with the real values, like we had in OFP, first versions of ArmA or now in (fortunately) TrueMods addon? BTW nice music in the menu.

You mean the bouncing? Collisions...

Scripting command that allows missionmaker to turn off the scoreboard for the specific mission so people finally stop the stupid rallying in frags and care more about their own survival and overall mission success.

Heh honestly I dont know much about gfx so I didnt know DirectX has its own way to do this. Always thought there are special textures that appear when you turn the thermal on. I wonder how its working then...

I fear we wont see any proper thermal imaging in Arma2, it would require separate textures for everything in greyscale (simulating the thermal emissions), it would need to change depending on the weather / temperature etc to make it realistic. What we currently can see in ArmA is just setAperture with low numbers (0.1-0.3) and works only during a night. (because of the greyscale postprocessing effect present in night) That would take too long to implement, but of course, I would be very grateful to see this in vanilla Arma2.