biggerdave

All code is magic. You should know that by now. And not happy-go-lucky Disney movie magic, neither. Terrible magic! With terrible consequences! You want an example, how about the FSM support that broke the domove command? How about the changes to the way armour is handled that left CSAT troops nigh bullet-proof? How about using the "climb over" command to phase through walls? Heck, just look at all the unsolvable bugs in AiA wrought by seemingly inconsequential changes to the engine. To go back to my ridiculous analogy - adding a new animation set would be the equivalent of putting a wig on your blind man. Adding new animations is work, yeah. It's a lot of work. I can't disagree with this. However; compared to rewriting the base code, rewriting all the uniform and vehicle configs, recreating all the infantry models and adding a new animation set... it suddenly doesn't seem like so much work. To be frank, I didn't answer your question because it has absolutely no bearing on the situation whatsoever (other than one of the "common truths" that I'm apparently so fond of). An example of how something can be worse than nothing... well... nuclear waste, people trying to kill you, cancer, the conservative party... you'd rather have these than nothing? I didn't say females heads or female civilians would break the game, just that people would complain about them. How do I know people would complain about them? Because these solutions were used in ArmA and ArmA.2, and people complained about them.... at length... No, the engine only checks which side you're on. And, more importantly, it's not changing anything about the uniform based on this, just telling you you can't wear it if you aren't the right side.

Generally speaking, any change to the base code is a monstrous task. Asking the engine to say "hey this character is male" or "hey this character is female" might seem like a simple task, in reality you're asking that the code do something it's not designed to do. It'd probably be easier to rewrite the code from scratch. To use a (slightly ridiculous) analogy, it's like asking a blind man to sort fruit by colour. Only the man's hands are covered in paint that constantly changes colour, so the sorted fruit is never the same colour as it was before. Also, there's a chance that whenever the fruit is sorted your blind man will vomit a swarm of rabid man-locusts who go off and ruin your Mother's teaparty. There's no need to be confrontational. I don't fundamentally disagree with what you're saying, I'm just providing an input from a perspective you might not have considered. Adding a full set of animations for female characters in ArmA.2 would be child's play compared to what we're talking about here. (To be honest, I'm kind of surprised no one's done it yet... I guess people today are afraid to try animations without a mo-cap studio on hand... shame, really...)

Quite often, something is worse than nothing. Again, not a pretty truth, but the truth rarely is. "Who gives a fuck" is a fine attitude for someone who can afford to take it. Ultimately, however, BIS, like any independent developer, are completely accountable to their fanbase, and don't have this luxury. No. I'm not exaggerating. I can't stress this enough. This would require a complete rewrite of the uniform code. Permit me an explanation - right now, the code for a uniform looks like this: (taken from the samples pack) class U_Test_uniform: Itemcore { scope = 2; /// scope needs to be 2 to have a visible class allowedSlots[] = {BACKPACK_SLOT}; /// where does the uniform fit to when not equipped displayName = "Test uniform"; /// how would the stuff be displayed in inventory and on ground picture = "\A3\characters_f\data\ui\icon_U_BasicBody_CA.paa"; /// this icon fits the uniform surprisingly well model = "\A3\Characters_F\Common\Suitpacks\suitpack_blufor_diver"; /// how does the uniform look when put on ground class ItemInfo: UniformItem { uniformModel = "-"; uniformClass = Test_Soldier_base_F; /// what soldier class contains parameters of the uniform (such as model, camouflage, hitpoints and others) containerClass = Supply90; /// what fake vehicle is used to describe size of uniform container, there is quite a lot SupplyXX classes ready mass = 80; /// combined weight and volume }; }; Even with the most basic understanding of code, you should notice this doesn't really define anything aside from its appearance in the inventory screen and a reference to character class which defines all the stuff that's actually important (appearance, protection, etc). That is to say: in the current iteration of the engine, clothing literally does define who you are.

Even ignoring the fact that Iran does have female soldiers, uniforms are only part of the issue. If you've played "Adapt", you'll know the first thing you'll want to do as a guerilla is grab the first helmet and armour off an AAF dude. Do you really think no one would bat an eye if a little message popped up saying "hey, you can't wear this because you're the wrong gender"? If BIS wanted to do something like this (and, again, it's not impossible, just look at something like Skyrim or the new fallout games) half assing it is just going to make things worse. Yeah, you could conceivably make it so that males could only wear male uniforms and females could only wear female uniforms (that way you're only pissing off crossdressers :p ). This still means you'd need to completely rewrite the uniform code, since right now the only thing that determines if you can wear a uniform or not is your side (so unless you want to put all men on blufor and all women on opfor...). And it still doesn't solve the issue with vests/headgear - it'd be pretty ridiculous that you couldn't wear this pistol belt, because it's a womans pistol belt.

Mechanically speaking, this probably isn't going to happen. There's 3 ways BIS can integrate female characters into the new engine: 1: Female characters would be set up in the same way as animals (ie, an extremely limited character class, like in ArmA.2), <sarcasm> which I'm absolutely certain would be a perfect solution that wouldn't make anyone unhappy. </sarcasm> (nb - if it does happen, that's how it's going to happen) 2. Simply have a female head model (similar to how we have a beard head model) and voice. If BIS did this everyone would accuse them of half-assing it, because you guys are dicks like that. 3. Create a female version of each character model (including all proxies). Completely rewrite the uniform code so that the female models are applied to characters who are female. Do all the animations for female characters. After completely recreating all of their work, BIS has slightly appeased the handful of players who wanted a female character model, and everyone who's been complaining about the lack of shotguns, a "proper" 3D editor or <INSERT VBS FEATURE HERE> is angry because they didn't get what they wanted. It's not a pretty truth, but oftentimes the truth isn't.

Recoil is going to be based on the ArmA.2 values, so it should feel right compared to the vanilla weapons. EDIT: It seems that "recoil_single_primary_4outof10" and "recoil_auto_primary_4outof10" (the values comparable to those used by AKs in ArmA.2) are bugged in ArmA.3 - this might be the cause of the low recoil in the addon you mentioned.

Hotzenplotz's Everon Island is very nice. I used it to make these screenshots: The SLA troops are more or less done, a few minor bugs need squashing, but they're definitely very close to being finalized. (I don't know why that guy in the front looks like he's wearing eyeliner, by the way. :butbut: ) Yaki Yaki Chedaki! These guys were almost cut, but recent events have inspired me to add them back in. For the first release there's probably just going to be Militia style troops, though I definitely want to add less organized forces (ie, riot mobs, vigilantes, gangsters, etc.) The RSRA are sort of based on the guerillas from Queen's Gambit - they've been moved to the West side, because they were technically good guys in QG, and I wanted to add guerillas to BLUFOR. (It just feels right having a regular and guerilla force on the each side, and a Blue/Red/Green force for both Chernarus and Sahrani :D ) All the guerillas have randomized headgear, which I'm pretty proud of myself for getting working (even if it is basically a copy of BIS's headgear randomiser script) And NAPA. Because people would complain if I did Chedaki and didn't do NAPA. :p

According to the bis wiki Sahrani is at 39° 57' 0" N / 40° 1' 12" W. It also says the nearest NATO base to Malden is in Estonia, which would put the entire Island chain somewhere in the Baltic sea... which doesn't really make sense to me, given the differences in terrain between the islands and tactics used during the CWC campaign, I would have placed them somewhere in the Atlantic as well. The green sea region is likely based off the black sea region, BIS released this map showing the relative positions of Chernarus, Takistan and the other two nations we don't really know anything about.

Erm... excuse me? I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but... what lack of user-created content? A cursory look on armaholic shows me we've had 10 different missions or addons released or updated today (30-1-13) for ArmA.3. I'm can't claim to be an authority on this sort of thing, but it seems to me that if you're getting that much community generated content in a single day, then you do not have a lack of community generated content.

So, here's a bunch of guns, that some idiot has just left lying around: (Materials are still WIP, hence why half are more shiny than they have any right to be, and the other half are duller than... well... let's not be disparaging towards anyone, shall we?) So, let's talk about a few of these. Sort of ordered by the factions that use them, we've got: -TrF1B- RACS standard issue rifle. Pretty much an off-brand M16A2. -TrF2- An older issue rifle that's been re-purposed as a DMR. -Remington 700- Long range rifle. Adopted long after the TrF2 on the sole pretence that a dedicated "sniper rifle" must be worthwhile. -MP11- Basically an MP5/40. It's not entirely clear why RACS have invested so heavily in "forty cal". It may have something to do with the fact that whenever someone mentions the words "Smith And Wesson" any RACS officer's eye's glaze over, and they humming the theme to "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". -FN MAG- Needs no introduction -SL53- AK47 domestically produced in the DRS. Has a folding stock, because Aluminium! -SLR56- Marksman rifle based off the RPK. -SL86- Modernized SL53. Carbine and light machinegun flavours also featured in image. -Brenka Kladivo- Chernarussian Rifle, based on the Vz58. -Brenka Savle- Modernized Chernarussian rifle. -Enkavs Jemny- Light machine gun, based on the Vz.52 -Enkavs Silny- GPMG based on Vz.52

Aside from a few... issues... with AI squadmates (that other people have already said quite a lot on, so there's not much else I need to add), I quite enjoyed it. Especially the: The side missions were a nice touch, but I think ultimately the format of the scouting scenario wasn't particularly good (especially with limited quick/autosaves actived in the difficulty settings). I would have preferred something more along the lines of the side missions from the original ArmA campaign (optional missions that are still structured in the traditional scenario format). Don't get me wrong, I like the open-world design, but I think "Skyrimmin' it" works against the Flashpoint formula here.

AI wrangling is definitely the most infuriating part of ArmA.3. Since ArmA.2 changed the AI to automatically enter combat mode when under attack, there's no real distinction between Aware and Combat modes. IMO, BIS should replace them with "Combat Ready" (ie, the current "aware" mode, maintain formation while not under threat, and act all tactical-like near enemies) and "Disengage" (do not break formation or engage enemy unless ordered to or absolutely necessary, ie, OFP's "Aware" mode). Stealth mode should be tweaked so the AI are better at keeping with their squad, and less likely to engage the enemy (especially if they don't have suppressors!) I don't think anyone's ever used Safe mod outside of scripted events (in which case, the hidden "careless" mode is much better). So we could probably just get rid of that all together.

Funnily enough, that's pretty much what I've been using it as - though, I doubt this was BI's intention, since realistically no one's going to use a unit insignia for IFF. To use your example, it might not be unreasonable for, say, someone in the US army to recognise the USMC flag, but someone in the Bundeswehr could easily mistake it for the Albanian flag. There's going to be a small amount of ultramodern equipment (for example, you can see the CDF's sopmodish not-Vz58 in the first post), but most of it's going to 90s style kit. I didn't want to stray too far from BI's original design. Vests, Uniforms and Helmets are separate. They're mostly based off the old MLODs, though.

I did consider dropping the CDF when I saw your thread - I don't normally like stepping on other people's feet (part of why I never did RACS for ArmA.2), but I've been working on this off and on since last October (I actually decided to add CDF before RACS), and it seemed a bit of a shame at that point to throw out everything I'd already done. I think the yellow-green patches might be an older design of Chernorussian flag - the CDF are very obviously based on the Ukrainian Army, so the it may have been left in either as a holdover from an earlier design of the CDF or a little easter egg, I was going to use a very similar design, but then I watched too much Stargate Atlantis and decided everyone needs to have their national flag. :p Some of the classic equipment will be making a comeback, probably not the 6-colour desert pattern though - I never really liked the original RACS camouflage, it didn't really make sense, given how little actual desert there was in Sahrani. You can't see it too well in the picture, but the new pattern (based on Kuwaiti Chocolate chip) is similar enough that it fits with the RACS "theme", and looks a lot more sensible across the whole island.

On the Armedassault.info frontpage. I noticed you used some pretty common filenames for your PBOs, if you release an update, I'd strongly advise you change these filenames, it absolutely kills compatibility with other addons! For example, you've got a file called "vehicles.pbo", the common convention is to have a quick three letter tag in front of it, so "POM_vehicles.pbo" would be a better choice for a filename.

Released on Armedassault.info :) [LINK]

For those wondering, "Dangerous Designs" is my new 'front' for releasing addons, the whole 'HSO' thing was really just a tag to prevent conflicts... ("Sulphuric Acid Studios" sounds kinda dumb, especially considering I don't have any kind of studio!) Anywhos, here's Release 3, R3 has been optimized for operation arrowhead (but can still be used with vanilla ArmA.2), other than that, it's very similar to R2-P. (What happened to R2? Well, the preliminary release didn't have as many bugs as expected, so there wasn't really any need!) Why did it take so long? Well... I'm quite good at procrastinating... Additions of Note: -Almost all textures redone (the only textures that haven't been changed since R2 are desert vehicles) -Thermal Imaging Textures (OA users only) -Backpacks (OA users only) -AN2 and BTR60 in both woodland and desert schemes (OA users only) -Interchangeable configs for both vanilla ArmA.2 and Combined Ops Screenshots: (These images are real ingame footage, none of these pictures are staged, the only photoshopping done has been cropping and resizing) Download Links: Filefront: [Download R3] Armaholic: [Download R3] Filefront: [Download Hotfix 1] Armaholic: [Download Hotfix 1] Armedassault.info: [Download R3 and/or Hotfix 1] Requirements A full installation of ArmA.2 or Combined Operations. At the current time, standalone OA is not supported. Known bugs: -Backpacks float in the air while not being carried by soldiers -no known solution -Vehicle drivers spawn without backpacks -no known solution -Especa AIMS-74 with PSO and Suppressor uses has no visible suppressor -resolved, correction to be included in hotfix 1

1st SFOD-D ("Delta Force") are already ingame, they're Tier One. A full Tier-1 expansion would just be retreading old ground. The only omission of note is DEVGRU, which would really just end up being a reskin of Delta Force dudes.

EDITED - 04/12/10 This has probably been requested before, but, a quick search didn't show anything in this section (ArmA.2/OA)... BIS should release the MLOD and model.cfg files for ArmA.2, OA. They should also consider releasing the MLODs for BAF and PMC (of course, not immediately after the packs are released) Why? 1. It'd invigorate the modding community. I realize I'm a modder, so my perception may be slightly skewed here, but it's no big secret that the main reason the ArmA series has been such a success was OFP's huge modding community. Look at the increase in both quality and quantity of modding projects with the release of the ArmA.1 MLODs, and they're still being used for a lot of projects today! 2. It's the only way ArmA.2's units, particularly infantry, are going to be brought up to OA's standards. Let's face it, everyone saw the uproar when PMC's campaign was accidentally included in the patch. BIS can't re-release the ArmA.2 units for OA without seriously pissing off everyone who already owns ArmA.2 (if they make it free, they'll complain about how users with just OA are getting something they paid for, for free, if they make it a DLC, they'll complain because they have to rebuy something they already have) 3. It'd remove all of the legal complications of hex-edited reskins of ArmA.2/OA content (never mind the technical complications!). A few noticeable projects have been stalled because of this. Of course, this'd hardly be a good argument for something unless I addressed the reasons against it! :butbut: 1. It'd give people content they haven't paid for - Except, it wouldn't. BIS have already given people the ODOL models for BAF and PMC with the "lite" versions anyway. For stuff in ArmA.2 that isn't in OA, and stuff in OA that isn't in ArmA.2, most of OA's content won't work in ArmA.2 without serious modification, even then, the texture work to get them ingame at a decent standard would probably be difficult for most modders (not that I mean to say "most modders aren't that good", but let's face it, would you go to the trouble of remaking textures for all the stuff in ArmA.2? I know I wouldn't!) 2. It'd make stealing BIS's models much easier - This I can't really argue with. But people have attempted to steal content in the past, so not releasing the models in MLOD format isn't really a deterrent for this. 3. It'd 'cheapen' addon making - A full set of MLODs do give people the means to create certain addons a lot easier, but is this really a bad thing? It can help add a lot to larger projects as well. For example, right now, if a large project wants to add something like an EOTech to one of their rifles, they have model the entire unit from scratch, adding to the devolpment time (we're not just talking about one model here, either, most attachments will need at least 5 resolution LODs, a shadow LOD, textures and materials). This is also kind of a elitist argument, but I won't get into stuff like that here! :p DISCUSS!

Was done several times in OFP (Civil War Mod, there was a more "Coyboy" mod too), so it's definitely possible. 'Course, not really the sort of thing I'd see BIS doing.

Hold up, don't you already have fully recorded voice libraries, from your OFP release? Included voices provided by my good friend Wittmann? :D Maybe missing a handful of the newer things, but all the important things. The VME team managed to add Chinese radio voices for the PLA mod, so maybe you should see if you can get in touch with them?

The Chinese Army have been seen using a simulator that appears similar to ArmA.2 (I don't known if this is VBS.3, though it may be), with an extension that adds PLA equipment. Probably the source of this rumour, doubt it'll see an official release though. The Chinese have banned media that features the PLA in any kind of questionable activity in the past, so if there's the likelihood that us decadent westerners might be using it as a way of training to shoot PLA troops! :butbut: (Of course, banning banning C&C: Generals was more likely a humanitarian effort on behalf of the PRC, that game was an insult to the franchise! :p )

Whisperingly, the MLOD for the D30 is already included in the ArmA.1 sample model pack ;) (weapons\D30)

(Facts complied from the PMC campaign and teasers, suitably censored to avoid major spoilers, cover up the fact I couldn't be arsed looking some things up and to look really legitimate and stuff!)