ThePredator

If you have any difficulties, let me know, I can help you with a patch-like sound-replacement cfg and all sorts of required actions. But you have to ask, don't want to run after you, since I already said you can use my cfg for your mod.

Update 0035 hours GMT+1: Please re-download the RC1, if you got the old file. Fixed a typo causing the missing M16 burst. Since 1.08 the M119 cannon fires with an audible sonic crack...maybe other cannons, too. Increasing the at-reload sound will increase the hearing distance of this sound. With my 5.1 system everything is fine, though.

Release Candidate 1 for 1.08 released ! I need feedback for the volumes of vehicles, they are not changed yet. If you could write down hearing distances (in meters) for the vehicles, I can edit the config until they are perfect. If you find bugs, errors or issues with 1.08 and ModWar, let me know. Suggestions are welcome too. D/L link on first page (as always)

Yes and WHEN IT'S DONE Don't know, maybe some weeks?

And as far as my scripting knowledge goes: We need to compare the rounds with the magazine capacity for all the weapons...A M249 has 200 rounds, the M240 100 rounds, the M4 30 and we have the 20 round magazine. I don't think the effort is worth the result. If you guys are afraid of missing tracers for small arms, it's simple put unrealistic to have tracers ALWAYS on. The majority does not fire tracers, so any other setup can be made mission specific. Update: A source told me, that they had tracers the last 3-5 rounds, because no one counts spent shots on the battlefield. Those were just for the warning, not for any visual aid purpose or marking.

Having rifle tracers, even 5 on top/end, is not suited for ArmA. There will be loads of scripts in further missions, add-ons and stuff, so every add-on, that modifies a part of the game not that necessary is drained performance. Even if the FPS count does not drop, the CPU still has to process the whole bunch. Without being able to move while reloading, the 5 tracers on top/end are a good indicator of a helpless soldier. It does not matter if you have 5 on top and 25 balls...The first 5 tracers after contact has been made are the most important ones. a) You know where the enemy is b) you know the next 5 tracers will be the last 5 rounds c) if there are more soldiers with this magazine setup the enemy can bump 'n' run after tracers are visible. The argument, ArmA has only US forces is not valid. We still have SLA, which is the other part of the game. And they only have one machinegunner, who usually fires tracer rounds. Big advantage over the US forces, because they don't use tracers as much as the Yankees. US Armed forces tend to show off their power, other armies are more unpredictable and don't use tracers. The FDF has some good reason: They can stay undetected while firing at the enemy. Even if you can spot the muzzleflash, it's too late to react. combat distance is less than 300 m, the bullet travels that distance in 0.shootme seconds... Tracers do burn out at 500 meters, so the 800 m tracer fire is impossible anyway with 5.56x45 mm weapons. Why use tracers on less than aforementioned distance, if the disadvantages outweight the pro's ? As a shooter, you don't see the tracer flying this distance, the impact will be at the same time as the muzzle flash dissapears. In the night time, you won't even see it due to blinding. A rifleman won't be able to see the tracers with ironsights, but without them, precise fire is impossible, every 5th round he has to realign the rifle to guess the correct hold off. After another 4 rounds, he can check again, if he shot in the right direction... A machinegunner can fire 3-5 round bursts with tracers every few rounds to realign the weapon without the need of ironsights. He will give away his position. A rifleman, on the other hand, can use the ironsights to fire precisely at the enemy. Which is somewhat the thought behind all that. Machineguns surpress, riflemen kill. No one would stick their head out, if tracers fly above. If the riflemen fire tracers, the enemy knows EXACLTY all positions. In the real world, tracers are not common for infantry men, they might carry them around, load a few on top/end of their magazine, but in the end, the current conflicts are not quite even. We have to go back to a real war, not a guerilla warfare conflict. World War 2... riflemen without tracers... airplanes with tracer mixtures, they had tracers the last few rounds, but dropped that, because the enemy knew the plane was out of ammo. With no apparent enemy, you can use tracers for your own men to see what you are shooting at. You don't expect a great force at the receiving end... In ArmA we have the SLA, not quite that well equipped, but a real threat to the BLUFOR. Tracers in rifles would be stupid, if you do not intent to mark enemy locations. Again, Murphy used to say: Tracers work both ways.

As andersson said: We want to change the game to match for all kind of addons and forces. US Army is not the reference army anyway. What about SLA and RACS? Firing tracers at day is unusual, firing tracers at night quite common. However, the script load should be reduced to a minimum, best way is to keep tracers on at daylight. Tracers are not used much in A-Stan and Iraq. Only at night they make sense. But they are not really necessary, since many soldiers do have IR lasers, which give some pretty advantage over the insurgents. Tracers work both ways. And even clandestine operators, like SEALs, use tracers in their machine guns at night. The reason is of psychological nature. They force the enemy to believe they are outnumbered and are facing a huge group of troops. Actually, there are only up to 12 of them, engaging with all their firepower to break contact. Their SOPs include the use of tracers, because no tracers at night are unusual for normal infantry platoons. But using tracers in rifles is only usefull for leaders... If the mission maker decides to use different options: he can simply add the required settings.

Well, the real world is different to regulations. Being allowed to have tracers and using tracers is a huge difference. Most combat videos you can watch will show you that tracers are not used that often. I opt for "no rifle tracers", because this is realistic and a good enough the reason, to disable them in this mod. We use tracers on heavy guns and machine guns, the M249 does use tracers IRL, so the battlefield will have alot of tracers already. Adding tracers for every rifle would ruin the authentic environment we created with realistic tracers. You will see tracers flying like crazy at all times, they loose their magic... A rifleman should shoot with iron sights, tracers would allow for hip shooting and this will lead to even more arcade-like gameplay. And as a weapons expert, I have to remind you of phosphor and the chemical reactions. A barrel shooting tracers will wear out quite fast, in the german army, we had MG3 barrels only used for tracer shootings. Cleaning such barrel is a biatch, too. So every infantryman will think twice to load tracers if he intends to fire accurately over his tour of duty. For squad/teamleader the situation is different, they use tracers for target marking. Either for their own soldiers or for close air support. Mission makers can change rifles to have tracers for such classes, but they should not be on by default, as I said earlier, this would ruin the whole "realism" attempt.

Don't judge the mod just by the (somewhat) staged video. There was a request for a video, Chammy made one, as many directors, he retouched some aspects, ArmA could not handle correctly. But the work in all the sounds is immense. I know what I am talking about. Chammy's sound mod would be perfect for non-plasying videos, because it's like watching combat footage on TV.

Ambience, that's what Chammy told me, Arma can not handle distant sounds like that.

He told me it's an ambience sound, this can't be ArmA, no muffled sounds = no ArmA. Would've been great if this was ArmA's sound engine, but it is just not state of the art...

It's not just the speed that varies, it's the flight path and wind drift. Burning substances are not predictable in a way, precision shooting requires. Tracers ar not used for pinpoint accuracy, more a rough direction marker.

Tracers do behave quite different to "normal" rounds, the US experiments with LEDs and capacitators. That way, the tracer does not change it's mass mid-air and the trajectory is repeatable, still not the same.

It's more the bullet itself that has a different trajectory due to the decreasing weight. We should not script everything, this is the job ob BIS to hardcode decent ballistics and tracers. All we should do is changing aspects, not the engine or basic calculations. I have to add something that might be unknown to most: ArmA fakes high firing rates with multipliers, so only the actual "spawned" bullet will have a tracer attached. If the multiplicator is neglected and the frequency true to life, way more tracers will be visible and the actual ratio can take effect. Therefore gatlings and AAA do not have the exact amount of bullets "flying". I could be wrong on the "spawning" part, the minigun for example has 1 round per burst and a multi x3. The Vulcan x6 and the ZSU-23/4 x4 with 15 rounds each burst. I don't know if there are actually 15 x4 rounds in the air, or if there are only 15 rounds with 4x damage, if any extra damage at all. For the minigun, this reduces the spawned tracers to every 3 rounds plus our ratio setting. With each round a tracer, every 3rd round will actually have a tracer (for the shilka every 15 rounds! You see how fast the ammo depletes on the counter, but there are less tracers.

@LoFFeN: Known bug (see some post before yours) I made a small video, this time, no music (for those who saw my last tracer video on YouTube ) Rahmadi LightShow "Sickboy"-style Rahmadi LightShow "Sickboy"-style NVG

Yupp, he triggered the radio chatter and the distant battle sounds (not in the mod, combat footage sound, IIRC).

Known bugs: - Aircraft do not have tracers - tracers sometimes appear above the player - firing right after a tank shell with the machine gun will disable tracers (tested with T-72) - two tracers visible per bullet Delete all old tracer related files before using the new RC-1. Do not use other mods to test if the tracers work and enable one mod after another. Use the beta / beta arma.exe

Kewl, gotta love the SOCOM. With Dual LAM/Suppressor (first for the looks) ? Do you need textures for the Mk23...or sounds...or first hand stories? I own one and for a proper adaptation in ArmA I'll do everything.

Tank shell tracers were always included.

The same technique is used for laser shows. It's fun to see how lazy the human eye is. I guess we can find some agreement on line-like tracers. They will look like Star Wars for sure, but better star wars, than magic missiles (for the RPG fanatics among us). @ sickboy: 7,62x51 needs 1.345 seconds for 800 m (match grade HPBT, 175 grains @ 835 m/s) and 5,56x45 needs 0.697 seconds for 500 meters (M855 ball)

Sounds cool. It's sad there are no decent animations even in 2007, but hey, what is the community for if not to fix the game

Isn't that a bit unrealistic? The cocking lever does not move until operated by the shooter. Since we don't have any autoreload, this would look strange. In the reload animation, it could be nice, though.

I have to add, that I shot quite a bunch of weapons in my young life. But the often mentioned "VBS 2" tracers are as unrealistic as the current tracers. Bullets act quite different to the simple ballistics in ArmA, ricochets, for example. And light sources always look different, because they are unpredictable to some extend. I said, shooting tracers is different to watching tracers being shot. I guess, I should explain that the shooter, if he uses tracers for trajectory corrections (realizing the path) does see the rear of the source. More of the burning substance is visible to the shooter. The glimming tracer rounds are barely visible to bystanders, still bright enough for night vision. We didn't have those, so I can't tell you the difference. Update: While I was typing, the misunderstanding was solved. Yes, my thoughts exactly. Thought you meant those raindrops from VBS 2.

In my experience, they are lines, due to their constuction and the physics involved they can't build up any "orb" structure. They are brighter at the front, that's why people see coronas. Due to the speed, the phosphor leaves the projectile with 700-1000 m/s, there can't be any orb at all. And burn out times are another factor. 800 m for 7,62x51 mm rounds and approx 460 meters for 5,56x45 mm. The afterburner of an jet engine does not create a orb either Shooting tracers is different then watching. We have an anti-air unit near the coast (Gepard AAA) and watching the tracers in the air is really a line.

Are you talking about the CS sound pack? Well, they are pretty good - for urban environment. They are recorded on some indoor shooting range. The config mod will be available sometime after I get my hands on 1.08. The problem with damage and realism is gameplay balance. I'd like to have it unbalanced and authentic, but you won't be able to play as OPFOR. We only have T-72 and M1A1, so I have to make sure, they can kill each other in a AI battle. Imagine the M1A1 being partly indestructible for 125 mm SABOT shells. The AI won't outmaneuver the enemy. As long as there is no point-damage system, like destroying the gunner sight to disable proper aiming, there is no use for that kind of realism... And believe me, I hate to say that I can't do what you demand.