madrussian

I just spent the last hour or so reading up on Unity3D. Lots of cool capabilities in there. Unity3D even does independent head tracking! Seems like you should be able to have the players head freelook from the body which is huge for me. (Indeed, that's one huge thing that sets the Arma/OFP series apart from any other FPS I'm aware of.) The only thing I was expecting from Unity3D but not seeing is any sort of AI component... am I just missing it? If not, curious what AI middleware you guys are using???

I would personally like to see an Vietnam expansion, in addition to existing and upcoming Vietnam mods. The more the merrier I say! Plus to have an official Vietnam expansion... think of all the new jungle assets that would perfectly cross-over and be useful in all our wonderful mods (not just for Vietnam). It would be a win-win-win.

That's not necessarily because of the tool though... Maybe that map lagged for you because there were a lot of objects and a lot of unique objects. Seems like it ran ok for me... just saying. But I would be interested is anyone knows for sure that maps created using the mapfact system are "inherently unoptimized".

I generally run by default, and hold shift to sprint. I've rearranged my keys and tweaked the majority of the movement speeds in the anim cfgs down quite a bit, so my run is really more of a light jog. Works well for me. Plus we can always toggle over from run->sprint to walk->run at the tap of a key. A toggle in the options to default to walking would be great though... then everyone happy. :)

Sounds a lot like Mount and Blade only set in modern times. Keep going with it!

I've actually been thinking along those same exact same lines. Definitely go for it! A twist on the idea is one missing maker (let's call him Mission Maker A) starting out with a short mission as a central starting point. Theme and such could be anything, but the point is make it short and quite open ended. Then the whole thing is opened up for additional mission makers to begin making Branches off of the original short mission. Mission Makers B, C, and E would undoubtedly take the story in completely different and interesting new directions. Indeed, any community member could jump in and extend the story however he chooses by creating a new branch from any point. Community favorite lines would likely emerge and the whole thing ends up looking like a giant tree. Every time you come back and play it there's something new, wildly connected in a bizarre new way with the rest. Now here's where it starts to get weird and even more cool: Mission makers could even go backwards in time and create prequel branches, and the whole thing could eventually wind it’s way far back in time. The prequels could then branch off forward in new and exciting ways, and actually chronologically by-pass the original episode all-together. Kind of boggles the mind really. :D

A related concept, but has anyone else noticed that Arma2 has abosultely NO momentum built in for character movement on foot? Go running full bore and stop at a dead stop. Watch this in slow motion from the side using decellerated time and you'll find that you are actually completely stopped the moment your finger releases the move key. Even though the slowdown animation is being played, you have actually stopped any forward motion at that moment. Less obvious, but the same thing goes for starting at a dead stop and pressing the sprint key. The moment your finger depresses the key, you are already physically moving at full speed (even though you do see the animation transition taking place). Indeed all foot movement is completely binary, meaning we get absolutely no momentum. I think this may contribute to the effect you're talking about. Very troublesome indeed.

The OFP/ArmA/ArmA2 formula is perfect in so many ways. Any attempt to improve or change anything should be thought through with great care. However, BIS really should rip out the decrepit physics system and retrofit with something like hardware-accelerated PhysX. Then a new ocean of possibilities opens up for all!

That would defeat the entire point of the game/community!!! The OFP/ArmA series provides a multi-faceted platform which gives each of us the ability to create exactly whatever our minds can come up with. We even have the ability to create our own game modes!!! Why on earth take this all away and water down the expereince of ArmA to appeal to the least common denominator (like with an MMORPG or what they've done with COD)?!? :eek: ----- Now, if you want to talk about the periodic release of paid mini-expansions, of which I can think of an endless number of examples (jungle terrain and units set anyone?)... Now I think BIS would have paying customers lined up in droves for something like that. But the cardinal rule, imo, is to always until the end of time, allow us to create our own content, including the best part of all, new and inventive game modes unlike anything seen in any other games.

btw Laggy- Many of us are really looking forward to your new creation. Any preliminary teaser-style details? :)

Great insight here Laggy! The AI in the OFP/ArmA series seem to have NO mechinism to tune up their desire to survive. I hope BIS implements a solution to make this a reality beyond simple increase of the "fleeing" variable. edit: Or at least there only currently exist very complication script-heavy solutions for this. A simply objective/survival priority factor as you are advocating is definately the way to go.

Regarding skipable cutscenes: IIRC, in general for intros in ArmA you can usually just press any key to skip them. I've also played missions where you could not skip intros... very frustrating on the second go-around. For cutscenes midway through a mission, I'm not sure if a press-any-key option is even possible. Having said that, how would the player even get to his action menu or radio during a cutscene? If you can make it work though, cool! If I was choosing between the action menu and the radio for skipping, I'd defiantely go action menu. But press-any-key trumps them both, imo. Good luck with the mission! :)

@galzohar Agreed... it takes a lot of thought and planning to come up with a small realistic no-respawn (or limited-respawn) coop that is fun and playable. Good call. :) @walker I hear what you're saying man. And I do have ArmA2. I'm not really much of a MP gamer (aside from having over a bunch of buddies for LAN gaming). And I probably shouldn't be writing off the community like that. There are lots of single player and small coops still coming out... hell more than I even have time to play! But I do stand by part of my statement - There has definitely been a shift in focus towards higher number of player missions and more PvP. That's bound to detract from the existing pool of mission making talent (from the kinds of missions I'm into). Having said that, the more I think on it, the community itself is growing... so more mission makers to take a crack at all kinds of missions, including the kind I like! :) Interesting thread!

The recycle bin?!? Did I just say that? No really, to each his own. :) I actually prefer something in between permadeath (too frustrating) and unlimited respawn (total absence of fear of death). Group respawn is good is a good balance between the two, but for longer missions something else is required. With long group respawn missions, once you lose that last man you get to sit and watch you buddy for long periods of time until he either finishes the mission or gets killed, knowing you have no possibility of returning to play. IMO, as you and I were discussing over on laggy's poll for story based missions, some inventive type of limited respawn would be ideal. As in, each player bears personal responsibility for getting killed. Get killed too many times and your stuck spectating until the remainder of the team can complete certain objectives, which result in the team acquiring additional team members... at which point you as the spectating player are bailed out and can return to play. Difficult to write the required scripts for this, but it could be reused across many story based coop missions!

This topic has brought me to a realization I've been long denying. The OFP mission making community of old is diminished and perhaps in its death throes. With the advent of JIP, mission makers are now more focused on making huge MP drop-in drop-out respawn-o-matic type missions. Gone are the days when 90% of the collective community's focus was on creating smaller, story based single player and coop missions. A shame really, but at least some percentage of mission makers are still creating these kinds of interesting story-based missions, which have always been my favorites. Thank god at least the realistic OFP/ArmA/ArmA2 system itself has largely not changed - and remains the ultimate platform on which to create the next story based masterpiece. To me is was never about the number of servers but the ultimate immersive experience and palette for creation this series provides. Anyhow, just an humble observation... not trying to stir the pot here or piss anyone off. :)

I agree! Within MP, I'd also like so see Coop types seperated from all those respawn-o-matic types.

To quickly weigh in on intros... I personally think intros/cutscenes in general add a lot of atmosphere, especially if they are well done. If they are too long, that can get a bit frusterating. How long is too long? Well that depends on the cutscene I guess and the information it needs to convey. I don't think you could ever get by with just five seconds... that's just way too short. It is important to make the cutscenes skipable. Once we've seen a cutscene, we may want ot skip it upon another playthrough. Plus apparently there are those we don't appreciate a good story and want to get straight into the action. Thus skipable cutscenes will please everyone! Regarding end of mission, I personally like the mission to end with a cutscene. But I guess there's nothing wrong with making continuing the mission optional. More options is generally better.

@galzohar I've actually spent way too much time thinking all this through. :p IMO, such a dynamic campaign would achieve the perfect balance of fear-of-death, dynamics, possibility, and high stakes game play many of us are craving. :) As far as your last character dying, there are many possibilities. First of all though, note that you control one character at a time. During a battle (occuring as part of the battle phase), when your character dies, you go into a death-cam mode until the end of that battle. From death-cam mode, you can monitor other players. When the battle is over, any other battles are played out (where you may or may not have another character engaged). After all battles are resolved, back to the map phase. Most likely, during battles where you have no main character, you can enter the battle as a pawn of another player. (i.e. a minor generic character that you only control for that battle). In addition, perhaps other players can hand over ownership of one of their characters to you, if they choose. Constrast this to a standard coop, where when you lose your last soldier, you are stuck as a spectator from that point on with absolutely no hope of returning to play! Also note the campaign length has an upper max measured in hours... so no worry about coming back the following week. Not sure exactly what you mean here. That feature point again: 5. An overall external yet organic force driving the mission to completion (through victory or defeat)... What I mean here is something along the lines of having a built in mechinism so that the mission does not go on indefinately (which is usually frustrating. as we are all limited in the amount of time we have to play these games). If the player can expect the mission to last approximately X number of hours, he can plan accordingly. Couple of other points that may relate: My ideal mission would be geared for a small number of players (1-6?) and yet perfectly playable by a single player. I know how much people seem to love JIP and persistant servers, but imo JIP has had a hugely negative impact on mission making regarding ArmA and ArmA2 in general. In the old days of OFP, mission designers churned out large numbers of wonderful small story-based coops. Since the advent of JIP, so many mission designers have turned to making CTI type missions (which are not at all appealing to me). IMO, the only place for JIP should be for when your connection goes bad, and you need to reconnect. Again, I'm thinking of a small number of players that know each other (LAN gaming etc), so this shouldn't be an issue. But to answer your question more directly, either the AI would take over for the departing player's character, or ownership would be handed over to the player who wished to remain to slog it out. --- One day I will create my dynamic turn-based mission. But currently time is constrained by full time job and all those RL responsibilities (don't we love em). :D In any event, much of what I'm talking about is based on extremely advanced scripting though, so no breathe-holding here... But just maybe Laggy can incorporate some of this in his upcoming masterpiece!

Sounds awesome laggy! Good luck with it. (btw - Loving your behind enemy lines mission!) I've been thinking on something like this for some time. A few features I'd love to see (probably beyond your intended scope but what the heck): 1. A strategic, turn based meta-map system, ala MTW2. Gameplay alternates between: a. Map phase where you receive updates on the situation and plot out your next move. b. Real-Time phase where you attempt to complete missions / fight out battles in real time. 2. Multiple characters per player that can die and/or be captured. No respawn, highly limited revive. Players control one of their characters at a time, and can obtain new characters by completing certain objectives. Fear of death is prevasive. 3. Overall victory/defeat system (revealed to the player up front). a. Victory condition goes beyond simply taking over the entire map (i.e. You can get extremely creative here.) b. Overall defeat condition goes beyond the possibility of losing all player characters. (i.e. Again you can come up with some excellent theme based overall defeat conditions here.) 4. Non-linear Mission structure. Dynamic objectives / events... some of which the players can directly affect, others which they can unwittingly bring on, and still others occurring beyond the player's control entirely. The players only experience a subset of the entire set of possibilities with each playthrough. 5. An overall external yet organic force driving the mission to completion (through victory or defeat). Overall mission duration maximum targeted at about five or six hours. Shorter if the players lose quicker. As opposed to a traditional long, narrow, and linear mission, the model here is short, but extremely wide with possibility. 6. Mission is geared so that the players will likely not achieve overall victory on the first play through. Because of the highly dynamic structure, players won't dread starting over. Indeed, they will actually look forward to it. This is my ArmA2 dream in a nutshell. :icon_twisted:

Greetings. I am working on an animations mod and have made a huge breakthrough today towards a genuine fatigue system for ArmA2. My breakthrough involves the ability to actually temporarily block sprinting, and lower running speeds in stages based on unit fatigue. IMO, this is central to proper survival missions where the player is being hunted, such as zombie or escape missions... but not limited to these. (I don't know about you, but I've spent way too much time running circles around zombies in ArmA1 and OFP.) One of the key pieces of the fatigue system puzzle at this point is a set of shortened versions of the the various run animations. Does anyone know a quick and dirty way to truncate RTM animation files? (I need the first instant or so only of the files in question.) If not, what might be the best way to go about obtaining these? --- Alternately, if I could answer a couple of questions regarding playMove and switchMove, I may be able to forego hacking into the RTMs. 1. SwitchMove always seems to reset the camera if you are in free look mode, which is extremely jarring to the player. Anyone know any way to prevent this reset of the camera? 2. Based on a bit of testing, PlayMove does not reset the camera -BUT- has it's own set of issues. Seems that PlayMove always plays the animation all the way through if interpolationRestart=1 in the config. However, if interpolationRestart=0, playMove seems to play from an arbitrary starting point and play to the end of the animaiton. Either way, player control is blocked while the animation is playing (even if enableDirectControl=1). Anyone have any idea how to get around this and only play a specified portion of the animation? (i.e. as opposed to the whole thing or the arbitrary/random amount.) Any help with any of this will be much appreciated... thanks! :)

I've been using these awsome units on and off for a long time now and never quite realized they weren't completely done... until you mentioned it Undeceived. Your mission sounds cool... gotta check it out! btw- Anyone know if agamoth (or anyone else) is creating new such rag-tag units for ArmA2? Or even just porting over these beauties?

You guys that are getting the CAA1 way to work... Can someone pop off a quick screenshot of the exact contents of your addon folder? I'm still having issues over here trying the CAA1 method. :eek:

Some good ideas floating around here! I love the idea of starting the player off at a random location. Should also have the extraction occur at a random location as well. Here are a few more ideas for such a game mode (some may be mentioned already): 1. Respawn System: Players start off with one life each, but may locate and group up with other ai escapees, which players could take over as, in the event that they die. When players are dead and there are no ai escapees to take overs as, the enter spectator mode until the other players find another ai escapee. If all players are killed and no ai backup... game-over. 2. Give it a turn based element, ala the Total War series. I've got some good ideas in this department. A fairly advanced thing to implement, but it would add a great deal, and make hunger a real possibility. 3. For the fatigue (whether from lack of food, lack of water, or injury), just use a tweaked anim config, and adjust the speeds downward appropriately. It wouldn't be too tough to get multiple stages of speed degredation. Also, I just figured out how to eliminate sprinting, which could add an additional option to the mix. IMO, such a system is a necessity, if zombies are to be used. Otherwise, the player can just run circles around the undead all the time and won't really be in any danger as far as bring caught/eaten. If the player can get tired on the other hand, food/water suddenly becomes a huge priority! 4. Based on the chosen scenerio, why not have an ongoing struggle in the background, with small groups of resistance fighters launching hit-and-run attacks. Would add a lot of ambience and unpredictability. Would kind of need a reason though why finding these good guys wouldn't mean rescue. 5. Couple of additonal ways to escape - Someone friendly to you prepositions a hidden boat (like the inflatable motor boat). Or escape by plane (with help). 6. While I like most of the ideas presented in this thread, imo "kits" don't fit this scenerio at all. (Plus I have always hated "kits" to begin with. :p ) Better to randomly start the player off with very little, such as randomly giving them just a handgun, shotgun, or nothing. And very little food/water. Then he has the opportunity to scavange weapons and other items from the fallen! This adds a whole new dynamic!

IMHO, FPS is not the only thing... instead it is the basis for everything else! It's clear some of us can enjoy playing games at a low FPS... and I do not begrudge nor pity them. In fact, one of my best buddies can play games this way! I, on the other hand, have needed a new PC (or new video card at least) once every two years to keep my FPS at an acceptable level. Now that this financial crisis has hit though, devs in general have at least slowed their relentless pursuit of ever-more-resource-intensive games, and started making games more adjustable in terms of lower settings (to maximize fan base and thus income). So my trusty 8800GTX has been treating me well for some time now. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite cut the mustard for ArmA2 though. So I think the important thing to realize is that people are different, and their tollerance levels for various things (including FPS) are also different. Overall, to each his own! edit: Cool sounding program Kegetys... gotta check that out!

Never really looked in this thread before... some interesting stuff in here. OK, here's my quick request: I'd like to see a shark, a bear, and a giant komodo dragon! Now quick, someone rush and whip up some carnivores! :outtahere: