r3volution

Up-voted that issue on the tracker. It's always been a frustration in the Arma series watching your squadmates doing their incredibly slow bounding cover & overwatch while moving to cover and being torn apart by rifle fire. While there's been a lot of improvement to AI regarding combat, it would be great to see this fix added.

Definitely agree with the current tracers looking like blaster rounds. Whether or not they're intentionally simulating the CNN effect, I'd much rather see them try to simulate what the human eye sees. In this case that would mean shorter trail lengths but more of them (for the minigun at least) and actually have a lot more of them spray/ricochet off after impact. That transition from incoming streak to slow bouncing ball as they ricochet might be hard to do, but man it would look good. Also having them a bit brighter illuminated would be good. Blastcore for Arma2 was a good example of what can be achieved ingame. It looked great and didn't impact performance that much.

After reading through the whole of this thread I'm glad to see that amongst the two billion people who reminded us that it's an alpha, are some people who really understand the nature of the issue. Having played the Arma series since the first game (OFP was before my time) this has been a constant issue. Particularly given that as someone pointed out the way the AI works means that 90% of the engagements take place at the midrange where the engine seems to look worst. Landtex did amazing things to fix up Arma2 but the problem is still definitely there in Arma3. As Nordkindchen pointed out it's a little frustrating as a player to have the game look so absolutely amazing at short/long range and yet just kind of morph into blurry crap in the midrange. Even if there's no hope of a new rendering addition which concentrates on the 100-500m range, some work on the ground textures would be great. Also a little work to harmonise the texture colours on trees and vegetation between distances. So if anyone puts up a feedback issue on this I'm looking out for it and will vote! Edit: Also creating a feedback issue about the mismatch in colour between the tree LOD textures would probably not be a terrible idea either. Also if Dwarden could pull some strings that would be great! ;)

*edit* Ok I saw the youtube capture of the presentation, looks sweet Yes the hi def screens are nice, but video would have been truly sweet... Would have been nice if the teaser had something apart from live action tho...

I know this is a topic of fairly heated debate given its association with, how do I put this delicately, the more 'arcade-ish' section of the market, but I'm curious to see how the Arma userbase feels on the topic. Would Arma3 benefit from some kind of cover system, the ability to 'lock' to cover by keystroke and then be able to return fire and pop out of cover directionally? I will admit I never played Op. Flashpoint as that was before my PC gaming days, but having played Arma, Arma2 and Arrowhead for a sum total of probably well over a few thousand hours, I feel like the AI could use the help that a cover-based system could bring. I know many people play Arma for the vehicle combat, but for me its all about the infantry, and the AI infantry behaviour (even when improved with mods) is vastly at odds with how you see soldiers behave in actual combat. A cover system could improve the ability of the AI to survive firefights and to actually resemble a trained fighting force, as opposed to fighting like an army of child soldiers thinking they're protected by witchcraft. I'll admit, a cover system is not the only way to improve the AI with regards to its infantry co-ordination and survival qualities, but I think it would give it a substantial leg up as well as making the game more engaging for the player. I'm well prepared to get ripped a new one on this though, so fire away. *Edit* I just want to clarify I'm not in favour of any kind of 3rd person cover mechanic, unless that's the general view option being used. First person for immersion!

As soon as real life implements a player levelling system I'll advocate for one in Arma... As it is: YOUR REQUEST IS DENIED If you'll just step this way, the elevator will take you down to the Bad Company 2 forum where we can talk more about player levelling and unlockable weapons... ;)

@woore: That depends on whether you read more than the last page of the thread before posting. Nobody wants an arcade cover system. But given you have no problem hitting 'x' to crouch, or 'z' to lie down, I don't see why there'd be a problem with hitting 'x' to shift to a fluid posture adapting to cover (not any of this velcro to wall BS though).

Honestly I think that it shows more sensitivity towards veterans to actually attempt to portray reactions somewhat paralleling reality and to have some possibility of emotional effect as a result of trauma. Particularly because to depict the soldiers as robots, ala '3... is... down' doesnt really do much to honor the realities of war and its effect on people. This though, is opinion and I hope I don't offend anyone with actual combat experience by saying it. I think that if the mature aspects of realistic gore and dismemberment are in the game, then it also deserves the maturity of having a possibility of NPCs having an emotional reaction to it, i.e a small percentage chance that 1 or 2 other soldiers in the unit, nearby or not will, on hearing the radioed casualty call, suffer temporary or lasting (for duration of mission) combat stress or loss of combat effectiveness. That gives a lot more gravity to trying to make it through a mission without losing a single one of the men under your command, rather than having a message coming up that reads 'you lost person x, restart mission' .

@DMarkwick... hell yes. I think it honestly doesn't do justice to war itself without the propensity for slightly horrifing ingame moments like finding someone's severed leg in a pool of blood near a mortar strike. I suppose then all the game needs is the potential for NPC units to have a tiny percentage chance of going into combat shock in those situations. Honestly though, I don't want to sound horrible, but in many ways having the capacity for AI troops to freak out would add as much to the atmosphere as would the gore. /OT

@Smookie, I love the idea of your pack and think its a great addition to the arma2/arrowhead mod scene. I suppose the biggest limitation for me is whether the AI use the animations too and in an appropriate way. This is what I see as the only limitation with modding this stuff into the game vs having it there from outset. I'm very heartened though to read back through this thread and see on the poll how many people affirm the idea of a 1st person cover/fluid posture system. I honestly would have thought I was part of a small minority before but apparently, at least according to the limited poll, I'm part of a small majority! :) Its not that I want to see Arma turn into Gears of Brothers in Arma... to those who seem to think that. All I want is to be able to more effectively emulate the way in which actual military personel utilise cover on the battlefield, and have my stance (and that of my AI team-mates and opponents) adapt to the cover itself rather than be limited to 3 fixed postures which have no bearing on the amount of cover you have in front of you. Given that no trained serving soldier anywhere in the world would kneel behind low cover exposing his entire upper torso/head to the world, I feel its stupid that I'm expected to in Arma, the most realistic military shooter there is around. There, I said it... :)

Optimisation would be great.. the fact that I have deliberately built my pc specifically around performance in the Arma engine and it STILL can't reliably push up above 30fps, when just about any other engine runs like greased velvet does somewhat concern me. I know everyone is very quick to point out that the Arma series is like no other game and rah rah rah, and this is true. No other sandbox engine can do what the Arma engine does, BUT this does not alter the fact that its very poorly optimised. Now there is obviously no such thing as a free lunch but surely there has to be some way of reworking the engine so as to make it more efficient, of course, pushing it to 64 bit would be a good start, but that's for another thread. Even keeping it in the realm of the 32bit, there have got to be some efficiency gains to be found. Especially given that there are a LOT of sandbox engines out there now, rather than when OFP was being coded.

Wow THAT is your argument? A 2 part rebuttal consisting of: a) The lady looks like a guy and b) Guerilla wars don't count in terms of proving women's ability on the battlefield. I just wanted to make sure of that. Before I begin, I'm only going to argue to your second point as your first seems pretty much beneath any comment. Firstly, I don't understand why you seem to believe women's supposedly detrimental qualities on the battlefield only arise as a result of exposure to enemy tanks/helicopters etc. This seems like the kind of argument which is just hiding behind the fact that there are no conventional conflicts currently raging to prove that women can fight just as well as men in a frontline role, which they are currently doing in Afghanistan. Secondly I'd LOVE to see you put this to any servicemen/women who've come back from a tour in Afghanistan, as I'm sure they'd most likely be pretty insulted to have it suggested that somehow its not quite enough war to actually test people's will and mental endurance and that only a conventional State vs State conflict is a real war. Thirdly, given that women are serving just fine and qualifying just fine for frontline combat in so many nations it seems that most of the people still arguing against the presence of women in frontline roles are doing so the basis that their presence negatively affects male combat ability and judgement under fire. IF a mans combat abilities are negatively affected by the fact that a woman is part of the unit, or is somehow less able to exercise good judgement on the battlefield, that is absolutely nothing to do with the woman. That just indicates that the man in question probably shouldn't be a soldier in an equal opportunity armed forces.

^ Bingo ^ :) *Edit* Can I also point out to the 'Don't want no 35kg anime model set' that this woman just looks like an ordinary soldier under all the gear.

Nowhere is anyone else engaging an army equipped with their same level of equipment, man power, tanks and aircraft? Or did I miss something and WWIII started overnight? But there are many armies both engaged in combat operations and not, that have females soldiers in frontline roles. Australia has just announced it is putting forward plans to bring women into frontline roles, Denmark allows women soldiers in frontline roles, Germany and Ireland both have no restriction on women serving in combat either. The Ukraine has a massive proportion of women in its armed forces though apparently this relates more to the low pay, either way it stands at near 13%. Also last but not least, Canada has no restrictions on frontline combat roles for women. Now at least half of these countries have either been involved in combat in the last 5-10 years or are still involved now. Enough facts for ya? :)

In combat EVERYONE thinks a brick wall looks pretty sexy... ;) That could be considered as one of the founding principles of this thread.

Got to say I'm quite surprised by how many pro-cover system votes there are, I was expecting a pretty robust thrashing. Thanks to everyone for keeping it well civilised and useful! :) I seem to be noticing a two key points in terms of the rejection of a 'cover' mechanic. 1) The capacity to do something approximating this already exists in mods and custom animation replacement sets. *** My response to this would be that this is good, but that unless its implemented in the core game by the game devs it will remain in terms of the AI behaviour, a strap-on system which only human players can use, thus defeating the point of most of this which is increasing realistic AI behaviour in a firefight, as we people can very effectively position ourselves behind cover manually. 2) That a cover system would 'lock' someone into place and allow them to become a target from the rear, and thus is unsuited to an open world gameplay style where targets can come from anywhere. *** Response to this would be that I don't think a 'velcroed to the wall' model of cover system would suit the Arma series at all. The last thing I would want to see is some kind of gears of war style cover hopping button mashing crap replacing the gameplay I love. I do however feel that there is benefit to having an ability to place yourself so that your avatar conforms to the cover without having to go into contortions ingame to stay down. Also that a proper cover system would allow you to actually FACE THE REAR WITH YOUR BACK TO THE WALL, thus meaning that you're less likely to die by shooting in the back. I understand that you do have the ability to bend down to make the game's crouch more pronounced as someone said, but nobody takes cover like that in real life for very good reason, inspecting your shoelaces in a combat situation is not great observational behaviour and will likely get you killed in short order. I have great faith in the ability of the BI devs. I think they have managed to consistently produce games of incredible scope and capacity, and so yes, I have the faith that if they chose to do a cover system it could be implemented in a way which didn't detract from the gameplay, something along the lines of a 'conform to cover' key which allows you to stay down behind the height of whatever you're behind, and allows you to pivot through 360 degrees whilst remaining in cover, as well as allow for resting of a weapon on surface to fire back more accurately...

I suppose in retrospect I should have made my point about a cover system clearer in the poll options, as I'm definitely not for the 'gears of war' style of cover mechanics. But I do feel that something which provides the ability to adapt your stance to the object your taking cover behind and give you better animations/actions could benefit the gameplay, particularly in the way AI behave, as others have mentioned they do notice cover in the game, they're just woefully inadequate at using it to protect themselves in a firefight.

Err were you sleeping through the rest of this thread? There are actually women in combat roles in many armies around the world. And yes, as pointed out above I forsee civilians playing a significant part in this which would indicate women should indeed be playing a role as combatants even if the quoted argument was NOT highly inaccurate.

I have to say I think the OP is definitely on to something. I repeatedly come up against one thing in the Arma series and this is the unrealistic way AI behave under fire. I know everyone LOVES to dish on the COD Modern Warfare clones and everything else but one thing they do have right is creating the feeling of men under fire, which is the one thing the Arma series really lacks. As others have pointed out audio is a big part of it, having more vocal AI yelling in combat and greater stress-related audio cues. But there is also a need for AI to move convincingly under fire and to behave as if they are in fear for their lives. This is the big one, as AI right now behave like child soldiers hopped up on meth, they run around standing up and then in 2 seconds when one man is left alive he might leg it for the hills. Having some sort of squad AI based morale system would help this, as the squad could assess unit casualties, rates of incoming fire and proximity of allied units to determine whether or not the unit is capable of mounting a counter-attack, holding in cover and returning fire, retreating to safer ground, or routing from the battlefield. A lot of RTS type games would be better examples for this sort of system at work, I know the Total War series relies heavily on this gameplay mechanic to a fair degree of success, and while thats a highly simplistic example to use, it does demonstrate how having realistic morale can make a game much more in depth and interesting.

@ Make Love Not War : Good points and that thread does have some interesting potential, I very much hope BI are reading it. I acknowledge that individual soldiers taking cover in an unco-ordinated way is just going to prolong how long they last, but it does emulate that first response in a firefight which is to go to ground. I hope that BI will really do a top down reformation of the AI so that they act in a more sophisticated way but my experience with what is possible and what seems to be implemented by BI points towards this being unlikely. I see incremental improvements through the series but nothing that goes towards a groundbreaking rewrite of the tactical group/individual ai. SO to be the ruthless pragmatist, I'd like to think that the cover system would at least mean that the AI would be being stupid in cover rather than being stupid out in the open. And thanks to metalcraze for without a smidge of irony exactly portraying the knee-jerk console/pc strawman bollocks that comes along with discussions of a cover system.

I understand where you're coming from DMarkwick, and appreciate your cool-headed response. I suppose regardless of the gender mechanics of whether or not its safe to actually have women on the field of battle, my point is that they are there. As others have said the shifting nature of guerilla warfare frequently places 'non-combatant' female soldiers into combat with the enemy and many nations have abolished restrictions on women serving in combat, as such I think its realistic to then have a small percentage of women present in the Arma3 military forces, or at least Bluefor/Independant side.

Not having use the TrackIR system at any point I can't comment on how that affects the cover experience but I do imagine it improves how Arma2 works in terms of being in cover vs looking around... That Red Orchestra 2 vid is a pretty good example of the kind of thing I'm talking about, subtle and 1st person, key activated rather than automatic and it doesn't seem to have much of a 'locked in' feel to it, as much as you can tell from a video. I know that some players may not feel they need a cover system, but the obvious joy of the key activated one is that if you want, you never have to use it. Its effectively an opt-in cover system rather than automatic and forcing you into it.

@ Nodunit : Agreed! I don't see why its totally cool to have the stupidly hyperstylised/hypersexualised female imagery everywhere, and for that to be ok or not ok as the case may be (argument for another day perhaps?). But to then have that used as some kind of argument AGAINST having realistic portrayals of women just serves to belittle both genders. You'd think we'd have the ability to get over Freud's 'Maddonna/Whore' complex about women by now but apparently not...

I have a hunch the enemy will use AK variant weapons, and use BMP-3s and T-90s. Don't you? :D God I hope there are no steel helmets 20 years in the future, its about time they were retired from the opfor soldier model...

I'm pretty amazed/impressed by the level of blatant sexism on display thus far in this thread, from the 'women are distracting on the battlefield' (which is a very interesting projection I think) to 'girls can't fire accurately because some dumb blond in a youtoob vid can't fire a 12 gauge'. OR the ever popular its not ok if women are shot in a game one, because you know theres a huge ethical leap between killing a bunch of pixels that looks male to a bunch of pixels that might look a bit female. There have been female soldiers on the battlefield, and in many armies for the last 10 years or so, only recently Australia recommended that Women be allowed to serve in frontline roles. And one only needs to dig through the history books to find plenty of examples of women taking an active role in combat. I know for the patriarchal macho set this will be hard to deal with, but it doesn't make you less of a man because women can fight next to you. And if Arma3 is based around the kind of desperate scenario they describe, women should not be relegated to the role of animated furniture that they were in Arma2. I don't even feel there should be a hugely different soldier model, and this isn't a concession to the 'cant fight if there's girls there' set, but an acknowlegement that however great the difference between the female and male body, under 50 pounds of combat gear its pretty hard to tell the difference apart from the face and/or hair. So I don't view it as an impossibility to do, because a slightly altered/tweaked soldier model with diff hair/face texture selections can't be that hard to do for BI at this point in the picture. So really, why not? The majority of the arguments I see against seem to revolve around some level of sexist opinion, tho there's a few technically based ones. I feel honestly the technical issues are nothing big (if they can be solved by Modders I feel BI should easily be able to implement at this point in development) and that given the scenario they're going with, and the way that military gender policy is headed, that not to not have women present in some combat roles (and I don't mean 50-50 representation, even 5-10% would be fine) is going to detract from the realism of what is supposed to be the biggest and best Mil-Sim yet...