General Barron

The version I've used had a very, very crude / ugly 3d mode (in addition to 2d and video modes). Compared to VBS (or even OFP), it is junk. But, again, the system I used is at least 1 generation old, possibly more. By now they might have a better 3d engine, maybe even whatever is being used in the VCCT. IMO, the VCCT doesn't look too flash when compared to VBS2 / Lasershot, though. Except for the semi-truck, of course. I don't think Lasershot has one of those. [edit] In this photo, you can clearly see a monitor that is labeled "FATS 3D" (bottom left monitor). So, the VCCT must use the current generation of FATS 3D. I'll leave it up to the reader to determine if it is better than VBS2.

Well this certainly isn't true. The US military has been using the FATS marksmanship trainer for at least 10-15 years. The FATS is specifically designed to be a marksmanship trainer, and it does that *very* well. It also has pre-recorded (video) scenarios, which is where you get the "shoot / no shoot" training. FATS worked together with DARPA to create the virtual convoy trainer, which is kinda like Ambush! with a FATS screen to shoot at. I haven't used the virtual convoy trainer, but I have used FATS, and it *is* good at training marksmanship. I thin the big areas where it would lose out to lasershot / vbs2 is in collective training and in scenario design. In VBS2 you can easily create all sorts of scenarios, which you can't do in FATS (you can only make new shooting ranges, not shoot/no shoot scenarios). In VBS2 you can train a group of people to work together across a wide range of disciplines. For example, you can have APCs and people on foot. In FATS you are only teaching marksmanship. Also, VBS2 is DIS/HLA compliant, while I'm not sure if FATS is. That is why VBS2 can be linked with an AC-130 simulator as mentioned in the article. So, no, VBS/lasershot isn't unprecidented in terms of marksmanship training. That's not to say it isn't the best tool for that job (and others), though.

Whoops, looks like I missed that one in the conversion. As shinRaiden said, it is the _rotate function. I'll modify my original post.

I wouldn't really worry about "how many can run". The answer is basically infinite. Worry more about what you do "in practice". What I mean is, if you were to make a mission with hundreds of triggers, chances are it would be far, far easier (on you as the designer) to move some or most of that functionality into scripts. In practice, I haven't seen any noticeable difference between a map with 0 triggers, and one with 1000 triggers. But this is with no scripted conditions. Of course, if you had 1000 triggers, all running "nearestObject" checks in their condition, then you would have massive problems. In general, I think people tend to over-worry about the "intensity" of scripts. The vast, vast majority of scripts have zero noticable effect on game speeds. There are only certain commands that cause lag, when used in massive amounts.

Technically, you can write anything here. There just needs to be a corresponding value in a person's config to match what you write. For example, you could make snow troops, who have footstep sounds configured for "snow". Then, you could make a snow map with surface sounds for "snow". But, of course, 99% of people addons are going to use the default BIS sounds listed.

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> "ca\wheeled\data\detailmapy\brdm2_01.rvmat", Do you have these RVMAT's applied to your model? --------- I believe the mat[] array works as follows: -It is organized in triplets -The first rvmat is the one that is currently applied to your model -The second rvmat is used when the vehicle is damaged. The first rvmat is replaced with this second rvmat -The third rvmat is used when the vehicle is destroyed, in the same manner as above -You can have as many of these triplets as you want, but they need to be organized in triplets (even if the second and third rvmat are the same) --------- So, to summarize, you need to apply one rvmat to part of your vehicle, then you need to configure TWO replacement rvmats for the rvmat that you applied. Repeat for all the parts you want to have damage textures on. --------- The tex[] array work almost identically to the mat[] array; however, it replaces textures, not rvmats. In your case, you might want to use the tex[] array, not the mat[] array (though you can still add textures via rvmat of course). I'm not sure how the old dammageHalf[] and dammageFull[] arrays relate to this system. They seem to be similar, only they are organized in pairs, not triplets (texture on your model, texture to replace it with). There is also the old method of applying a "user value" on your model. This is linked in a hitpoint in the config, under the "material=" property. When that hitpoint is damaged, all textures with the same material number ("user value") will be darkened, in the old OFP style. Ex: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">class HitEngine {armor=1.2;material=60;name="engine";passThrough=1;} All textures with "user value" of 60 will darken when the engine is damaged.

I would assume they are scripted, especially since they don't even use an addon, AFAIK.

From my understanding, the missile smoke is hard-coded to use the "MissileEffects" and "MissileManualEffects" effects classes. That means, ALL missiles use the same effects. I don't know of any way of changing them per-missile/rocket thru the config.

Oh no, not this one again... Your arma shortcut has almost nothing to do with whether an addon gets overwritten or not. I think I'll need to post this on the wiki so this confusion ends... http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....t=71959

You could display the control as text, then trim the first 9 characters off of the string. Then, use the parsenumber command to turn the string back into a number. This would also give you the IDD of a display, if you use a display instead of a control. I'm not sure the easiest way to trim a string though. Haven't played with the new string scripting commands, but I think there are methods for turning it into an array, and then turning an array back into a string.

Umm... no, obviously not. Like all governments, the US government don't allow succession. That's what the American Civil War was about. Some million people died trying to sort this one out. I'm sure the confederates thought they had the legal right to succeed, and maybe they did; but of course all laws are enforced with a gun one way or the other. I wonder, has there ever been a case where a territory non-violently succeeds from a nation? Without intervention or pressure from other countries or groups like the UN, I mean.

Hmm... I had to go re-read some economics textbooks to make sure I didn't totally miss something in that class. You are sorta right, but not fully. I deposit $10 in the bank. The bank turns around and lends out $9 of it, keeping 10% in reserve with the Fed. Those $9 dollars are then deposited in another bank. That bank turns around and lends out $8.1 dollars, keeping 10% in reserve. Those $8.1 dollars are then deposited in another bank, which lends out $7.3 dollars, which is deposited and lent out, and so on. Money is created, because there are now more dollars in "circulation" (M2 money supply) then there were before the original $10 dollars was deposited and lent out. I was wrong in that the banks aren't directly creating the money themselves. They are simply following the rules set up by the government / Federal Reserve, and these rules allow the creation of money in this manner. So I suppose its really the Fed that ultimately is creating the money in the first place (and this isn't even considering the other options of the Fed like buying and selling of T-notes, or changing overnight interest rates). I found a great chart on wikipedia which shows the growth in the US money supply: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped....ly2.svg If you were to extend this graph to the left, you'd see that the money supply really didn't grow much at all before the 60's. So we truly are in a 'dollar bubble', which is leading to all other sorts of problems. My plan is to buy real estate after the bubble fully bursts, as I'd prefer income producing assets to gain my wealth. For protecting my wealth I'd rather have gold until the price gets too much higher.

Communism is slavery. I'd rather be dead than live like that. Many southern Vietnamese felt the same way as me, and many did die defending their country from the communist invaders. I'm not trying to trash our country either. Although it does have its faults, I do believe it is still the free-est place on Earth, and I don't have to believe in any god to feel that way. But it does have flaws, flaws which are shared by every other country (at least, every country with a central bank). I believe these flaws are leading to an economic disaster, possibly on the scale of the 1930's. Even if the disaster doesn't happen now, we still have millions of baby-boomers waiting to retire on the back of a bankrupt, socialist-welfare system called Social Security. And we aren't the only country with that problem. You think we have a "liquidity crisis" now? What's going to happen when millions of baby-boomers suddenly start selling their stocks to fund their retirement? What will happen social security suddenly needs to pay out far more than it takes in? All the surplus money in that program has already been spent, you know. Our generation is going to pay for the socialist BS of our grandparent's generation.

Amen to that. This "credit crisis" is caused by people (both "rich" and "poor") who simply don't know how to manage their money. They are screwing things up for the rest of the world. So are the banks who are lending to them. But again, if we didn't have a fractional reserve system (where the governments and banks are able to "create" ~10 dollars for every 1 dollar they have in deposits), then the banks wouldn't really be so willing to lend all this money in the first place. I mean, if someone let you print almost as much money as you wanted, wouldn't YOU lend as much as you can for a nice return? The governments set up the rules, and these rules are flawed from the start. If those rules were different, we wouldn't have this problem. The federal reserve system is a hindrance to capitalism. Capitalism is about competition, yet governments outlaw competing currencies. Then, when banks STILL manage to somehow screw themselves up (even though they own the printing presses for the dollars), the government turns around and forces the taxpayer to bail that bank out (like what happened in the UK recently). Maybe we'd be a bit more careful if things weren't so darn "safe". Maybe we'd avoid more disasters if we were a bit more careful.

Read The Dollar Crisis, by Richard Duncan. The book was written in 2003, and its spooky just how spot-on his predictions have been since then. This problem has been brewing since World War One, when the European governments went off the gold standard in order to finance their wars. When they repaid their debts to the US, it led to a massive inflation (the "roaring 20s"), which led to the great depression. The problem really took off in the 70's after Nixon finally broke Bretton Woods, which was a semi-gold standard. Today, money isn't backed by anything real like gold, it is only backed by a promise from XYZ government. Since it isn't backed by anything real, the banks / governments can basically print as much of it as they want (not possible under a gold standard). The problem is, governments (not just the US) like to print these IOUs in order to finance their wars and their massive social welfare programs. The number of dollars in circulation has skyrocketed exponentially throughout the 20th-21st century. So what we have is a massive "dollar bubble", kinda like the tech bubble of the late 90's. We all know what happens to asset bubbles. The value of the asset will eventually collapse. In this case, that means the value of US property, stocks, bonds, etc etc. This will hurt not only the US but the rest of the world. Too bad Ron Paul didn't get the presidential nomination, he was the only candidate who was even talking about monetary policy. To the rest of the country, I suggest you bail out of stocks and bonds, and instead keep your wealth in something real and tangible, such as gold, oil, real-estate, businesses, etc. These are real investments anyway; people don't achieve financial freedom by buying shares in mutual funds. I blame the education system for teaching us NOTHING about finances or investing.

True, but different uses demand different tools. A gamer's definition of "realism" and the military's definition of "realism" aren't always the same. For example, many gamers find 3rd person view to be 'unrealistic', while calling 1st person view 'realistic'; therefore many disable it on MP servers. The military often finds that 1st person view decreases situational awareness so much that it is unrealistic, making 3rd person view necessary and useful. Gamers often think that things like pressing a key in order to deploy your weapon's bipod would be 'realistic'. To the military, this just be annoying and a waste of time, as it adds nothing to training. To a gamer, more complicated controls to simulate simple RL tasks is considered 'realistic'. To the military, using a mouse and keyboard to simulate running and shooting is NOT considered realistic. However, there are certain training outcomes they can get in VBS that are either too expensive, too dangerous, or too complicated to train in real life.

That isn't quite true. For the most part, gamers mainly care about "realistic" features relating to blowing stuff up and killing people. Other forms of realism or features aren't really as important. For the military, blowing stuff up and killing people is just secondary. There is a lot more to mission accomplishment then just that. Small example: turn signals/indicators are CRUCIAL to military users. Gamers would only regard such a feature as 'oh, thats nice'. Non-lethal / escalation of force scenarios are also crucial to the military. Most FPS gamers would find it boring to play a mission for an hour and not fire a single shot. After action review is perhaps THE most important component for the military, and the AAR phase is more important than the actual in-game mission itself. Not so for gamers, hence the lack of AAR in video games, and the limited interest in modding a high-quality AAR. Inter-sim compatability is also very important for the military; while I've never heard a gamer request that ArmA be able to play MP with Steel Beasts or Close Combat. Gamers want a 'game', aka an entertaining competition (either pvp or pvAI). The military wants 'training', which is about the process, not the competition.

Ok, I do see your point. I suppose I was reacting more to other general 'complaints' I've heard about the price of VBS, I do now see that wasn't what you were doing. Anyway, I'm really not trying to take this thread off track. This thread should really remain about the new VBS2 features, and their relation to ArmA, not about product pricing or anything else.

By the same token, about 95% of the "new" features that have been implemented by ArmA mods, could have been implemented in OFP. Some examples: I had reloading while moving working in OFP, as well as battlefield clearance; tank fire control had already been done; dogs had already been made; destructible buildings were possible; tanks with multiple turrets had been created; VTOL simulated; and on and on. I dare anyone to find one "feature" that has been modded in ArmA that could not have been done in OFP, one way or the other. The difference is in the quality of the implementation, which is both what you see in-game, and what goes on 'behind the scenes' in the code. ArmA added more features to the OFP engine, allowing for things to be modded with much more quality and much less "hacking". The same would be true for VBS2. The same will be true for ArmA2. People don't seem to grasp the economics behind the pricing. VBS2 and ArmA are sold in different markets. Different markets command different prices. In the entertainment market, you can sell a million copies of your software, so you can afford to price it at $30. In the simulations market, you wouldn't even sell a tenth of that, so your price must be set over 10 times as high to still bring in the same profit. VBS2 also has effectively twice the development team of ArmA (BIS + BIA), and it has to provide much more customer support compared to the entertainment market, so it costs more to produce. The pricing is set by basic economics, just like the price of everything else in the free world.

Well, I would assume that the publicVariable needs time to be picked up by other clients. So, you can't expect that the instant you issue the command, the clients will have the results of the variable. Nor can you assume you know how long it will take for the variable to reach all clients. I believe there are some exceptions dealing with the briefing, but I don't remember the specifics. I don't think init events fire until after the briefing anyway though.

Do they have "class=house" or "class=building" (no spaces! in the named properties of the geom lod? This may be a requirement for paths to function properly...

Wow, I wasn't aware that you could now use dialog scripting with title resources! That opens up a heck of a lot of opportunities! Basically, the old question of "how to make a dialog where I can still move" seems to be solved...

Kindof. The best you can do is modify the explosionEffects or the craterEffects of the ammo. These are the particle effects that run when the ammo explodes. As with the drop command, you can run a script when a particle is destroyed. So, you could add a particle effect to your explosionEffects, which drops one particle only, and that particle makes a script run. In that script you would get passed the location where the particle destroyed itself (i.e. the location where the ammo was exploded). The only problem with this method is that (a) you can't tell who threw the ammo, and (b) I don't think it would work on dedicated servers, since they might not actually run particle effects.

Or maybe not Then again, haven't tried it, you never know. Nah, I'm afraid the requiredAddons does not refer to an actual filename, but instead it refers to the cfgPatches name used in the addon's config. Confusing? Yes. But it does make sense, because this way you can rename or merge pbos, and still keep backwards compatibility. Yes, that is basically what I'm getting at here. The load order of addons is, in a way, written into the addons themselves. Mod folders have very little to do with load order. Are you aware that it is possible to delete classes? I'm not sure if this will help in your case, but basically you can use addonA to delete classes declared in addonB. An example: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> class RscMsgBox { delete SubBackground; delete Background; class Top { delete title; }; }; You may have to delete all sub-classes of a class first, before you can delete the class itself. Also, the 'access' parameter might influence whether you can delete the class or not. Oh, and one last thing, I don't think you can re-declare a class in the same config that you delete it in.

land_ is also required if you want your visitor-placed objects to have a config. When you load a map, for every object on the map it will look for a config with the name land_(modelname). If it finds it, the config will be used for that map-placed object. Note this only happens if the model has simulation=house or building in the named properties, I believe. Anyway, this is how you can have things like working doors or lights for visitor placed objects (as opposed to only editor-placed objects).