Sith

Oi dcal ... don't make me use the word "epic". Honestly, I carry a strong degree of animosity towards it! I'd hate having to break out a meme-like word to describe what you just did there :lookaround: :p Also, 12 minutes worth of fully scripted machinima is no small feat. How long did take you to record and edit all that footage?

You seem to be missing the point that was made earlier in the discussion though. The 1:1 (realistic) view DMarwick is talking about IS the zoomed view. Not the default view. Holding down RMB is not a matter of "everything gets bigger" than it should be, because "your eyes all of a sudden have an extra lens on them". NOT holding RMB (the standard view) is in fact making everything smaller than it should be, almost as if you're looking through binoculars the wrong way around :p I've watched your WarMod video, but it seems to do basically what was present for some time in ArmA 1: add a default zoom to non-magnifying sights. This functionality was actually removed in a patch, because both developers and players found it very annoying to deal with a shifting view every time you wanted to align a target. You often lost your bearing on a nearby target, along with all sense of spatial awareness. The RMB function was retained as a player-activated feature, so they could "rescale" the game's proportions to its proper size once they needed it. How exactly would this be different from ArmA2's current default handling of non-magnifying sights? It retains the same FOV as the default view (lesson learned from ArmA 1) and leaves the RMB rescaling optional to the player. Here's a simple comparison for reference: Default field of view: High positional awareness allows precise movement Wide peripheral view allows high situational awareness Mimicks 50% of our real life field of view on ~25% of your eyes' FOV (monitor size) Objects in the game world are smaller than they are in real life Gameplay: The increased positional/situational awareness is great for CQB, but targets over 150 meters away are rendered too small to allow for realistic ranged combat "Zoomed" field of view: Low positional awareness prevents precise movement Small peripheral view greatly limits situational awareness Mimicks ~25% of our real life field of view on ~25% of your eyes' FOV (monitor size) Objects in the game world are the same size as they are in real life (so it's not zoomed!) Gameplay: The decreased positional/situational awareness is bad for CQB, but targets over 150 meters away are rendered at the correct size, allowing for realistic ranged combat Your choice in a game is simple. Either you get realistic combat ranges with a zoom function to overcome the fake zoomed-out view you need to walk around (otherwise targets would be too small to see), or you get a game without zoom function where combat ranges are reduced to allow you to see the targets. Imagine the outrage if the next patch log were to list "Reduced range on AI and weapons to rebalance game for a 100 meter engagement limit." :eek: ;) Not entirely, to be honest. I'm sorry if I'm completely misinterpreting your posts, but I find them very difficult to read. Take a bit more time to review your text before posting it, adding more punctuation and structure to channel and emphasize the information you're trying to convey. Right now it's just all over the place :(

Some scenes may need a bit of work, but there's still a lot of great shots in there. And the narrative proved very effective :) 1) In the opening scenes you seemed to struggle trying to get a good horizontal framing of the guy on the ground. Either you'd be showing a lot of boring ground, or the guy was barely visible somewhere in the bottom of the frame. Try not to force such shots if the subject clearly doesn't align well. After one or two horizontal establishing shots, you can safely take subsequent shots of the guy on the ground using a top down or angled perspective. If someone walks over to help him, briefly establish their proximity and then focus your framing on the kneeling dude. Don't try and continue to force the other guy into the picture, we know he's still there and you can always cut back to his top down shot. 2) Keep tabs on how long each shot is. Don't be afraid to use 3 shots instead of 1. A long shot (4+ seconds) determines the pacing of what you see in the scene ... not how much content you see in the scene. You had several shots of 10+ seconds in a row at times (e.g. rotating shot around wounded guy, stop, close-up, zoom out), mixed with some shorter ones, which disupted the sense of flow. It's great to use those long shots to open or close a scene, but when there's more stuff to be shown, use short and varying shots. Take a "chunk size" to base your cuts on (e.g. 2 seconds and multitudes thereof) for a sense of rhythm. 3) Match the direction of movement and position of your subject onscreen to tie one shot to the next. You're jumping from left-right to right-left and back a few times when trying to show events that are supposedly related. Positioning and moving them in a way that flows from the last shot makes it easier for my mind to see the continuity without having to stop and think about it. The last scene worked well in terms of camera movement. Having consistent shots from one side of the soldier would've made it perfect. I loved the salute/uniform shot. A perfect example of 4 seconds saying more than any 20-second shot flying through bootcamp _camera camCommand "inertia on"

Humans have a near 180 degree Field Of View. A typical FPS view generally offers a 70 (console) to 90 (PC) degree FOV of the digital 3D environment. This is however applied to a surface (monitor) that takes up less than 25% of your actual horizontal FOV ... when using it at a responsible distance ;) Thus relatively speaking, the displayed digital FOV is increased by a factor 2 compared to what "real life" would look like on that screen (90*4 vs 180). Trying to cram the full 180 degrees in there would not be pleasant :eek: 90 degree FOV 170 degree FOV

As has been explained on many previous occasions, the RMB zoom doesn't mimic "focus" but actually displays the world and objects therein at a size comparable to their proportions vs distance in you real-life field of view. The unzoomed view in turn shows an unrealistically wide field of view in order for the player to retain some degree of spatial awareness. As a result, objects seem much smaller than they would in real life. In a previous thread that discussed this topic, one of the forum members made a very nice visualisation of this effect. I wasn't able to find it, but imagine this: Take a box, width and and height resembling the size of your monitor, depth identical to the distance between your eyes and the screen. Take out the front and the rear ends of the box and attach the contraption to your head. Pick up a 1 meter-long M16A4. Now try to aim the weapon and walk around a bit. And note that I'm not accepting any legal liability for sustained injuries and/or property damage. Doesn't work too well, does it? That's what a 1:1 realistic field of view in a 3D environment would look like. Games overcome this by taking a FOV angle resembling the one you'd normally have, and squeezing it inside that little gap at the end of the box. Naturally this makes the entire world far smaller than it should be. Realistic 300-500m fire fights would be reduced to single digit pixel hunting sessions, where in real life you'd still see far larger objects at such ranges. That's where the RMB zoom comes in, allowing you to see distant objects at the size they would have in real life.

When playing a Warfare mission where you are the Commander, you should be able to switch to High Command mode (Ctrl + Spacebar). This allows you to select all AI combat teams using the F-keys or by clicking on them on the map, give them individual orders and assign them to tasks. Pressing Ctrl-Spacebar once more will take you back to control of your regular squad. New tasks can be created right-clicking on the map; e.g. doing this on a neutral/enemy town's depot marker will allow you to create a "Capture" task. Selected teams in High Command can be assigned to this task by left clicking on it in the map view.

You are aware of the paradox in this statement, right? ...

It's to do with the attachTo command ... obviously ;-)

The fact that they invade by the thousands indicates they expect to be facing opposition capable of inflicting quite a few losses. Why on Earth (pun intended) would the most highly evolved lifeform in the galaxy subsequently decide to get bogged down in an all-out attack on one of the smaller military entities amongst the council races? Just because Shepard managed to take out 1 and a half Reaper with more than a fair bit of luck? I'll keep my fingers crossed that the press release was indeed simplistic for the sake of not having to delve into the game's back story too much. It would be a shame not to see how noble all these races remain amongst each other in the face of total annihilation :cylon:

Personally, I could live with that decision. And that represents exactly the conflict between "background story insinuation" and "main plot simplification" I mentioned ealier. If you don't want to be disappointed beforehand, don't read the following quote straight out of the ME3 announcement press release: :rolleyes: :( :mad:

But why would RPG elements be required for, say, Reapers coaxing humans and Turians into a renewed war, generating territorial claims/shifts and ramping up the loyalty issue for Garrus? Or violent ethnic repression becoming a mainstream human habit, rather than a naughty Cerberus exclusive? Something that has to be physically reflected in both your team and the world around you, rather than just getting a quick mention in one of the dialogue branches. Something where Shepard has to exist as part of a vulnerable and imperfect world, without the reassurance he'll get to fix it all in time for dinner. These things are not bound by genre-based features. They can be introduced as fully linear plot events in the most traditional of action games. But for some reason the "seeds" for these, well, flashpoints (:blues:) seem to be kept as far away from the main storyline as possible. As if the design doc states "Upon reaching a main plot point, the player should express 'Oh, ok' and walk on, rather than 'Oh, wow' and stop." Still, I can't wait to get my hands on the third iteration. I really want to see where they'll take all the characters. They'd better not mess up ME3 Tali as badly as they did with ME2 Liara (pre-LotSB). A game character forcing me into adultery was awesome in hindsight, but I will not let go of my feisty Quarian! :nono: :o :p

I do hope that for once they'll manage to put some narrative fidelity in the main storyline. BioWare's characters and side quests have always been rather well fleshed out and diverse, but the main story never really goes much beyond "there's this uber-baddy bent on destroying the world, go and stop him". Which, after following a straight trail void of doubt or reconsideration, stopping said uber-baddy, always left me wondering how a world populated by such interesting characters can only be shaped by events with the dramaturgic subtlety of those wartime Disney cartoons. If they have the guts to let the ethnic polarization and other inter-species tensions act as more than Codex entries and conversation branches, actually structurally reshaping the world(s) around you, I'll be a happy Shepard. But alas, knowing BioWare my money's on a rather plain "unite all races to save the glorious human race, who's supposedly rather insignificant home planet is considered the Reaper's primary strategic target.

That's not the complaint I've commonly heard over the past years. The main difference between movement control in Half-Life and ArmA is the fact that the former lets you control a floating camera, which drags along an external player mesh performing walking animations roughly matching the camera's pace and direction (resulting in the infamous "ice skating" walk anims when done poorly). This allows you to make very small and rapid adjustments to your character's movement. The "few extra steps" you mentioned is simply a little momentum applied to this floating camera. ArmA instead allows you to issue "movement orders" directly to the character skeleton, initiating a sidestep animation that moves the camera according to your character's head position, rather than nudging the camera and roughly animating an external mesh in its wake. As a results the character controls may seem "indirect" to people used to controlling a floating camera around the game world, refering to the animation-bound movement increments as "sticky" controls. My point was that the use of a locomotion system also binds your camera to the dexterity with which your character can displace himself in real-time. The people in this thread hoping for it to allow them "floating camera"-style controls would most likely be disappointed by such consequences.

I've actually done a graduation project in Unity using this exact locomotion system. I'm no animator myself, but here's a few things I noticed: Yes, the system does greatly reduce the number of required animations for a full movement set. Especially the number of transition animations can be significantly reduced (or left out entirely for simple animation sets). Yes, the system does allow for relatively smooth interpolation, going from one animation state to the next. No, the system does not necessarily provide the instant movement feedback people here seem to expect. Some level of "clunkiness" often remains. Give the implementation a try in this minigame. As you'll see, similar to the locomotion system used in GTA IV and RDR, your character has some degree of inertia when e.g. shifting direction. In third person games like these, this isn't much of a problem due to the visual feedback you get on said inertia. But if you apply it to a first person perspective, the results could be in many ways similar to what people dislike in ArmA's anims right now: seemingly "sticky" animation switches. It's not really my field of work, so I don't want to go too far into the technicalities. But the current discussion does seem to steer towards the "woah, awesome solution to all our problems in one package!" mindset, and I figured some personal experiences might make for a more balanced discussion ;)

In line with the other underworldly towns mentioned in this thread; I fly to Vantaa (Helsinki) Airport quite frequently, and always find it rather amusing to type in the 3-letter destination code at the airport's auto check-in machines. Please state your destination :devil: (While it misses an "l" for correct English spelling, it works out in Dutch)

And here I was thinking Total War's appeal came from the fact that it was one of the first big empire building series that did feature real-time 3D combat, rather than plain statistics and dice rolls :confused: If you're refering to the possibility of assuming 1st/3rd person control over a single unit in these battles, I'd remain rather sceptical myself. First of all due to the horridly unadaptive Battle AI featured throughout the series (Campaign AI as well for that matter). Secondly, the individual gameplay spectrum would be far too limited: Combat in M&B appeals to our sense of involvement due to its limited scale and rather lenient "free for all brawl" approach to combat. In a Total War battle, you'll find yourself restricted to a very tight formation, slugging away on one spot as line infantry, endlessly hurling projectiles at range, or repeatedly charging static enemy lines as cavalry. You're a nobody with a one-button task, along with 10.000 others around you. There's far too little room for "interactive expression" to justify it as game, rather than a mere re-enactment fantasy. That's IMO also where the definition of a good AI comes in. Its sole purpose is to stimulate the player's use of said interactive expression. Punishing the player for the repeated use of a single tactic, and forcing them to re-evaluate their interaction options. Identifying and adapting interaction patterns is our evolutionary forte, not their repeated use ad infinitum. I've always quite liked the Half-Life games' AI, probably due to the rather simple yet unique behaviour patterns to each unit class. Because Valve created such a wide scala of classes, the combination (Combine :p) of two or more types of enemies can radically change the combat gameplay from one moment to the next.

Lens flares have never been visible through your character's eyes in the OFP/ArmA games. They only appear when using an external camera (with lens :p) like the 3rd person view or a scripted camera.

There's something of a gameplay drive in place actually. Night time brings out the zombies, skeletons, spiders and the likes. You need to build yourself some shelter to fend them off. But that's also my biggest criticism of the game. While this basic survival element is present, it's not putting any pressure on the player beyond the need for four basic walls around you. You're not driven to build a strong fortress, deadly defenses and elaborate traps in order to hold off increasingly threatning hordes of monsters. There will be no zombies clawing through doors or dragons bombarding your walls. After those four walls, built of whatever resource you gathered first, all that's driving you is some light exploration and an unhealthy dose of OCD-fueled construction work. Don't get me wrong, I'm OCD enough to potentially waste half a lifetime on this thing, and I understand the need for it to remain a friendly sandbox game for the masses. But part of me also wants to embrace that sense of fright, fighting the odds and barely surviving every time the sun goes down. The hurried constructs put up in those precious daylight hours all get imbued with the strongest sense of purpose. Watching the blocky sun set from atop your fortified tower with lava moat is a whole lot more rewarding if every one of those blocks was heavily contested. For those of you completely puzzled by all of this low-res block lovin', I can highly recommend watching this playthrough with commentary. The guy's doing the complete opposite of a clean "tutorial" playthrough, but it's easily the best showcase of the game's potential I've come across. It's 10 parts (and counting), so be sure to check out the rest of the vids: ANgI2o_Jinc Oh, and this things recently got turned into the next big nerd-hype online, so I guess I should include it as well: kn2-d5a3r94

This should basically round up the discussion. I'm not going to get involved in all the mud slinging around here, but it's rather endearing to see people project some sort of squishy "perfect romance" plot on BIS' and CM's work on CWC (which was less than a quarter of its development cycle, mind you), wishing for the two quarreling lovers to hook up again. Cute, but ultimately somewhat naive. Only a very small number (if any) of the CM staff involved with BIS/CWC back in 2000-2001 still works for them. 10 years is a hell of a long time in game dev country, and many people in creative positions rarely spend even half that timeframe at one single company. You move on, looking for different projects and opportunities at different companies. There is no absolute and persistent entity behind the name "Codemasters", or even BIS for that matter (although we have a few hardliners :p). While it might come as a bit of a surprise to some of you, the same thing also applies to the latter company. All elements of the BIS team have seen changes small and large between the development of CWC, Resistance, Elite, ArmA, ArmA II and Arrowhead. And it's a good thing, as it fuels innovation, fresh ideas. It might not always work out as well as you hoped, but that's one of the risks of working in a dynamic and creative industry. You meet inspiring new people, you learn, you create something beautiful together, you move on. There are so many factors flying in and out of this process, it's nearly impossible to identify and secure all ingredients for "the perfect project".

First of all, excuse my scepticism, but could you provide some statistical proof on that claim? Many people commonly perceive an increase in media coverage as an increase in occurance in these matters. Secondly, Polish youth is not the topic of this thread. We're talking about a ban in the Netherlands, where no such increase in violent crime has taken place. Let's look at the emergence of all media reference you've brough up so far: Natural Born Killers: 1994 Pulp Fiction: 1994 Counter-Strike: 1999 Games as mass mainstream medium: halfway nineties and onwards Going by these dates, any change in behaviour of the generation brought up in a world of such horridly violent productions would have to show up in a graph detailing statistics from 1997 onwards. If the strong upwards trend would precede that timeframe, it would in fact be more likely to correlate to the preceding generation ... you know, the one that grew up on Care Bears and Utopian Communism. My take on the possible difference between the Dutch and Polish situation? The alienating picture generated by modern mass media: you as a tiny insignificant person in perspective to a big uncaring world, had a far more destructive inpact in post-communist nations than it did in western nations. Trying to consolidate both the fact that "the government" is no longer going to hold your hand in troubled times, as well as the fact that the outside world suddenly became far more visible (post-1990) and turned out not to give a damn about you either ... was far more than a lot of "fragile" people in the post-communist countries could handle. Fragile people in western nations only had to deal with half the alienation, relatively speaking. But that's wildly going off-topic.

Besides the fact that your comparisons are not doing much to support your argument (seriously .. Care Bears vs Natural Born Killers? Angelic communist teenagers?), there's one easy way to counter all your assumptions in regard to the topic at hand ... There has been no significant increasing in violent crimes in the Netherlands over the past decade (and then some): The dotted line labeled "geweld" (violence) shows only a very small increase over a period of 8 years. Follow-up statistics indicate that this trend actually showed a decrease after 2005. There is absolutely zero proof that violent games, movies, books or music in any way contribute more to violent real-life behaviour than the ice lolly stick I mentioned in my previous post. So tell me, when will we see a crusade against this unholy corrupter of our younger generations? :p

It honestly doesn't work like that. See if you can inform yourself about what goes into a game rating procedure some time. It's a strict and arduous procedure, where independent rating agencies in each sales region (PEGI, ESRB, USK, etc.) will go through all game content. It often takes a developer quite a lot of time to provide all these materials, and adding even a basic line of dialogue after the rating process can get you into a fair bit of trouble. What game was the kid playing though? A violent and bloody 18+ puppy murder simulator, or Barbie's Horse Adventure? Kids (and adults ..) get upset when you take away their toys. Messed up kids may get more than a bit upset, regardless of what kind of toy it was. I've seen a little girl scream at her mom she hated her, after throwing away the stick of an ice lolly the kid had just finished. Nope. Nope. That's the whole issue in this discussion. Your concerned point of view would be entirely good and true if there actually was a problem. But there isn't, hence people's scepticism regarding a moral inquisition against one very specific new medium. The same silly sociopolitical outrage was triggered by the introduction of radio, film, television, rock&roll music, comic books, P&P roleplaying games and the Power Rangers. None of them were banned, so can you cite any showcase of their horrid impact on generations past and present?

Is that Hirsch Ballin's intention though? As I mentioned ealier, there is no clear outline of what the definitions for "violence" and "banning" are in this context. Hirsch Ballin is known to be in favour of a lot of legal regulation that infringes on your rights and privacy in ways most people would find appalling. He has expressed his admiration for the way Germany's finest handle media censorship, which leads to ... what? Calls to ban all 16+ rated video game development in the nation? How is forcing Guerilla Games, Triumph Studios and Playlogic Game Factory (their only remaining viable branch) to close shop going to stop the occasional teenage wackjob from doing what psycho wackjobs have been known to do since the dawn of mankind? Ask yourself these questions, because as Jerry's post shows, the people vouching for this regulation refuse to approach the topic as anything more than an easy shot at unfueled baby boomer angst. If this would've been a fair attempt to enforce tighter age rating compliancy, the counter-question regarding movies (or comics, or books, or paintings) being treated by the same standards, would never be considered a "voter consensus issue".

I'm still very much confused about his eventual intentions in this regard. Most news reports I've read on the subject state that he's attempting to impose a ban on "sales to minors", rather than an all-out ban of said violent products. Along with the shady definition of "violent" in this context, I'm puzzled as to what exactly would be banned at the end of the day. If it would simply result in fines for retailers refusing to uphold age ratings on sales, that seems relatively harmless. But anything more than that would certainly guarantee the CDA to lose any remaining votes from the population under 60 from here on (the handful they had left). Calls for censorship have never been received very well here in the Netherlands. How can you possibly give an answer like that and NOT start to question your own hypocrisy? :j:

While I'm not familiar with all the pathfinding intricacies, this may have something to do with it ... Flashpoint roads: (screenshot by Symbiot) ArmA II roads: