Ezekiel

I dunno.. I'm not a member of a clan but in the last few days I've been playing Evo and had some wicked teamwork moments. GBU bombing while someone laser designates targets is spectacular, and seeing 12 guys dismounting from your chopper simultaneously and spreading out to assault a town is pretty cool too. Question - is VOIP essential for membership in a squad/clan? That's really what's stopping me from joining one. And I dunno if someone's suggested it but the single player version of Evolution is a good way to test out all the vehicles and weapons, no civvies but more enemies to kill than you can shake a stick at. Gotta unlock the weapons and vehicles first tho which can be a pain.

Methinks that everyone in this game should be slightly more mobile. The grenade animation is a perfect example - you've thrown your nade, your hand is empty, and yet you still have to wait a little while longer while the animation brings the arm back to the gun and raises it up to firing position again. What's extra stupid is if you're sitting there waiting for the animation to end so you can move back into cover, you're about to lower your gun again to move anyway. Of course, the major advantage I see of the players working for the animations rather than the animations working for the players (and that is undoubtedly what's happening here) is it encourages realistic play. There's no dodgy floating around on your feet whilst snapping off shots and bunnyhopping around like a nutter. I played BF2 the other day (yeah, sue me ) and the sheer difference in how players can move is shocking. BF2 looks like a bunch of deathmatchers leaping around. PS: Don't forget! Quicker prone animations will lead to irritating floor diving theatricals. If the time it takes to hit the dirt is sped up, the time it takes to get your rifle back up and firing shouldn't be tampered with.

Dudester, I think the point he's trying to make is that yes, everyone knows the animations aren't perfect. I don't think anyone is trying to outright deny they couldn't be improved, but sitting here and moping is hardly the best way to go about getting it changed. Petition BI to change it by all means, a lot of ppl already have. But it sounds more like you're trying to dissuade people from playing entirely... On a diff subject, I just noticed something REALLY wierd with the anims - when turning horizontally in 3rd person view the legs turn with the rifle in little steps. Go into 1st person and look down at you legs and then turn, and they dont move at all. Wierd.

My only major complaint - try holding W, throwing a grenade and then stopping. Nothing more horrifying than frantically mashing keys as you go casually sailing out of cover. Often the way it locks your running legs will mean the grenade goes awry as well, especially if you're trying to do something clever with it like get it just over a wall or through a window/doorway. The alternative is to ensure you're not moving forward when you throw a grenade, making it rather unspontaneous and painfully slow when you have to wait for the animation to finish (you throw the grenade then fiddle around with your rifle a bit before you can even crouch, much less move. I'm sure there's a reason the arm and leg animations aren't seperate... right?

Aren't there 3? 36 - full length 36K - carbine 36C - compact (or commando, shortest)

Hmm, ragdoll physics would make some cool thing possible mind. Imagine your surprise when your helicopter copilot takes a bullet in the eye, you bank sharply to the right and his bloody face rolls over to stare at you... And performing tight maneuvers in an MH-6 with 4 flailing corpses strapped to the sides would be truly comical.

So - Your LB comes flying in to a hot LZ, bullets are flying, you snap off a bit of suppressing fire and leg it for the chopper.... and intead of leaping in, you pull out your cursed bleeding binocs instead and have a quick glance through them. Or even worse, you miss your lift because the pilot doesn't want to wait while you fiddle around, waving binoculars around and practicing your rifle shouldering. I was just thinking to myself, one of the things I was saddened to see in ArmA is the old mousewheel menu interface. Although it served its purpose in OFP, I was hoping ArmA had moved on in more ways than just graphics but the interface is pretty much identical (except for a few targeting issues which are worse now). Would anyone else be interested in seeing a more intuitive, fluid context menu? Rather than having to scroll down a list with your clunky old mouse wheel and root around trying to find the right one (trying to draw your pistol when its buried under 6 or 7 other menu options is way too slow to make it worthwhile), I think ArmA could benefit from looking at how other games do it (eg R6, Ghost Recon), where you hold a button in and use you mouse to select what you want. No more accidentally selecting completely the wrong thing in the heat of battle, and a lot quicker/prettier/user friendly to boot.

Two words: Camel Dogfight

We'd need the option to keybind certain things first yknow... There isn't a 'get in vehicle' keybind that I've ever seen. Actually I'm thinking the main issue here is the way the action you're searching for can come and go quickly and cause you to accidentally click the wrong action (certainly in choppers during fast extractions, since they tend to be moving, rotating, hovering just off the ground etc). Someone needs to get creative and suggest a workable solution to the issue, a 'get in vehicle' key would work but that doesn't solve other fiddly issues like the ladder. Maybe the context menu should be triggered by the position of your feet rather than the position of your cursor, so every possible action within proximity is listed regardless of your orientation. That way you wont have to aim your cursor at a particular rung of the ladder, and you won't lose the 'get in as xyz' command if a vehicle moves slightly. I agree using little graphics for selection might be too much hassle, although I've seen it working in the VBS2 demo (for getting into particular vehicle positions, it has every single selectable position shown in a sort of diagram at the click of a button) which is what prompted the suggestion in the first place.

Heh, I always use 30 rnd mags in the SPR. Is there actually any reason not to?

Having read Maruk's comment I can only assume BIS will not be concentrating on doing much extra content for the game and will instead focus on improving the engine whilst releasing the odd expansion pack (whether its them or outsourced) with new islands (and better missions) as the the main focus. It kinda makes sense, since A: making islands in ArmA is looking very hardware intensive and B: VBS2 has absolutely tons more official content than ArmA and it has to stay that way to justify the $1500 price tag. Is there going to be some sort of official community standard for user made content (mainly new models/units)? Once the tools have been out for a while and there's plenty to choose from the community is going to need to get together and pick out all the best stuff to put in one easy to find package..

Having read Maruk's comment I can only assume BIS will not be concentrating on doing much extra content for the game and will instead focus on improving the engine whilst releasing the odd expansion pack (whether its them or outsourced) with new islands (and better missions) as the the main focus. It kinda makes sense, since A: making islands in ArmA is looking very hardware intensive and B: VBS2 has absolutely tons more official content than ArmA and it has to stay that way to justify the $1500 price tag. Is there going to be some sort of official community standard for user made content (mainly new models/units)? Once the tools have been out for a while and there's plenty to choose from the community is going to need to get together and pick out all the best stuff to put in one easy to find package..

Hehe, quote from the official S.T.A.L.K.E.R. website: Of course, anyone who's played the game will know it doesn't exactly work out like this - while the enemy behaviour can be very cool and realistic sometimes, other times they'll just get confused and start walking endlessly into a bit of scenery... Still, they have the right idea. It's a shame that the AI is intrinsic to the engine, I'd love to see a bunch of devs all get together to make an ultra-realistic AI system from the ground up...

Hehe, yes my bad that was quite a sweeping generalisation. Most people here I've seen post are perfectly polite and helpful. And who knows, maybe I've completely misread the tone of his first post? If he's being sarcastic then fair enough, but I prefer to give ppl the benefit of the doubt with ambiguous statements like 'what a bargain!' and 'so sorry BI'. He might be perfectly genuine which is how I first read it, followed by 2 or 3 fairly offensive replies. So um like, and I'll shut up before I get acused of fanning flames.

Lol, did I miss something? I'm reading and rereading ht-57s post and I don't see him saying "BI its all your fault the download is too big and slow". All he did was state that he started downloading it and cancelled because of the long wait, saying he would prefer to buy it as a hard copy (which makes sense, I wouldn't want to sit through a 16 hour download every time I format my hardrive or do a clean install. Honestly, what's with everyone trying to jump down ppl's throats on this forum all the time? Not what I remember from OFP for sure.

I can't be the only one using bog standard keyboard and mouse... Flying's pretty damn hard but you sort of get used to it after a while, I can prolly fly a chopper well enough now most ppl won't notice I'm not using a joystick.

Blasphemy! I agree with you about the whole moving around in cargo thing, it would just be kinda silly having a bunch of people wriggling around in an APC and they wouldn't look right standing/squatting there with their weapons out all the way. Not to mention the hassle of people blocking up hatches on vehicles and stuff. But I really think better animations for getting into vehicles would make a huge difference. It wouldn't affect performance any to have the hatch of an APC opening and a squad actually stepping up and into it and moving to their seats. The only problem I can see is being able to get into a vehicle at the same time as someone else, which would cause havoc. But I don't mind the slightly slower pace, the animations would have to be quick since you're often getting into/out of vehicles in a combat zone where lazily climbing out of a car without a care in the world would be frustrating... I'm finding myself concluding 'wait for game 2' more and more these days, and ArmA is feeling more and more like a dog biscuit to keep us going till its out... Still, its a tasty dog biscuit and I hope ArmA (and its addons) will ensure Game 2 really does have all these cool little features.

Well, in case ppl haven't seen it: http://www.vbs2.com/site/downloads.html Check out the technical demo, its a good 1/2 hr long but I distinctly remember seeing a clip of a soldier stepping inside a cargo plane, though I couldn't say whether or not the plane can actually fly with someone active in the cargo. Or if it can fly at all. Still, one thing I was hoping to see some day is better animations for getting in and out of vehicle. Rather than holstering their weapon and making some bizzare hand movements before zipping out of existence and instantaneously appearing inside a vehicle. I know its a rubbish comparison but GTA pulls it off (albeit by setting you on autopilot and guiding you with brainless pathfinding into the vehicle when you click the button). Being able to open the hatch of an APC and actually move inside the cargo space in order to buckle in would be ace on its own IMHO.

*cough* That may be it, though I thought all the 8xxx stuff had been fixed.

Meh, if the only purpose of this thread is knocking the game I don't see why its still here. Isn't there some purpose to posting in this thread? Surely you're hoping that something will come of it, that the developers will listen to what you're saying and make improvements? Otherwise ye would have stopped posting and either returned the game or tucked it away at the back of a shelf. Anyway the point of my previous post was to highlight that yes, changes are being made and complaints are being listened to. In fact, you could say I was validating the very existence of this thread and those that occupy it! Okay maybe that's taking it a bit far...

Personally I don't see what all the hoo-har about female models is. Maybe as civilians, sure that would make a lot of sense. But certainly in the UK women are not assigned to frontline roles, so unless you intend to be using them in a lot of boring missions I don't see what the point is. Yes, occassionally due to the nature of today's warfare they do end up in combat, but its generally meant to be avoided. If used appropriately female soldier models would certainly add to the realism and immersion, but that's really all they'd do. Unless of course there are some gals out there playing ArmA and getting annoyed at having to play as men all the time. To do that tho I imagine it'd have to be hard coded into the game in the same spot you pick your face so that each campaign and mission knows which of two alternative models to use. And even then because of that, they would have to make female equivalents for all the models or it wouldn't work. OR - each individual campaign/mission gives the user the option to pick their sex at the start, and then appropriately adjusts the player model used in each individual mission (which isn't going to come from BIS). So um, yeah maybe a couple of female models to be thrown into particular missions where they would be likely to be seen or something....

Okay, I'm running Arma with: Win XP X86 Family 15 Model 4 stepping 7 GenuineIntel 2799 Mhz 1 GB ram Nvidia GeForce 7500 LE w/ 512MB On pretty much all low/very low settings and 1500m view @ 1024x768. Performance is pretty mediocre, and it really doesn't look that great since my flatscreen should be running it at 1280x1024 and with shading set to very low the trees and foliage look awful (I went back and checked out Farcry just to compare them, and although the Farcry foliage is obviously technologically inferior, it looks a lot better than ArmA's does on low settings). I'm not sure exactly what sort of speed my ram is or the model of the motherboard as I bought the comp as a prebuilt HP very recently (set me back a good 550 squid too). If anyone knows how to get more specific info about my hardware I'm all ears. (preferably without opening the thing up) What I want to know is what exactly would boost my performance the most? I'm not sure its even possible to upgrade a prebuilt computer, I've seen some with the PCI/AGP slots physically closed to stop extra stuff being added. My comp only has 2 slots for RAM (both of which are being used by default ) so upgrading RAM would be expensive, and the graphics card upon research has turned out to be a budget card specifically designed for prebuilt comps. I don't think I can even use the latest Nvidia drivers on it, since apparently all driver updates on a HP prebuilt comp have to come from HP and I've never seen it find ONE SINGLE update when it searches.

I had very similar problems when I first got the game (original Euro release) and it seems to have cleared up progressively through the patches (1.5 was still glitching out/crashing occassionally after an hour or two of play or after a few minutes with higher settings). With 1.7B/1.8 the overheating is completely gone, presumably because the performance has drastically improved too. TY BIS!

Thanks for the pointers guys. After dicking around for a while I've decided that someone needs to go into the native FSMs for the AI and change it up some. A few questions - Is it possible to add entirely new 'states' to a native FSM? Can an AI distinguish between different types of cover? i.e. if someone were to improve the AI's ability to move to cover when under fire, would they be able to prioritise moving to a nearby building over a nearer bush/tree? I'm looking at the config.bin file in characters.pbo and it seems to be missing a fair bit of information regarding the behaviours of AI. Is there any way to see a more detailed map of their 'brains' or am I missing something? I know its all rather OT but I originally got interested when it occured to me that a lot of the AI behaviour seems quite abitrary (for example giving the AI pinpoint ears) when it could be a lot more general and dynamic. When they 'hear' a gunshot for example, instead of instantly knowing you're standing at x,y,z they should get a rough arc/distance. They'll still turn towards that arc and scan for enemies, perhaps changing their behaviour slightly based on the percieved distance (for example a loud gunshot from behind might mean they simply turn and fire rather than throwing themselves to the floor as I've seen some complain). A commanding AI could even use that perceived 'arc' to plan their tactics - which direction to flank in for example. This might come in very handy for some sort of supressing fire behaviour as well - AI would fire through bushes towards a perceived arc rather than at your exact location (even if they've predicted your location they're still firing at a pin point spot as far as I can tell). Uh, anyway hope some of that makes sense, it is rather late.

This is a really noobish question but how exactly do you go about unpacking and viewing the AI scripts (or is it not possible without the mod tools)? I haven't a clue how it all works but I'd be interested in finding out.