dmarkwick

I have noticed that, increased demands of modern mods aside, there hasn't been the increase in performance you might expect over 5 years. It leads me to think that there might be some sort of internal clock that has never been changed, and that OFP fundamentally clocks at a set rate regardless of hardware. And I doubt that BIS will be very interested in giving OFP a boost now by changing that what with new games to sell etc.

Played it for a short while, I'm very happy with it it seems to have fulfilled the promise of it's half-finished preview of a few months back, and I recommended it to our small group at frugalsworld.com, commenting: So yes, I'm considering taking it on as my next DAC+CTI project Will you be porting this over to ArmA? I think it would quickly become a favourite if it's one of the first islands to make an appearance Myself I always prefer woodland maps to any other kind.

Nice one Fasad downloading now.

I read a long while back that BIS were intending that old OFP addons should be compatible with AA, as the two game engines are similar I would expect this to be fairly easily implemented even if it does mean using models not as detailed as new AA standard. Has anyone tried using OFP addons yet? Have you had any success? Is it all addons that are compatible or is it hit & miss? I'd be interested in using for example the CoC addon, that has behaviour as well as items. Also, (and I expect less compatibility here) how about maps? If maps can be directly used that would be nice, but I suspect I would have read something about that here by now

IMO if you can afford TIR then you should just get tIR and not bother trying to get TIR functionality on the cheap. It's not going to work to the same degree and might even put you off a perfectly good technology solution. As has already been mentioned, TIR gives you not only up-down-left-right viewing but also leaning, moving forward and lifting up out of your chair. AA has not implemented all of the movements, as far as I know the lifting out of the chair movement hasn't been used. I think it would be useful to be able to "peep" over obstacles ingame, perhaps some modder will implement this. Even me if I get the time

Don't know if you have PCWorld there but I picked up a couple of spares last week for about Å3 each.

Good topic Large hi-res map. Compass. Watch. Both of the type as seen ingame. OK maybe not the watch, but compasses are not too expensive. A map is a must I would say

I'm a big fan of DAC, and I like applying large DAC zones to simulate a busy enemy territory, then going in to perform some mission layered over it. After I've switched the DAC map markers off, disabled the DAC radio messages I no longer have any idea what's going on or whether I've been spotted, or whether backup is on the way or not. It adds so much to the atmosphere to have all this activity, and going silent & slow becomes an imperative. Also, along the same lines, I like to have one large eastern DAC zone in the center of an island, and one smaller (but just as populated) western DAC zone to one side of it, with a waypoint zone on the opposite side. That way, regular western patrols need to cross the eastern patrolled zone, with all the randomness and inter-group communication that DAC offers. It sets a superb backdrop to whatever your mission is and makes it seem that an independent war is being raged around you, which kicks off whether you're there to do anything or not, and is different each time. And both of those scenarios adds a luck factor into things just to mess things up a bit

There is a sweet spot for each PC with graphic settings vs view distance. First of all, the terrain doesn't need to be on a high setting. Have it on lowest, or second lowest. View distance is (at least I have found) a sudden FPS killer, find how high you can have the view distance before the FPS suddenly drops off. Do all your tests with stuff happening in front, behind, and at distance from you to test the game. Eventually you'll have a view distance (mine is just a little under 2km) that holds a steady FPS under various conditions. My own preference is to have shadows on all objects, which surely reduces my performance somewhat, but then again I also ditched DXDLL which also eats FPS, so on balance I gained I think.

I've made a very nice CTI mission that uses the very excellent Novajev island, into which I've converted across an MFCTI mission, and also added some DAC scripting also. I must stress right off the bat here that I am not taking any credit AT ALL for any of the excellent scripting done by much more talented people than me, I am very much riding on the shoulders of giants here The Novajev island, although using a modified landmass from Nogova, has a totally redone town, road and vegetation layout and is in my opinion the best ever map for OFP. I use it almost exclusively now, it's that good. (I really hope to see it ported over to Armed Assault, that would be perfect ) I've had to somewhat fiddle around with the conversion, there's more towns for example (from 28 in Nogova to 34 in Novajev) and the spawning positions, flags, triggers etc can only be tweaked as I see problems ingame. I think I've ironed out the vast majority of problems, and now I see a game that is at least as consistent as an official CTI mission. I've also added some extra touches, at random farmsteads & buildings I've added ammo crates that only have a very small chance of existing (only western ammo though so far), I view them as found resistance caches, luck and observation will find them, they are by no means numerous. Also there's some cars to be found in towns, again randomised and not numerous. The above gave us (I play in a small group) a very nice game indeed, speaking for myself it's now my favourite CTI mission (I would say that though wouldn't I? ) but I added more. One thing I found is that CTI missions tend to become races to the next town, lone wolves can run rampant, because apart from the towns there is no danger at all in moving about. To combat this I added a DAC script which adds into the mix some random resistance patrols. At first it had several ground troop groups, several unarmoured groups and some armoured groups, but this proved slightly too laggy for the host's machine to cope with, so I rebalanced it to have less troops, more armour, and the performance seems to be OK. Ingame experience ranges from not seeing hardly any resistance patrols, to being inundated with armour backed up with reserves of more armour and ground troops. A very nice change, it's no longer safe to go blasting from town to town. A nice touch of course is that the eastern side has the same problems, and distant running battles can often be heard. The mission takes about 30 seconds to a minute to initialise, during which you'll get slowdown, slideshows and an error message about not naming units, just click continue it's of no consequence at this stage. Pretty soon the mission will have fully initialised and things should smooth out. Get the CTI addon here: http://mfcti.sourceforge.net/MFCTIDownloads.html Get the Novajev map here: http://www.ofpbase.com/newsitem.php?id=376 And get my Novajev CTI+DAC mission here: http://freespace.virgin.net/david.markwick/DM_CTI_Novajev_DAC.rar And as a special treat, for those who wish to have a somewhat more complete SINGLE PLAYER experience, get the extra busy CTI+DAC mission here: http://freespace.virgin.net/david.markwick/DM_CTI_Novajev_DAC_Busy.rar this one will be entirely too server-intensive for MP gaming, but by all means go ahead if you fancy it it has lots of ground units, unarmoured units and armoured units. Remember, these guys communicate between each other, so expect backup when engaging them Hope you enjoy, leave feedback *EDIT* The current "official" public beta is now labelled v0.5 and contains many improvements. DM_CTI_Novajev_DAC_advanced_v050.rar New version. v0.51 DM_CTI_Novajev_DAC_advanced_v051 New version. v0.52 DM_CTI_Novajev_DAC_advanced_v052.rar This final version has many minor improvements, including troop patrol vehicles that only travel between towns on roads, foot patrols that regularly inspect the most logical advance points for each town, and armoured units that stay inland on higher ground rather than uselessly patrolling shores.

'Nuther update. No radio hints from DAC, no longer see all DAC units on map. DM_CTI_Novajev_DAC_advanced_v052.rar

Already done for the next minor update the DAC seems to be acting pretty much as I wanted them to so no need for map & radio anymore. I don't suppose the wrecks around the base have much more impact than complex trees, but I take your point about the commander maybe having problems working around them. And maybe it would be a nice touch to be able to get some cash for all that work I'll see what I can crowbar in sometime in the next week or so.

I hadn't planned on adding the DAC wrecks to the CTI salvage logic, as I quite like the permanent nature of them. It makes certain hot spots look like, well, hot spots, but that's a personal preference. I could be persuaded In fact the DAC code is already changed for this project in that I removed the bit that removes them from the battlefield after a short while. I find that the permanent bodies at least provide some emergency ammo & weapons that occasionally save the day. Yeah the build-up and reducing nature of the DAC units complicates things quite a bit, but as wreckage becomes permanent upon unit destruction I wonder if they can be added to the array at that stage instead. There must be some logic applied to destroyed units to remove them from DAC arrays etc so maybe I could inject a little code there. It would mean that, at least at some very minor level, CTI and DAC starts to become integrated. At the moment they are very separate, I view them as "layers". Thanks for the code tips, that'll save me some shoe leather I'm sure

Improved version. DM_CTI_Novajev_DAC_advanced_v051 v0.51 has tweaked DAC patrol makeup (re-added T72s & T80s so some armour takes more than 2 hits, all the better for promoting teamwork), tweaked some start & flag positions (no more steep slopes or forests).

Hmm, well SP in the way that the editor is firstly an SP experience. I don't care for storylines and campaigns (unless they're dynamic campaigns) but a well made mission is a good experience. And playing that good mission with friends is a better experience The editor is a great sandbox to play around with as well, as long as that feature remains as good (or better) as the one in OFP then I'll be happy.

What COD2 probably does if it's like 99% of the other FPS shooters (OFP being the other 1%) is supply that gunsight & animation as an overlay, it's not actually part of the game world as an object. You can see this by the fact that you never see your own shadow in these games. This is where OFP is different, what you see in your hands is what exists as an object in the game world too. Also, your whole game body is used, as evidenced by your shadow, even though it is "behind" your view. To be honest I'm less impressed by great graphics as I am with the integrity of OFP in this respect

You're assuming you're dealing with people who in any way give a shit they don't, if they did this wouldn't happen. Boot stamping on a human face my friend, boot stamping on a human face. (Orwell reference)

So what is the beef? They don't like us seeing the adverts that we carefully ignore on our search for mods? I don't understand what monetary gain they get from pursuing this. By monetary gain I mean money that they are otherwise losing out on in allowing this activity to happen. Looks like free advertising to me, ah well there goes my interest in SG whatever the format.

The word is yes on faces, not sure on uniforms. If I'm wrong someone will point it out. With OpFlash, you could mod the faces relatively easily, as you suggest, but new camo and other clothing required more sophisticated modding efforts. My /guess/ is that ArmA will be similar. I lucked out with the faces in OpFlash, in that "Peter S" looks almost identically like me, to the point that a friend of mine cracks up laughing every time he sees me in multiplayer. Hopefully I luck out in a similar way in ArmA and "Peter S" is again used as a model... Yeah me too Instead I try to do variants. This is the latest one, but I have been known to slap on a little lippy & mascara for the boys

This is a good point actually. I think it's not unreasonable to assume that the soldier you are "occupying" has skills built right in that you can take for granted, and one of those skills is gunmanship. Otherwise you might be overly concerned with tank driving, helo flying, webbing fastening and all sorts of other things. The things I would like to see implemented have mostly been discussed, things like breath holding, injury, exhaustion, environment (sun, dust etc) as long as the appropriate penalties are applied to AI as well. So going gun to gun against an AI that has been lying down for two minutes with the sun behind him after you have run up a hill gives him an advantage, but also the other way around too.

Yep, using a mod folder just for this map. Tried it with ECP and GOTY. Actually I just tried it again today and it seems OK. I think that the RHS helos are giving me some problems in general (I've had out of memory errors since using them, but never when not using them). I will do further testing with default choppers only. Yep I hear that. The ones I'm referring to look mostly like this, too small to be of much use and oddly placed. Around the perimeters of forests might be better for them, but I'm not too worried about them since seeing FPS improvements.

I get the error message upon launching OFP, even before the splash screen. It comes up as a Windows messagebox. I'm guessing one of the addons itself has a dependancy on it rather than the map first hand. It seems to be very dense, I put a simple(ish) DAC zone onto it (8xtroops, 8xunarmoured, 8xarmoured, 5xhelos) and the game became very jerky. I have a feeling that when the entire landmass(es) are finished it wll only be suitable for small simple zones only, not too much of a biggie but it might be indicative of how large missions might eventually play out. I'm not suggesting you simplify the map, I like it's denseness but I just thought I'd mention an observation. I wouldn't dream of being harsh it's a wonderful island so far, very dense as I have mentioned. I would say that there's a lot of very small cabbage-sized bushes dotted around that are unnecessary, and small grass type objects that are also dotted around in single clumps. (If a single plant can clump.) There's maybe a lot of these types of vegetation that can be deleted and replaced in more localised densities rather than alone in the middle of fields, which I have seen quite a few of.

I dunno, I say let's leave the high-scores thing to BF2 and the like. As far as I'm concerned, I'm more interested in how the team does. Looking after the back door in any squad is a thankless task and won't get you your kills necessary for scoreboards, but it's a necessary task and needs to be done well. How do you score that? You cannot, and why would you want to. As a previous poster said, getting seperated and successfully surviving against the odds is much more of what AA is about, having the high scoreboard will only cheapen the whole thing. But then again, if it gets people playing, it might be good. But not if each person is trying to get the highest score, that way madness lies

Had a quick scoot around - it looks very nice I made a CTI_DAC mission for Novajev, this looks like a good candidate for the next one. Interested? Capture the island seems to have extra meaning here Incidentally, I got a message about a missing Map_misc addon or script or something, can you add this to your list of required addons? (And a link ) The towns look suitably realistic, and look good for AI to wander around. I'll add a small DAC zone & see what happens.

Plaintiff1 has already described how much more complex the issue is than simply working out a sphere of destruction. To make buildings destructible you'd need to make buildings out of lots of sub-models, each sub-model having various swappable variants, and a general building logic to keep overall damage levels for the entire structure, to prevent for example upper floors remaining when lower floors are destroyed. I'd be happy with a sort of OFP style damage (where the model gets distorted) and then a total building collapse as per the video, but much slower and with more persistent dust.