Gustav62

I looked around at other posts, and didn't see anybody suggesting this improvement, so I made this thread. Sorry in advance if it has already been mentioned. In real life, grenades fired from rifle launchers have a safe distance. If the ordnance hits the ground (or something else) before it has rotated a certain number of revolutions, it is not armed and will not explode, so as to put the shooter in the damage radius. In Armed Assault, grenades do arm the moment they leave the barrel. Both of the above apply to anti-tank weapons. I don't imagine that that would require a lot of work to fix. But the game would look closer to a simulation of real life with this update.

(Neat topic you have here.) In the flight simulator "Lock On," there was an option to turn on mirrors full-time, and if they are on, what level of detail to use for the reflection. Even with the mirrors off by default, there was a key to "flash" them when necessary. Like people here say, it does eat up resouces to have mirrors on. Maybe Armed Assault II could also have a button to turn on the mirror. Although to some people that would look unrealistic, to have the mirror materialize at the push of a key, then disappear. The other option is to reduce the LOD in the mirror reflection (how detailed does your helicopter have to be to avoid bumping into it?). Also, a mirror isn't a simple camera view drawn on a texture. The image has to be switched left-right. Is that hard to do, does anyone know?

Yeah, I got a kick out of that. And don't they also have "Sundat" pickups instead of Datsun?

No sir, I didn't say that I know how it turns out. Pay attention. From what has been revealed by BIS, the premise of this game is very similar to the real life situation in Georgia. Many people expected a Georgian-Russian armed conflict for some years, since there already was one in Georgia in the mid-nineties (the Ghost Recon story centers around a renewed war in 2008, even though that game was made in 2000 or so). I'm not privy to inside information, so I never claimed to know the details of the Armed Assault II campaign. So it is possible that the Armed Assault II developers wrote this story before the actual war took place, a point that someone above was disputing.

SgtH3nry3, that didn't occur to me. You're right, they probably have dedicated people on every part of the project. As to the being vulnerable when entering or exiting, the difference with real life and a scripted animation is that in real life, one can change their mind. In a game, if the player starts to leave the tank and realizes that this is more dangerous than sitting inside, he cannot interrupt that action. This would be even more frustration to me: losing because I can't control my character for a whole five seconds. In reality, if a tanker wants to leave the vehicle, but it's not safe, he can stick his head out of the hatch and shoot at the enemy first. Also, if car doors open, won't people complain when the car is parked too close to a building and the door "disappears" through the wall? And what if a character leaves a car in an emergency, will he have to turn around and shut the car door? My point is that adding eyecandy mostly compounds the future headaches for the developers.

I don't know if there is some kind of deep dark meaning to this. There is a Ukrainian city called Khersonnes, so maybe this abbreviation "KherTrans" is short for "Khersonnes transportation company," or something. That's the thing -- a name like that is so innocent-sounding and deniable. I heard that there was an Italian power company that bought the domain genitalia.it, probably not suspecting how dirty that sounds. But you're right. I noticed on screenshots that the Russian trucks had "ZAMAK" written on the grille, when the name of the brand is, obviously, "KAMAZ." Maybe they don't have permission from the brand to use their actual name. About communists, it's no secret that many people in America hate communists with an irrational passion. So if you need a bad guy for a story, then make him a communist! It doesn't have to make sense -- I'm starting to worry that these games from BIS might never feature a reasonable storyline.

What?? Male genitals, maybe? I don't know the reference. I thought Rockstar just had the R and the star? Dwarden, anyone who paid attention to that region already saw the war as one of the likely next steps. Maybe BI Studios started this game not anticipating a real-life war, but still playing out on that tense scenario.

That's true. If they're already planning to have such animations, that's great. And if they will leave it the same as in Armed Assault, I don't have a problem with that, either. Actually, exiting animations could prove to be even more problematic in the game than "popping" out, because that means that the player is uncontrolled and vulnerable for a few seconds. Like I said above, if they have to choose between making new animations and improving the gameplay (like not getting your character stuck in buildings), then I'd rather see improved gameplay.

Admittedly, I'm not as knowledgeable about these things as you are. Honestly, I've never even heard of PC Gamer, so the reason I liked Ghost Recon is strictly that it fit my own taste. You're making my point for me. Ghost recon was praised by the critics even though it completely lacked any first-person gun view. That's what I'm driving at -- a game doesn't have to dazzle people with hyper-realistic detail to be a fun experience. If it turns me on to watch people realistically getting in and out of cars, I'll go to the Walmart parking lot. If I want to see realistic grass, I won't beg BIS to put it into Armed Assault II. I'll simply go to the park.

I've never seen that in Armed Assault. (And not in Ghost Recon, either.) I don't know why that is. Maybe because there is no real definition of gravity or weapon mass, and no concept of coefficient of restitution. So if the weapon were to separate and fall on its own, it would look mega-hokey. But that's just my speculation.

I thought that they did fix it. In the later patches of Armed Assault. I agree, that was a very annoying thing -- watching the character reload, and assuming that he hasn't been hit even though the has.

I agree about animating the sling. Since it's mostly a non-rigid body, it is affected by gravity and tension on the rifle. That is hard to render in real time. For example, game cut scenes in which a character talks on a corded phone usually obscure the actual cord (so they don't have to animate it). Almondpoq, I support the idea of a quick switch from the rifle to another item in the inventory. I hope they do make something like that. Everyone has stories of getting killed in Armed Assault while switching weapons.

Oh brother. Real life violence is always disturbing. Someone was killed in my apartment building a few weeks ago, and I walked by the pool of blood on the stairwell. I couldn't eat for the rest of the day. Game violence, even if it's totally realistic, never conveys the reality of the end of a life. You can always restart and everything is back to normal. Not to be mean, but if you'd really love to see a human being's head blown off, you should expeditiously go see a psycho-pathologist. Ask a person who's been to war if they joined with the intent of quenching a bloodthirst, to "look at proper blood effects" and wounds.

In Armed Assault right now, the magazine leaves the rifle when reloading, doesn't it? Anyway, I'm more worried about the fact that when you push "R" in the game, you're immobilized for three seconds. That is the worst. If you're expecting an animation in which the soldier removes the magazine, puts it away in one bag, opens the flap on a pocket, pulls a new magazine out, the flap falls down realistically, then he rocks the magazine into place and chambers the first cartridge, I doubt that'll be featured in any game in the next decade. There are too many kinds of small arms (conventional dimensions, bullpup, uzi-style, underbarrel grenade launchers, left / right / center charging handle) and too many kinds of tactical vests with way too many kinds of pockets. It's not realistic to expect anybody to make a life-like reload animation for all of those cases.

Maybe I am. I like to think of it in terms of man-hours. If the game developers concentrate on the visuals (a time-consuming chore), that means less time for adding or improving actual game elements. Operation Flashpoint and Armed Assault are in a completely different genre and aimed at a different audience than games like Crysis, Call Of Duty 4, and other such juvenile games. For Armed Assault II to compete with those on their terms (i.e. pretty graphics) means assured failure, anyway. OFP paved its own path through the games market, and people apparently liked what it offered.

Have you played the first Ghost Recon? That game didn't even attempt a first-person view of the player's hands / weapon. The reload "animation" was a little turning clock-face that indicated the progress of the reload. So, in effect, absolutely zero eyecandy in that regard. And people loved Ghost Recon -- for its intrinsic content. Frankly, the way Armed Assault in its current state does the first-person depiction of the character is the best I've ever seen in any game. I haven't heard of any other game where you can see your own feet, shoulders, etc. Or a game where you can point the gun in one direction and look in another. I think that kind of novelty and "outside the box" thinking makes up tenfold for the shaky reloading and less-than-lifelike motion capture. Just my opinion.

Amen, exactly my thoughts. Plus, there are infinitely many ways to enter a car, let alone crawl up on a tank and climb into the hatch. Even if they made one set of animations for every entry / exit, people would eventually complain that they are the same every time. (Think scripted death animations -- there are so many, and still, people eventually memorize all of them). There is no satisfying a person's eye-candy appetite.

Oh. Sorry, I didn't notice it. Was it in one of the videos that were released?

Maybe I am. I guess in training people for a specific situation, like raiding a house, that kind of option would be beneficial. But the truth is that there are already (probably) hundreds of shooters which focus on room-to-room shootouts. The OFP family of games is unique as a simulation of bigger-level combat. I would hate to see that watered down. Morality in a game is something that doesn't affect the outcome. In real life, a person could feel guilty for committing a crime, but not in a game. I suspect if they were to put in an option for abusing civilians, some people would use it at every turn (because there is no real consequence either way). The other thing about "personifying" the player's character is that it's been beaten to death already in all other games. If you've played the Half-Life series, you know what I mean. The playable persona is treated like some kind of very special being and constantly praised by the allies and feared by the enemies. I thought OFP was so refreshing and novel by making the player feel like a unnoticeable cog in a military machine. The first missions especially made me feel like I was really there (in real life, just one person is an insignificant being -- strength comes from unity and numbers). I was impressed that, even without shooting anyone, I could help bring a victory to my side. Just like in reality. In the childish games, of course, the emphasis is on the player's character carrying the whole war. Sorry for the rant. It is relevant to my point -- too much focus on the "personal choice," character development and heroization of the player will make Armed Assault II just another cookie-cutter shooter.

I guess it does happen, but that situation is less "war" than "police business." Whenever there is active shooting, civilians make themselves scarce. I don't mean to put down your suggestion, but it seems like the option of abusing random strangers would send the game more in the footsteps of GTA than OFP.

Are you talking about the "Resistance" campaign? Maybe, since it's technically a vehicle, that was no problem. I can't remember if they had moveable / animated buildings and structures in Operation Flashpoint.

Well, they have animation for openable hatch of UH rotor aircraft  In Armed Assault, tanks and fighting vehicles had slideable / hinged hatches which would open and close depending on if the crew "buttoned down" or went open. Except, even here, the character would just "pop" out when the hatch finished opening. Personally, I'm happy with the kind of "man using vehicle" animations which already exist in Armed Assault -- my imagination is healthy enough that not everything has to be displayed in ultra-realism. I think the people who are pining for detailed super-animation of every single toenail, eyelash, etc. should look to Operation Flashpoint 2. The developers of that game seem to be taking the hollow approach of putting all their stock on the visuals and nothing on the actual game content.

That crossed my mind too. Any kind of scripted animation takes a certain length of time to play. In some cases, the player needs to leave the vehicle quickly, in other cases he would do it leisurely. If he needs to get out quickly and the animation takes three long seconds, there is a good chance to get shot (and there's no way to avoid it). Plus, if the vehicle is slowly rolling as you jump out, a full, "realistic" animation would have the character's feet sliding across the ground until the animation finishes. With the way people "pop" out of vehicles now, the roll doesn't make it look any more strange.

Wow, I never even noticed that, would you believe? Thanks for explaining.

Like using human shields and such? Pistol-whipping people and turning their pockets inside out? I think this game is meant to be a military simulator in its own tradition. Not a "Mafia" or "Grand Theft Auto" clone. The action in Operation Flashpoint focused on operational / tactical level military action, not on individual characters like in the vast majority of shooters.