spamurai

I don't think this feels very much like an upgrade at all. My strong initial impression is that it makes Arma look dated. The world object textures all look flat, with a strong wallpaper effect. There is no "texture" to them. It looks like someone has simply wallpapered a picture of the object onto a flat surface... like older games would do that lacked proper rendering shaders for height and bump mapping (ie: Operation Flashpoint). This is especially pronounced in towns with dilapidated buildings, burned cars and otherwise old, neglected looking things. There are no shadows on objects, like under a concrete bridge until you approach them... it looks janky and out of place because there is no depth to the world. The contrast is way oversaturated on things, making artwork look fake and really accentuates that "dated" look to everything. I wish I had more pictures of the older visuals to compare with because the ones in 1.60 make me suspicious of how awkward Arma III looks now. I used to marvel at how good ArmA looks and how well it holds up, but now I'm wondering if it has always looked this bad and I just hadn't noticed until now. I think it's because the new visuals draw too much attention to the details that would go unnoticed and now I can't stop looking at them. Sad Schpam is Sad. You make me mournful of how old ArmA looks now :(

I am suspicious of your result as you effectively seeing what amounts to no gain at all. Please don't interpret this the wrong way, But you did link the cards together with the SLI cable and then enabled SLI in the Nvidia control panel? I only ask because your benchmark appears as though only 1 card is actually doing the work. You should see an improvement with SLI. My SLI GTX670 was a marked improvement over a single GTX670

If you are going to do "futuristic" then do it. I don't care if you have laser guns and mecha-walkers, you can do science-fiction without giving up on a realistic premise. I would be interested in that. However, it doesn't fool me when you dress-up a CH-47 helicopter with a "stealthy" geometry for the hull and call it a CH-67. It feels uncreative and kinda lazy. That said, you have a very "future soldier" aesthetic to one faction (CSAT), one conventionally modern (NATO) and then even cold war (AAF). This mixing of themes also doesn't help with the overall integrity of the atmosphere.

Honestly, I can't say I'm a fan. The theme feels like it's trying too hard to give you the impression of being set in the future, but not far enough to actually be in the future. What really does it for me is that the major factions lack character. They are composed of a menagerie of pieces pulled together without a common thread between them, except that they are closely related to elements from today. Like someone went through JANES book of Future Vehicles and just picked out the cool looking ones... especially ones with "Stealthy" aesthetics. I don't want to be overly critical of the art direction. The art itself is all very well done, the best yet for ArmA. It's just the composition and theme is generic and rather awkward. I don't feel like the immersive factor has naturally evolved from the time frame of ArmA II into a believable extension of that period. There really isn't anything "cool"... like not a single vehicle that I am fond of and pick as a personal favorite like I could in ArmA I and ArmA II.

BIS should just simplify the control scheme and let the Player drive the vehicle themselves from any crew position (as long as the vehicle has an AI driver). Do away with the clunky, unreliable and just outright annoying "remote command" type of control that generates more headache than it's worth. Who doesn't already seat-swap constantly anyways because you can't rely on the AI to do the right thing?

If we're getting a Sniper and a Helicopter DLC pack.... are we going to eventually see a Armor DLC pack?

Agreed. The system just flips a switch and deactivates the doll which collapses into a contorted pile of limbs. Feet glued to the ground, the doll often falls in the same predictable pattern. http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/1024x768q90/538/7e0ed9.jpg (187 kB) http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/1024x768q90/538/e1d827.jpg (227 kB) I might suggest generating a small amount of impulse to push the model to get the ragdoll motion started. Better still would be to blend a few frames of traditional animation to setup the doll before releasing it to the physics system.

They need to visualize the amount of accumulated fatigue like they do in VR Training. Such as a HUD element that ranges from 0% to -%100 to indicate how impaired you are. If you make things ambiguous thinking it's more immersive... but the player can't figure it out, they'll start filling in the blanks of what they don't understand with assumptions... and more often than not they'll assume the worst, or take the more negative view of what they think is going on.

The VR Training and Arsenal reinforces how unsatisfying the ragdoll animations are. Characters frequently ragdoll into an unnaturally contorted pile of limbs. The pattern the ragdoll takes is often predictable regardless of how the doll was shot. It's always as if someone glues their feet to the ground and then flips a switch that turns them off so they just go limp, and collapse into a pile. If you'll excuse the pun, it really deflates the impact of killing other characters.

It has nothing to do with the debate surrounding the social/political implications of female soldiers. Or it shouldn't, despite what certain opposition to the proposal keep dwelling on. It's much more practical then that. It takes time, effort and most importantly money to create the extra assets needed to add a female avatar. Since the asset isn't needed for any of the BIS generated content of ArmA... it isn't likely to generate any increased revenue. However, if it did exist, it wouldn't mean that it would have to be included in any of the story driven campaigns or user created scenario's. It would mean that modders would finally have what they need to create new content that involved a female avatar. Which the community has been asking for... since the very beginning. For arguments sake, if BIS wanted to create a complete female alternate avatar for the game that was fully interchangeable with the current male options, They would need, - A new avatar model - A duplicate set of motion capture animations to rig the model. Proportioned to the new female scale - A new voice pattern and vocabulary library. - A duplicate set of accessory props to fit the new female scale (vests, uniforms, plate carriers, packs ect). - A set of new game functions so the code can differentiate between the models when and where needed (?) There is only 1 male reference model in ArmA and everything is constructed to fit his dimensions. Creating a female model would involve duplicating everything and refitting it to match differences between the two genders. The community has asked for this for a long time, but it involves the expenditure of resources that, so far, Bohemia apparently can't justify as the return on the investment of manpower and money isn't likely to generate revenue. Which is sad... because ArmA survives and thrives on the generated content of it's users more then anything else and it seems very shortsighted to intentionally handicap potential possibilities for new content based on a needlessly restrictive convention for what ArmA "should be" or "should not be".

With all due respect.... I think ArmA could do planetside better, than planetside does planetside. With the exception of the MMO aspect of course.

The key here for me is that if we have a "Mod" made by a community member which significantly attracts public traffic into playing ArmA 3, then it would make sense if that modder profits a little bit by that mod. If people are buying ArmA 3 just to play this specific mod, then BIS is benefiting from it financially and therefore, so should the modder. However, let's be honest here... there are no mods currently associated with "ArmA" that attract a noteworthy amount of attention from gamers. Even our most well know mods within the community like ACE Mod, do not have the gravity to significantly influence people into playing more ArmA in a meaningful way. For example; There are many existing ArmA players who consider ACE mod to be synonymous with ArmA, but this does not impact sales of ArmA 3. An example of a mod that did have a significant impact on not only the total sales of ArmA, but the volume of positive attention brought to ArmA, was Dean Hall's DayZ. For years prior to 2012, I could not motivate people to buy and try ArmA, for any reason. No screenshot, no youtube clip, not my droning on about of how awesome it is or my desperate begging to come play it. Nothing. Then in 2012, everyone I know is suddenly banging down my door asking me "What is ArmA?", "What is this DayZ and how do I get it working?". More people are buying ArmA 2 in 2012, then at any point since it's release. Suddenly this 2 year old game is #1 on the Steam Chart and everywhere you look, people and media are talking about the game. It's hard to find good examples of ArmA-play on Youtube.... but there are no shortage of Day-Z "Let's Play" videos now. However, now that we've shipped off Dean Hall to make Day-Z a separate game, so goes all that attention. I mention that ArmA 3 is released and everyone asks "will it have Day-Z?". When I tell them no, they go back to being indifferent towards ArmA and ask "When is Day-Z going to be available?" This sort of phenomenom is not exclusive to ArmA. It happens in many games, where a mod becomes a better selling point then the parent game it's based on. Half Life had Counterstrike, Battlefield 1942 had Desert Combat and so on; and so forth. We need another "DayZ" to replace the hole left by Dean Hall's departure.

You know... there is some logic to this statement. Since ArmA appears to be increasingly dependent on it's modding community to actually furnish content that provides a reason to play the game at all. Especially now, more then ever with ArmA 3. Giving incentives to possibly attract triple-A modders into coming to ArmA and building badly needed attractions to play ArmA seems smart in this case. However... Look at what you are essentially saying... Buy ArmA for 60$ and then you buy additional content to make ArmA worthwhile? Honestly, ArmA 3 is way too expensive to be attractive to anyone who isn't hardcore into ArmA as is... and most of us already bought the game when it was Alpha-cheap... so who do you think is going to be motivated to try ArmA at a full industry (cliche) price of $60? And then pay more money on top for End-User addon's? You would be killing the accessibility of ArmA to potential gamers. Now if you want to talk about cutting ArmA's price tag down severely to like $30 and then you pay $5 for the mod you want to play... maybe then it would be come workable. Even then it still isn't palatable. This idea isn't headed in the right direction for ArmA in general.

So let me get this straight... ArmA 3 is now a $60 game, with no Singleplayer campaign, very little content at all out side of some sample missions in fact, including MP... and now BIS suggests making it into a platform for others to sell me stuff? I thought I was a "Supporter" of a Triple-A MilSim game... not an Indy-Dev Kit for hobby game designers.

Gamespy is defunct. It was my understanding that the "powered by GameSpy" browser was to be replaced with a new one. Possibly a Steam enabled one, with improvements and new features. But... that may have changed by now.

Exactly Zukov, exactly. With this being the most content starved release of ArmA yet, if anything, ArmA 3 could sure have used a "DayZ" of it's own to kick it off with a healthy boost of momentum while we wait for BIS to build up it's native content offering. ArmA has never looked any better, never been more accessible, never had such a smooth release... ... the only thing it is missing... is a reason to play it.

This thread is rather depressing. If you really think that DayZ was a bad thing to happen to ArmA, that it was nothing more then a cash cow that brought nothing but the wrong things and people with the wrong mindset to ArmA... then you are a fossil. It is ultimately you who have the wrong mindset, not the 1.8 million people who gave ArmA some badly needed mainstream attention. What better staging could Bohemia have stumble into then to have so many eyes on ArmA with the launch of ArmA 3 on the horizon? None. DayZ brought attention to ArmA. Brought people to ArmA. Not people "with the wrong mindset". People. <end-stop> Period. People who did not give ArmA even a glancing look in any of the previous years of ArmA's history and would have passed by ArmA 3 without even noticing it's arrival. Suddenly everyone was talking about ArmA and that is something far more important then arguing over petty things like "grenade damage" or "animation speed" or "no 3D vehicle interiors". Under DayZ's "zombie motif" is a strong ArmA pedigree. The mod is based on the core ArmA experience at heart. From it's core assets and code, to it's unflinching preponderance to virtual atmosphere not available in any present format. Dean Hall proved that ArmA can be an experience for everyone, not just the minority armchair virtual commando's, without having to be another "HALO" or "Call of Duty" or "Battlefield:Whatever". If you can't see how DayZ honors it's ArmA lineage, then dare I say it is you who truly doesn't get what ArmA is all about. DayZ simply uses the Zombie trope as a means of presenting ArmA in a format almost anyone could appreciate as interesting, and not the tiresome Modern Warfare theme. It's really sad to think that DayZ will launch as a stand alone product using ArmA 2.5 technology in the coming weeks or months, and when it does it will overshadow ArmA 3 in the attention it garners from all those people "with the wrong mindset". Meanwhile ArmA 3 will take it's usual place in the corner as that game that everyone has something nice to say about it, but no one actually plays it for one reason or another.

Each vehicle would need it's own set of animations for each of it's crew positions. The AI wouldn't be handed control of the character until the animation finished playing out. There would be no "navigation" pathing problems since each dismount animation is pre-rendered sequence of frames that simply transitions the character model onto the ground at the trigger spot for getting in/out of vehicle. The main issue is that it's a lot of work to build all the animations for every vehicle. And you might want 2 sets of at least the dismount animations, one set for dismounting normally, and another for bailing/ejecting out of a damaged vehicle.

Collapsed buildings have a different effect. They appear to fit in with the scene better, even if it's just 1 building in a cluster of otherwise healthy buildings. Several buildings in a ghost town create their own local atmosphere that looks more natural. I think it's because that, while many of the buildings are the same model, they don't look haphazardly copied and pasted into place. It's not unusual to have buildings appear to be the same pattern. We expect that as observers and we relate to it from our experiences in the real world. It doesn't give an impression that leads to atmosphere breaking questions. Decor models like the burnt out car are a more specific, recognizable object when compared to a building. A burnt out car makes a statement in the scene, attracts your eye to focus on it much more readily than a building which are typically background details in a scene. It would be different if you encountered a burnt out car, abandoned in an overgrown yard of a collapsed/abandoned house... and then didn't encounter that car model for some time while moving about the island. When you encountered that car, it would look like it was normally expected to be there. However, the car model is so distinctive, that when you encounter it over and over again, you can't help but observe a repeating pattern that gives less of a natural, and more of an artificial purpose for it being there. If you encountered a burnt car in the middle of a town square, surrounded by unmolested scenery; the buildings are intact and colorful, the streets are clean, you can't help but silently ask Why is this car here? What happened to it?. Placing the car like that is supposed get a player to ask questions that help build up the atmosphere of the local scene by getting them to think about what's going on around them. However, if you then pass by the wreck and turn the corner only to encounter another oddly placed burnt out car that looks exactly the same, you then can't help asking more questions, but now the questions begin to dis-spell the atmosphere. Why is this car here? Why is it the exact same model of car as the previous one? Why so many burnt out cars abandoned here? The scene begins to look unnatural. It's hard to be immersed in an unnatural scene. Suspension of disbelief is broken. The same goes all the set-piece decor objects. It's not just the copy-pasted burnt out car model, but the shiny and colorful piles of plastic garbage bags too. Some times those start turning up in easily recognizable patterns. They lack variety and look repetitive. There are area's of the map with fields of these strange little piles of bright blue recycling bags scattered every where.... eerily placed as if some unseen entity out there has a plan for them... like it was recycling day on the island, and then "the event" happened and everyone vanished without a trace, except for their little piles of shiny trash bags and burnt out Korean Sport hatchbacks every where.... is this ArmA? or are we in the Twilight Zone. I have nothing against the burnt out car model. It's just too "unique" of a model to be used as repetitively as it has. Makes the world look artificial, as if the world designer just copy-pasted it all over the island to fill in the gaps with detail. Did the Altian population have a massive revolt against a specific Asian Imported car manufacturer? Is that what started this war?

I would love to see better damage/destruction to environmental objects (buildings, walls ect). Thromps idea is an awesome example, but I think it's a bit of overkill. We could get away with something simpler and still achieve a much more immersive and improved effect in game over how the ArmA engine currently handles destroyed objects. Thromps idea looks like it uses a form of dynamic mesh deformation to slowly chip away and break up objects? As is mentioned, this would appear to be expensive on a large scale, like destroying an urban environment. Not really practical on such a scale, but very cool. I know everyone who plays ArmA also loves playing Battlefield 3 too! ;) Ok, maybe not... but one has to admit that the Frostbite engine that handles the visuals in a Battlefield game is impressive for what it achieves at that scale. I think it has a novel solution it uses in it's Destruction 2.0/3.whatever engine that handles damage/destruction of world objects. The net effect gives the desired appearance we all seek, but not as dynamic as Thromps idea. Buildings are constructed with a core skeletal structure. For example, each level of a building has a solid floor and there might be a central core support like the stairwell joining them together. That's the building's skeleton. Then the outer walls of each floor are actually modular sections or "panels". In a modest rectangular sized house, you might have 6 panels for each floor. 4 "L" shaped panels at each major corner, with a flat panel connecting the long side corners of the rectangle together. Destruction of the building is handled through fancy slight of hand by the GFX engine. When a panel is struck by a weapon system of the right class, the panel is "exploded" and removed, leaving a gap in the section wrapping the buildings skeleton. Some creative use of the excellent particle effects engine makes the panel appear to break up and blow out into pieces. The adjacent panels change animation state to make it look like a round(ish) hole was left behind by the now missing panel. In this fashion, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 achieves a remarkable effect that feels very dynamic, with a building being blasted apart piece by piece, but it's not truly dynamic like in Thromps idea. It's just clever use of special effects as smoke and mirrors. However, the highlight of the system is the illusion of the actual destruction and collapse of the building event. When a preset condition is reached for damage to the building, the "death" animation of the building is triggered. The condition in BF:BC2 for buildings to collapse is that all panels on the main floor must be destroyed. When this condition is reached, all surviving panels remaining on the building are exploded and removed. Then a pre-rendered animation sequence is played which shows the buildings skeleton (floors/stairwell/roof) collapsing in on it self. The final frame of the animation is the resting static state of the building left behind in the world. Every building is eventually destroyed in the same sequence, but the quality of the pre-rendered animation (using simulated physics) always looks natural. It's amazing what impact it has on the atmosphere of gameplay in BF:BC2. When a building falls down in BC2, it's a "everyone stop what you are doing and watch this!" moment, and it's remarkable. When BF3 came out, the Destruction of buildings was muted from it's effect in BC2, it doesn't have the impact that it had in BC2 and that was a shame. Now, imagine a system similar to Destruction 2.0 in ArmA 3.

In ArmA 1, when you grouped members of your squad into colored fire-teams, those fire-teams were displayed in the old spacebar menu. This also held true for members of your squad who were presently crewing a vehicle. That vehicle was then treated as a fire team on it's own. So, when you pressed space bar your fire-teams and vehicles were selectable as a hot group from the first layer of the UI. Select RED Team Select GREEN Team Select BLUE team BMP-2 (Ivan) BRDM-ATG (Viktor) It was quick to press spacebar and scroll to the group you wanted and issue the instruction to the group. In ARMA 2 we introduce the context sensitive "Quick-command" menu system which replaced the old spacebar menu and lost the hot groups. Now you have to find your colored fire teams by navigating the scroll menu and vehicles are omitted altogether. The fire teams are buried under at least 3 layers of the UI which completely defeats the purpose of organization and "quick" command shortcuts. You have to open the menu with a hotkey, then scroll down and choose "TEAMS" then scroll down past "Assign Team" and choose "TEAMS" again, then scroll and pick your colored Fire-Team and then issue an actual command. How counter-intuitive compared to the old system. It takes at least 4 clicks to get to your fire team now and then possible 2 more key presses to actually issue the desired command to the AI. Old Spacebar system - 2-3 Clicks New "Quick-Command" system - 4-7 clicks.

Rag dolls are missing something. Not fully sure what it is, but the end result feels like it needs a little more "salt" added into it. The rag doll effect makes characters look like marionettes that have had their strings clipped mid dance. The bodies simply collapse into little wooden piles; limbs contorted in awkward poses. They need at least a little bit of animation to transition from being "alive" into "dead" before the model is released to rag doll. Or a little bit of physX needs to be applied to connect the event that killed the character with it turning into a rag doll. IE: An impulse of physX applies a bit of force to push the doll as if a bullet hit it first (instead of just collapsing into a heap with the gun popping off the model).

I'd like to bump this rather than make a new thread of my own. How do you activate this template? What steps are needed to get it working as intended?

Is it possible... that some sort of script is/was used to populate the island with wrecks, and it's gotten out of hand?

People are forgetting that the map is a sandbox. If you dress it up too much with a specific theme in mind, you make it harder to use the island in any other context than ArmA's main story campaign. Accent details should be applied by the Mission Designer to create atmosphere in just the right amounts needed for his or her specific purpose. So there shouldn't be so many specifically themed ambient details pre-placed on the map (IMO). Also, surely the extra details like the burnt car wrecks increase the graphical load on a clients system by default. having fewer of these ambient objects keeps the island's various area's lighter and easy to render. Details can be added by a mission designer later if more atmospheric flavor is needed. "Altis" is merely a stage for players to tell their own stories on. You don't want to spend all your budget on stage props if it hinders the actors ability to perform because they get low FPS trying to draw the stage and all of it's passive props into existence. But the main issue is the dressing the sandbox for a specific atmosphere instead of keeping the environment flexible for more then one context. It's like having Charnarus covered in pre-placed garage piles, wrecks and general debris for DayZ... but then having to play the regular ArmA 2 campaign with the post-apocalyptic dressing every where.