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Sith

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Posts posted by Sith

  2. Posted

    Even Fallout3/Oblivion is nowhere near as buggy as the OA AI is. In those games it has a tendancy to belly-up due to player behaviour (ie overpowering sneak, or similar).

    Fallout 3, Oblivion, GTA IV, the lot ... all render a maximum of several dozen AI entities in a ~100/200 meter radius around you. Anything outside of this radius is reduced to little more than a regional statistic.

    The "broken core AI" you're referencing is in fact the consequence of retaining an actual AI presence throughout ArmA's game world. If you want to be able to have 50+ simultaneously active and adaptive combatants in your game world, you'll have to accept the resulting impact on performance. If your system can't deliver the required CPU muscle, you'll start seeing AI blackouts.

  3. Posted

    Keep in mind, the aforementioned feedback only applies to Warfare BE, which is a community mod.

    In Arrowhead's own Warfare missions, the gunners in defences are spawned by the "town garrison"; a group of AI units that patrols and protects a town after it has been conquered. The size and armament of this group is determined by the Supply Value of said town, which means that:

    - They will only man defences within a radius of a town controlled by you

    - > So not at captured camps in enemy towns

    - > And not at camps built far away from friendly towns

    - They will do so as long as the local Supply Level is high enough

    - Losses will respawn after some time

    - Defences will slowly rearm over time

  4. Posted

    While I'm not expecting too many Fins to be tracking this topic, I'll give it a shot anyway ...

    Does anyone happen to know if there's any remotely interesting places in the center of Helsinki where I can watch the matches this week? I know a fair few sport-ish pubs near Kamppi and such, but if I'm going to embarrass my gf by being an orange idiot, I want to at least make sure there's a bit more liveliness than a bunch of old men hugging their betting tickets :p

  5. Posted

    Exactly. I have been reading articles and the comment sections of English-language newspapers and football sites, and they're all filled with "Dutch were crap, cheaters that don't deserve to win, style of football is completely unattractive etc."

    I'm still quite puzzled about this. The Dutch team has indeed been playing what might be best described as "pragmatic football" so far, but in the second half against Brazil they were simply dominating the game. Brazil's initially covert attempts to kick Robben out of the match turned into blatant feats of assassination, as the frustration radiated by Dunga seemed to transfer onto his players as well. The Dutch team got its act together and started to play on their terms, which apparently came as quite a surprise to the opposition.

    Considering the time I spend abroad, I hardly see myself as a staunch "Orange" supporter. Still, by the 90th minute I could only conclude that the Dutch team simply had the upper hand and won fair and square. Equally puzzling is the lash out at Kuyt in the English comments. Ranging from "why is he on the pitch" to "worst player of the tournament", I can't help but wonder if a player in his position can only gather praise by "solo-ing" in as many goals as possible, because the fact that he works his ass off as one of the corner stones to nearly every single offensive movement apparently just won't cut it.

    Ah well. Jeeeeuuj, Oranje boven! :drinking2:

  6. Posted

    Why does that video look different to this one, i mean the gun sights and whatnot (im not talking about when he's using the drone btw)?

    <snip>

    Also can someone confirm vehicle FLIR? Im sure its there but ive seen a couple of the videos and noones used it yet.

    Uziyahu's video only shows the use of regular NVG. The second video shows the use of FLIR sights by the AH-6X (white-hot, marking targets) and the AH-64 (black-hot, 0:59 onwards). Both vehicles (along with many others) can switch between these two FLIR modes as well as regular NVG.

  8. Posted

    Usually i lose some units doing that and i would like to "refill" them but every unit or vehicle that is created joins my own group. How can i send units to others groups? can i create new groups?"

    Every squad in Warfare, players and AI alike, earns funds by killing enemies, completing missions and -more regularly- through supply truck deliveries at friendly towns. The squads you control as High Commander thus have their own financial balance and will buy their own units.

    • If you use a factory to buy units, they will join your own squad
    • The AI squads under your control will buy units based on their financial balance and the "squad type" you set them to in the Teams menu (map view)
    • When AI squads respawn, they will repurchase new units
    • You can force squads to respawn using the Teams menu, thus forcing them to "refill" their unit using the available budget
    • As pravin mentioned, you can donate money to squads to increase their budget
    • You can also donate units from your own squad to other squads using the radio menu (select unit, press space bar, select Communication, etc.)

    Hope this helps :)

  9. Posted

    lol 'fragile' balance and yes I guess I am sometimes I wish there'd be more servers on this game using the original stuff but I guess all the bugs and such need to be fixed in the original game before that will happen.

    Pretty much all WF issues have actually been fixed in the patches, along with including a whole bunch of new features. But MP mission popularity is quite a conservative thing. Once people like a certain mode/mission and have played it a fair bit, it's very hard to get them to (objectively) look into alternative gameplay formats, sometimes even for years at an end. I like to call it the "de_dust2 syndrom" ;)

    I'd like to point out that forcing players to wait for several hours in order to get something so simple as a light factory is pretty game breaking in my view. Not only does it stop players just simply hopping in and playing the game for even 30 minutes but classic RPG stuff like this ends up severely imbalancing multiplayer because you will inevitably give players an unfair advantage/disadvantage because it will always be the ones who play the game longest that will win rather than those who actually have the best skill that will win.

    Is this still stock WF you're talking about then? I always see the light factory being built within a maximum of 10 minutes after the start of a new game. Until then you can use the trucks and HMMWVs/UAZs spawned at your starting position.

  10. Posted

    I do wonder why we can't do that in the non-supply truck mode though? Most if not all servers use this system so the rates are automatically fixed and in my opinion the supply upgrades provide nowhere near enough bonus. Especially if you are on the run and need to construct bases more often than not.

    As mentioned by GossamerS, you're probably playing Warfare BE, which is a fan-made "modified" Warfare. There's not much we can do about balance issues there, other than try and convince players to host the carefully balanced stock Warfare missions more often ;)

  11. Posted

    Why not let the commander trade $ for S? Or maybe even vice versa if they build up enough of each? This would drastically reduce the amount of sitting about and waiting for new upgrades and it wouldn't be so much of a game mechanic change that it would take away the original code. The reason I suggest this is because for some reason you get far more $ and because you are a commander all it does is sit there most of the time since you need S mainly for upgrades and buildings.

    AFAIK, it's already fully possible to do this. Use you $ to buy a whole bunch of supply trucks and have them drive from town to town. This should quickly generate a whole lot of SV.

  12. Posted

    I hope you understand we're not able to read every single post in every single forum on a daily basis.

    Take a look at snapshots above. I am playing Dogs of War, I came across this, you can see the difference in the prices of the items, just wanted to know why is it so. Another thing I observed is that if I buy an item where price is low that is if I buy SPG-9 for $100 it comes along with the crewman and if I buy it for $200 there is no crewman!!!

    The difference is caused by one of the camps you're constructing at being part of a friendly town, resulting in relatively low prices for the defenses and troops being available to garisson them. The other camp has been captured near a hostile town, resulting in higher prices for the defenses and no available garisson troops (though they will be manned once you conquer the town).

  14. Posted · Edited by Sith

    I think this is an excellent point of view and I fully agree. I'd be much more drawn to Warfare style PvP if the tactical environment was smaller, compact and driven by CONSEQUENCE rather than staying afloat on a broken economic system.

    - Why must warfare cross the entire island?

    - Why must warfare contain every gun, car, animal and vehicle in the game?

    I think one big reason for the lack of play on stock Warfare maps is the fact that the vast majority of people haven't really kept up with the vast amount of improvements and additions in the latest patches. They haven't exactly been highlighted properly, so it's not entirely unexpected. It's something we have to look into, because we've noticed the "full map, no FT" approach in BE Warfare puts off a lot of newcomers, with all due respect to Benny's work.

    One of the most important additions has been the big list of customisable parameters in the server setup. Amongst them is: Capturable Towns Present. This self-explanatory setting addresses exactly the issue you just brought up. Gameplay can extend to all corners of the map, or be limited to just 2 or 3 towns; always clustered in a randomly selected region of the map, so variation between games is ensured. The low number of towns will ensure a low Supply income in a high intensity combat environment, thus greatly reducing the role of air and armor in favour of infantry tactics.

    Combine this with the Neutral Town Opposition difficulty level and it's easy to set up a game where you'll be mourning the loss of a single TOW HMMWV or LAV even at the ending stages of the game.

    Warfare is still constantly being worked on, so by all means, I'd very much welcome a discussion of the stock vs (e.g.) BE version features. Share what you feel are the strengths and weaknesses of certain elements from a gameplay, tactical or strategic point of view. But please leave out any rethorics that have no basis in functional gameplay ("bcuz teh IRLz!!") or are blatantly judgmental towards others. Yes that'd be you Icewindo. No need to be religious fanatics holding on to our age old sacred scrolls here. It's great to think outside of the box and discuss how for instance we can translate this sense of self-preservation to a respawn environment through penalising death or rewarding survival. In my opinion, it's all completely relative to the amount of your time/score investment you're likely to lose.

    [Edit] A quick list of interesting topics off the top of my head:

    * Respawn/loss penalisation vs gameplay momentum

    * Fast travel conditions and consequences

    * Fixed wing aircraft use as endgame mechanic

    * Balancing light (inf, recon) and heavy units towards the endgame

    * Introducing "noobs" and JIP players to a running game

    * One base vs many bases vs game length

  15. Posted

    The reason I complain about this is because there is absolutely no way of getting the hq back even if you've maxed out all your upgrades and have hundreds of thousands of money at your disposal.

    This, along with your previous remark about long travel times, makes it quite clear you've been playing a community-made version of Warfare. My guess is BE, which amongst things disables fast travel, has a greatly reduced AI garisson implementation and introduces facility upgrades and spawning at old bases without an HQ. Added up, this results in a game where compared to stock Warfare:

    - Player/AI squad transportation is slow

    - Static defenses are significantly less effective, giving air units free reign

    - Old bases remain operational as respawn locations and act as victory conditions, resulting in a very long post-HQ-destruction gameplay phase to locate all remaining facilities.

    Sounds familiar?

    So next time, before you claim Warfare has

    the most insane design oversight I have ever come across!

    ,

    blatant balance issues

    ,

    half-assed coding

    and

    it needs fixing

    which the people at BIS

    simply don't seem to care about

    while claiming that others trying to explain the different feature sets should

    STOP TRYING TO JUSTIFY CRAP GAME DESIGN!!!

    instead of

    trying to derail with inane nonsense

    ... do make sure you're actually playing the version BIS made.

    Said copious amounts of inane nonsense was trying to point this out to you.

  16. Posted

    The problem I have with this whole APC hq system is that it eliminates the ability for a weaker force to use guerilla tactics against the enemy and that ends up messing up the game balance.

    Besides, all this bickering is pointless, having a side get killed just because of one APC and they do get killed fyi is ridiculous, it's a major balance issue and it needs fixing or at least given an option.

    One question.

    If this is, as you put it, a "major balance issue", howcome most online games still last between two to three hours, with no clear winner emerging until one faction´s entire supply infrastructure has been brought to its knees? That's an insanely long multiplayer session by any other game's standards, barring MMOs.

    As mentioned by others, the concept of multiple MHQs sounds interesting on paper. But as soon as you put it through some testing runs, you'll discover it'll boil down to little more than a perpetual cat & mouse game. If you start playing an online game, you generally want to have at least a slight sense of how long it'll roughly take to finish, along with a concise idea how to achieve this. Most people simply prefer to round up a session with a "win" or a "loss".

    Some strategic tips that might help you improve your HQ's chances of survival:

    * Set up solid AA and AT defenses at all towns along likely enemy lines of advance. The automated AI garrison forces will use them and are quite capable at stopping enemy rush tactics.

    * Remember that not just the destruction of your HQ, but also that of all structures in your (most recent) base is required for the enemy's victory. Keeping a good amount of SV on standby, you can use the other facilities to shield your HQ, repositioning it as soon as the base comes under attack.

    * When reverting to guerilla tactics (it really works!), use infantry AA/ATteams as skirmish forces in forests-lines to intercept the enemy's heavy hitters. They won't get stuck and are a pain to hunt down from the air.

    * Sticking to forested regions when repositioning the HQ makes it very tough to get a good bead on you. Stick to the narrow roads and put the pedal to the metal :)

  18. Posted

    The a.i. itself is very good but the instructions are not ideal.. and make it seem worse than it actually is.

    A.i. lacks team cohesion and tactics, the engagement routine is the same old flashpoint.

    This is not true. ArmA2's AI squads are using an actual "buddy system" during combat movement. One unit moves, while his buddy provides cover. It's quite a big step up from OFP, where Engage orders would indeed be executed by single units. And as shown on the previous page, they also take kill zones into consideration a whole lot more. Have a good look at a squad's movement patterns when they make contact. A good giveaway is the "Go, I'll cover!" messages you're probably quite familiar with :p

  19. Posted

    An old ArmA 1 Warfare manual can be found here, but it's quite outdated due to changes to both the interface as well as the overall feature set.

    I'll see if we can get an updated version released, but until then just going through the different interfaces in Singleplayer should give a quite straightforward idea of how to access everything. Online play still provides the best training ground for tactical and strategic skills, but be aware that most Warfare servers out there use modified versions of the mission, which may contain a different feature set.

  20. Posted

    You encounter russians if you join the NAPA forces , a mi 8 dropped MDV troops when I was trying to reach NAPA contacts and I also went against BTR 90's in the warfare mission

    Which makes sense, seeing as how the Russians were convinced that NAPA was nothing more than a bunch of violent anti-Russian terrorists. Start fighting on NAPA's side, and the Russians might no longer like you a whole lot ;)

    :)

  21. Posted

    In Warfare, each team has its own resources. As such, units you purchase off your own funds are part of your own squad, even if you're the commander.

    Your subordinate squads are able to purchase their own units, but in case they're AI-controlled, they do so based on their designated team type. You can change this team type by going to the Teams menu in the map view. Here you get an overview of the different teams, their type, their current units, their funds, their current mission and their current location.

    Select a squad from the list and click on the Set Type button (or double click the squad) to open up a new window which allows you to assign a new team type. Keep in mind, while you can set all your squads to Armor type at the start of the game, they will still require adequate resources and facilities to upgrade to e.g. an M1A2. Until that time, they will buy cheaper armored units such as LAVs.

    Adjusting a squad's team type will also affect how it approaches its objectives. Mechanised infantry squads will dismount at some distance from the objective and proceed on foot, while armor squads use brute force to breach enemy positions. Keep this in mind when you "donate" units, as mentioned by rosentorf.

  22. Posted

    - LUA as the scripting language (also featured in e.g.: RF:G, Crysis, GTAIV, OF:DR)

    - LUA scripted behavior based AI model like in Crysis which means the AI isn't scipted in the usual sense, but decides what to do based on events that happen in the game world and based on the behavior state it is currently in (e.g.: idle, interested, threatened, alerted)

    Having worked on games using both BI script and LUA, I can't honestly see why you would consider this to be a prerequisite in your definition of a "modernised" engine. I do recall Codemasters presenting LUA as the be-all-end-all scripting power for DR last year, but don't fall for it. In truth both the function/parameter formatting and level of control it provides within the engine are pretty much entirely up to what the gameplay programmers decide to implement :)

    Pointing out legacy line-based functions as BI Script's weakness is a bit of a silly argument, as the script system is very clear about providing three different layers of functionality: Linear SQS, SQF Functions and FSMs. Besides having been a gradual evolution of the design environment, this approach also allows our community to create scripts through a far more organic accessibility curve. The compatibility between these layers results in one of the most powerful script environments I know. Need custom state-based AI routines? Write an FSM. Want to reduce the network load of your mission? Customise your variable handling. Want to turn the game into an RTS, RPG, platformer or Godgame? Don't even worry about knocking on any programmer's door. Yes, it may have its share of quirks and legacy features, but it still blows the LUA games I've worked with out of the water.

    - Physics

    - Wound system

    - Component based damage system

    - Context sensitive interaction triggers

    - Command menu

    - 2D/3D map & mission editor

    Again, all of these features are just that ... features. They can be added into pretty much any engine out there, and would be the last thing in the world requiring a completely new engine. Especially middleware like the Havoc/Euphoria systems are in fact designed and supported specifically to be integrated into existing engines. And disregarding ease of implementation, the latter also come at a very obvious performance price tag in a game the scope of ArmA2.

    As other posters have already suggested, familiarise yourself a bit with the strengths and advantages of the current system, before condemning the features that may not seem like the best at first glance. An engine's complete feature set is always a case of compromises :)

  23. Posted

    Clear Skies (EVE Online) Part 1:

    As8cmHb-aKU

    3TBQHTdTNyc

    MOh9LDIySTI

    eZE8zGpowVc

    Clear Skies (EVE Online) Part 2:

    ym-qd5XlZAY

    GhOp6WG3gd4

    cYVA-n8rlN4

    03bxHJR8AkQ

    OrFznLMaHBI

    vMxcUP8B_5o

    mii1jNL08VQ

    And i've always found this TF2 production to be very nicely done:

    pC_aGQyFETU

    :popcornsmilie:

  24. Posted · Edited by Sith
    typo

    Please take it a notch or two down, on both sides of the fence. Flaming new members is no more contributing towards a constructive way of handling certain game concerns, than said members barging into the room with a bucket full of complaints, unfound or not.

    Not at all. He's representing the company.

    No he's not. BIS devs can be recognised by their title and avatar.

    <- Like that one there.

  25. Posted

    I'll be giving a workshop on this exact subject in a few weeks from now, so I guess I could drop in my 2 cents and a bit :p

    First try to figure out exactly what side of game development you'd like to focus on. One-man studios are not unheard of, but you have to be quite the "homo universalis" to pull that off on anything bigger than a small mobile game these days. There's so many facets to design and programming alone, it can already take quite some time to figure out what to love and what to hate :)

    Here are some basic pointers though:

    - First of all, education isn't the answer to all your hopes and wishes. The most important thing is your personal drive. Your passion that enables you to stay up late at night to figure out how to UVW unwrap that Autobot you modeled in class, even if it's not a part of the courses this semester. Your will to rewrite your entire collision code, just because it had some bumps and niggles that no one else in your project group really noticed. Education offers you a platform to kick this drive into a higher gear than you could ever achieve by yourself. But going into it entirely blank, void of a sense of heading out there to do "your thing", is likely to result in a whole lot of disappointment. Making games is NOT easy, NOT fair in hours vs paychecks, and NOT at all like playing games ;)

    - As an aspiring designer or programmer, try to get your hands on a functional development environment as soon as possible, and get them dirty. This is AFAIK the only proper and productive way to get a good sense of what it takes to build a game.

    - Fire up OFP/ArmA/ArmA2 and start editing. Seriously, it's a very good environment to take your first steps in gameplay design, modeling, texturing, scripting and interface logic. There's loads of documentation out there, and the game allows you to almost instantly test everything you build.

    - Joining a mod team allows you to easily focus on a very specific part of the design process, such as level design, modeling or interface scripting, and has the added advantage of showing you how hard it is to get people to work efficiently in a team.

    - Environments such as Flash, Unity, or cheaper alternatives require you to put some more work into coding/scripting a basis to work with, but from that point on they'll offer you a virtually unrestricted sandbox for your own prototypes. This is the way to go if you want to take things up a notch after modding other games.

    - While these engines tend to be only a small step away from the work environment of a full time developer uses, make sure you don't limit yourself to just one engine/language. Just like in "real world" languages, the more variants you study, the easier it becomes to pick up new ones in the future.

    - Create LOADS of diverse portfolio material. Honestly, go wild. Having a lot of variety in the things you create not only builds up your skills, but also allows you to compose customised selections when applying at different developers. Lionhead might not show a significant interest in an entirely mechwarrior-based portfolio.

    - Make yourself heard. Get your work is out there for people to see and make sure you build up a big network of contacts. Try to think of every person you meet as someone who might help you get that dream job one day. You'll be surprised to find out how easy it is to get around in the world of developers once you know a few good people here and there.

    - Good luck :cool:

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