pd3

In some areas yes, driving vehicles? Yes. In all areas but the one that counts the most. Speed and accuracy with aiming. And the mouse will -never- be beaten there, at least not without auto aim. :P I can do without a lot of things, but the overwhelming advantage conferred by being able to precisely control your aim is a tactical advantage that will make or break you. And analog is cutting edge? ROFL? Precision mouse aiming is by far a newer innovation than control via analog. Oh wow you can walk at a multitude of speeds, but you still won't have the same level of precision or response time that a mouse in the hands of somebody who is capable ever will. This is why the vast majority of console shooters use the terrible expanding ring system, because it effectively negates the advantage of being able to aim precisely, as wholly unrealistic such a truncation of the variables it simulates can be. And I would likely suspect the vast majority of people who whine about simulating weapon inertia and hand instability are controller users who KNOW, that even the most epileptic of thumbs cannot compensate for those simulated variables nearly as well as a mouse can. There are plenty of games out there that cater to your particular handicap, however this series is supposed to simulate a multitude of things, not the least of which including operator error, and in such a way that it doesnt turn the proposition of shooting into a random number generated farce. When all is said and done, controllers are great for arcade games and racing sims, but they're absolute shite when it comes to high speed, precision aiming. This is why so many console shooters include auto aim.

I know that my seemingly fascistic PC superiority rhetoric might be growing tiresome, but I honestly believe companies like BI are in a prime position to "take back" the market and force players to evolve, or sit on the sidelines. When microsoft released the XBOX and started essentially poaching PC game developers we as PC gamers suffered something of an indignity, having to sit around and wait for this new generation to "catch up", its been more than ten years now. I think these people need to either: A: accept their place on the food chain and work at improving their game playing skills or B: sit on the sidelines while everyone else whoops it up enjoying themselves and the absolute best that PC gaming has to offer. I'll be perfectly honest, I'm nothing short of utterly resentful of how much console gamers have been catered to at the expense of PC gamers when we were the ones that supported the industry to begin with. I'm really tired of unsophisticated games, and I'm tired of developers catering to the demographics that purchase them. I don't really mind that they include controller support for this game, but drastically altering core features of the game to accommodate people who refuse to develop their eye hand coordination is really offensive, IMO. BI was rather courteous in offering controller support to begin with. I actually don't think adding sheer numbers to this game's community is a good idea. I think we need to draw in the right people, not all people.

Then they would have to cap mouse speeds, and what about arm/weapon inertia? You do realize ARMA is supposed to be a sim right?

I would be fine with that sort of thing as long as it wasn't retardedly implemented, you know as some kind of off-hand insta-kill weapon up close, like -some- games we know. Honestly, I don't think its likely, but CQC implementation in this series would have to be accurately modeled as a "last resort" option, meaning that you're likely to die in the process. Additionally, hand to hand CQC would only be handled reasonably if it was accompanied with a bi-lateral QTE type system for reversals, etc. But I highly doubt they will try to implement any of that into the series.

I fired up the multiplayer test on my LAN. Everything seemed to work pretty well, although it seems as if there's a fair number of features missing, this was to be expected of course. One thing I will say though is I wasn't a big fan of the close spawn proximity of the AI in general, when I play the SP version its minimum 500-900. Everything seemed a LOT more condensed, that is to say, it didn't really feel as expansive, it felt like there was a giant trigger surrounding me creating AI within it and nowhere else. This gave an impression that diverged greatly from the SP scenario. It was actually pretty easy to escape whatever was happening, and find yourself way out in the middle of nowhere, all alone. I also noticed bodies disappear a lot more quickly, which is kind of frustrating when you're trying to re-kit yourself after playing for a little bit. That aside I saw no technical issues arise.

There was this old game in the arcades when I was a kid called: Caliber 50. It was a vietnam/southeast asia themed top down shooter, and I pretty much figure that importing this into Lingor would pretty much be as close to a modern realization of that as possible.

Define "smooth"? Having mechanically accurate dexterity when trying to simulate soldiers holding weapons isn't sacrificing a little bit of realism. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater in that respect. ---------- Post added at 07:07 ---------- Previous post was at 06:58 ---------- Good god, the last thing this game needs to play like a Quake engine mod. I would argue in favor of removing ways that make aiming cumbersome in ways that aren't natural, although I would advocate simulating human error via attaching tensor, flexor and weight values to firearms, and actual "arms" respectively. People who want to play as if weapons weigh nothing and have no physical constraints to speak of have plenty of other games to enjoy than ARMA.

As far as the acceleration differential, that's fine. However being able to edit acceleration values, I fundamentally believe that the ARMA series should always take into consideration actual human constraints, as they already do. So long as acceleration values apply solely to the mouse moving the perspective, and are capped off in a way that doesn't facilitate somebody snapping their neck at mach 3, or worse yet, implying that the inertia that some guns are constrained by should be removed. No. Nooooo.

Inverse Kinematics (IK) reconstructs 3D human full-body movements in real time, and you're telling me that's somehow not going to be more cycle intensive than simple motion capture? Say what?

I love CTI/Warfare, it was a dynamic gameplay mode that allowed the player to assume responsibility on a sliding scale, be it commander to grunt. The choice was up to you, and of course the level of cooperation of your team as well. Don't blame the game, blame the players. :P

Can't tell if trolling. For the love of god, please, no.

Its called inverse kinematics or IK for short, and while it is quite neat, its dynamic nature will impose much higher system requirements, so be careful what you wish for. You can't have large scale battles (a cornerstone of the franchise) and good performance without some serious hardware if you have all these fancy dynamic physics for players and AI. I will admit its a really cool feature, and one of the most prominent and impressive renditions of it was in a game in the arcades quite a few years back called "Crisis Zone". It was a light gun game, and you basically had a UMP/MP5 looking hybrid, which did about as much damage as a .17 caliber bullet, and thus you basically had to lead-hose your enemies to death. This resulted in enemies dynamically stumbling and wobbling all over the place as they ran, ducked, and dodged their way about the screen as you sprayed them with bullets. At 0:23 you can see a good example of this (video quality is crap, but all other HQ vids of this game are of the console version which seems to not have IK at all, which is extremely disappointing).

It really depends on how you've configured your game, because a lot of the time you simply cannot afford to engage in mindless shooting. In fact there are quite a few times where I'm forced to pick my battles because I know I'm effectively surrounded.

One thing that is desperately lacking in A2, is the ability to demand your troops move via basically a straight line, double time, from point A to point B. A lot of the time even if you set them to "safe", and to "stand up", they will still slowly dawdle to their assigned waypoint. Sometimes you just need to demand that your troops get somewhere in as orderly and efficient fashion as possible.

No probs, I think in general you'll see a considerable frame rate increase if you use some of the CAA enabled islands such as Sahrani, I can easily expect lower performance with takistan or chenarus, however I can have multiple factions going at once, no fog, eight groups, high percentage of air power, armor, etc with Sahrani and the ambiance is amazing. I would actually like to see a dynamic mode similar to this for Avgani, which is one of my all time favorite Arma maps. The only problem with avgani is there really isn't much ground to cover, so I wonder if there could be like a survival mode in which maybe you had to last a certain amount of time, and then make it to a randomly generated point or something. In general, I think this particular script set has so many possibilities, I could see expanding the mission generation potential to: -destroy structure/base generated at x/y location. -assassination -sabotage This is seriously becoming one of my favorite game modes for ARMA 2. For an added challenge, try playing as the NAPA insurgents vs the Russians. You have absolutely no map or gps, so you have to carefully maneuver your way into a place where you can kill an adversary, steal their gear, and then find your mission waypoint. ---------- Post added at 04:55 ---------- Previous post was at 04:04 ---------- I also actually have a question regarding the mission itself. In init.sqf, does max_skill set the upper limit for random variation? That is, if I lower the variable max_skill from 1.0, to 0.7, will a line such as this: _unitType createUnit [[_pos,50] call areaPos,_grp,format["soldier%1 = this; removeAllWeapons this",_soldierCount],random MAX_SKILL]; Mean that his ultimate skill potential is between 0.1 and 0.7?

I've heard that overlapping of mods/scripts in missions can seriously hinder performance. There was a discussion on the thread for the "LOST" game mode, in which somebody had confirmed that ASR_AI was giving them performance issues, and I had personally confirmed that the LOST game mode was performing some redundant tasks in tandem with ASR_AI. Although, I experience no such thing with this mode, so I'm quite happy. Perhaps try different combinations and report back?

I will be buying a new computer for A3. I may also buy another later on when I'm tired of the maximum capabilities of the first A3 machine and wish to take advantage of any potential system requirement increasing addons/scripts/mission sets, etc.

I'm using JSRS and ASR_AI, and CBA obviously. I'm not experiencing any performance issues, with either of these, in fact I'm amazed that for a dynamically generated scenario that it runs so smoothly. I've heard that ACE is pretty demanding, hence my reluctance to use it, even though its supposed to be pretty damned good.

Co-op would be godlike at this point. I'm actually in the midst of a game right now, and all I can say is WOW WOW WOW. Holy crap. Every battle is different, I've had crazy experiences in so many beautiful locations throughout Sahrani and yet I don't believe I've even begun to completely experience all there is to offer with this mission. I've had gunfights end with my desperately trying to dodge a helicopter with a pilot shot dead as it was climbing across a mountain ridge, where I was fighting a platoon of enemy soldiers, only for it to narrowly miss hitting me, only to slam into the peak of the mountain a few meters away. Insane, crazy battles, even if you're blown up or killed, you're left in silent wonder at the carnage unfolding around you. There are scant few things that I would like to see, but their absence does not in any way detract from the experience thus far. One would be to allow for some kind of config file to allow custom specification of addon units for the player to use possibly? The other pertains to the overall duration of the battle itself, I'm not sure if it continues indefinitely, or whether there's a set limit, but in the case that there is, it would be cool if you could set the total battle or sides to replenish in user specified waves. And possibly the ability to repair certain types of vehicles if they've been damaged? I know you can do this already, but the system is not as relevant to the unpredictable pace of these missions. Aside from that, it runs flawlessly for me, the battles do not ever show signs of being contrived or pre-generated, everything blends seamlessly giving the impression of being one small unit at the heart of a very large military operation. Additionally, if in fact you're having difficulty figuring out an efficient method of implementing cooperative, if you are in fact planning to, I would suggest that an easy way to do that would be to give a lead player the SP abilities, and have every other player serve as squad mates. I would also highly recommend using a revive system in the event of a co-op version. Anyhow, some people might say that having a lot of similarly dynamic missions are redundant, but I would argue otherwise. We're spoiled for options, which is very much a good thing, as I think I've found my personal favorite of the lot at this point.

I'm so OCD about my custom stats that I "sensed" a difference in the behavior of the AI after playing it for a few minutes, I was like: "Wait, this thing comes with an addon too doesn't it..." A vanilla version that just dumps some garden variety bis units or addon units or whatever would be cool, but I see you did go to a lot of trouble to implement that system, so either way, its pretty damn cool. And it isn't as if I can't do it up the way I need to, it would just be basically recreating my ASR stats specific for that mission.

Basically all the stats governed by ASR_AI's settings config file, and respective cpp files. Mine are custom and I mean technically I could transpose my data into one of the missions you've made so I can enjoy it to the fullest. I'm certainly not asking you to go out of your way personally for me. Its a pretty integral part of your addon pbo file "createunit.sqf", pretty much conflicts with the values specified in the ASR_AI configuration file. For example: ASR_AI class level_0 { // perfect (only used for testing) aimingAccuracy[] = {1.00, 0.00}; aimingShake[] = {1.00, 0.00}; aimingSpeed[] = {1.00, 0.00}; spotDistance[] = {1.00, 0.00}; spotTime[] = {1.00, 0.00}; endurance[] = {1.00, 0.00}; courage[] = {1.00, 0.00}; reloadSpeed[] = {1.00, 0.00}; commanding[] = {1.00, 0.00}; general[] = {1.00, 0.00}; units[] = { // add class names to this to override their default (or inherited) skill set }; LOST case "PRIVATE": { _cep_myunit setSkill ["aimingAccuracy", (PVT select 0)]; _cep_myunit setSkill ["aimingShake", (PVT select 1)]; _cep_myunit setSkill ["aimingSpeed", (PVT select 2)]; _cep_myunit setSkill ["endurance", (PVT select 3)]; _cep_myunit setSkill ["spotDistance", (PVT select 4)]; _cep_myunit setSkill ["spotTime", (PVT select 5)]; _cep_myunit setSkill ["courage", (PVT select 6)]; _cep_myunit setSkill ["reloadSpeed", (PVT select 7)]; _cep_myunit setSkill ["commanding", (PVT select 8)]; _cep_myunit setSkill ["general", (PVT select 9)]; }; Etc: PVT = [(0.2 + random 0.2), (0.2 + random 0.2), (0.2 + random 0.2), (0.2 + random 0.65), (0.2 + random 0.2), (0.2 + random 0.2), (0.2 + random 0.15), I also think because you also seem to specify custom units in your cpp file, those may not inherit certain class alterations with ASR_AI either. I don't know. I may have my work cut out for me if I want to do the little things I need to do to play it and enjoy it. Its unfortunate for people who already use such a mod, but I suppose its comprehensive if nothing else in the event that one does not.

This is pretty neat, although I noticed something was immediately off when it seemed like the AI skill mod I was using seemed to have virtually no effect on the gameplay. I don't suppose there's any way you'll release something that allows people not to have such mods infringed upon?

I must say, a great improvement in the successive updates. Although I must say sometimes the AI does do peculiar things when they have spells available to them. I was well out of the visual range of any AI casters, and out of nowhere I hear a "FWOOOWH", and then something parked by a building exploded. Was that a fireball or? I haven't played around enough yet to see a fireball, although I can't tell you what a relief it is not to be constantly teleported around. This mod has a lot of promise, I wouldn't mind testing it in MP to find any potential bugs that might result.

I'll give it a go this evening and see how it works.

I think I've discovered the first possibly serious gameplay issue when playing against AI with magic powers. They really -LOVE- to use random dislocation, and if it places you way the hell out in the middle of the ocean, and you use random dislocation to teleport back to land, you re-appear basically swimming in the air. I'd generally advise getting rid of that ability for the AI. Thus far its pretty much been a random dislocation fest. I'd also say that magic users seem to be able to see through walls when determining to use magic powers, which can make things kind of difficult. That aside, this mod has tons of potential, its quite a blast to play.