miles teg

WOW! I'm blown away! I hope the high-poly detail is not for the final version otherwise it may lag out the game or go past the game limit for polys. But regardless those screenshots look AMAZING even without textures! Awesome job!!! The "Bear" was always one of my favorite bombers. Truly a unique aircraft. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

What I'd like to see is something that I think I've told BI staff before. That would be the beginnings of a hand to hand combat engine that could become the basis for an entire new line of games based on the original ArmA2 engine. While we only need something like a basic bayonet and knife hand to hand combat system, this alone would be enough to create something like a Nepoleonic War Pack if a horse calvary system could be made (with the ability to tow and crew historic artillery pieces with horse, mule, or oxen. Basic systems have already been made in OFP, ArmA, and ArmA2 in the past so this is not impossible or unrealistic. The main things that would be needed to be modified would be a waypoint setting that caused platoons/squads to move and maintain a perfect formation coupled with the ability to do volley fire from such a formation. Further spin-off games from such a system could include a Wild West game and an American Civil War game or addon pack. Now... expand this idea further into a more sophisticated hand to hand combat system for a variety of weapons (swords, maces, spears, axes, atalatl's, bows, crossbows, pikes, etc...) and BI could create a truly breathtaking series of games similar to the Total War series but with the first person perspective. With such a system everything from the campaigns of the Roman Legions to the Viking Campaigns, or something really new like the Mayan Wars of Ancient Meso-America (which are truly fascinating), could be pioneered. The sky's the limit as to what such an engine could bring to the First Person Shooter genre of gaming. The Total War series was a a great success. It's only common sense that somene would create a hybrid of a strategic system like the Total of War engine and combine it with a FPS system. The ArmA2 engine with its vast and beautiful landscapes would be the logical choice to create such a pioneering game. While it would be a major undertaking, getting the BI team to try creating a basic knife/bayonet system would be a start to see how they like the idea. I was skeptical of such ideas myself until I played the old Civil War mod for OFP a long time ago. It rapidly became my favorite mod with many elements that truly created a first person combat experience unlike anything else (such as seeing enemies charging you with their bayonets fixed while you're trying to reload a muzzle-loading rifle thus creating more then a little sense of intense drama). So anyways... other then that, I would agree with others that a logical upgrade would be an expansion to all the OA stuff with more British, German, American, and Czech vehicles and aircraft. Maybe even just an armor & air pack for the European forces. I know that everyone was very disappointed that a Challenger 2 tank was not included with the British forces. That in my opinon, was a major shortcoming in that pack that otherwise was a fairly well-rounded pack. Other ideas include mod packs that nobody has ever done such as a Colombian Civil War/War on Drugs pack or a Mexican military vs. Mexican drug cartel pack (that could largely use current BI models retextured and modified slightly). Northern Mexico maps would be easier as Colombia would involve serious Jungle maps that are not easy to make. Another idea would be a civilian SWAT pack and urban map suitable for SWAT missions maybe with stuff like enterable static airlines that could also be used for counter-terrorism missions. I could go on and on and on but I think the ideas posted above would be of definite interest to the majority of players in the ArmA2 community. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD> Team Leader of the Lost Brothers Mod

Thanks for the info Myke. UV mapping is something I need to learn as well. Although with that said, my mod has a few old OFP addons with a bunch of textures and so far they don't create a big hit on the performance of my low-end computer as long as I don't add dozens of those tanks. So for small missions that only need like a platoon of them (which is generally how most armor missions are) they'll still work fine and I'm glad that he released them so that mission makers can have some fun with them until better updated versions are made. But yeah, definitely better to have textures merged and also important to have them at the appropriate size otherwise, as you mentioned, they cause some graphic cards to have serious trouble. The other major benefit for merging the textures is that it makes the file size MUCH smaller because you don't have to make a ton of different .rvmat files and your rvmats can be much higher quality (not just a setting to make the textures shiny, but rather detailed bump-mapping etc... that brings out all the details in the textures). One idea is maybe to try uv mapping on some simpler objects first to get the hang of it? I think I'm going to try that. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

The Mig29 we are trying to port over but we have issues with it. The Su-24 and Mig-21 are on the list to be ported over although not specifically just for Iraq. The Mig-25 we have a crappy model of but we may try to modify the model and textures to improve it unless someone else has a better model and are willing to let us use it. The Foxbat is one of my favorite classic jet fighters so it would be nice to have that powerful beast in Arma2. Some may argue that it's too fast for ArmA2 but I've flown quite nicely at 1,000 km in our Mirage IIIC at low level. So say giving it a top speed of 1,800 km and with its quick acceleration it would be a very interesting plane for multiplayer air to air combat. We'd just have to downgrade the maneuverability a bit to give the BLUFOR planes a fighting chance as in real life it's not a particularly maneuverable aircraft. Both Syria and Iraq use the plane so it would be a good plane for our mod. On the US side, we have no plans for a major American mod. The BLUFOR is mainly ground based as there are enough BI US air addons (although we will have Israeli F-15I's and F-16's and maybe an M109 SP arty and a Vulcan AA system). Originally we weren't even planning on any US forces, but we figured since we have that PASGT body armor model, that we could make a few US infantry units and retexture a few BI armor units so that players could recreate the 73 Easting battle. So I'm afraid that no, we have no plans for porting over the entire US Airforce collection of addons from OFP and ArmA1. Again we only have 3 people actively working on our mod and soon will have only two people. If we concentrated on US forces then we would have to just scrap all the IDF and Arab army stuff and change our mod name. The Iraq and US Gulf War stuff is more of a side project and not the center-piece of the mod. But that is Andrei's baby. If he wants he can get permissions from all the different addon makers to port over all those aircraft but that would also mean that you will probably not see anything more then a very tiny IDF/Arab conflict pack within a month or two and probably only one update within the next one to two years if its just me working on all of that. I'm hoping to wrap up all the Iraq updates so that Andrei can help me with the huge task of getting the Egyptian and Syrian forces converted to ArmA2 along with the rest of the IDF equipment. We also have a massive number of naval forces that I really wish to get converted as well. If anyone wants to make a fullscale Gulf War mod, then they should join us and help create that. We can not join them because we have strict permissions from addon makers/mods who's models/textures we use in that we can not lend them out to anyone else without their express permission. The Iraqi forces fit into the Lost Brothers Mod because Israel did launch an attack on their nuclear facilities in the 80's and Iraq did participate in past wars against Israel (and their gear and equipment did not change much over the decades until the US occupation). That is why the US forces are an afterthought just to recreate a few historic Gulf War missions and to have a few BLUFOR for the Iraqis to fight. I hope that makes sense. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

When we get to our Egyptian and Syrian stuff we will port over the Mig-21 and many other planes. Thanks for the bug report. We'll look into that one as I don't remember ever getting that. Thanks. Oh..one update. I've fully ported over a IAF AH-1S and a Mirage IIIC and have them fully working with OA features (FLIR on Cobra and radar/missile warning and flare systems on both). The Mirage IIIC is a real beauty and flys like a dream. Unfortunately it's more for the historic IAF stuff but I'll probably release it anyways. After we get at least one modern IAF fighter-bomber and one modern IAF transport helicopter working, our first pack will be ready to be released. I'm just waiting on some help from the other IDF mod to see if they'll let us use their retextured UH-60 and F-16 or whether or not we'll have to do the work ourselves. Until then I'm working on trying to port over our old F-16I Sufa which is the primary fighter bomber of the IAF. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Awesome! I'm super excited!!! Much appreciated! Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Galzohar: Yeah it's not that I hate ACE. I play regular on the United Operations server (made up of what used to be the Tactical Gamer ArmA2 community). ACE is standard there. However galzohar, if there are weapons ballistics that ACE made more realistic, I have not noticed this at all. I was an expert marksman on the M16A2 and have experience with the M60, M249, M2, Mk-19, AT-4, and M-203 systems in the US Army. (No disrespect but aside from DM's and medium/heavy machinegunners, IDF marksmanship training is generally limited to 100 meters). I haven't experienced any ballistics that were terribly off with any of those on stock BI. On the other hand ACE added insane recoil on the FNFAL and G-3 rifles as well as made the recoil on M16 rifles way too high in my opinion. Also, honestly I don't care who plays or doesn't play the mod. The only reason I keep the mod going is because I like playing it. If anyone else likes playing it that's just a bonus. :) Also as I already explained it is A HUGE AMOUNT OF WORK keeping everything updated with all the ACE updates that often break or change things. It's just too much of a headache until they release stable versions...but they're always updating even after they release stable versions and everyone always insists on using the latest beta. So for me that's the #1 reason why it's not priority. People forget that we only have 3 people actively working on stuff in the mod and soon it will be down to just me and Andrei as Namman2 is going to stop working on stuff so he can concentrate on university studies. So if we found someone who was willing to do all that work to update everything for ACE, and keep it updated, then that would be fine. Otherwise it would come at the expense of any new units. Already the ArmA2 IDF/Hezbollah release is going to be pitifully small compared to our glory days of OFP. It's because in comparison ArmA2 addons are alot more complicated to make and the community demands higher quality... something our little mod team is hard pressed to meet. But if I worried about that, I would have quit a long time ago. I just like having fun with the addons. But hopefully more addon makers/texture artists/config scripters will join our mod so we can make it "purtier" and more professional. But until then, we just do our best.

I don't suppose you'd be interested in making a Jordanian Falcon tank for my mod would you? It would just need a new turret: Here's the pic of the real thing: http://www.armyrecognition.com/moyen_orient/Jordan/Exhibition/Sofex_2004/pictures/Falcon_Turret_KADDB_Jordan_Sofex_2004_01.jpg http://www.military-today.com/tanks/falcon_turret.htm Remote turret = increased survivability due to ammo storage and enhanced crew survivability (as they're in the hull and not in the turret that might take hits in a hulls-down position). I believe it also features an autoloader. Overall it's one of the more interesting modifications of the Challenger 1 that I've seen so far. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD> Team leader of the Lost Brothers Mod

Fidai: Yeah our Hezbollah guys look pretty much like what you posted with a mixture of IDF kevlar helmets and the older French made steel-pots. The units with body armor have PASGT kevlar vests (what US forces used in the late 80's/early 90's) as they got alot from the Lebanese Army and other sources. In real life, a few also use older Vietnam War era ballistic nylon vests mixed in with a few individuals who have higher-end body armor with ceramic plates, but we can't find a good model for the older ballistic nylon vests and we decided not to use any of the ceramic plate body armor as its so seldom used by Hezbollah from what I can tell (plus our only other body armor models are the IDF body armor and BI Russian body armor on their sample model). Galzohar: ACE doesn't really change the ballistics (except on some of the AT rockets). They mainly just add the ability to adjust your sights. The enemy are still snipers with AK47s and able to often kill you with one or two shots at 300-500 meters with ACE for example (extremely unrealistic). I also HATE the range adjustment crap on the rockets. It's fairly useless without a rangefinder unless you are super good at range estimation. Also I'd have to have samples of their armor to implement their system (which I believe they actually got from the old LoBo system that Calm Terror made for us in OFP). Unfortunately he's gone and I don't know how it works so we never implemented it in ArmA1 or Arma2. Unless we get a tutorial on that, the LoBo ArmA2 won't have it either unless I spend a few hours/days trying to figure out how our old system worked in OFP and whether we can implement it in ArmA2OA. Also the FCS on TOW launchers, last I checked, was screwed up in ACE. I think the default BI system works fine. Even if we did use it, again, it would take alot of work to get our armor fully ACE compatible. I'd rather spend that time converting or adding more units for our mod rather then screwing around with ACE and trying to keep up with updates and stuff (which means constantly updating our addons). So basically there is no way to magically convert our addons to ACE and keep them constantly updated. It takes alot of time, work, and FTP bandwidth for a Yoma setup to keep everything properly updated for ACE. I just don't think it's really worth it. I'd prefer to recruit a talented config scripter to help us implement ACE-like features in our mod so that it was not dependent upon ACE. Otherwise, the most that can be hoped for is perhaps an ACE config for our infantry and any vehicles that do not require changes to their models (that might effect using those models with a default non-ACE config). Myke: yeah I agree. Those are some of the reasons why we're not jumping all over ACE. Andrei will probably make an ACE config for the Gulf War guys, but I'm in no big hurry to make it for the IDF and Hezbollah infantry units. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Wow....so basically this script allows the AI to use the BI arty??? If so that's a BIG deal and I'm definitely going to try out these scripts to see if I can figure them out. I just hope that the docs with it are not as confusing as they were for the old UA system back in OFP. His docs were written for computer software engineers rather then average users and thus was not very user-friendly for average mission makers. I can't to actually see the MLRS and BM-21 doing their thing. EDIT- Just unPBO'ed it and immediately noticed that the mission was in .pbo format. I recommend that you add an unPBO'ed version of the mission as well. Just one less step for mission makers who need it as a template mission. I also just read the readme....ouch. Sadly yeah its like UA. Written for scripters. I suppose thats fair as the top mission makers know how to write scripts and thus can appreciate your brilliant coding. However I'm afraid that for the average Joe like myself who can't script himself around his own ass and who has difficulty with high school level algebra, it's very difficult to understand (I don't remember what an array is for example). I'll still mess around with it though...maybe I'll get lucky and figure out how to use it. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

You don't need ACE for it to be realistic. ACE is cool in some ways, but it also breaks alot of the BI stuff (like the crew served weapons backpacks). So I'm not sure why everyone thinks you absolutely need it for realism. We will probably eventually have optional ACE configs, but it's not a priority. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Yup, Andrei has been working his butt off rapidly trying to built a more or less realistic 1991 US Army and Marines BLUFOR as alot of people were complaining about the lack of a BLUFOR (and are too impatient to wait for the Iranian mod to release a pack). We had the basics to create US forces from that period so we figured...eh what the hell, why not. This way the LoBo Iraq pack will be more of a Lobo 1991 Gulf War Pack and thus more usable for Domination/Warfare mission makers as well as mission makers who want to re-create historic battles from the 1991 Gulf War. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Thanks BushLurker for showing the proper way to inform someone who is new to the forum with patience and positive information. It's all too easy to simply lash out at someone violating forum rules (even if they're new) so it's nice to see... well...someone being nice. Hats off to you Bushlurker. :)

Yeah that is not a bad idea but I'm not sure if our FTP could handle that. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

OPFFever: Thanks bud! Glad you're enjoying it! Ahmed: We will try to fix up the T-55 to see what's going on there. The Israeli-Arab conflict part of our mod (the main part) will be released in small parts. We currently have our IDF infantry pack and Hezbollah infantry almost finished and we are waiting for a few more tanks to get finished along with a helicopter and jet-fighter. So it is coming soon and we may just start out by releasing an infantry pack and then later release the armor and aircraft packs. Either way, the Infantry, armor, and aircraft packs will be seperate. That way each pack can be updated seperately and it won't be such a big download. However our goal is to make the mod as big as it was in OFP (which was HUGE). But we are a very small mod with only 3 active members and a little bit of help from other addon makers. Inshallah, we will make good steady progress and eventually have the entire Israeli, Egyptian, and Syrian armies, airforces, and navies in the mod. :) We also still want to make Jordanian and Saudi Arabian units as well. We have some beautiful Challenger 1 and AMX-30 tank models sitting around that need some love. :) Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Thanks Esco!

Woe... that is bizarre. If you are still getting that error even after removing the Lobo_Iraq_Mig23.pbo file, then something is really screwed up if you are still getting that error. Double check addons folder and make sure that its not in the main ArmA2/addons folder where all the BI addons are. Double check also that you have no other mods being launched with OA. I don't have a steam version so I can't give you any more advice then that unfortunately. But most likely it's something simple. If not, then you just found a bizarre bug that has to do with the Steam system that is beyond our power to fix. Perhaps a skilled script writer/programmer could figure it out, but we don't have anyone like that in our mod. But as Andrei said, if nobody else is experiencing that bug, then the problem is likely something simple that was overlooked where somewhere in some ArmaII directory you still have that .pbo file and Steam is loading it up or attempting to. It may be loading up missions that need that file perhaps. So you might try removing the missions that use that addon. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Yeah, on the completed section of the forums Namman2 posted some pics of the new Merkava Mk3 Baz (fully up-armored). He's also working on getting the Namer Mk2 and the Nagmashot working in-game. Creating a good interior for the Nagmashot will be tricky, but that thing's a beast. We have it halfway working in-game so far. Just the cargo section needs to be modelled and a few bugs worked out on the MG positions. We'll probably make variants of the Nagmashot later with the armored observation towers and stuff. Right now I'm working on creating custom working backpacks and just finished getting rid of a nasty bug on the Hezbollah guys. The backpacks are being a pain in the ass at the moment. I got the cargo system working with custom ammo loadouts in the backpacks, but they're still dragging around at the feet of the soldier instead of on the back. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Well some USMC units wear beanie caps (knit watch caps/rolled up balaclavas)....

Oh wow! I had NO idea you had to do that. Thanks a bunch for that tip!!! Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Yeah that error in the missions is a really wierd error. We're still trying to figure out what's causing it. But fortunately the missions still work fine. It's just a minor annoyance. As for the thermals, yeah we still need to look at the tutorials to see how to go about adding the thermal heat signatures. On the T-55, yeah we'll look into trying to get a better commander view. Also thanks for finding those bugs on the Urutu. We'll see about fixing those. As for the HMG on the top, as of right now there are no plans to get it working at the moment, but we might if we have time. It's just not high priority at the moment. Getting extra MG's to work is a REAL PAIN in the ass and is very time consuming and we got a ton of other addons that we're trying to get working not to mention the updates that need to be done to this pack. But hopefully we'll get more members joing us who can help with some of these things. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD> ---------- Post added at 07:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:00 PM ---------- Thanks for the tip. I'll have to check that out. Chris G. aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Hehehe...yeah that LGB view was a script made by Footmunch. All credit for the aircraft and that script goes to him...oh aside from the SU-22 which is by the great addon maker TomiD. We were allowed to use Footmunch's stuff with his permission but we are looking for a script writer who can include a way to get out of that script (like "esc" key) if you are heading towards the ground when you drop that bomb. So it's not perfect..but we're going to work on improving alot of things. This first release is a bit of a beta. But most things should work fine. We also VERY MUCH hope that this pack will encourage the Iranian Mod to continue their development. This pack and their mod will be perfect for mission makers wanting to simulate the Iran/Iraq war. Our later IDF stuff will also be a great adversary for them in missions after we release some stuff.

Some of it will probably work in ArmAII, but other stuff won't. :( Overall yes, it's meant for OA. I would buy it. It's well worth it overall. For certain our upcoming IDF/Hezbollah release will be 100% designed for OA as infantry will use the backpack systems and the weapons will have IR lasers and flashlights.

Yeah...it's a bad shadow proxy. Wierd that I didn't notice that. That's an ongoing problem that has plagued our mod for a long time. We'll probably just substitute the shadow LOD for one from another infantry model from our IDF guys that I know works. It may not be accurate, but at least they won't have those wierd lines.