dmarkwick

As far as I can tell, the only effect is of visual cover, so that you can make sure the guys are looking in the direction(s) you need them to. Also, last night I noticed that the formations in the ECP mod do indeed fill in the gaps. So it can be done with a script/addon.

I'd like to hack in a permanent smoke fix for burning wreckage ala FDF mod, see pic below. Either that or find out about a permanent fix for all mods. If possible I'd like to insert it into my ECP install, but I don't know the procedure. I've done mission scripting so I know scripting basics, but I've never modded anything (I guess this counts as a mod ) I'm guessing that I need to: decompile something edit something compile something but I'm a bit short of experience in this. Any kind soul care to tell me more on this please?

Now, the problem here is that I believe that the methods that OFP uses and the methods that BF2 uses are quite different in terms of how they model the player's view. I may be mistaken but I believe that the weapons in bf2 are modeled in a manner similar to halflife. They're not part of the game world, and the arms and weapon are essentially 2 dimensional overlays of an otherwise clear view. These overlays take lighting information from the game world, of course, but I don't think that what you see in front of you in the third person is made of the the same vertexes as what the other players see. In OFP, the weapons you see in your hands and your hands are the same geometry that all of the other players see. The result is that the weapons look somewhat lo-fi when brought close to the camera. Also, given the low fidelity of the weapon models to accomodate performance considerations, BIS needed to develop a way to see the iron sights of the weapons without actually wasting the polies on them- ergo, the sprite gunsights. I do hope that they found a way to easily impliment a system of context driven reload animations (or even, context driven anims period) dependent on what you are holding. This would require quite a few more weapon classes, though. It would be cool to see, but it's certainly not a deal breaker for me. Actually, that is a bit of an overstatement. I don't actually care one way or the other, but I will appreciate the work that BIS puts into that kind of detail, where-ever it's found. That's little reason why there can't be a different model object that everyone else sees than what the player sees and have them both move in sync. Bring the rifle object up to your eye in first person and it comes up to your eye in 3rd person, it's just the difference between a 1000 poly rifle object in first person and a 30 poly rifle object in 3rd person. Actually this is one reason that OFP stands head & shoulders above the rest. The weapon you see in the 3rd person is indeed the same weapon you see in 1st person, but it goes beyond that. In other games, 1st person means you're a disembodied viewpoint with a high-poly gun overlay, but in OFP your entire body is still modelled even though you obviously can't see it. Check out your shadow, and even some camoflauge when sniping. I prefer this sort of integrity to the shallow but impressive eye-candy approach, I never really notice the gun model in any case, I'm more concerned with what's going on. The current modelling is functional, and can be improved with mods & addons etc.

Hi guys, hope you still check up on this thread My question - will you be releasing this for ArmA? I consider this the best OFP map I have seen, very realistic town layouts, realistic vegetation dispersal, very nice in all areas in fact. The only thing I've seen out of place is the phrase "this area under construction" still pasted here & there on the eastern half of the map. I use this map almost exclusively now, maybe you should consider submitting it to BIS for inclusion? I don't know if they have any policy that accepts 3rd party stuff but I really think this map is a cut above the rest, and it looks like ArmA might be short in the European woodland areas. That's not to disrespect the other maps, it's just praise where praise is due

I don't see a reason why someone who has the radio activated as their current equipment shouldn't have their voice transmitted over both. Cool

As long as it doesn't take up any of the AI slots necessary for the soldiers it would be cool. Probably the best implementation for it is to "spawn" random animals appropriate for the environment in an area localised around you, kind of a "bubble" of wildlife. And when things kick off no-one would notice if they all dissappeared, I mean how often do you see rabbits hopping around on a battlefield? Keep it tied to framerates, lose them if it gets choppy too.

A few games have VOIP ingame now. I suppose most of us will use Ventrilo or Teamspeak or some similar app, I wonder how people would feel about having one built right into the game. Bear with me, I know the other apps mean that it's not really necessary, but for extra realism I always thought about how cool it would be to have both positional & distance information affect each player's voice. It's not beyond the wit of man to tag each voice channel to a particular soldier model, and so we could have voices not only emanating from the direction of each soldier, but to also affect the volume by distance, so that we find it harder to hear people further away. Radio men (indeed anyone close to a radio) could have their voices "transmitted" to a channel unaffected by position & distance, and anyone else with a radio could pick it up. Would add enormously to the ambiance I think and add some element of "fog of war" to battles. Ventrilo is very good and I wouldn't be without it, but sometimes I think unlimited communication takes something away, as well as adding. Either or, but the choice would be nice I had thought that some ingenious hacker might be able to ascertain positional info from the game packets & work it into some app like Teamspeak or Ventrilo, but then I thought that it would be very similar to how cheats work and so PB or whatever anti-cheat mechanism is used would boot it out.

Oh well then maybe modding the VOIP will be possible , I hadn't heard that it will be in, if you're right then things are looking good already.

Not at all - if you think about it, it happens all the time whenever anything happens ingame anyway. Gunshots, explosions, engines etc all already have positional & distance effects already. Just be another sound to tag to an object except it would be a channel.

Armed Assault is going to be "tactical" also as far as i know. Um, yes it is going to be tactical. Was there some wiggle room for doubt for you? PunkBuster may not be perfect, but it's pretty far from a pile of crap. Unless you need to cheat, natch.

To say that cheating won't be prevalent on ArmA is being a bit optimistic, I would guess this optimism comes from looking at the state of the OFP community. Remember, OFP is a game over 5 years old, the kids don't wanna know about it. It's too tactical, and the game is seen as rather "clunky". ArmA, when released, will be bought by the kids (or more likely downloaded) and the cheating subsection will emerge. To be sure, there will always be more straight players than crooked ones, but as we all know it only takes one goon to ruin a server. Until ArmA leaves the top 20 and becomes the domain of tactical players again, it will be like this. And it's no great surprise that BIS would rather the game stay as popular as possible for as long as possible So anti-cheat mechanisms are to be welcomed I think. PB is not so bad.

The preview pics I've seen so far show a desert/middle east type setting. Anyone have any info on whether a woodland/European setting will be included? I much prefer European maps to ME maps.

A while back I made a short video demo showing the CoC Unified Artillery addon at work. I'll post it here too It's a bit rough & ready, but it got a few converts

Here's a couple of links that may or may not be helpful. If you don't get any joy from them, try posting with your problem. It's a nice friendly site and if anyone can help, they will Post #3 Long & detailed.

I'm not convinced by that argument faster PCs are not barred, my joystick cost Å250, I have 5.1 surround sound which gives me additional positional information on enemies, etc etc The bottom line is, TIR is just a pointing device, like a mouse or a tablet. Barring it because you strap it to your head makes as much sense as barring people who strap mouses to their chins BTW, I realise you're not posing that as an argument, just fooling around

It's not a notion but unfortunately a fact. A number of people in the sim community where TrackIR has been used for a while consider it gives such a great advantage that it's use is unfair. Read through the 23 pages of this thread and you'll find some who also share this belief. It's not a novel argument. When I played Counterstrike with a Razer Boomslang* the same thing was said, it was a far superior mouse and more importantly expensive. Most gamers, as in life, dislike others having an advantage gained by something they cannot afford. It's not cheating, where the advantage is gained by breaking the rules and dishonesty. However it could be called unfair. I personally don't mind a server side option to ban track IR. It would be impossible to prevent entirely, but you can easily disable the TIR support built into the Arma client. I plan on getting TrackIR and would be quite happy if I were restricted to using servers with only other TrackIR users. * (won by beating the PCZone magazine team in a match ) Well I certainly won't start any argument here, if you've seen it then you've seen it But the notion that it's a cheat is nonsense of course. Every reasonable PC owning person can agree to that, and so I doubt that BIS will develop a server side disabling option. Might as well disable joysticks for helos. I have to admit that I've never heard of any of the sim community regarding TIR as a cheat. I have heard of servers that disallow padlock views, but never TIR. (I'm "part" of the sim community, but not a very active online flier.) In any case, it won't bother me one way or the other, if it turns out that some servers have this option turned on, I won't join most admins won't care a whit unless under pressure from paying members or something, and paying members will by their very nature will have TIR and only a very small number of elitist anti-TIR admins will disable it. All IMO natch.

I wouldn't think BIS would make it server disableable, I don't think there's any way for the server to detect it. And in any case it's only a different method of moving the view, when the "normal" player can still move his head & lean, but via keyboard, it seems a nonsense to disable TrackIR because it lets you do it with your head. Might as well disable fast mouse movements for people with fast reactions BTW, where do you get the notion that some find it a cheat?

I wonder if anyone has any info on whether AA will have a persistent smoke effect on wreckage. FDF is still my mod of choice, one reason is that the battlefield quickly starts to look very real with persistent thick plumes of smoke filling the sky. I always find it slightly distracting that other mods (and indeed the vanilla game) has rather weedy smoke that peters out after a couple of minutes. I know it's not exactly a deal-breaker, but it does have more value than simply aesthetic, these plumes are visible for as far as you have visibility set at, and are useful for navigation, especially for something like DAC AI addon where you don't necessarily know where things are likely to kick off. Check out the following two sample screenies, the first is FDF with very nice persistent smoke effect, the second is FFUR with weedy smoke that only lasts a few minutes per wreck.

Can anyone mention any method to limit AI movement to roads only? Is there either a magic little-known command or perhaps a scripting trick? One thing I'd use this for is random civilian movement, but I'd like it to be limited to roads only. *edit* oops, I see there's a topic for this sort of request

Actually I just thought of another: the ability to script entities to use roads only, for example for civilian traffic, they only ever will use roads, never go off-roading in fact, have it as both an AI behaviour and a waypoint behaviour. That way we can make realistic convoys.

In that case could you explain the steps? Might change the topic of the thread if there were some actual useful info on this right here in this thread I'm not keen on the level of FOV myself, but I'd like something slightly more wider than FDF. If I can do this myself, I will.

Well, as far as I'm concerned the inclusion of TrackIR is all the reason I need to get this new title. I mean, I was going to get it anyway but TrackIR alone would have been enough As for new features not yet announced, I would like to see much improved indoor handling by the engine. OFP is the absolute best war title I have, but it lacks in both the very close and the very distant scenarios. By distant I mean flight sim distance, fast movers are generally not very well handled in OFP right now, but that's OK with me But I'd definately like to see better indoor handling, and with it better collision detection for built-up areas, for grenades etc.

I'm sure it's possible, but I've never heard of a game that ever used it. 3D apps like Lightwave & Maya use it, but the rendering is horrendous as you said When the 2D sprite method is perfectly adequate, I'm sure that developers regard it as a no-brainer.

All smoke effects in any game/sim are 2D effects. True the particles thenselves will often move about in different qualities of 3D movement, but the particles themselves are always 2D sprites. Even the apparently 3D clouds in FS2004 are only layers of 2D sprites. It's the applied texture, transparency effects, movement and persistence that sets some above the others.

Yep that's true but I hope it's in the vanilla release, I really think it adds a lot to the subliminal feel of the battlefield. And of course, although smoke was a FPS killer in OFP, with newer rendering engine improvements it's really needn't be as bad.