bedges

Aye. The timing is a wee bit off. A new game to release and patch. Very few of us in the Community can appreciate the pressures involved. Given the context, the time-lag is understandable. That said: What a pointless waste of time. "We love and adore the Community who support our software, so here's a poll to provide an accolade to those who, according to the populist vote, contribute the most to supporting OUR games." (but we'll run the poll - TWICE - collect the votes, discover the "winners", and not bother just posting the results, because let's face it - it doesn't really matter and neither do they) BIS is dead. Long live BIS. Placebo? You're a twat for not taking the lead on this. Fuck the webteam, do it yourself.

"The Bohemia Interactive Forums database has encountered a problem"... when attempting to edit a message in a social group.

:j: Surely being declared the winner is prize enough? Just announce it already and let the accolade be its own reward. If BI wants to send something extra when they get the time, that's an added bonus.

We're currently running the second OFPEC Member Survey.The feedback you gave us last time around was central to our efforts to improve the site and decide what direction to steer it. Now that ArmaII is so tantalisingly close we thought we'd run another survey to gauge the Community's mood. There are 22 questions in total, and several optional free-text areas where you can give more details. Take a moment to have your say.

Just a quick note to say thanks to all who have participated so far. The free-text responses make interesting reading, and the percentages have given us a few things to think about. We'll post a selection of the comments in a week or so - some of them are just too well-written not to share. In the meantime, the survey is still open for those who have yet to respond.

The board titles in ARMA: ARMED ASSAULT / COMBAT OPERATIONS and OPERATION FLASHPOINT, are still displaying "!Forum description". Additionally there seems to be something weird going on with the MODEL EDITING (OXYGEN) forum section, as it's not collapsible like the rest. Otherwise looking good, kudos to all concerned.

This has been mentioned already but seems a bit buried and is not among the requests in the sticked summary. Imagine a 12-loon group: units 2 and 3 are drivers of vehicles, units 4 and 5 gunners of those respective vehicles. The remaining loons (including group commander) are on foot. Commander orders 2 and 3 off into the distance, and orders the remaining infantry to return to formation. The remaining infantry leave 2 huge gaps in the formation where the vehicles would normally be, rather than either spreading out to cover the gap, or simply closing in to the commander. I'm not sure what real-life formation protocol would dictate in this instance but to a layman it seems odd to leave the gaps in a formation for non-existant vehicles...

I read that and thought "hmmm - what exactly is a sequel?" So I consulted the ol' Cambridge Dictionary and was given the following definition: Now I confess I've been too busy coding OFPEC lately to take much notice of OFP2 - or ArmAII for that matter - but from what knowledge I do have I think I'm right in saying that in terms of #1 above, the hype for Dragon Rising has yet to make mention of any of the original characters or storylines from CWC or Resistance. In terms of #2 above, Codemasters' justification for calling Dragon Rising a sequel is pretty tenuous. It's a new product. ArmA is a 'result' of OFP, as one could probably trace the development of the software and techniques from one title to the next. All Codemasters have to work with is a genre which is the 'result' of the release of the original OFP. All this is very easy to say, picking apart a definition for the word 'sequel' from a single source, and at the end of the day the legalities of this issue - if it ever gets that far - are beyond the scope of this thread and forum, unless there are any barristers present. Either way, there are two points I'd like to contribute to the conversation: Given the size of BI as a business entity, it has a lot more to lose in terms of its employees' livelihoods. For that reason alone I think putting the record straight on all counts is only reasonable behaviour. Hype-tactics aside, I think it's right to call Codemasters on this issue, and any others which appear fallacious. On the other hand, anyone who is going to read a review which says Dragon Rising is the sequel to the original Cold War Crisis, and from that infer that Dragon Rising is worth buying because of their positive past experience of CWC/Res, is probably already a member of the Community or at least knows where to look for the real story. I don't think BI has anything to worry about on that front. The real battle will be fought in the pockets of the buying public, and all either company can do is ensure they release as good a product as they are capable of producing, and be open and honest about it. In that respect, BI currently leads the game by a few points. Whether that continues to be the case, only time (and in-game vids) will tell.

Not sure at what stage you are with your investigations, but perhaps OFPEC has some tutorials to offer which might help. For example, Suite of O2 Tutorials by Brsseb.

Thanks for the links Sanctuary; bought Evochron this morning and it's pretty enjoyable. What's missing from the game and from the others you mentioned as far as I can tell, including this new build of Carrier Command, is joined-up genre-crossing gameplay. Being a loon on a planet, ArmA style. Cross 4km of BI-tastic realistic terrain in the pouring rain to get to a base. Climb inside a craft and lift off. Pass through the atmosphere and head for the orbital station. Dock the ship, get out and explore the station, etc etc etc. There's the ocean too, obviously - if you're going to do space, why not underwater while you're at it? I wish BI every success with this game, and I'm sure it will be quite popular - there seems to be a lot of mileage in resurrecting the fond memories of grown-up kids with disposable income, as can already be seen in both film and music. Personally, I'll wait for a game which will bring it all together, seamlessly, and deliver a real sense of freedom at all scales, macro and micro.

Those being?

I too was intrigued by this idea when Hoz first mentioned it, and I too read a bit more and perceived a sinking feeling - no pun intended. To my mind if you're going to do sci-fi you need to do space. If BI were to combine this excellent planet-side premise with an Elite-type space shooter/trader/explorer, complete with all the multiplayer aspects BI have become known for, they'd corner the market. An epic task, obviously, but not one beyond their talents.

we're working on it. we were unlucky enough to suffer a major crash at the time ArmA was released. that in itself was bad enough, but we spent such a long time clawing our way back to a recognisable state that the community moved on without us, and our resources seemed to have stuck in perpetual OFP mode. starting the BIKI at the same time didn't do us many favours either... things have improved a great deal over the last year though, and continue to improve. i won't claim that OFPEC is trying to be the only source for editing information for the Community - that's just unrealistic. we are trying to be a decent source - searchable, easily navigable, approachable and above all helpful. only part of that comes from the staff, the rest is down to the members. by the community, for the community and all that. to echo wolfrug's comments above, although it's easy to get caught up in the editing frenzy and forget about recording that knowledge someplace for the benefit of others, there may be an impression that even when you do sit down and write a tutorial or a handy function, there are a lot of hoops to jump through at OFPEC before you get stuff you've worked on accepted for hosting. that's not the case. we do insist on public beta so that everyone can have a look and suggest improvements to the scripts, because that way everyone learns. at the very least we make sure the things work and are easy to use, to maintain a reasonable standard that benefits everyone. given that the staff are volunteers with real-life priorities, that process can take time and very occasionally it can seem as if the resources are simply ignored or forgotten about. all i can say is that we are doing what we can as best we can to support the editing Community, and we'll continue to do so for as long as folk type our URL.

ofpec is and always has been the editing center, and our mission to host a library of resources which have been proven to work and are useful to the community has not changed. we provide beta boards for testing of both arma and ofp resources respectively, and our ed depot staff are always on the lookout for interesting resources so that we can get them into that library. the problem with the methods discussed above is that a forum is necessarily good at discussion and bad at hosting lists of resources in an easy to access manner. that's why you need a 'depot'. if ofpec's slogan needs repeating, it's by the community, for the community. if the ofpec ed depot is almost what you need but not quite, by all means make some suggestions so we can improve it and bring it up to the standards that do meet the community's requirements.

As many of you will know, we've moved servers. The move is complete, and everything works. However, we are having some issues with the DNS switchover to point ofpec.com at the new site. We thought we had it yesterday, but it seems not to have 'taken'. We've looked at things again, and with luck the domain should resolve within the next 12-15 hours. In the meantime, you are all welcome to login to OFPEC using the IP. EDIT: looks like it's working. we're getting many reports that www.ofpec.com points at the new server. Welcome back

thanks to the timely intervention of Machoman, OFPEC is now back up to full speed.

ahem... since the biki has been constructed in the main by community members, with all due respect to those involved the priority seems to have been getting the information in there for the existing community. very little of the content is written at a level easy to understand by those new to the games, and even the stuff that is created with the noob in mind is difficult to find - the above topic being a perfect example. the biki's navigation is not intuitive, i must admit. regarding my own issues with the scripting area layout template, it's sometimes a lot of template for very little actual content. for example, the nice blue titlebar says "Description", then underneath is the sub-title "Description:"... same with "Syntax"... when looking for information, even as a seasoned editor i find it difficult to get at what i need amongst the seemingly redundant bits of layout. that said, again it must be stated the biki is a community-led effort, not a professional exercise in information architecture. i think so long as the community continues to express its varying needs, and there continue to be enterprising and like-minded folk to fulfil those needs through a variety of outlets (Biki, BI Forums, OFPEC, etc.) we should be okay, noobs and veterans alike.

a website being like a police state... hmmm. it's a very strong comparison isn't it? if topics on these forums included discussion about serious human rights violations which were subsequently stomped upon by those in charge so that no-one could read them, i think you'd have a point. but topics on these forums deal with operation flashpoint, elite and armed assault. computer games. i think a more apt analogy would be a friend's house. you go round to talk to your mates about sport, and about your girlfriend, and about the latest developments in a game you all like playing. thing is, your mate's mother is usually around, and she doesn't like to hear people swearing. now you and your mates, you express yourselves however you like usually, swearing included, but when you're at your mate's house, and his mom is around, he prefers it if you don't swear. so if he asks you to piss off home after you say "fuck" one too many times in front of her, is he infringing on your freedom of expression? when he throws you out of his house after you argue that he's being unreasonable, is his house a police state? or is it just that you haven't yet grasped the concept of behaving with respect for the rules of the house in which you are lucky enough to be a guest? hmmm....

alternatively.... since you asked so nicely... bulletcam

thislist returns vehicles as one unit. try it for yourself. put three tanks in a trigger, west present, on activation "west_tanks = thislist". then find out what west_tanks is. the only way to do this would be to somehow determine which of the units in the trigger area are vehicles. i tried this last night by using <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">?((vehicle my_trigger select _i)==(my_trigger select _i)) where _i is looping through the overall trigger count. couldn't get it to work... i shall experiment a bit more...

married. you can work out the rest for yourself anyways, i'm downloading the addon and i'll take a look at the scripts concerned. the basic principle holds though - if you camcreate the bomb you can give it a name, and using the name track its course. telling when it's near the ground is the tricksy part, but we'll see. i may even be able to put a sample missionette together, no promises EDIT - hmmm, can't seem to locate the fire script... there's a script for bomblets, nothing for the napalm... i still think there must be a way of getting the AI to play nice, perhaps in combination with an invisible target, a setpos command... there's always a way!

not familiar with the addon, but it sounds fairly simple. first question though: do the camcreated bombs fall? if they do, then you should trigger a script which calculates the bomb's height above ground. for a moving/dropping bomb this is tricky as the height of the ground will change along its trajectory. i'm a wee bit rusty with this, but i suspect that if you create a GL and setpos it using the bomb's x and y coordinates it will move along at ground level. in a fairly fast loop, match the x and y coordinates to the bomb and determine the distance between the bomb and the GL. once it gets within an acceptably small limit - say a couple of metres - use the GL as the starting position for the napalm effect. if the napalm script uses a directional vector - no idea what the napalm effect looks like but they're generally lines spreading off in the direction of fire - use the x and y of the bomb 4 metres up and 2 metres up. that should give enough of a difference for a vector. however, a much simpler answer would be to have the a6 there with a pilot, and get the ai to fire the bombs.... is this for a cutscene? how come you're camcreating these things?

depending on the type of building, find its ID number and you can simply put the following into the init.sqs file - <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">(object ID_number_here) setdamage 1 no need for explosives, although there will be an almighty roar as the building is destroyed. consider using 0 fadesound 0 at the very beginning until a few seconds after the setdamage command, then 5 fadesound 0.8 to return sound to normal.

lest we forget, there's always the online comref... failing that, ofpec should be back up and running fairly soon... <insert sound of bedges holding his breath...>

yes, and yes. use <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">_camera camsettarget getmarkerpos "markername"