Sniperwolf572

Looks like you will be able to join servers only as a commander from the tablet. Due to this I expect it to be different from BF2's commander. If you're the commander, there's no running around and shooting, you're locked to the commander interface for the round or you give up the slot. Also considering tablets can't play until they're voted the commander, the commander choice will probably be made at some point before the round itself starts.

Feel free to copy and adjust the last years version. :D

It's not in modules as far as I could tell. You can find them in the functions viewer, I believe under ORBAT. There are 4 related functions and calling one of them that's called "init" seems to do nothing. "Show" or something like that needs a set of parameters, running it without params crashed my game.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand Echo lead is voiced by Coopers voice actor in the showcase they're playing. I wonder if he's going to be in Arma 4 aswell. ;)

It's actually pretty "simple", currently the head is a proxy if I remember correctly, we just need a slot that's able to change the head proxy itself. As with glasses, you could select it in your profile and it would be equipped by default at the start of the mission and you could take it off. Config defined face wear would override your profile choice. Balaclavas and similar head items could be modeled as new heads that could inherit the "personality" texture of your profile face, so you could have one balaclava model that would still represent your face behind such facewear. Having nothing in the slot would default to your default head model. Something in line how the uniforms work now and would avoid clipping issues with different head models. The only issue here is that some heads are shaped differently so the headwear that shows a large part of a face could potentially end up looking slightly odd, for example your default face has a model that represents a guy with a thick nose and the guy who modeled the balaclava that shows the nose too has modeled it in a way that the face has a thin nose, it would incur a bit of a visual oddity when you put on the balaclava and the nose suddenly becomes thin and the texture gets mapped a bit different, but I believe the trade-off would be acceptable.

Because the shouldered "aim down sights" animation is always in effect in Arma, at no point are you tucking your weapon under your armpit or having it at hip level.

Just because something is clear to you, doesn't mean it makes sense or is seen by everyone else the same way as you do. Plenty of issues around the world today revolve around that outside the tech world. Which brings us to following: I don't think anyone goes "Oh, I've made a Steam account, I'll buy all my games there now". I certainly didn't. A2 was sat as the only game in my Steam library for quite a long time until I got the "trust" you mention for the method. For many people, A3 is going to be that first step. If they try it out and it turns out shit for them, fair enough, if they like it, good for them. The key part is try, it costs you nothing if you try it with a F2P game like TF2 and to get full features you can get something that costs less than a beer. The problem here is that many people on the forums here have got the impression that Steam eats children due to the shitty things said about it by a few. Those people in turn take that as "that's how it really is" and then spread the same thing around without checking and where we ended up with people saying "Well, now that I tried Steam, it isn't horrible as my opinion was" recently. I'll give you that, yes if something horrible happens, I could lose all my games if nobody does anything to untie them from Steam. But that if and might is pretty slim compared to the convenience provided. It's like not flying in planes because if the pilot fucks up or something breaks you could die. Statistically it's very unlikely you'll die in a plane crash and statistically not many people have had games taken away by Steam. I also don't see myself getting banned as I don't plan to do anything that might earn me one. It's a paranoid line of thinking. Either way, the above is your personal opinion, and I'm fine with it, I've no intentions on trying to change it. But I will argue the uninformed facts that masquerade around here as absolute truths.

You are trying to paint a wrong picture here. The go-to argument is "they're reducing the options where we can get the game from". That also assumes something horrible, you take that the product will be developed for granted and that the only thing anyone cares for is the distribution method. The development process is irrelevant, the part where you enjoy the game for 4-5 years is irrelevant in that argument the only thing that's relevant is "Where will I get my game from" as if the game appeared on the store shelf magically and after you've bought it you never touch it again. And really, yes, it's a bad comparison. You can compare PC's to consoles as platforms, and you can compare Steam to Xbox Marketplace or GameStop. I tried to illustrate that with my last list, but it apparently didn't come across. Can Steam gimp your game if you change your GPU? Nope. Can Microsoft block you from the entire Live service if you mod your console? They sure as hell can. It's a store, not a platform. If SteamBox ever becomes a reality, you can then compare THAT to consoles. How are consoles contained? Saying that console disc distribution is closed is saying that you can only get a game for your console from GameStop. You can get games them from any outlet and are in large cases handled by regional publishers, that's why (regional) publishers exist, to handle publishing to stores. that's where they earn their money. It's obviously not closed, otherwise the publishers would be extinct. Only thing so far for "closed" that we've seen is Microsoft wanting to introduce licensing into the entire deal so it's more like Steams per-license approach. Just because Steam is the distributor of choice at this moment for BI it doesn't mean if Steam GOES DOWN RIGHT NOW everything is lost and you'll never play Arma 3 again. Those are worst case scenarios which have plans of action on how to handle them. If you want to fear for something, it would be much more likely that all of servers that host BI's source code get set on fire at the exact same time, than it is that all of Steam CDNs stop working suddenly. Until that point, I suggest enjoying the game, it's what matters.

Folks didn't have a problem with "everything" before and it still would be a non issue in case Steam wasn't involved this time around. You have to see that the convenience that was the deciding factor here isn't for you or me, it's for BI. The added convenience (or inconvenience, depending on your Steam opinion) just comes along with their decision to use Steam to solve their own problems. You can also reminisce about having 15 floppy disks to install a game back in the day, but it doesn't change the fact that it was inconvenient and now archaic that you have discs (which I haven't used in ages) and USB drives. If I want to back up any of my games, originated from a DVD or Steam, we've come to a point where I can literally plop them on my phones Micro SD card or keychain. There's also the fact that N64 popularity was a sliver of PSOne's due to stubborn choice to use the outdated media for the console. Equating Steam to consoles is a bad argument. - Steam doesn't charge for or controls the patches - It doesn't restrict mods - It doesn't make every PC equal in specs - It doesn't strip any potential from any game due to fixed specs - It doesn't charge for multiplayer - It doesn't force a controller on you - It doesn't make shitty games good or good games shitty - You don't have to go through PITA certification for your game - You aren't forced to have a physical media to play a game - The disc on consoles is not backup capable (unless you own a modded version of the console) while you can backup the data downloaded from Steam anywhere you want. - It's in no way even similar to console environment from my point of view. For that matter, if you look at consoles, they're trying to implement a flawed version of Steams license driven approach to games. So, what's so console-ish about Steam? Please don't say, optional achievements, optional friends, optional notifications of new releases, optional big picture mode.

What I meant was Steam specific BI handling, the rest of it probably couldn't have be done any better. It's not a case of "If BI did things better, we wouldn't be forced to use Steam" which I'm assuming you mean by "in which case things may have been different". You can't have 10 different publishers for 10 different regions with 10 different requirements and expect for everything to go smoothly. Hence Steam, 1 "authoritative" delivery method, DRM and then the region specific publishers can take a snapshot and release the game with whatever kinda packaging and bow they want on the box. What I'm saying is that Steam specific handling of the title when OA was released wasn't exactly stellar. BI went headfirst with the attitude that to have complete Combined Ops experience, you'd just install OA into your A2 directory and everything was fine, which is great. They seemed forgot about Steam and that you can't combine them as such so there were various workarounds until a few weeks later they made it work without having to do crazy command-line-fu. The only really bad thing they really did in general is inventing a new name for every single package you could get the game as (Combined Ops, Reinforcements, Complete Collection, Anniversary Edition), which resulted in a ton of people being confused. Don't expect them to decouple it from Steam unless armageddon happens, as we've seen on the Beta stream, some integration with Steam specific features is going to happen so making another version without those features would just mean going back to the old clusterfuck.

Then you might be the best person to ask this. :D Edit: Nevermind.

My A2 and OA have been from Steam due to the fact that it was nowhere to be found here at the release, so I'll explain that a bit. I'm assuming the delays were due to the multiple publishers and multiple copy protection methods used, which is one of the core reasons they opted for a single distribution method. Other issues besides that were generally due to BI's own mishandling of the release itself (A2/OA/CO combining) and there were a few cases of Arma 2 being redownloaded completely because of at-the-time Steams retarded method of patching which was replaced ages ago by delta-patching. You'll also read on these forums that you couldn't use addons, there were problems with them, but that was never the case, they were always working perfectly. At some point BI removed the copy protection from all releases so technically all versions ended up the same and if you opted out of Steam patches for the game, you could use the full patches that everyone else got.

No I don't. I doubt they will do that since Steam versions of A2 and TKOH are not built with Steam as a primary distribution platform. It would only add more complexity/headaches for the devs that maintain those products, which at this point, probably isn't more than a few people, making the release channels even more messy than they are right now. Additionally they'd still have all other versions to deal with anyway so there would be no real benefit.

Why is it a different story? Dev branch could stay and receive unstable updates, serve just the same as the current beta patches for A2 do, except they could be much more efficient than with the current A2 beta patches. Stable patches could also probably be more common than they are with A2 due to fricion-less delivery method that can be hotfixed in seconds without fear of having: Update 1 - v1.01 Update 1 hotfix - v1.01a Update 1 hotfix 2 - v1.01b

Subscription based MMOs already exist. Actually, we get updates to A3 5 times a week. But you're forgetting that it's not only (ignorable) convenience for us, it's also (pretty important) convenience for BI. Difference between A2-style development patches and A3-style development patches is that BI doesn't have to restrict themselves in any way what they deliver to us. A2 beta patches work because they're tiny and only ever contain code fixes without data. A3 dev patches contain whatever BI wants them to contain because size is irrelevant this time around, because they don't have to deal with it. Yes, digital distribution is hard. What you're saying above is the same as saying "Fuck, I can make a copy of Google myself, i just need to put an input on the webpage and then it will simply crawl the web". It doesn't even have to be digital distribution, look at the things like every single Blizzard title launch, Reddit that gets pounded to bits and tons of other products that get bogged down due to underestimated demand. Shall I mention Sprocket situation again which worked fine with trickles of people buying BI titles over the years, but then A3 comes along, where they "only" had to take your money via a 3rd party payment provider and give you a line of text in return? Solving the load balancing problem effectively to the point where it works requires money and a lot capable workforce. Which is what Valve has and BI in no way has. I mean no disrespect here, but five guys with a small budget aren't going to do it. I'm sure BI would rather make games and sell them via other developed and proven distribution methods like Steam instead of throwing all their money on Sprocket and hoping they will one day be able to compete with Steam. Would you rather we get awesome Arma 3 / Arma 4 than Sprocket 2? You're thinking the other way around. They have billions of dollars because they give developers a fair solution to their problems with a great product. Ignore Steam as a client software here for a second. If I'm making a game out of my basement, my concerns are exposure, marketing and delivery. I'd gladly give Valve a cut of my sales if that means they'll solve those problems for me, and I'm sure that's one of the many reasons BI chose them. So you don't have a problem of forking over cash, you have a problem with who you'll give it to. I get that. But your money is not important. Literally. Anyone would trade your money for more money. It's money, it's how it works. Fortunately, I don't see Valve doing it. Why? Businesses are better customers than we as individuals are. Always will be. Valve will rather offer you a free service if it means they can say to BI or anyone else: "Look at all the possible customers for your product we have!" and that's what other publishers say as well. Except that other publishers will tack on other requirements and whatnot, Valve does not seem to give a damn if they get "Epic lazor gun DLC exclusively on Steam" or if you as a developer use any copy protection at all. And anyway, let's remind ourselves of a tiny little predicament BI was in that the entire community was concerned about, let's say 8-9 years ago, when BI had no publisher and it looked kinda bleak that we'll see Arma at all due to that. How about Morphicon and the most shitty build of Arma 2? And I'm sure there was StarForce involved at some point.

No fixed wing or tracked tanks in the Beta.

Yes it is if the eggs are Arma and the basket is Steam, the developers are hens, BI is the farmer, foxes are pirates, households are customers and the roads are the internet: - You don't have to worry about developing and maintaining 5 different eggs with 5 different egg-shells to various baskets because of different anti-fox measures required by the basket providers - You don't have to make sure each basket has your best egg, there's one basket, you work on having the best egg in it - You don't have to be forced by 10 other basket providers to put different colored eggs in their baskets to draw attention to the egg in their basket - The hens don't have to worry about baskets, it's all the same basket, the basket and the basket-manager will deal with it, hens do what hens are best at and develop good eggs - Hens can concentrate on making eggs good instead of making eggs of different colors and different egg shells - The basket has such features as extra padding, fox deterrent, etc. which eclipse other baskets - The basket provider will deal with transport of the eggs, making sure you have enough of them to satisfy the demand (Sprocket-basket, while it was merely selling coupons for the eggs that will be delivered by the Steam-basket failed here, remember?) The downside as you say is: - Some households like other baskets and hate the basket the farmer chose for various reasons, some valid, some silly and some because they don't know any better and will believe anything anyone says about the basket without trying it themselves - Some households don't have developed roadways where basket delivery trucks can reach them at full speed - Some households have NO roadways - Some households live across a drawbridge which means sometimes, when the drawbridge breaks, they can't get the eggs and will have to eat something else in case they didn't store enough eggs to eat while the bridge is being fixed In the end, software is not an egg, if the basket fails the egg will be fine and the farmer and the basket provider has a good reputation so the household doesn't have to worry that it will be labeled as fox. Farmer always has the master-template for the egg and can do with it what he wishes.

What's your build number? Addons? I can't reproduce it even with ARCO.

It's no longer there in todays dev build. So yeah ... matter of time. :D

Because it's not a preorder. You're buying the application, you can store it in your inventory as like any other Steam game and give/trade whenever. Only if BI changes the application itself, which they stated they won't do, can it cause a problem.

Yep, in the 12 years of development we've seen no changes from OFP to Arma 3, we're stuck with 2001 style graphics, animations, controls, physics, vehicle handling, underwater combat, modding capabilities. It's exactly the same as Madden, it's just the same game with different armies and even every single mission is the same to the letter. Every year we pay $50 for this and every year they pile up another 50$ worth of DLC's. Why do you keep buying it anyway? It sucks dude, vote with your wallet and buy the better product that does all the same things even better for less money. Oh wait...

If I remember correctly, this is caused by not saving the file with a proper suffix according to these types. Try naming the file something like "my_texture_CO".

If your image is over 100kB, it's automatically converted to a link. If it's wider than 601px, it displays, but with a width restriction of 600px. Let's test: A post can have maximum of 10 images. Smileys count as images aswell. Not that I'm aware of. No, all files need to be hosted elsewhere.

It's pretty safe to say it doesn't. If it did, you'd be losing enormous amounts of vertical peripheral vision as additional side monitors only add to your horizontal peripheral vision. Now, if you had like 9 monitors in 3x3 configuration that would be a different thing. :)