Col. Faulkner

Some fun "photos" of some of the addons in progress posed in the scenery with "imaginative" (ho! ho! ) captions. The animations are almost correct now, the LODS are done and the shadows are working reasonably OK too. Texturing and all the rest obviously still needs a lot of work though. NB: I know that the unit titles mentioned are fictional in places - this is entirely intentional. Similarly, some of the details are not strictly right for the scenarios pictured - eg. the Gordons are wearing Staybrite capbadges and are carrying bayonets on a CO-IN patrol out in the field. This was never actually done. My actual CO-IN patrol model guy - under construction - is properly authentic:

You don't fool me! You took a photo of a real rifle and pretended it's an editor shot!

Is it really? These anti-armour HEAT munitions actually do very little damage to such structures. They just punch rather disappointingly small holes in walls. Ironically, the hole it makes if it goes right through without detonating is often bigger (I once used to know a guy who actually watched an RPG 7 grenade - fired by the PIRA - Â pass through both walls of the room he was in), and do little physical harm to the occupants unless they are hit directly. The Carl Gustav (which fired exactly the same 84mm HEAT round as the M136 uses) fired at a concrete wall, for example, used to make a hole that you could just stick two fingers into. The 66mm LAW, for some bizarre reason, made bigger holes than the 84mm. This deficiency is why nowadays you get fancy new warheads that do things like penetrating armour before exploding inside a structure (eg. the British Army's LASM - Light Anti Structure Mathingummy). I still maintain that, unless they have these new anti- structure/anti-personnel munitions, the ArmA AI guys should keep their anti-tank weapons for use against AFVs only.

One (if well placed) would have been enough. In theory the M7 HEAT rocket would penetrate everything on a Panther except the turret front. In practise it was less effective, of course. Experiments done by the the US XV Corps in 1944 came to the following conclusions regarding the "bazooka's" effectiveness vs the PzKpw V "Panther": "The bazooka will penetrate the armor on the side, rear, and side of the turret on the German Mk. V Panther tank. The turret is very effectively penetrated and the blasted particles on the inside most certainly are lethal. The side armor is of less thickness than the [rest of the] turret and can be penetrated more easily. Â The wheels and tracks are not profitable targets. Pieces may be blown out of the wheel or tires cut, but the possibility of stopping the tank is remote. Â The rear armor is a profitable target, because the engine compartment is very susceptible to fire, even though the tool boxes, jacks and exhausts are reduce the area of vulnerability. Â Upon the front armor, it is difficult to get an effective burst, as the slope of the armor will ricochet the rocket. No perpendicular hits were obtained during the trial." Much as I dislike the film "Saving Private Ryan", the way the "bazooka" is shown being used in that film (ie. right up close, ambushing the target and shooting it up the arse) is authentic.

Double post. Forum no worky

Consult any set of WW2 tabletop wargames rules for hints and data.

Fiddling about trying to make a bod in a respirator recently it occurred to me that it doesn't really have any function in the game. I did a forum search but never found anything apropos. Does anyone know if anyone has yet created any sort of chemical weapon (or at the very least tear gas) for ArmA?

Those Russian armour vests must be really good!

FWIW I should like to say that I agree totally with this post, but short of writing [y]our own "battlefield simulator" from scratch I can't see how any of this is likely to be realised. I doubt that futzing around with finite state machines and scripts is going to deliver it, and ArmA 2, I strongly suspect, isn't going to give us it either. In the meantime we have a decent enough toy soldier shooty game, but a "simulation" it surely ain't. I do envy those who can play it multiplayer in squads since it's there that I reckon it could really shine. YMMV but I prefer ArmA because the models and environments are nicer and the soldier animations are somewhat more human than the OFP ones were. ArmA also runs smoother on my  hardware. There is little to choose between them in their representation of movement and behaviour on the battlefield, however.

IMO there are more important weapon features that are missing and which I'd like to see supported first (iron sights that have to be set for range, proper BDCs on telescopic sights, bipods that actually support the guns, weapon reliability, etc.).

I liked it the first time I saw it, but it got old very quickly. Leaving aside the exigencies of real life combat, I'd rather they just didn't fire at anything except hard targets. In an Arma AI squad, hoying explody things at the baddies is the grenade launcher operators' job.

The grey-green Feldgrau uniform colours in that last screenshot look spot on. No worries there. One tiny thing I'd say, though, is that the steel helmets seem to be a bit misshapen. It detracts a bit from the overall "look".

Don't lump the Bren in with the German GPMGs or the BAR. Shooting accurately out to 500m (or more) with the Bren is totally realistic. Regrettably, I'm old enough to have actually used one.

Dunno if they are entirely what you had in mind, but the "Conflict Zone Mindanao" mod has some gun truck models in an advanced state of development. They have a dev' thread on this forum. Their artwork looks of very high quality.

Yes, it definitely looks like it's made of Trex: A dog would be much more useful, or a horse that you can ride.

Actually you'll need to do that first. Otherwise you'll be stuck with the American accented voice when commands are given. That Dynamic sound mod doesn't change those. So, "da rat", are you taking on this project now that it's been explained to you how to go about it? Otherwise it'll get consigned to the "addon requests" thread and composted with all the others. I'd be interested in such a thing but I have my work cut out enough as it is trying to make addons (British, as it happens, so I'd eventually have to try a small voice replacement scheme myself if none such exists by the time the addons are done).

I am painting a half dozen or so faces with the right sort of brown cam cream daubed on. All of the guys in fighting order will have cammed up faces (and hands). It's an important detail for getting the right "look". I have made cammed versions of some of the weapons too. The heads are standard BIS ones so I suppose other custom faces could be applied if desired.

Do you mean you want actual figures for accuracy or just what people like in the game? Â In reality, it depends on the state of the rifle, the ammo and the shooter. For all WW2 service rifles a 4 inch group at 100 yards is average to pretty good. I could post more detailed info but I'd obviously run the risk of being called a "moron" again. Â One thing I notice is that your German sniper has a really crappy telescope view. It looks like this: If you want it, I can give you this one I did. The graticule is traced from a photo taken through a real one so it's in the correct proportions: It has a very slight lens bloom and a tiny yellow cast to represent a WW2 era optic that's seen some hard service. I can send you a .p3d with the optics view texture already applied so all you'd need to do is open your rifle's config file and set optics=<.p3d I'll send you> and change the texture path in the optics view .p3d. Let me know if you want this. Speaking of the rifles, I must say that none of them recoil nearly enough. The Kar98K in the mod, for example, barely moves, when in reality it kicks [really] hard. The "semi-auto" case ejection looks very silly too - especially since it's so easy to disable.

Also having a go at making an APC for the boys to rattle around in: Ideally, I'd like a Chieftain tank too but the shape of the turret has so far defeated my pathetic modelling skills. The 432 will do me fine for now (better for an infantry-oriented addon set like this anyway).

Here's a rough idea of what one of the Spearhead British infantry figures is going to look like: This bod is in temperate combat dress and fighting order (without NBC kit). These textures are only very roughly applied for now and don't at all represent the intended end result. Work continues on improving all aspects of these figures (and their weapons). I have now managed to get rid of almost all of the problems with animation (only a small, annoying embuggerance with the left arm remains). Other figures in progress just now have different equipment (eg. extra ammo bandoliers), are in different NBC states, wear different helmets (Royal Marines, MkIV, MK V and MK VI - no paras for now), or have different mods to their webbing. Others wear soft headress (DP combat cap, Tam O' Shanter, Beret) and are from 1960-65 and 1985 (other orders of dress - ie. jungle, arctic, desert - and other time periods - ie. 1950s and possibly 1944-45 - may follow on later).

But in ArmA we can hunt human prey...muhahahah! Apropos hunting; I offered a nice Remington hunting rifle model to the "community" a while ago. WIBNI someone wanted to have a go at finishing it. I can even donate a couple of telescope reticules too for it if required (I have a 30/30 and a couple of types of post reticule already).

Was that actually how you intended the gunsight to look? It's zoomed in far too much. It looks like you applied the texture to the gunsight proxy thingy wrongly (I got that with some of my stuff too until I worked it out). The tanks all behave a bit strangely. I can't do anything from the commanders position. The view is fixed straight ahead. All I can do is fire that machine gun (which shouldn't really be there anyway). All of the allied tanks make ArmA crap itself and crash. The Horsa glider has quite some potential for unusual missions, though, even if actually landing it on a desired spot is pretty hard. This mod reminds me of when I used to play "wargames" on the floor in my room; platoons of shoddily painted plastic toy soldiers and panzer divisions of home-made cardboard tanks.

The turret traverse is actually too slow. The real Tiger II could traverse the turret through a full 360 degrees in between 36 and 19 seconds depending on engine revs. At full revs that's almost as fast as the M4 and way faster than any contemporary British tank. This is a nice model indeed but not nearly ready for release as an addon, IMHO.

Is this of any use to you? It's a utility called "P3D2OBJ". A download link is at the bottom of the page: http://tactical.nekromantix.com/wiki/doku.php?id=ofp:tools:p3d2obj

Maybe they're like the Johnny Rebs in the Civil War who knocked the backsights off their brand new Enfields claiming that they could shoot straighter without 'em Â