dmarkwick

Could it be some variant of the Boomerang technology? i.e. some on-vehicle doohickey that analyses sounds through a ring of microphones that can give a reasonably accurate location for incoming fire?

I found, for my own preference, that turning down accuracy but allowing for high awareness gives a good play experience. As for the do-they/don't-they AI experiences, as always a solid repro is the best evidence. Anecdotal evidence is not nothing, but it's also not useful, if you have time then setting up a scenario that displays the problem and putting that scenario up for download by others (or, a written precise step-by-step setup) will do far more revealing the problem than anything else. Regarding grass - clutter has long been a problem for lots of people, you can level the playing field somewhat by disabling clutter, at the expense of visuals. AI shooting players that are hidden - very variable in terms of anecdotal tales here. AI will remember where you were seen, and also what direction you were going when you were seen. They can also hear you. Don't be surprised to be shot behind a bush when you think you're hidden, you can only achieve hidden status by not being seen in the first place, and keeping quiet 🙂 AI shooting through terrain - never seen this personally. A repro is the best way to go here. As mentioned before, there's a possibility of AI regarding low-terrain fidelity vs the player seeing high terrain fidelity, but I've never seen anything like this personally.

I think licensing has become an issue over time, so the older titles assumed a fair use but it became stickier :) Large companies are a lot more savvier now when it comes to monetising their very name. I'd guess before they were happy for their stuff to be represented, or did not care about a small issue of video games. Now video games are big money, and game technologies mean a more accurate and hi-fidelity representation, lawyers start to sit up :) As to why BIS take the future route, well perhaps they don't want to just make the same game over & over, and want to create original content. I'm sure they have their own ideas they'd like to develop, and I seem to remember that OFP "became" OFP based on an originally sci-fi concept, so maybe that's always been their eventual passion project. Yes real-world content worked in the past, but those games are still available and quite playable :) and for the most part can be ported in. Mod support can give most people their real-world fix, that's what I meant by 3rd party content :)

While most of these types of game are all trying to get a portion of the widest demographic, it amounts to battling for a thin slice of a fat pie. It's only a matter of time before some developer sees the opportunity to cater for a smaller demographic, and get a fat slice of a thin pie. This is where ArmA comes in 🙂

ArmA has always been a sandbox, and it's the mods that make it a mil-sim IMO 🙂 For the future, it's probably going to remain that way. Not-quite-real-world hardware but allowing for 3rd party real-world hardware. This is the most likely continuing situation simply because of licensing. I know you can recreate items and give them faux names, but at some point it's better to own your assets totally I guess and not have to dance around the legalities. As long as A4 has mod support, and support for easy importing of <A4 mods, things will be good.

I'll be happy to get a new map, and some new assets, and with it the inevitable tweaks, fixes and features of the Arma engine. This stuff doesn't pay for itself, and ArmA 3 is getting on a bit now so engine development won't spring up out of the ground. Most everyone who will buy Arma 3 has already bought it. Will I play the campaign? I've never played one yet, so I base the decision to buy on the other stuff. I'm looking forward to it. If all the buildings are enterable I'll be happy 🙂

I recently bought a Pimax 4K VR headset, ostensibly to play Elite: Dangerous, but but actually I am playing nothing but Project Cars 2 :)

Each time you see certain buildings or areas, you remember times of extreme drama you experienced there. Certain bush LODs at a distance look a bit like a soldier with a gun. But you're suspicious anyway, just in case. You put a few extra rounds into any dead body you see, because you're not sure whether or not one of your addons simulates recovery.

I've noticed for a while now that looping scripts will degrade in perfomance over time. I have custom smoke effects that initially look pretty nice, but degrade after a while. This is in a DAC mission which also has scripts running, for the first 20-30 minutes it seems fine, but after that it degrades, so DAC controlled units stop responding and smoke loops get stuck. Often during the making of missions I'll use the floating camera function, and I notice that when all the other functionality degrades, trying to call this function results in a delay before it happens, so I will call the camera function and nothing seems to happen, and maybe 2 minutes later it suddenly executes. I think there is some script scheduling issue over time.

I currently live in the Czech Republic. Years ago when I played ArmA 2 I wondered if the "real" Chernarus was really as crumbly as the game made out. Turns out, it is every bit as crumbly 😄

24-30 fps is not too bad for Arma 🙂 As ever, settings can help. Not so much visual quality, as generally Arma is CPU dependent in this regard, but object distance etc could help. Mods & mission design too affect fps hugely. What you can look at to get a feel: Single unit somewhere on altis, nothing else going on, what is your fps? Vanilla mission from the stock game, same thing. Make your own missions, varying from very simple to quite crowded. Fiddle with the settings in each of the above, do you notice what settings are most effective?

If I'm correct in my current understanding, the Enfusion engine is not improving AI meaningfully, it's really more about animations etc. It's good enough for zombies, basically.

I first encountered the Arma series with the original OFP when it was first released, as I was looking for something to play that was like Battlefield 1942, but more so. I initially took the game back to the store after a game-breaking perceived bug, which later turned out to be caused by my keyboard after the same bug appeared in another game. I re-purchased and didn't look back. It not only replaced BF1942 DCS but opened up whole new areas of gameplay. I'm apparently one of the few people who actually liked Arma (1) on release, mostly because it made use of my TrackIR but also because Silola upgraded his excellent DAC scripts to Arma. At the very end of that game's life just before Arma 2 came out I started to experiment with scripting, and continued that into Arma 2 culminating in the release of a few well-received addons. I do less scripting now in Arma 3, just a couple for my own entertainment, but I still enjoy DAC in a solo environment.

Sins Of A Solar Empire: Rebellion free until 18th. I don't know much about this game, but some people really like it. https://www.humblebundle.com/store/sins-of-a-solar-empire-rebellion

Well, I've seen stupidity in AI behavior, and I've seen stupidity in human-player behavior, I'd be hard pushed to favour one over the other :) AI, while not perfect, is acceptable IMO. There's the possibility to tweak it, mod it, and use numbers to give appropriate levels of challenge in non-PVP gameplay. I don't do too much online play, I just like to pootle about in my own scenarios. Changing stuff around and adding randomisation gives me surprises and keeps me entertained :) I'd say having AI in ArmA is pretty much a must, will it be perfect? No, but are human players perfect? No, so choose your stupidity and play within it :) I get huge enjoyment out of the AI.

setSkill might be the way to go. As in: _thisUnit setSkill ["spotDistance", 0.25];

That solution won't stop the units from moving slower, it'll just stop you hearing the report :) I'd suggest lowering the spot distance of the units, or adding some fog.

I only play SP, and really only my own SP missions. I seem to have a different outlook than those expressed here. For me, a mission I make has to be replayable by me, the mission creator. I do this by introducing a very basic player goal against a randomised background noise. I use tools like DAC to create randomness within limits, so for example I'll have a central area controlled by DAC with all kinds of randomised patrols and enemy. I then either use DAC to move another opposing force through that area, or maybe manually do that part. For my own team I'll often have a base team of some size (8, say) consisting of the most important group types (AT, AA, Machine gun etc), have two of each. Then each unit will have a 50% chance of spawning at mission start. In this way I have a different makeup of team members to think about. Sometimes no AT will spawn at all, other times I'm short of AA or machine guns, or medics or whatever. It makes me approach the same mission in different ways. If the enemy and friendly forces are all similarly randomised (which you can do with DAC) then I also don't know the positions, number, and makeup of the AI entities. I then give myself some simple goal within this chaotic environment, and every time it's a different experience. Add to this randomised weather, fog & time of day etc,, plus the idea of selecting everything & just moving it all around the map I can play the same mission 50 times before moving on.

I'm happy to see regular large updates to this :) over time it may come up to what I was expecting to see, this update seems to address a huge problem for many people. Myself I'm not big on MP survival games etc, but I'll certainly look forward to more work being done on working ecosystems :)

I don't use a HC at all, just nuts-simple SP missions I like to pootle about in. I'm pretty sure that about a year ago I could call the camera function easily, first time and straight away each time, but recently I can't after a certain amount of complexity has built up. This is also noticeable in smoke scripts that I have where they still emit (#particlesource), but don't update their parameters (which are altered via script over time). I run these scripts concurrently in a DAC environment, each script monitoring and affecting a smoke source. If DAC/my scripts/all the other 3rd party scripts are being subject to some new(ish) script scheduling process then I guess this could all add up. Until now I assumed it was my computer getting old and ArmA becoming more complex. But yes I suspect some scheduling issue now.

Yeah real shame, if not for this DAC would still be my most-used addon/script suite. I suspect there's been some script scheduling change that's done this, very often I will try to spawn a camera from the console and I can wait up to 20 minutes before the script runs and I get my camera, if ever. That's the most visually obvious symptom of this for me.

As has already been discussed here, an extreme fear of public speaking can be best sorted out by initially visiting a doctor. He/she will refer you to a behavioral therapist or hypnotist. Other than that, if you wish to gradually increase your exposure to public speaking you can start by only speaking when you have some game-related information to say. Like your current position when asked, your current status, and enemy call-outs. You can't get into any imagined trouble by just doing this, and over time you will feel more comfortable saying other stuff.

Oh rly ;) I guess I could hear it in his voice recently though. He had that weakened timbre that happens in these occasions.

I was down in southern Czech Republic over the weekend for a wedding, and I met a bunch of Czechs down there who were on a hilltop lamenting exactly this. I knew he had cancer but that was when I heard he had died. I always enjoy his reviews and am sorry this has happened to him, and of of course his family & friends.

JTD_FireAndSmoke beta 0.3 is released. ***IMPORTANT INFO*** The JTD_FireAndSmoke_config.hpp file now must go into a new folder, ArmA2\userconfig\JTD\. If you do not have this path/folder, make one. This is apparently a standard of approach that modders will be encouraged to use. ******************** ArmaHolic Mirror : ArmAHolic DepositFiles JTD_FireAndSmoke v0.3 changes: -All new smoke textures. -Fire sound fixed. -Birds sound fixed. -Object fire colours fixed. -Fuel fire effect added. -More trees added to config. -MP fix so non-users don't get their .rpt file spammed (as much). -Other tweaks & fixes to ensure a good performance experience with new features. JTD_FireAndSmoke v0.2 changes: -More smoke particle texture variance. -Altered smoke colours. -Fire damage now per-tree instead of per-area. -Fire colour changed to orange, also user configurable. -Minor config fix. -Forest fire sound added. -Vehicles have altitude check before emitting fire & smoke. -User config path changed to ArmA2\userconfig\JTD\ -Keys added. Links for 0.2 only: ArmedAssault.info Mirror : DOWNLOAD - JTD Fire And Smoke (v.beta 02) - [850 KB] from ArmedAssault.info Required Addons : DOWNLOAD - CBA: Community Base Addons Please read the readme for correct implementation (particularly concerning the .hpp config file). Readme: We hope everyone gets a lot of value from it. Feedback, screenies etc are welcome. *edit* OK, a little information about The Birds Yes, for those who've expressed an interest, it's the same startled birds from way back when. Implemented at last in a meaningful way They work like this: There's a very small chance that units moving sufficiently fast will startle a small flock of birds from their tree. When I say sufficiently fast, I mean that a normal ArmA2 walk will set them off, but a crouched walk will not. So stealth will pay off in MP pvp games. Any unit on the map will have this small chance of scaring up birds, but it is a very small chance per unit. This means that one, lone unit walking through a forest might never set off a flock, but a whole platoon probably will eventually. A group made to walk through a forest will have a definite chance of setting off a flock, increasing with group numbers. A group made to walk through a forest but set to stealth, has a much smaller, but non-zero, chance of scaring up birds. So again stealth will pay off. The faster a unit moves, the further ahead is the possible random position of the flock. A tree is needed for a flock to appear. Vehicles will also scare up birds. Also, a firefight will set off all the flocks in the whole area, not to return for a long time (several minutes at least). So the flocks of birds is a "quiet time" ambient effect. The first time a weapon is fired, flocks all around the area will take to the skies. After several minutes of inactivity (weapon wise), normal bird logic will resume. As far as the birds themselves go - they are an ambient atmospheric effect. They're sprites used to suggest a flock of birds, and while very effective, close inspection might reveal some birds apparently flying backward. There's nothing to be done about this, as it's difficult for me to know from what side each player will view the sprites, and which way they'll be flying for that matter (although for MP synchronicity I think they all go the same direction anyway). So please, take them for what they're meant to be, an atmospheric effect, useful for becoming suspicious and paranoid in missions involving stealth. In any case, almost every time you'll see them you won't be able to tell which way they're facing, you'll just get the subliminal flapping object effect, which was always the intention. Oh, and one other thing. While testing, I found out that rabbits can also set off birds. I spent a paranoid ten minutes hunting down God Knows What in a map that I thought I was all alone in before finding that out.