Skaven

from the read me... I present you my Racs Version 3, this version is intended to be a step forward in quality rather than just quantity, changes like all Lods modeled down, merged textures, new sounds (by RobertHammer and tpM), new recoils (by Twisted), better animations, better textures as well as many other things have been introduced, with time you will discover them all. Some new weapons have also been introduced like the M16A1, XM177e1, M249, Galil AR (just to mention a few) and some have been removed from the previews pack because I feel they didn't match the quality I was expecting them to. There is also the addition of an ammo box which contains all the weapons and magazines from this addon (some of the new weapons are only available inside the ammobox) and an extension of the High-Dispersion weapons/soldiers to the West side, which means all sides are now covered with 80% of the weapons represented. List of changes: New: - All Lods modeled down. - All weapons textures merged (1 texture = 1 weapon) in most of the cases, being only two weapons the exception with 2 textures each. - Geometry added (weapons now make impact when hit by a bullet). - 7 New weapons (2 of them only available inside the ammobox). - Small groups added for better use of the F2 key inside the editor. - Officer Model added. - Ammobox added (I've used the original Racs's ammobox model to decrease the size of the addon). - High Dispersion Weapons/Soldiers extended to the West side as well as an increase of the Racs and East weapons (MP5A5, G36c and AKS-74U). - Captive soldier added to both West and East sides (soldier model used). - Light MachiGunner class added for both Team 1 and 2. Improved: - Soldiers textures (added lots of detail like for example to the pockets and helmets). - Weapons textures. - Sounds (100% new by RobertHammer and tpM). - Recoils (100% new by Twisted). - Normal Mapping (100% new). - Animations. - General code of all the three config files. - Iron Sights. - Better and easier to understand Ska_Jam config file for people releasing side projects of this file. Fixed: - East RPG soldier had no ammo. - G3A3 had the wrong name (G3A4). Download Link below: (mirrors needed) ArmedAssault.info Mirror : DOWNLOAD Skaven\'s Racs V3 [51 MB] from FTP#1 BIS-4P Mirror: http://ofp.4players.de/sys....ateg=14 Armed-Assault Zone Mirror: http://www.armed-assault-zone.com/news.php?readmore=388 RobertHammer mirror: http://www.sendspace.com/file/6zik82 ... have fun and thank you.

I was asked to wright a tutorial about making shadows for Arma and so I took the opportunity to paste it here, I know this as been explained before, however, this is a dedicated thread and will be easier for future searches. 1 - Open a 10000 distance view LOD (note it's 10000 not 10.000) 2 - Make the model to use as a shadow inside the 10000 LOD ( for example a weapon should be like 200/300 polys tops, of course the less the better). PS: Don't forget to delete the textures applied on the Shadows model (if you have any) since it's all black you don't need it mapped. 3 - Open a property inside your 10000 Lod and call it Lodnoshadow the value is 0 4 - Open the same property (Lodnoshadow) in all the other Lods but this time give it a value of 1. 5 - Inside the Shadow Lod (10000) with the entire model selected go to Structure/Topology/Find non-Closed and check if you have any opened point/faces (they get red if you do and below on your left O2 tells you the amount of them). 6 - If you do have any opened points/faces you must close them, you may try O2 to close them for you, for that go to Structure/Topology/Close, this should close the model for you, however, sometimes you need to do it by hand since this feature inside O2 as some limitations. PS: Be sure that all points/faces are closed, the best way to know this is by doing the step I wrote you before Structure/Topology/Find non-Closed and see if it gives you 0/0 on the left part below, if you miss this than not only the shadows won't work as most of the times the game will crash while loading the model. 7 - Finnaly with all points/faces closed, select the entire model and go to Structure/Triangulate \ . That's it, now try your shadow in game, good luck MODERATORS: Please fix me the name of the thread

No no, as I said before I'm taking some time for myself now, I've been playing Tennis and Golf and above all (Steve you are going to laugh on this one) I felt in love with a beautiful Brasilian girl and so sports and love are taking all my free time. Nevertheless, I read this forum everyday and the only reason why I'm not wrighting anything is because I don't have a chance to help so... criticise and not being able to help is not my style. Reply just for saying congrats to you guys it's not worth it since you know very well that I admire all of you Cheers my good friends and ty

Did anyone managed to merge textures with the new O2? I tried the .ptm file used in the previews version and it's not working... did anyone had the same problem? Maybe the new O2 needs a different coding?

Not frustrating, just time consuming, I don't know how many they were but... something like 600 hours were for sure, so now, I'm trying to take some of those hours back, starting to put myself in shape again in the gym and than the usual afternoon tennis/golf games that I like so much. But no worries, I'm still here and I have a lot of projects to work on, as Steve said, it's just some vacations

ok ty

Too soon Xira, we will update you later, but now we focus on Vr.2 Giving the East side a chance to fight back versus the Racs or whatever was one of our goals, I think we did it. The release day is very close but don't ask how close or Steve will stress Ty all for your continuous support and dedication, we are doing this for you we hope you like them as much as we do

Looks very good Cam

Well... if you wanna help, Steve (Shadow NX) will send you the final readme version later Â

All fixed, ty again, please keep it coming About the read me, well... we are making the Russian Army, I think it would be nice to deliver a readme in Russian specially for a question of respect and friendship

Fixed, ty

Steve my part of the readme is fineshed I'll send it to you once I arrive home. Since English is my third language and since most of you guys probably won't read the readme, I'm gonna post a part of it that may have some mistakes, if you spot some, please help me by pointing them so I can correct it on time, ty  ... from a small part of the read me... ************************* * Some Important Notes: * ************************* 1 - You'll find an ammo box (inside the editor) with all weapons available under the name of "RHS Weapons&Ammo Box", most of the weapons aren't equipped on the soldiers since they are away too many for our ammount of soldiers and also for a realistic point of view, normally you don't see a Russian squad equipped with 10 or 12 different types of weapons, we tried to mantain this by balancing the realism/fun to play factor. 2 - The disposable RPG feature is only available for our custom soldiers, normal BIS units will use our RPGS without droping them after firing. 3 - Most of the weapons may use more than one magazine, they are defined for example as: AK74Mmag/AK74mag/AK74pmag, there is no real advantage between them, we use more than one class, only to allow us to share different color magazines between the same family of weapons, unfortunatetly replacing the magazine models while switching magazines would increase our addon size dramatically, so, for now, we will not include this feature. 4 - Each of this weapons has its own advantages and disadvantages, with time you will understand how to deal with each one of them, for example, you will notice that its slightly easier to turn the iron sights of an AKM than an AKM-GP25 (weight simulation), you will notice that the AKM-PBS1 has its range of fire dramatically decreased to simulate real life standards. A good choice for CQB would be the AKM-S since its fast, light and has a good rate of fire, however don't use it for large distance firefights since the recoil is a lot higher than its future variants ie: AK-74. The AK-103 for example would be a good choice to use for a large caliber controlled distance fire due to its modern standards, or the AK-74M (with a smaller caliber) since its the modern version of the first AK-74 therefore its recoil is decreased. For night missions you would probably like to equip your team with VAL weapons, however if you aim to go mainely CQB (at night) than the AKM-S PBS1 is definitely the weapon you will want to equip yourself with, covered by a VSS sniper of course. Each of the weapon's family has its own recoils, again to simulate the real standards and to allow them not only to look/fire differentely but also to feel differentely when handled by the Human player. Just some examples, I'm sure you will find a lot more as you play with our addon. 5 - All weapons have 5 Distance Lods plus View Pilot, Geometry, Memory and Shadow Lod, the decrease of polys between lods is more or less of 50% per lod, 95% of our weapons use only one texture which means that in terms of gameplay/playability they should be as good as the original BIS weapons, therefore not compromising your FPS and general gameplay, this was one of our main targets on Vr2 and will always be a standard in our RHS creations since we feel it's our responsability towards you to not compromise your ARMA game. 6 - We are not releasing any missions in this release, instead we have a RHS Mission Makers team on our plans, so we can while updating our work (usually 1 Version per month) offer you guys new missions to play from time to time. 7 - By request from the community we release this version 2 without custom soldiers/vehicles models, Version 3 will of course feature not only custom models for the weapons but for all the soldiers and vehicles as well, we are already working on it. 8 - We tried to use all modern features brought to us by the new O2, so we've added for example .rvmat files to all this weapons, as we learn more from our nice new tool we will keep updating them and modernizing them as much as possible, nevertheless you will notice some good 80% change on the old weapons that went from textures, to models to probably everythig we could think of. 9 - We tested our work countless hours however, due to the amount of things we are releasing, it's possible that some bugs may have slipped, we count on you to help us detecting them so we can in the future versions fix them, you are our forward RHS beta tester, you can contact us in the BIS Forum with a Private Message or on our Forum Thread, ty, all help is welcome.

I tried it, and I like it Törni, the Lods are ok, not perfect but ok, the textures need to be merged, specially now that you normalized them. Damage needs to be worked a little bit more, but... despite this small things I say you did a great job again, congrats and ty for your work

me too

We took care of it for you Cam, don't worry my friend

There's no need to change the boots textures, the way BIS mapped the boots makes it almost impossible to make it better. When we release our custom models you will have fresh new boots as well as many other things  But that's for Version 3, now we talk about Vr2: Vr2 is close to the release, beta stage is already advanced, so far we did't spot many bugs which is a good sign (altough something always slips, which are the ones you guys will find for us, so you'll be our beta testers later hehe ). Still, if we have the same bugs we did on Vr 1 (1 bug) than it means we did a good job. I think you guys will like this Version, specially if you liked the one before, lots of things have been added and changed for better. There's some surprises that haven't been mentioned, like for example some weapons that haven't been shown or talked about. Perssonaly I'm very happy with our work and I think this time we defenetly are making the difference for the East Side with lots of quality. We tried to involve as many people as possible 2 heads think better than 1, 10 or more heads are a force to be reckoned and I think this is a good time to talk about all of the people involved (Steve use this for the read me please   ). I did of course forgot someone that I hope to remenber on time  As I said above a force to be reckoned, that travels around the world in places like: (by no special order) Germany, Portugal, Denmark, Japan, South Africa, Russia, US, Netherleands, Polland, Belgium, Hungary, Slovakia, Australia, Finland, Canada and Sweden. Version 3 will have a lot more I hope. Sometimes when I talk to this guys I think to myself how can there be wars in this world? We have all sorts of cultures, languages, religions, politics, ages... and we all go along very well, we did specially managed to make something together and that makes me very happy. ty my friends Â

Something from our amazing photographer , Mr. Andrei from Russia (NSX)

I'm getting the same errors with my weapons even with the models worked in the new O2, so... unless someone from BIS explains us why it happens we won't be able to fix it.

Thanks Robert but Bionic is making us a fresh new one More or less, we still have some things to finish and to talk about but... can't say exactly how much time but should be close

Use the old O2 instead and your fine, just don't save the HIND with the new O2 or the old version won't open it no more, turn your msn on if you need help

Ok i'll check it I promise Now some SV-98 pictures would be nice please

Yes I know that's exactly what I don't wanna do, I like to have my own ammo Also I don't want our work to depend on other people's work, I don't wanna release a 400 mbytes modification and than wright "You need to download this to play with our work". Maybe implementing them directly in our config, but i don't know if sickboy allows that and also I don't know if everybody on the team agrees on changing the tracers so... . The best option is probably to release a second version of the 5 mbytes file, and join 6th tracers file with our pbo files, but than I don't know if missions will work from one version to the other because they would have different ammo... . It's not that easy trust me, the problem is not implementing them, the problem is what I will loose because of the tracers, I promise I will study the situation. Thanks mate that's a start That's my opinion too, let's wait for more

Tracers: Many people asked us to implement 6th tracers and than many actually like the ones we use... . Personally I like our tracers... But I can implement 6th tracers it's just a question of studying how they did it, than ask for permission and than test them to see if there is any difference in FPS. There is a second option, tpM will release a new version of our RHS_Mags on the day of the release, Tracers and Sounds are inside the same (5 mbytes) file so.. I'll ask him to implement those tracers in his version and at least you guys have an option, but I gotta talk to Steve and sickboy first to see their opinion. Also, yes I confirm Russian tracers are green, some people have pmed me about it, so ours will be green to. Soldier Models: This is something we are talking about now, wait and make new models which will take a long time or release Vr2 and save the GRU for Vr3 ? A request to all of you: Bionic is starting the SV-98 at this moment and he needs pictures of the weapon, all sorts of pictures are welcome. So can you guys please spam our thread with pictures or links of the SV-98 so Bionic can surprise us again with his amazing work? ty people

Unlike NonWonderDog I am not using BIS ammo and I didn't check 6th tracers carefully but I'm supposing it's ment to work with BIS ammo? So it should be easy to implement to people using BIS ammo which is not my case. Nevertheless, the most important thing, I like my tracers, changing color is one thing adding a new model for the tracers is another I've been using this tracers since my Racs and I'm happy with them

I remember you asking about it, I gotta check that with the advisors and I always forget, can anyone confirm this please? That's more complicated since we use custom ammo, I'll see what I can do but no promises here. I know what you mean about the cobra, but I think the reticle in this case is static unlike the aimpoint but I'll check it again with the advisors. That's something that we have planned but we still don't know if it's for Vr2 because if it is than it would delay the release a long time so... we have it planned and we are deciding when, now or in Vr3? ty Maddmatt