DaSquade

What to say... *New member (Feb 2009, if not...sorry) shows up with quality own made material. *Shows he can work pretty fast and different approches, reworked script work. *Tries to make it as realistic as possible. I can only give you my full respect. Carry on. As for the chute. Sadely i'm just a poor modelbuilder and texture maker, but you might want to check into the stock material. If not mistaken the old non-steerable and the new steerable chute bought get deployed by using an rtm animation file (not 100% sure, rtm or a normal bone structure animation). In the end, with some knowledge you should be able to make your own custom rtm. I'm almost sure some people with skills in rtm making will be able to help you out if needed.

CBFASI: are you using a path lod for your roadway finding? I'm sure you are, but i'm wondering how. I mean, doesn't it help like how one makes a path on a slope of a building that can be randomly hidden due to the landslope. I fixed that by adding several 'in' points along the slope...like each meter. Works perfectly on land, not sure if that would fix your waterlevel detection. Wasn't aware of the water-limitations. Hope they one day get solved for your water projects.

Maybe one day the mods will disable the poll fuction as most of them: A. Don't really contribute anything. I'm fairly sure BIS staff is all to aware of what could 'add' or don't to the gameplay. It is up to them if they want to invest in feature X or Y. B. Polls like these only result in flamewars because the topic supportors refuse to accept the anti-supports opinions..and will do anything to make them believe other wise. Personally, voted 'None of both'. Why, like Manberrie...if you play it tactical and in team, if you ever end up in a case your only defence is stabbing, you are doing it wrong. Meaning, you did at least two things wrong. First you get yourself in the situation where you end up without ammo and you manage to get yourself within arm lenght of your enemy. But it might depends on what your type of gameplay and tactics are offcourse. I could understand there might be a fun factor and in stealth missions a bayonet or knife would be cool. Anyway, bayonet and knife features are on the end of my personal wishlist and 'on what should BIS spent his precious time on now'. Carry on fighting over something BIS hardly lays awake off at night.

Hm i don't follow anymore... First it is the 'FOV' that is crappy and now it is the accuraty that is the problem. An other useless poll? Nah, seriously. Although i haven't played much, one really needs to learn his weapon (zero points of each individual type of weapon/sight) and the ballistics or the bullet types. I do agree about your point that since the beginning that BIS integrated the aimpoints red dot..it was always too thick. Maybe for once ( :p ) BIS got it correct as in RL it is a diameter of 4 MOA, but ingame this size is often only usefull at very close ranges. That was why i tried to make my eotech 553 holo center dot as small as possible (and used the small reddot mod for the aimpoints). Anyway, we need a proper sight adjustment mod for each and every weapon that in RL can be adjusted. A custom preset (zero at your own prefured range) should be a nice bonus.

Hm? -> So you are saying the Holo (aimpoint or eotech or bought?) fills too much screen AND obscures targets? Ok, i don't play that much anymore, but afaik ironsights block almost everything near your target but has a more open FOV around the ironsight. Where with the eotech and aimpoint, the target and near zone is as open as it can, but it blocks a bit your FOV. Imho i prefure the eotech/aimpoint... We are taking about CQB sights, so i need my direct FOV instead of an overall awareness sight. Please enlighten us... Voted 'couldn't care less'.

Uhm, maybe you should test and report if an existing (BIS or 3th party) model works and shows textures in bulldozer. *What viewer do you use? ArmA1 or ArmA2 bulldozer? *Do you run the latest tool package of ArmA1 and using arma1 bulldozer? *Is the path to your dll folder correct? *Do you use the correct texture format and resolution (tga and 512-512, 1024x512, 2048x1024 etc). Hard to tell without any background info.

4 men team purely for the sound development (at least field recording) and one military consultant. Something BIS can only dream of i think. Hope i pays off...

Well, i was chatting with Chris last night (or was it the day before...short memory here) about the alpha bugs. Afaik the alpha bug (alpha bug not inside an model, but alpha bug between two individual models...witch was afaik the problem) was only a problem on previous generation GPU cards, like the 8800GTX etc (at least i have that one and had the bug). But according too other players with other and newer cards apperently this alpha bug isn't present anymore. Witch makes me wonder, since we are all in some way forced to replace our old cards by a newer one to be able to play ArmA2 decent, maybe the bug isn't relevant anymore so this allows us to introduce it again. Maybe a poll or even better some quality research on why and how is needed.

Oh for me they can add a ranking system. I couldn't care less... BUT let them loose all their ranks and medals if the player dies :p.

pufu is correct about the attacheble and swapping of scopes. In rl this isn't done afaik at least not with most scope. But indeed still a mayor engine limitation atm. Something not only would benefite players in kitting their own weapon, but from a modelers point of view and sourcing/addon packs it would even be a better thing... Silencers/suppressors on the other hand would be more realistic and especially for sniper riffles i think it is very common they attach/detach it. It is possible, but has some negative points afak. About the realistic holo's on aimpoint/eotech. Indeed gives for some (was it nvidia or ati users that had the bug?). Might be nice if we could get more detailed info why some cards have the bug and some don't. Maybe the newer generation cards don't have the alpha bug anymore....(still on a GTX8800 here).

Beside the Normal (_nohq) and specular map (_smdi) textures, the ambient shadow (_as) texture also contains 'effects' that represent folds and other details. Although DM (?) once released a PSD (photoshop file with layers) of the stock arma1 soldiers witch contained most details as folds, pockets, camo etc on seperated layers. I don't think this will be availible soon of the ArmA2 models. So you will have to tweak your way yourself. You might want to play with the default color texture (_co) and play with some effects like: - Desaturate. - Layer style (overlay, soft light, hard light, color burn etc..). - Opacity. - Layer masks. untill you get a good blended in result, without loosing the basic details. Not an easy task and you will be forced to stick to the default shapes unless you alter the _nohq, _smdi and _as textures.

Picture = the picture that represents the unit in the leaders team bar (the buttom bar where you can see who is in your team and witch number they have....sniper picture, medic picture, mg picture etc...) Icon = the icon that represents the unit on the 2D map. (soldier icon, tank icon, building icon etc...). Hope i'm correct and it is clear. EDIT: Getting slower each day....Planck beat me.

For the 'love of realisme'... :p. Not sure (as that isn't my task etc), but maybe with ACE2 it will be much more flexible so servers can decide if they use script'X' or not. Anyway, the script wasn't stupid, it was the users not appling it correct that were stu.... ;). This was one of the key features where ACE was build around in the end. They add good and bad things of real life. You just need to learn to adopt feature X and Y. Meaning, that feature added a new approche to how you equipe yourself...and most important imho is the fact it forces you a bit to communicate with your teammembers. So if you plan to fill all your slots, you act as the mule of the group. So you serve the team and in return the team backs you up by frequently taking a rest, cover you when you need to do a long sprint...and if you collapse during that move, they should take positions and cover untill you are fine again. It is a give and take feature. I remember we had some good plays and communications that covered this when i played with the guys of GOL. Beside that, you can still use the option to pack up vehicles and use those as mobile rearm crates. But yeah, that requires teamactions and dissipline. Something you don't find on every server. Anyway, just giving you some options as i don't think the stigma feature will be something that will be dropped.

Nothing new...every thing remains the same as in O2/arma1. So atm you still need to use the arma1 tools. The only new thing is the fact you best use the arma2 bulldozer because if you plan to use the new arma2 supershaders, you are able to view/render the new shaders in the arma2 bulldozer. Not sure if the 'how to' of setting up the new shaders is a public secret... Anyway, all is possible with the old tools (except binarizing of rvmat afaik). But that shouldn't make people hold off releases...

The best way, as Jenny used to do it, was to work with the custom face texture. Since that texture is very personal it won't effect other units, downside is AI units won't have the personal stuff unless you edit all the stock BIS face textures. BUT this methode will require that you edit the unit models. You will need to add poly's to the model where you want nametags, badges etc displayed and include them in the face named selection. Other way would be to use the clan picture..but again you will need to modify the units. Downside on that is, you will have a useless clan picture as you will need to map several items on that picture, so as global clan picture (on tanks, helis, player list etc) it will look bad. Welcome to the world of limitations :).

@Gnat: Fact is, that little programming falls afaik under reverse enginering (as you try to reverse something that isn't meant to be done)..and so that makes it an illegal action. But again correct me from wrong, i failed on my 'Uber-excited-self-proclaimed-Addons-Police-Officers' tests ;) , so correct me from wrong. -> Back OT.

Like IrishDeviant posted, you might want to make a normal map for that. I did it for the TAC50 aswell...i even used a reference picture and remade an accurate heightmap sample of the relief. Turned out pretty realistic imho. After that it is up to the shader settings to give it that extra look. @Black²: Watch your caps lock use (but i don't want to moderate :) ). It will be done when it is done mate, and even then we have to check when or how we will release it.

Just wondering...Afaik, BIS changed something in the paa that is why we need TD's decompression tool to open BIS stock textures. I haven't found any info on what is changed and if all textures (alpha and non alpha) are compressed. I suppose guys like TD know more... So far i have been too busy making contence that i didn't really had the change to check his tool out on ingame textures. The topic of TD's de and compress tool didn't had much info and afaik one could still use the old uncompressed format. Maybe for some reason view pilot needs to have that kind of compression (make no direct sense though). Good luck testing that out. *On the models (sights, muzzles, etc...) itself nothing has changed afaik. On the other hand it might be what Scuba says. Maybe one should wait for the tools.

@kju: Sorry mate, but i'm stepping out of the ring. Looks like already one member lost the battle and got suspended. *Everbody his own opinion...peace.

Nice to see you are back into arma modding Daan :). Welcome back...or did you simply never left?

So you are saying you use a double account. Even if you don't, why would you be affraid to post under your 'known' (respected?) forumname. Are you thinking 'ripping' is indeed in some from cheating? :p Joking, don't take it too seriously mate. Same for me, maybe i take this hole thing too seriously. But 'ripping' still feels durty and not rewarding towords myself. But you make a point, why wast all the time to make your stuff if you can 'easly' skip the hole modelling process and start on the cfg part. Again Rocket scores in my book: At least if he means, ripp away and get as much as possible data (3d and 2d)..but use that as a reference to build your own work. At least those persons in my book get a big respect. ->I made a vector21 recently based on 2d reference pictures. Although i didn't had any good building pictures of it form, i thought it was pretty accurate. I showed it to someone in the buisness and he explains it was a bit off in global shape. He has the real model and they have a 3d scanner. He was that kindly to send me the scanned model (although it was a bit rough and not super detailed)...Anyway, i used this as reference and modified my model according to the scanned one. I could have cheated and restarted from the actual scanned model (would of needed a lot of cleaning up though)... Studied for architect, did it for a few years but went on a different road (dockworker now). Been self-educating myself since the release of OFP. I still have a long road to go even after all these years... But: - Fulltime job (dockworker, gets my bills paid and i really enjoy the work/envirement). - Freelance modding work (it was an oppertunity that came along..but in the end this is the least fullfilling part imho. Deadlines aren't my thing as it often goes against my creativity and standards). - Hobby: spending my free time on making ArmA addons (most full filling thing, especially if you know you did all the steps and only have to credit yourself). *So livingproof +3. Make no mistaken. There are a lot (really) people who are in the same boat just in this small community. A lot have left the scene (a lot lost interest but a lot went fulltime 3d artist within BIS/BIA or other game developing buisnesses). Anyway, didn't want to drag this OT. But imho it all comes to one thing. Modding is some sort of lifestyle. Sure you can rip other stuff and try to get it optimized to this engine...but in the end, what do you learn out of that? I know, time is for everybody a pain. Sure anybody even a modeler want item X or item Z as fast ingame as possible, but if you are only looking for the fast and easy way, i'm not sure if this is the path you want to travel. Don't get me wrong, not everybody has to follow that road and everybody has a different opinion on that. But you might find out that those who take the long and hard road to learn and try to master one aspect of the process will easier get some respect...witch lead this person will easier be helped when he encounters a problem and faces an issue. Yes, well again sure he can rip..but again like rocket and franze say. Why wouldn't you first try out how those who made the stuff you want to rip, if you didn't tried to make it yourself. Ok, nobody will launch a program for the first time and have a nicer first model. But ok, for some the hole modeling progress isn't just their hobby/life and it is just the end result (and the fame they get if they release something fast). You make some point about the fact there are tons of for example the superpuma model. Some maybe even in better quality then anyone around here can make. Ohwell, maybe some of use have just spend too much time into modeling we forget that in the end it is just a game :p.

Rocket does make a very correct point with his last comment: I think the main reason why QG didn't sold good, was the fact this community was shaped over years that for extra contence you shouldn't be paying for as one day someone would make something for free. Might sound harsh, but i'm sure a lot of people were simply not up for it to spend XX€ for a QG expansion. Ok, it might not of been the best and greatest contence...but still. I suppose BIS missed the ball from the beginning (well they do made RH etc...) and on the other hand, making it such an open sources package is what it made so good and addicted if it is your cup of tea. Offcourse we are used to get our samples in the end and i'm sure one day we will have some. I agree the main purpuse should be educational, so one (good) example of each class/feature would be a big help. I suppose it is for BIS easier to release a model then to write a full guide...in the end, a model says more then thousend words. I understand the example models are a great resource for beginner and that will lead to an other batch of copy/past models. I guess, put your ego aside and let the storm pass. I'm all for creativity and doing it all from scratch, but i guess not everybody shares that same point.

Great topic over here. This is indeed a golden topic with tons of usefull info for new folks. Go rip guys,....don't wast your time on trying to make something yourself! (reported, nothing new but imho this shouldn't be in a topic aimed at new commers and i don't suppose it is something BIS or any hardworking modder can stand behind...with or without permission).

True, you make a point (flat as a babys butt :(). I remember mine didn't looked super aswell without a decent spec map and weathering. Anyway, PM inbound.

USSRsniper, i would first make the normal map. At least most of the times i first make my normal map and then start to make my _co's. Weathering your model imho comes last..and so far your weapon is missing a bit of character imho (often normal map gives it some life). I have also don't have any decent scratched reference pics that i can share. But use your imagination and some sense (sense as in where would paint first come of...sharp edges and heavy used parts are one of them). Wip Vector21: After showing of some pics of my model to someone with skills and a good military background/connections, the person mentions..."Looks good, but in some area's it is a bit off". Turns out he has the vector21 and he was that kind to provide me a 3d scanned model of his (cheater :p). Fixed the mayor differences. We (Scuba) found a fix for the lenses/shadows after he came up with a ref. pic of the vector with killflashes. So under the moto 'pimp my vector': The facecount is pretty high sadly (for a bino): 4930 tris/3320 vertexes. Wip TAC-50: Scuba is doing a very good job with the texture, he even proofed he is good at making AOR1 camo pattern from scratch :). Still no smdi's. Decided to make the detailed shadowVolume LOD today and overall i'm pleased: 1428 tris/797 vertexes (muzzle/suppresor included). Luckly no clippy shadow issues encountered. *Bulldozer render with shadows blurred/image sharpend. ->High resolution pic I always wanted to make a more dedicated sniperweapon, so making the weapon less visible in the envirement. I did some test for a ghillie camouflaged version. Overall i think it came out pretty good even with low amount of faces. Still needs some tweaking (need to add some more 3d to it to break the top-line) and i have some other things planned for it. The scope will also have a ghillie wrap in time....then we need to find/make a matching sniper :d. ->High resolution pic We see what we can do...