PacUK

The latest beta's have raised a number of issues which is to be expected, be sure you are using the correct CBA and the correct A2 beta patch for that version. If you experience any actual errors in your RPT please report then on our Dev-Heaven page, if the issue lies with A2 there's not much we can do until we know whether its a change in the way something works or a bug with the new version of A2 so any extra information you can provide would be a lot of help (e.g. dedicated server, specific builds, experience with other builds etc).

Heh good one... when you do it's about time we fired up that server and had ourselves some war in the jungle, you guys fancy filling up a boat and wiping out an island or two anytime soon? I need an excuse to blast out the Pacific's soundtrack again.

2.7 has been primarily focused on the Aircraft so there are no large plans to include any new tanks, vehicles or units other than the new planes and gliders Yac and Gnat have been working on alongside all the new plane features it will bring to the mod. That being said we do have a Wespe that I'll be slipping into a patch soon though can't say whether it will be a small in-between patch, or 2.7 itself. There are some other units we hope to get in for 2.7 but due to us having a very limited team size right now its liable some of our planned additions such as the M10 Wolverine may be delayed until 2.71 or so in favour of getting 2.7 and the planes out etc.

No you want this version for A2 - http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?85766-Alpha-RTE-for-ArmA-II

Few new screenies of the WN stations moving up the coast and around the town of Les Moulins which has now been fully realised on the map.

Really nice use of the wrecks, curious how you're handling it on the map though, the problem I've had on Omaha wanting to decorate the beach with some wrecks but it kinda screws the map for anything set before hand. Though as Dimitri said it should be relatively simple to get these working as wreck models, what problems were you having? I'm pretty sure we have wrecks working in I44 (though most still need a wreck model, more for the to do!) there's at the least the Cromwell's wreck Macolik setup so I'm sure we can make sure it doesn't go to waste :)

You could try using LockCargo on your missions to prevent anyone from boarding the tanks until you want to unlock them again.

Tank sights are a very different beast from the user interface stuff, we decided on the white to be less intrusive so the interface doesn't litter the view with the old green style hud icons. The tank sight (the bit the gunner aims with) is part of the tank model and based on the actual optics, which were generally in black. However some german sights include a night sight which is very effective in the snowscapes as well. I've only ever used 1680x1050 as thats been my native monitor resolution for a good few years, resolution however is generally redundant as it depends on the interface size selection, anything but very small and the tanks UI does not display correctly. As we're lacking in coders I don't expect to be able to get it fixed anytime soon. Progress on Omaha is going well, I've reconstructed some of the road systems and added a ton more, the sea-front WN stations are all complete and in place (though might be tweaked if we have time to do a few more pillbox models) so I've moved onto updating the missions. I've made a few templates which I'll include in the release which have placed 'static' weapons at all of the station bunkers and positions which should save mission makers a lot of trouble (I'll probably include a version with and without AI manning them too). I'm adding a few final touches to the map today (some road signs from our old and returned modeller Boomrang, welcome back to the team mate) and then will get back to work on the mission updates. D-Day and D+1 are likely going to change a bit and I'm also hoping to expand the size and scope of Operation Tarbrush to make more use of stations. If possible I'll get this and the mission updates out along with some smaller fixes in a 2.66 patch if at all possible but this mainly depends on Gnat's progress with the 2.7 work he's doing and any work Yac has still to get into the overhaul. Hope to have some more pics of Omaha later today!

Not really as it currently is, the huge load of the static objects really bogs down what's possible for one. The main issue is the AI can't really navigate or use the defences, if you're lucky they might man the statics but compared to the number used in the SP missions it isn't nearly as noisy. I did consider putting AI in as 'extras' but this again puts far too much load for it to then actually be playable with 100 people on a dedicated server + a whole bunch of AI. You could however edit your own version and simply add in more static enemies at the beach which leave the "playable" axis respawning units more time to run between the capture points as their AI tells them to. On that note the newer version of Omaha should help if I can nail down the AI pathing a bit more but there will at least be better positions and less server load than the current mission placed defences :)

Thanks always great to hear people are enjoying the mod! We'll take a look at the Panther and damage but will probably need more information on hit locations, who did the shooting etc before we can reproduce it. That's more of a personal preference, if we changed it to yellow then you'd lose them on maps like Neaville with its yellow wheat fields. Ideally A2 would allow the user to customise the interface and change the colour using a slider but unfortunately as far as I know it has to be preset images, overall we found the white on black to read the best across most maps without sticking out like a sore thumb, making it a much less intrusive interface (we were close to just removing the on screen iron sights completely as well as other hud elements but decided to leave them in for users who prefer having a HUD and sticking with difficulty to deactivate them instead. Plus after 10 years of ArmA-verse games I barely look at the orders panel anymore heh. Might be something we look at again at some stage but its not high on the list. The tank UI size I believe only shows correctly when using the very small interface size design, the members who developed it however are no longer very active so unless we get a new UI coder in I doubt I'll be able to fix that issue myself, welcome to try persuede Homer or Macolik with booze and women to take a look at it but it has been an issue we are aware of since the interface was implemented. If any community members can suggest anything code-wise feel free to drop me a line! Again I'd highly recommend you give Real Time Editor a look its a very useful addon for decorating ArmA maps, much easier than hand placing the objects :)

No as its a solid mesh of a concrete wall with the earth ramp it would require removing the wall and creating the mesh of that side of the ramp, either that or just texturing the square concrete with mud which would look... odd :D Highly recommend RTE for object placement like this, I decorated all the foxholes and trenches on Bastogne using it manually placing is just far to twitchy. As long as the maps are kept small its not so much of an issue, what slows Bastogne down as a map is the foliage as well as the detailed terrain in combination makes it very resource hungry, as we don't have source files for this map as it was a third party map produced by Prowler we aren't able to modify it to make use of much lower resource intensive foliage such as that used on Merderet Winter. Any map is a balance of detailing though as well as making use of the resources we have, we don't have a great number of members to produce new content so its better to focus on using what we have avilable and using the engine to its advantages rather than focusing too much on the weaker aspects of the engine. I still think some of the best use of a high detail small terrain mesh could be as a small ruined town, using the terrain as rubble piles which the AI could still easily navigate unlike the rubble objects which also require pathing etc. By all means experiment away, I can however only warn you of the difficulty of blending terrain and models, often it requires the land to be pretty flat or the object to be much taller under the ground level to allow placement on high angled terrain without seeing the bottom of the model floating in the air. Also you lose detail such as clutter so the grass will always be missing from the plugged in objects, on dry terrains its pretty easy to not notice, but on a grassy field a large 10 square still sticks out as much as object stuck on top of the landscape. The main issue at hand is these kind of features are demanding in terms of modelling as well as mapping as the areas need to be pre-designed to contain these objects and it can be hard picking random good spots across the map that ultimately don't get seen or used. Generally its easier just to focus on certain spots such as the new WN stations which are pretty vital positions and allow mission makers to place more specific setups themselves using objects that work on most terrain. Its not to say its impossible to do well, the Pacific team have done a fantastic job of creating fortifications in their maps that really sync with the terrain but again this is mainly due to the smaller grid size detail allowed by the nature of the maps themselves but also in their original design, most of our maps were not intended for such builds and upping the grid size isn't a practical (or probably even possible). The best example of objects that might work would probably be the warfare bases from stock A2. There large prefab areas have a really high detail level and allow for much more familiar FPS type environments but require a hell of a lot of work to produce requiring multiple LOD's, geomtry's to function well and pathing if they are to be considered anything by an obstacle to AI. Without a very active modelling team its not really a feasible option.

Just a little note I've seen a number of servers still running v1.02C/1.03D releases of Battlegrounds, all C&H missions were updated v2.65 with latest patch and I would highly recommend running them over the old versions! Server admins update your mission folders!

Not quite, the new trenches are concrete walls for one, theres both a trench and a wall version (e.g. one and two sides), these are solely for the WN stations I'm not modelling new pieces just making use of things we've had waiting to be used for a while. There is already the Trenchline wooden version and the built in arma fortifications which cover less established trench areas just fine, or the foxholes. Mud ramps really don't work and weren't used as cover by anyone as far as I know, far too easy to drive a tank into them a bury people under the mud which is why you would always support a position like that. The Wespe has been fully ready as a model for ages, but has not been included as there is no artillery system for it, we cannot use ArmA2's as it requires a very high angle of fire not a low one as the Wespe used. We'll probably end up including it as a direct fire only weapon just like a standard tank as no one is stepping up to give coding a new arty system a go... yet.

SFG has been busy getting A's in class, I thought I'd got back to you on that but I'll recover quickly. I'm afraid we can't share a lot of our content in anyway outside the mod mainly as the original authors are no longer active members and without their say so we can't authorise use. Off-hand I don't know who's model it is, so if you spot this message and don't mind loaning out your gun speak up! :D On that note you might wanna check with Waxbutter about his Bren in the Pacific mod, lot newer (I've had my eye on robbing your armoury for a while now wax when you poke your head up out of the jungle for a second! With DAC you need to use the config's alongside your mission and you can redefine the groups used. There are some versions of I44 templates floating around on here and our public forums. Also you can unpack any of our Coop mission they mostly use DAC so have lots of preset groups, though sorry not one config with every faction, I might do one for 2.7 if there's time/demand and no one else gets round to it first!. Back to the beach!

Thanks guys, progressing well got WN64 and a few tank traps done today! Just a few more to go! I'd definitely be interested in playing with those garrison scripts, I've yet to test with anything like DAC etc to let the AI explore and man posts, but I have managed to fix the bunkers pathing and that does help the AI lead into the trenches much better. Bit more fiddling and I'm hoping they'll be able to explore it freely, just seem to be having an odd occassion where the AI decides to wander through geometry trying to fit into their squads formation doh! I tend not to use many/any extra AI mods except for TPW's suppression system which I adore! But I've heard some good things about ASR_AI recently and Zeus in the past, its always been something I've considered bringing in as part of I44 but as people generally have their own preferences it seems to be best to leave that as a third party addition for now unless we can get a specific version designed for I44 so we could do things such as deploying mg's etc, will just have to daydream about getting an AI coder in for now!

I was actually going through the 'trenchline' and 'foxhole' objects adding pathing and positions for AI which led to me remebering these concrete trench sections (and then the following work texturing them up and pathing them + testing AI would follow waypoints on editor placed versions, which they did very nicely). The only issue I am having is the initial entry of AI who are say in a player group into the trenches I think the thinness might make it hard/impossible. But those AI placed in them and waypoints along the paths seems to work pretty nicely. This unfortunately is impossible, at least on Omaha and all of our current maps. As maps work on a gride size, omaha using 10m for example, each point that you can raise or lower is far bigger than any of these objects, and making them that large for a small feature really sticks out. As we have no way of cutting away the ground geometry this is as good as it gets on a large map in ArmA2. Only smaller higher detailed terrain maps like Bastogne using a much smaller grid (but because of the detail has to be a much smaller map) which allows for placement of foxholes etc in the holes more seamlessly.

Ok so I know you're all probably a bit bored of Omaha, covered and covered blah blah, but for the two or so people that are still interested in it... I started myself a little mini-project that I've been wanting to do for ages, here's a few screens of the progress so far. In the past we've had to depend on mission placed objects to create our trench systems, but I've recently implemented a lovely little set of concrete trenches by Biiskaps that were sitting around gathering dust, textured them up and created a few extra little floor pieces to get rid of that pesky grass. Then with a lot of zooming in on scans of my Omaha defense map, tried to match as closely as possible with our resources the defensive layout of the 'Wiederstandneste' (Resistance Nest) stations that line the coast (WN61, and WN62 so far pictured here with a few more to build). This should give players and mission makers a lot more to play with, and if I can nail down the AI pathing, hopefully more interesting enemy behaviour too. Also a huge benefit to MP missions that won't require the hundreds of extra objects lagging the server. Quite when this will be ready I'm not sure as it will have a large impact on existing missions I'd guess 2.7 as the beach assault missions will all need to be reworked to remove the old decorations and take advantage of the built in fortifications!

Hmm yeah the mines do seem to have no effect on the tanks (thought they are at least blowing up). We'll look into it, don't forget to post bugs on Dev-Heaven! Thanks!

Shouldn't be the case, Animosity did go through and ensure tanks were generally only getting their tracks damaged. Stock mines probably haven't been taken into account just the I44 ones but I'll give them a look next time I'm in the editor. Possibly brought about by the new beta etc as they defintely worked last time I tested them. Certain you saved the mission after placing the module? Seems to be a common issue.

Any issues you find with damage etc should be reported over on Dev-Heaven with appropriate source information where available, current data is all based on historical records of the weapons and armour but its possible a decimal point slipped here and there.

No worries I totally understand where you were coming from on the texture front, trying to maintain a colour scheme between the vehicles produced by different modellers and texture artists over such a huge period of time has been very difficult. Again keep hold of the texture and I'll be in touch if we decide on the old switcheroo. On a positive note we've located the source of the issues with the beta patches and everything should be back to normal soon enough so no worries, big thanks to kju, Sickboy and Macolik for pinning down the problem and beating it into submission :D

I think the issue lies more with the shaders than the texture itself, from the screeny it looks a little blander than it should be with a lot of the finer detail getting lost. I'm a bit useless when it comes to A2's super shaders so it'll take me a while to get my head around them before I can do anything directly, keep hold of the texture though we may roll it in at somepoint if theres time (and if Guy doesn't want to update his model himself). 1. Can take a look into this but wouldn't that result in the guns being super accurate without the dispersion? 2. It is something we wanted to do with that and a couple of the other modules and instead have modules to disable our core features if users didn't want them, a lack of coders has made this a little difficult to achieve however. 3. This is mainly because I wasn't sure what limitations Frizy and Faust had originally coded into the C&H mission template, but from working with them more and more it seems the classes are irrelevant so I've been hoping to do a British mission or five, just a matter of having the time to restructure stuff also means changing some other aspects of the template for weapons and such which I've just not had time to do yet, once I have the current templates locked down and working with minimal/no issues I'll then look at making a british version but will wait until that's locked down so I dont then have more versions to apply multiple fixes to later down the line.

Could be an issue with the hitbox, or it could just be the round penetrating right through heh. My guess would be the first, unfortunately I don't have too much time to deal with it right now as I'm desperately trying to find the source of the issues with the new beta so the problems don't get rolled into the next 'stable release' patch from BI. Best bet is to report in on our DH with reproduction steps/screenies etc so I don't forget cheers! Just took a quick look over the hitbox geometry and there doesn't seem to be any obvious problems with the geo-lods around the hull/tracks (though I have been having issues with the turret weirdly enough). So yeah until I get some more time, aim high! :D A note to those running PwS, Sickboy has had to revert to distributing the current beta patch which causes many issues with I44, so I highly recommend rolling back manually, then following these steps to prevent PwS forcing the beta to re-update: http://getsatisfaction.withsix.com/withsix/topics/how_to_manually_control_arma_2_oa_beta_patch_updates. Build 100697

That's very odd as I've just tested them again myself and both seem to be working fine for me, are you sure you're using/loading CBA correctly and have placed the Armor Penetration module (and as someone suggested, saving your mission before previewing). Also are you getting anything in your RPT? Finally how and what have you installed I44 from (archives, pws etc) and if manually are you sure you installed all the required patches in the correct order (2.6, 2.61, 2.62, 2.63, 2.64, 2.65)?

Issue solved, thanks all!