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DrBobcat

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Posts posted by DrBobcat

  3. Posted

    Yes, but addon use is not and never has been mandatory. I am certain there are countless addons available for ArmA that people have not used in any significant fashion. What is wrong with offering a choice to the player?

    Secondly, censoring addon content supposedly for the sake of protecting a game's reputation makes little sense to me and only seems to serve as an example of society's incessant urge to regulate moral law into some universal format that all beings must follow. So please, for the livelihood of new ideas and ethical pursuits, allow people to choose what they want to expose themselves to and try not to impose on others what you believe is right or wrong.

    Thirdly, the military indeed does breed far more than killing machines and I hold nothing but the utmost respect for them. While we bicker amongst ourselves about whether to implement graphical features into a video game, they continue to fight or train on for our right to do so in the first place. My hopes are with each and every one of them.

    To conclude, I am eager to see what the product of this discussion actually becomes, even if it results in absolutely nothing at all. It is better to find some sort of conclusion than just chase our tails for weeks on end...

    - dRb

    EDIT:

    Quote[/b] ]Tho it is the parents business if the game is rated 16+ and was tested without dismemberment mod or any other thing a child should not see.
    And what is stopping a sixteen year old with adequate modding skills from designing his own gore system, or even a nude mod of some sorts? Nothing. In addition, there have been no guidelines given from BIS on whether this kind of mod is allowed or not. Do you truly believe it is completely our responsibility to act as marketing agents on their behalf?

  4. Posted

    ArmA is intended to be an entertainment product. While it may have capabilities to be a medical skills trainer, it is not marketed as such.

    Those of you with medical training, or experience with the psychological ramifications of trauma treatment will immediately recognize that enjoying gore as a form of entertainment is extremely psychologically inappropriate and frankly damaging to emotional wellbeing of the participants.

    The emotional desire of the undisciplined desires for shock and bloodlust fairly universally regarded as abhorrent by most societies, and expressions of such are reserved for the most punitive retaliatory punishments for great evils and injustices, and hardly as spectator sports.

    A close friend was only days ago one of the first responders to a horrific and fatal motorcycle accident. While he commented that he was surprised that he was as little affected by the trauma that lay around the scene, his utmost focus was to aid the victim in whatever way possible so that his certain passing would be as (relatively) comfortable as possible. Until you have been in a similar situation, or have a heart to feel, you will not understand the gravity of what you here trivialize.

    Not to set the personal sensitivities aside, but as has been expressed previously, the legal situation in respect to entertainment ratings for video games is in limbo internationally due to past ambivalence on the part of designers and publishers towards moral responsibility for their products, and for content produced for their product but outside the original developer's immediate control. Whether you agree or disagree with the defacto status, you should be able to see that implementation of an 'optimal technical solution' would result in serious backlash and legal review of the product. As was the case with GTA, the entire brand was smeared by the one instance of 'Hot Coffee', and no amount of protestation by the developers could remove the public image and stigma attached retroactively.

    While I wholeheartedly agree with your thoughts on gore implementation in mainstream game design, and while I did not necessarily infer that you implied otherwise, I still believe the choice should still be given to the player on whether or not he or she wishes to have additional levels of gore in their (this) game. For all intensive purposes, someone (or a team) could "easily" create a new mod that does so and pack it all into a single PBO file. If an individual so desired, he or she could place the file in a mod folder and be off in their own blood-filled universe. Conversely, if they did not, they could abstain from downloading the file at all and be fine.

    I definitely do not recommend any teams working on total-conversion to implement any gore system directly into the underworkings of their product. Otherwise, this whole entire argument will flare up once again and virtual heads will roll onto the message board...

    - dRb

  7. Posted

    Which is the greater sin: the use of crude oil and other finite resources to power our homes and automobiles, or the use of biological fuels at the undesirable expense of other people's lives around the world? Last time I checked, many wars up till this time and to come began over energy concerns. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this has meant petroleum. Additionally, civilian casualty rates in modern war have been increasing, IMHO, due to the changing ways in which war is fought. I believe the only thing we can do, in spite of whatever the costs may be, is to try to stray away from limited resources as quickly as we are able. I anticipate far more violence stemming from an assured loss such as oil than from a perceived loss in food supply.

    Honestly, I believe a great deal of the African starving nations are in the state they are due to poor governmental policy and leadership, not due to the minute rise in biological fuels 5000+ miles away.

    Then again, this is all the opinion of a white, handicapped American in California,

    DrBobcat

  8. Posted

    Actually, I find BIS' approach to multiplayer scripting to be quite malleable, if not a little complicated at times. Locality depends on many different factors, but the most important one, in my opinion, is where the code is actually being executed. For example, take a trigger that has been placed in the editor by the mission designer and it runs a function named test.sqf.

    <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">

    // test.sqf

    if (isServer) then exitWith {};

    hint "I am not the server!";

    Assuming the host is a dedicated server, all the players will see the aforementioned hint in the upper left corner of their screen. However, because the player and server are one and the same when locally hosted, the host would NOT see that message. If we were to revise the condition...

    <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">

    ...

    if ((isServer) && !(local player)) exitWith {};

    hint "I could be the server, or I could be a player";

    ...

    ... a local host would still receive the message and a dedicated server would not. For more information, I highly recommend you read this.

    If you would like to ask a more direct question, please either continue to write in this thread or send a PM.

    Good luck!

    - dRb

  10. Posted

    This is most definitely my favorite sound mod released for ArmA yet. However, there is a bug with the Harrier's 20mm sound. Instead of looping continuously, it plays once every so often whilst firing. Quite annoying.

    Thank you for all your hard work. I will gladly download the new versions when they are released.

    -dRb

  11. Posted

    Agreed, and we must also remember that ArmA underwent a majority of its most aesthetically pleasing changes later in its development, not earlier. I remember seeing the game look not much prettier than elite one month, only to see it as it is now a few months later. However, I am not considering this game for its graphical prowess, but rather the changes to AI and user friendliness.

  12. Posted

    My friends and I discovered a fix to the skeletal errors we have all been receiving. Simply place another unit that uses that skeleton on the map so that it will be loaded into memory by the application. Those that work with our tests so far...

    SoldierEB (OPFOR Rifleman)

    SoldierWB (BLUFOR Rifleman)

    SoldierGB (Independent Rifleman)

    SoldierMTeamLeader (QG Mercenary Team Leader)

    - dRb

  13. Posted

    @ Thingamajig

    I had originally planned on not writing in this thread anymore, but I can see this is really frustrating you and I wished to help. Essentially the entire game's music structure is made up of one giant cfgMusic entry very similiar to the one seen in description.ext files for mission editors. What you need to do in order to get your custom music to work is create a music addon. Here's a simple visualization of the concept...

    (ArmA official music) + (CfgMusic addons) = (Newly generated track list with custom music)

    Personally, I have not ever made a music addon before, but I imagine it's not all that difficult. You'd need a config.cpp and all your songs encoded in ogg vorbis format.

    <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">

    class CfgPatches

    {

                class PersonalMusic

                {

                units = {};

                weapons = {};

                requiredVersion = 0.100000;

                requiredAddons = {};

                };

    };

    class CfgMusic

    {

    class CTrack1

                {

                name = "Track 1 Name";

                sound = {"\directoryInAddon\track1.ogg", 1.0, 1.0}; // First 1.0 is db rating. Raise to raise volume, etc. Second is pitch.

                };

    class CTrack2

                {

                name = "Track 2 Name";

                sound = {"\directoryInAddon\track2.ogg", 1.0, 1.0};

                };

    };

    Should look something like that. Good luck!

    - dRb

  15. Posted

    No. If you want to play your own music you must simply do PBO Music Pack, In which you have to place musics and config.cpp

    Well... I done everything with readme and for me it works perfectly. It seems like it's problem caused be other addons or sth.

    Or do that. Really, you just need to make a music addon with a cpp entry for each song. This will add additional tracks to the game's cfgMusic class and your new songs will automatically show up afterwards assuming you did everything correctly. While I'd rather not explain how to do that here, I would recommend you go to ofpec.com. They have more than enough resources to help with any editing question.

    - dRb

  16. Posted

    hm, thanks for the help - but unfortunately this is exactly what i did before.

    what about this "config" file that they talked about on the front page?.

    i made a config.cpp file, and, using notepad, within it i copy/pasted what was mentioned on the front page. i placed it in a folder named MusicBox, which was placed in:

    c:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA\@HULK_OggPlayer\AddOns

    and within musicbox, was the songs of my choice. i also edited the Config file to direct it to the songs i made.

    yet after doing all this, it still refuses to play my songs. only the default ArmA ones.

    This is because you must unpack the main PBO, place the new config.cpp in the generated folder, and repack again. Alternatively, you can also edit the original cpp and add what you wish.

    - dRb

  17. Posted

    I too have been trying to host my own dedicated server and have not been able to clear the same obstacles mentioned by those here. My server shows up on the gamespy master list but all those trying to connect receive the message "connection failed." after a few seconds. However, connection through an IP works correctly if I make sure the server is private. I wish for this to be a public server, though, so the previous "solution" is not much of one.

    All port forwarding and DMZ approaches have been tried, but there has been no change to the situation. Has anyone else made any progress? If so, please share your knowledge so we can all progress past this peculiar plight.

    Thank you,

    dRb

  18. Posted

    Quote[/b] ]sickboy, Mar. 19 2008,08:22

    To my opinion, You are saying: "If you want to use ECS with other mods, you will have to make a seperate solution for them". I bet you mean the ECS config class that allows you to add XEH, or other addons. To my opinion this is the other way around :-D  XEH is there for the whole community and widely used, why not use it by default? Or supply solutions in Readme and your website, so users will immediatly be able to use all the rest of their addons aswell?

    The comment came before the problem became properly understood.

    This may be redundant but as Joker has already tried to explain a solution has been found and should not impact other mods. We are in testing to make sure all is well before we release the fix (ECS).

    We did not build this mod with the intention that it would be used with other mods, but that it should not interfere with or cause issues as such, though when we started this project we did not concern ourselves with what others were doing with thier mods.

    Perhaps if we had known it would be so popular we would have made an effort to contact everyone and work things out ahead of time.  As it is we are sharing it with the public, as it is a great addition to a 'bare' ArmA, that seems dry and unanimated. If all can be resolved (and it appears the solutions are in hand) we can all sit back and have a great time playing ArmA !

    Please give us a few days to post the results and the fix. Thank you for your patience.

    And thank you for continuing to work on the project. I'll definitely be downloading it again once the compatiability issues are addressed.

    - dRb

  19. Posted

    To the ECS guys: Have you had a look at the Extended Eventhandlers addon (XEH for short)? It doesn't seem like you know about it or understand what it's for.

    Have a look at it here. Integrating it into your mod would take minutes for someone who understands it and it will make your mod compatible with other addons and mods.

    XEH has become a community standard already, you will see that if you check out the other addons and mods smile_o.gif

    I don't know if you want your mod to be compatible with other stuff or not, but it would make a lot of people happy and your mod may be more widely used.

    I wholeheartedly agree. Having downloaded the original mod a few days ago, I very much enjoyed it. However, when I found out that it is almost completely incompatible with other mods, I immediately uninstalled it. Now, why would you want to isolate yourself so severely, ECS team? If you truly wish for others to download and use this in any significant fashion, you must consider integrating the extended event handlers mod by Solus.

    That's all I have to say on the matter,

    dRb

  20. Posted

    VON seems to crash my computer 100% of the time.  I'm using the latest audigy 2 drivers and the latest open AL.  EAX and HW accelleration enabled.  Audigy 2 zs platinum.

    Disable hardware acceleration and you will be fine.

    To reemphasize this:

    If you have HARD REBOOTS (computer reboots without warning), all you need to do is disable hardware acceleration. That will stop the hard reboots. It has been 100% effective from what I have observed.

    That is not much of a solution, honestly. Without hardware acceleration, I cannot play with surround sound and I get overall worse performance. Sure, it may fix the hard reboots, but I hate how the game sounds without HWA. Oh well. Thank you for the advice.

    - dRb

  21. Posted

    VON seems to crash my computer 100% of the time.  I'm using the latest audigy 2 drivers and the latest open AL.  EAX and HW accelleration enabled.  Audigy 2 zs platinum.

    Audigy 2 ZS and consistent crashes with VoN as well. No blue screen. No error messages. I am simply playing, my sound output becomes a high-pitched screech for a second or so, and then the computer resets.

    I thought these crashes were fixed. Or were those listed on the wiki of a different type? Either way, I would like to see the problem addressed as I cannot reasonably obtain a new sound card right now.

    Other than that, loving 1.09b,

    dRb

    P.S. Do anyone else's strelas simply not lock? Stingers work just fine, but not the strela launchers.

  22. Posted

    What I would like to see more than anything is custom animations for the different weapon types, including the positioning of the hand atop a machinegun whilst prone or the placement of the hand onto the underbarrel of a grenade launcher. This same-animation-for-every-weapon-mentality has gotten old quickly. While I understand there are differences between the ArmA engine and others, it is ridiculous that we were told back in 2005/06 that we would no longer have to suffer this plight and yet are still forced to "deal with it."

    So please, Sakura, do what you are able to help make ArmA somewhat more of the game it deserves to be.

    - dRb

  25. Posted

    *sigh*

    I've never installed any emulator software, so that .sys file, and any other files affiliated with it, are not on my system. I am running Windows XP professional /w SP2. Unlike many others here with the same problem, I have a 7900GTX video card. I've updated to the latest nVidia drivers and the newest DirectX version. In addition to these things, I have done all the securom fixes mentioned thus far and nothing works. No one has even identified what the source of the problem is. It's frustrating to be able to boot up up 1.05 with no issues, only to have the game never start once 1.08 has been installed.

    Find the source.

    Fix it.

    Play.

    Why is it so difficult?

    - dRb

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