pd3

You're not talking about the expanding ring system are you? That was horrible, there's no way to do such a system without truncating a lot of very complex variables in a way that results in weapon handling and ballistics not being realistic at all.

Yeah, exactly. You see what I mean about the very basic implementation of the concept, but ultimately I think this is what needs to be done in some form in order to achieve that inherent difficulty in long range shooting in a combat simulation. Unless of course you just want to go the COD route and put a big expanding crosshair on the screen and call it a day.

I recall playing Trespasser way back in '98 and seeing a lot of potential in how I wanted the future of weapon handling in FPS games to develop. In Trespasser all objects had a weight assigned to them, and admittedly in the game the manipulation control scheme for moving the player's "arm", was really unintuitive. I caught on immediately because I'm all about that sort of thing, however I really liked the fact that everything from how weapons were held, to how the weight of the gun interacted with the recoil, to how the player's arm interacted with both of those variables was completely dynamic. Granted you "one-handed" everything in the game, but that was something I was willing to overlook as the concept was very far ahead of its time, too far in fact, and the means they had to implement it were primitive at best. Even so, I'll cut to the chase, I recall finally being able to shoot a velociraptor at 50m with the croatian AK clone you could pick up in the game, that compared to the feats of marksmanship in ARMA or other games was something to behold. Basically, because the player had a tension or "strength" value associated with their arm and how they could handle the weight and recoil of the gun, everything interacted in a way that felt natural. I would love to inevitably see something similarly done in the future for some military sim, only streamlined and adapted for real playability. Imagine how such variables could be applied to different units in the game, conscripts being inexperienced would naturally have very poor weapon control, and of course that would progress upward in a linear fashion to the special forces who would be significantly better at it. Such technology is a generation or two away at least, simply because having hundreds of units all with their own IK simulation of weapon handling physics would be really hard on most modern systems I would imagine. However ever since I played that game I always wondered what it would be like to see such an idea fully realized.

I don't know how much we should expect from ARMA 3, however I believe that the future of realistic tactical/milsim gaming should inevitably result in a full IK simulation of weapon handling. Physics, tension, weights to objects, the whole nine yards. Say what you will about Trespasser as a game, for those of you who know what I was talking about, when I played that game I saw a lot of potential, despite a rather slap-dash implementation. I agree with not overburdening the player with a lot of knobs and buttons they have to press and account for whilst aiming/shooting, however behind the scenes, things should become much more complex and detailed so that when we as players are involved, it feels much more like the real thing. That's just my 0.02 anyhow.

Yeah, pretty much. Not one of the videos as far as I've seen yet features the traditional dead zone, so I guess for demonstration purposes they've just disabled it. Still, I had a moment where I thought the worst. I probably shouldn't have such little faith in BIS, but stranger things have happened in this industry to companies that have become successful.

No, I'm aware you can modify this with ARMA 2. I prefer it on, turning it off makes it feel like I'm playing quake or unreal. However have they completely abandoned this for A3? They don't seem to showcase it in their promotional videos.

No, because its basically been in every game since OFP Your weapon tracks independently of your perspective. This has been pretty much the definitive hallmark of the series. I'm watching some of the videos of the gameplay recently and I had completely overlooked amid the fantastic visuals the fact that this critical element to the game seemed to be missing. My face:

One thing about music in the ARMA series that I think needs to happen is the implementation of a dynamic soundtrack. This is something that is so elementary to some of the oldest games that I've enjoyed that I don't understand why it hasn't been attempted by the developers as yet. Different music, dynamically chosen for different circumstances. There should be soundtrack selections for all sorts of circumstances.

The "grass" in ARMA 2 is essentially see-through for the AI, you should've already downloaded the mod that shrinks the grass. Bushes are not see-through for the ai, despite much controversy, but the grass definitely is. This was something that BIS flubbed on, but when you make a game of this scale and complexity, somethings things happen. Trying to compare narrow-scope console FPS games to this is unreasonable, so just remember, there's likely a community fix, and that's just the way it is with this game. The ai in ARMA 2 has come a long way from the days of OFP, and yeah, I remember, the AI could catch you from 1000m away no problem, they were like terminators. This time around they will coordinate pincer-like attacks, they will sometimes figure out the best way around your terrain defense and neutralize you. In OFP, they would just bulldoze you, and thats it. In ARMA 2, they will sometimes avoid areas where guys have been routinely gunned down, they will wait on the opposite sides of walls and buildings, stack-up and then rush you. I've seen all of these things happen. You have to understand that again, that working with dynamic ai is a LOT different than scripting individual bits of code for levels as they do in a lot of other console FPS games that really don't have the breadth that the ARMA series has. Secondly, another thing you have to understand about ARMA is a lot of pretty much everything is community driven, you have to get used to doing a lot of things for yourself, that's why we have such a great mod community, is because BIS allows this. With the script set ASR_AI, you will experience ai that will flee from bad tactical situations. The only thing that I personally had to change about ARMA 2 in general that I did not like is the fact that the current values for the variable "sensitivityear" puts the AI on the same level as having some kind of psychic "echolocation" Its extremely difficult for the AI to not be able to "hear" where you are even though in all fairness you may not in the inverse situation be able to hear them. I had to tone it down so that they weren't as tactically all-knowing. This is the one thing I do hope BIS will address in the future.

What I really like about ASR_AI is the fact that not only are they more coordinated, but they will also withdraw from a fight that they believe is not tactically worth investing in. They'll bugger off many times after taking too much heat if they believe they've lost the advantage, and they're -damn- good at making you work for the ground you gain. I think the community does a great job of "tweaking" and offsetting any minor issues people might take with the ai or gameplay in general. The new people coming to this game need to realize that, as one person on this forum already stated: ARMA is not a game, its a hobby, and I wouldn't want it any other way. If the hordes that are awakening to the greatness of ARMA cannot appreciate that, I sincerely hope BIS does not forget their core demographic in favor of appeasing these people.

The "newfriends" need to sit back and quietly accept conventions that have been staunchly defended by the community who supported this company while it was being smeared by the likes of PC Gamer in favor of other franchises such as "ghost recon" back in the day. I don't know, the ARMA series is the last untouched bastion of tactical gaming that hasn't been polluted by the activision/DICE lowest common denominator. Don't mess with a good thing I say.

This is really interesting, although the only thing I've noticed that I haven't figured out how to offset is the AI's reluctance to follow relocated zones after a while. They just stop bothering and no matter what you do, they refuse to relocate to their assigned zone. Has anyone else had that issue?

I sincerely don't hope you mean something like an expanding ring system. There's so much absolutely, positively wrong about those that it makes somebody with a sense of physics and basic math spontaneously combust from the sheer and utter laziness of it from a development perspective. You are correct in assuming that its made to "punish" people who don't use iron sights, however its done in, once-more, the absolute most inane and lazy manner possible. They are combining the concept of "weapon handling", and dispersion within the same dynamic variable, which just boggles the mind as to how completely and impossibly unrealistic it can be. And we're not talking about trifling details of debatable significance. We're talking about the ballistics of all small arms in the game, which can be a deal-breaker for people like me. Put it this way, the amount of torque generated by a firearm that it would cause bullets to fly in a cone at such radical angles as they're capable of doing within mere cycles of an automatically firing rifle, would be so great that no soldier would be able to hold it for more than a single shot. Think about it this way: In games like COD and the like, you can literally see two bullets be separated by extreme angles of separation. Like in the 30s of degrees, that's insane. And if you factor in the cyclic rate, lets say 600 rounds per minute hypothetically. That means its taken one tenth of a second for the theoretical barrel of the gun to put two bullets more than 30 degrees apart from one another, within a relatively short total range (short by ARMA's standards anyhow). That kind of torque isn't manageable by human hands. No, what needs to be done is there needs to be IK-based recoil, or something that looks damn close to it. Simulated physics based recoil. That's the future, not this hodge-podge of random number generators that ultimately reduce the amount of spatial awareness, and ballistics and tactical knowledge required to be successful. There's a reason why COD series is made with Quake engine technology, they play very much the same, only the damage values are tweaked. If you watch a lot of helmet cam combat footage, you'll start to notice that the aiming methods used by the series since OFP aren't all that far off. I would much rather keep iron sights as a toggle as nobody walks around with their rifle in the ready position at all times, nor do they always shoot that way. I've seen plenty of footage of even special forces, cranking off shots without doing so.

This, this, this, holy shit this.

I've personally modded ARMA 2 to make things more difficult for both the ai and the player to shoot accurately at long range. I'm all for changes as long as those changes don't involve using something horrible and lazy like an expanding ring system. That would be a tremendous step backward for the franchise.

One of my pet peeves is concurred with ROE/AI concerns in general. One thing that absolutely drives me batty about the AI in ARMA is the fact that the AI will become fixated on targets and oncoming fire to the point where they will go immobile and attempt to fight to the death. In mout situations, this is a death sentence, if you need to move quickly through close quarters, sometimes the AI must know when to ignore targets and simply RUN. I would suggest if you issue a command after the AI has acknowledged the presence of enemy ai, that they disregard the AI and incoming gunfire and simply comply, often times that means the difference between life and death.

I'm in the process of making a mission, and drawing upon my apparently archaic OFP editing knowledge, I wanted to forcibly re-arrange ai within a group to certain positions on a vehicle. In this case, a helicopter. I had the AI run to the empty vehicle using the "GET IN" waypoint, only my problem was that some of them don't get into the appropriate positions (I'm using an Mi-8 with three gunnery positions). The simple solution that worked back when, was to simply at the "on activation" field on that particular waypoint, was to re-assign the AI to each position as you would like. Example: helo1 moveindriver chop1 helo2 moveingunner chop1 ...and so on and so forth. Apparently this doesn't work anymore, because I'm given a funny error that expects me to place a semicolon just after the declaration of the unit I'm trying to place in the vehicle. For clarification, not something reasonable such as: helo1 moveindriver chop1; helo2 moveingunner chop1; etc. It wants me to put a semicolon after "helo1"... which is just puzzling.

I get the same error, thanks anyhow. I'd take a screenshot but apparently ARMA doesn't seem to like it. All I get is a black screen. Ahah. My have times changed. What I was looking for is the "moveinturret" command. As the helo has three gun positions and the AI only fills one by default. So I simply added: helo2 moveInTurret [chop1, [0]]; helo3 moveInTurret [chop1, [1]]; and that seemed to work like a charm. You inadvertently kicked me in the right direction twirly, thanks much.

Yeah, I've noticed some differences. If I recall you used to call scripts with [] exec "script.sqs". That's another thing, the format has changed. Thanks for your interest in my problem, although, for some reason even though my script is present in the root directory of my mission, ARMA 2 is telling me it can't find the script. I'm not sure what I did wrong.

Sorry, I should have been more concise. I was originally using the aforementioned code in a function module, however I realized I cannot sync them to triggers, so I opted for calling a script with the code from a trigger. It seemed like the simplest way of solving the problem from my non-programmer perspective. I'm sure I've borked something up at this point, I haven't really done any of this stuff since the old OFP days.

I'm actually trying to use this method to spawn a group and its telling me that it cannot find the script I'm calling. Now it doesn't give me the "not found" error, however the script still just doesn't run. GroupSquad1 = [getMarkerPos "Squad1", east, ["TK_INS_Soldier_TL_EP1","TK_INS_Soldier_3_EP1","TK_INS_Soldier_4_EP1","TK_INS_Soldier_AAT_EP1","TK_INS_Soldier_MG_EP1","TK_INS_Soldier_AR_EP1","TK_Soldier_Medic_EP1","TK_Soldier_EP1","TK_Soldier_AA_EP1","TK_INS_Soldier_TL_EP1","TK_INS_Warlord_EP1","TK_INS_Soldier_MG_EP1"]] call BIS_fnc_spawnGroup; wp = GroupSquad1 addwaypoint [getMarkerPos "s1",20]; wp setWaypointType "GUARD"; Is there something about this that won't run as a script yet will as a function module init?

Im not a troll at all, jarhead if you have any problems with my transaction let me know. You're not a bitch i appreciate your efforts even though i may be picky about certain things. You've made something great here and dont think im buying you im investing in the future of something i believe to be of value. I modify modifications, if bis wants to prevent that they can. Although i may end up leaving arma in that case. Be that as it may, i think you have something worth maintaining. I cant do much more than this right now, but i will be finished school in a few months and will be able to help you if you need it. I know i'm disliked for my position on editing work, but that doesnt change the fact that i value your work even if my personal preferences differ. I'm an asshole, okay, but i'm not a bad guy.

This is probably the point out of anyone else here that I can empathize with the most. You want money? Or a donation rather? What? 100 eur? I can do that. I have no problem donating 100 euro in cdn if that's what you'd like. In fact fuck it. I'm doing it tonight. Don't get me wrong man, I like your work, I could've worded things better but if that would make things "better", that's something I have absolutely no problem doing. If you made it for sale I'd buy it for sure. Of course I'm not going to stop tinkering for my own personal use, but there, I've done my bit. Sorry for getting out of line and all.

That is exceptionally hypocritical and arrogant right there. To espouse an open addon making community and then to say "OH BUT DON'T MOD MY SHIT YO". Is extremely childish, if BIS demanded everyone play the game the way they made it, nobody would be making addons period. I'm sorry, but I don't empathize with any hard feelings incited by my wanting to play ARMA 2 or use any mods the way I want to use them. I understand the idea of not passing off somebody else's work off as one's own, or distributing it, however since I everything I do is self contained. That is to say, I don't play on public servers, I don't distribute anything I edit, I really don't see the problem. And honestly if anyone has a problem with somebody else not wanting to use something the way it was made, you really picked the wrong game to make addon content for. I'm not the one with my panties in a bunch right now... nor am I being unreasonable. No it isn't, make mods for games where the source is compiled and only you have access to the source. You're capitalizing on an open format game, and an open format community. Getting pissy because you want that to apply to everything else but not your work is the pinnacle of self absorption. Not if I would enjoy the game if some personally necessary changes need to be made for my own enjoyment of it. You'd think that would be acceptable for somebody who is supposedly doing something uncompensated for the betterment of the community. Its not like I'm taking credit for it. Here's one for you: I modded ASR-AI so that all the BIS units have a "sensitivityear" value significantly lower than the one implemented because that variable was causing the AI to have "psychic powers" and constantly being aware of any enemies it had previously detected regardless of whether you could actually hear them or not, or whether they had become obscured. That was game breaking for me. I enjoyed everything else, but that was not acceptable. That aside, I really enjoy Robalo's work, but I'll be damned if somebody is going to pitch a fit shout: "You bloody well play it like I make it or you're a bad person!" Are you kidding? That's a clear indication that the person isn't trying to contribute to the overall enjoyment of the community, they've got some kind of personal fulfillment they're going after, and outside of common courtesy, I really won't accept that sort of inconvenience. Likewise, I owe an addonmaker nothing but the courtesy of not plagiarizing their work, which of course I don't. I get the feeling you seem to think everything is a one way street, and I hate to break it to you, but that's not how it works. Nobody owes you that courtesy as unreasonable as it is, you see its a mutual "we don't owe one another anything" -type deal. The only difference is, plagiarism is wrong, and so is being obsessively controlling. You can't stop me, or anyone, and honestly my enjoyment of ARMA2 trumps offending an addonmaker's deranged concept of what they're entitled to. That is absolutely hypocritical, and if you equate respect to having control over how other people play a game with something you've made then you have a huge problem. A self afflicted problem. Especially considering there's positively no way to restrict that (nor should there be IMO). Again, I have no desire to do that, and I can understand your concern, but you have no authority nor is it a reasonable request to demand that of others. It seems like you'd be much more at home with a community for a game like Call of Duty than one such as this. They can't do shit all, and nor can anyone else, that seems to be what you're aspiring for. Or is that entirely selective? Again, I have nothing to do with that, although yeah I'll admit I came off as kind of a dick and I apologise for that, that was my fault. It really came as an unpleasant shock to me that such a thorough and complete sound mod would have in my opinion dropped the ball on such a critical aspect. What I was not aware of is that it was a bug, and not an actual feature. So, yeah, I was a dick for that; Mea culpa. Well, I stand by the independent observation that the sound of crumbling sand being a sound for a bullet striking a human body is horrible, because it is. I understand some of the rancour that it generated, but initially I was not aware that it was a bug until I actually tried to fix it myself. At which point I kind of felt like an asshole, but like I said, the bug makes it sound awful I understand its not the author's fault. I understand that nothing is perfect and that the author has put much painstaking time and effort into the project and for that I applaud him. Its fantastic. Except for that bug, which is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Well, honestly if it comes down to my simply not being able to enjoy the game, and making a critical modification that makes it IMO, the best game ever (such as turning down the "sensitivityear" value which I didn't even know was responsible for the AI having essentially extra-sensory perception). I'm going to do what I have to do to enjoy the game. I understand the practical aspect of not wanting the community flooded with "variations" of mods, but that has absolutely nothing to do with me. I get that, and yeah again, a decidedly asshole way of going about it, however I certainly didn't want anyone to be under the impression that I wanted it fixed specifically for strictly my benefit. I believe demanding other people not tinker around with other people's work at all, regardless of whether one is going to distribute it or not to be just as spoiled, but I can find some agreement in other things you've said. ---------- Post added at 22:56 ---------- Previous post was at 22:48 ---------- I've done a fair deal of shooting with a variety of calibers and you'd be surprised. Yeah, from a far distance you probably couldn't hear anything, but I was on a neighbor's land helping him get rid of prairie dogs one summer a few years back, and I got one in the head. I'd say from a good 30 feet away you could hear a pretty awful hollow "Thwock!" as it struck it's skull. And considering most soldiers have not only clothing, but random bits of gear as well, yeah. You'd definitely hear something.

Or it could eventually get fixed and there wouldn't be an issue. There's no need to get bitchy. ---------- Post added at 04:06 ---------- Previous post was at 04:01 ----------