Evil_Echo

The old ACE1 gear menu was dead on arrival as far as ArmA2 was concerned. By neccesity gear management is closely tied to the game engine and just too much had changed. It required close to a total rewrite for the new game and ACE2. Which is a major reason I've not talked much about it or even documented it on the BI wiki yet. Right now the push is to make sure the ruck system works at all. That goal was pretty well reached aside from some polishing up here and there. The testers have not called for my head on a platter, so I take that as meaning they are largely happy. As per the look, right now the new gear interface looks a lot like an extended version of the vanilla A2 version ( first make it work, then make it pretty ) with some things shifted about to make room for the new slots and actions. Don't count on transparent backgrounds for now - even the vanilla interface really has too much stuff in it to make it easy to see if the background lets too much scenery bleed through. Colors - that's another matter altogether. I know you folks will be relieved to know rucks are on the way - even if OA may offer there own system eventually ( bet ours is better - :) ). For now though, try to keep the "ideas" and "suggestions" in your back pocket because I have a very full plate. There are some cool things coming for rucks beyond what was in ACE1 - let me finish those before asking for more.

Accessable is via the mission designer. Any empty vehicle's status is changed by use of the mission editor. Naturally you can add scripts/config changes to make changing seats easier or harder once inside the vehicle.

You've asked about that ( ACE2 out ) already elsewhere. The signs will be very obvious when it is out - all hell breaking loss in forums, people both hugging and yelling at us.

Whose (A2, some mod, etc.) ballistics are 'wrong'? Just would like some details please.

We still read and post here. Just A2 area has more of our attention here. Which soldier class are you talking about please?

One goal of ACE2 is to make it easier for others to make ACE2 compatable addons and mods. ACEX is our own case of that - where the stuff not directly tied to the ACE2 core lives ( e.g. the small-arms, APCs, helos, jets, etc ). People wishing to make ACE2-compatible nationality packs can certainly contact us. We already have one major dev working with us right now.

a) the default mines have no friends. b) you'd need to change the configuration - make a new type of mine. c) no. d) change the configuration. e) yes. there are a number of addons and mods. ACE2 will include AP mines.

Like I said - caliber is not the sole factor. The x39 does tumble easier than the x51. But as mentioned, it has that effect only on large sections of tissue - whereas the 5.56 NATO round destablises in very short distances in matter denser than air ( e.g. flesh ). Some 7.62 rounds start to tumble after traveling through 15-20cm of flesh, nearly through a human chest. A 5.56mm round, especially the older versions fired through low-twist barrels, would tumble in as little as 3cm. The effect is far more devasting. Also the topic of temporary vs permanent cavity was mentioned. It's subject of debate even among experts as to how significant it can be. But it is agreed that hydrostatic shock can disrupt tissue in some cases. Fragmentation is also a factor. Often a 5.56mm will break up during tumbling, leading to even more energy transfer. If you did not know better, you'd think the round had exploded based on the damage. Agree that individual response to trauma is extremely variable. That makes the damage modeling even more tricky. Personally I think the major grief many people had with ACE1 wound system was how the AI was handled. Getting ambushed by a enemy AI soldier you thought was down for the count can be aggravating to be sure. ACE is taking those comments seriously in the new design. Wait and see what we come up with, ok?

1. Wound and ballistics. Anyone who thinks that just the caliber matters is incredibly naive. When you design a round, there are trade-offs in penetration vs damage vs range vs etc.... A 7.62mm round travels further and can often punch through body armor better. But it often goes straight though a human body - exit wound not much larger than 8mm. A 5.56mm will tumble on impact and transfer nearly all of it's kinetic energy to the target. You can get huge wounds from it. Plus that round has a nasty habit of richocheting around inside you. However that round deflects off foliage easily, loses speed faster and certainly has less ability to penetrate armor. Simulating these issues is not trivial. If shot in the chest the 7.62mm will have better chance of defeating body armor and causing an injury - though not as likely to be fatal due to bullet characterics ( could easily survive or even fight back for a while ). A 5.56mm to the thigh would not encounter armor and could either destroy the femoral artery or even bounce off the bone and go upwards ( know a case of that happening - round exited opposing shoulder, destroyed the victim's lung along the way ). Such wounds can kill very quickly. 2. Sandbags, craters, dirt piles, etc. Building up land features has proven to be far easier than digging down. There was some work by Loki and his team to do dynamic terrain, have not heard much recently though. If someone comes up with a workable system for altering terrain that meets ACE's quality standards I would think the team would at least take a look at it.

ROTFLMAO! Agree - you cannot prevent some players from doing dumb things. But it sounds like your mine layer did everthing he/she could. No doubt you will have people running into clouds of tear gas without masks, dropping WP grenades at their feet, or roving a fallout zone after a nuclear strike and then saying they feel a bit queasy. ( The map markers should be a big hint BTW ). ACE is far more that "Advanced Combat Environment", it's an idiocy penalty enhancement system. Without proper teamwork and communications you get to watch a lot of highly entertaining attempts to make the yearly Darwin Awards list. Have a good chuckle, have the server admin kick the repeat offenders, then play on.

Additional explosives were added to ACE2. Very evil items. http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Features_of_ACE2#Explosives

Master sqf first - then FSM via the editor is fairly easy. Besides, you need to use either sqs or preferably sqf in the code sections of your FSM states.

If you mean a co-op mission and not a making new terrain then there are a number of guides out there. Mr. Murray's guide is a classic.

Even better if you use the vector math functions in ArmA and/or the CBA addon to create the proper orientation for you. Then pass that to doWatch.

Less like Pascal, more like Perl with C-like precompiler. If you are new - skip sqs and learn the newer sqf notation. You'll be a lot happier with the new control structures, and have better performing code.

Funny you mention that, given a number of the people on the ACE team who post here are the PR folks. We do recruit developers that catch our eye with high quality work. Just in the last 2 weeks three very recognizable names have either joined or are in the process of joining ACE.

I played BF2 before discovering ArmA. Overall, the teamwork on pub servers sucked. Practically everyone was obsessed with stats and getting their next medal/promotion. Most of them had apparent IQ's in the low double-digits based on the quality of play (I could easily frag a dozen people just with well-placed mines in a typical session). Ditto for CoD. It's not arrogance, just lots of experience. When you see a lot of new Arma2 players trying to use tricks like bunny-hopping or dolphin-diving it does not take long to guess what they are used to playing. People who single-seat a tank or drive a MHQ into a hot combat zone clearly are not thinking about the team, just themselves. Frequently those same people are jamming up comms with silly comments, sound effects and bragging about their K/D ratio. In other words, the bad players are stat-happy. I can't prove that stats cause bad play. My personal experience is that stat-based FPS games have a lot more bad players on them than ones that don't support stats.

You summed up my point nicely. Scoreboards fail to record the true value of the player. Even a kill/death ratio is useless, so why add a global scoring system that skews the mindset of the player community? The last thing I want to see are ArmA stat padders - people who are most likely to invoke hacks and cheats to increase their numbers. When I play on a pub server I see the bulk of the "idiots" are coming from stat-intensive games like CoD and BF2. They charge into battle with guns blazing and get cut down, steal equipment ( including aircraft ), team kill, or demolish resources. Because of the mindless pursuit of numbers, they have never learned how to work in teams - it's all about their stats. I can think of a number of things that would make A2 better. A way for servers to snapshot missions so that they could possibly recover from crashes. A way to remember your favorite load-out so you did not have to waste time at ammo crates at mission start. Etc. Global stats - please never do that.

1. Models. The ACE team is quite diverse, but we are largely specialists. Some are coders ( scripts ), some sound gurus, some special-effects wizards, model makers, etc. Coders can collaborate fairly easily, but model making is largely a single person's effort since you can't have one work on the front half of an APC and other work on the back expecting it to come out right. When a model maker starts on a project it largely takes up all of their time, you just work on that model or family of models and nothing else. Doing a good model takes a lot of tedious work and testing. Even porting an existing weapons group like the HK's takes time since ArmA2 changed so much. ACE stresses quality over quantity in models, so we'd rather release good stuff slowly vs. give you all a huge number of crappy weapons in a hurry. With such limits, you have to prioritize the assignments. Not everything can or will come out as fast as some would like. Let us get an initial release out, then we can focus on additional models. As it is, there are plenty of goodies in the pipeline. 2. Balance. "Balance" and game statistics are the plagues of combat games. War is never balanced, every faction throughout history has had strengths and weaknesses that made it unique. Part of being a good strategist and tactician is to make sure the battle is unbalanced in your favor. How that is done differs according to what you have available. Traditionally - the former Eastern Block ( WARPAC ) countries largely counted on masses of largely unskilled troops controlled tightly by central command. Weapons were simple, cheap, and fairly sturdy. The US and allied countries countered the numerical superiority with a flexible command structure and higher tech systems that allow for greater efficiency - albeit at higher costs and limited availability. There is no balance at the equipment level. An Apache has better avionics than a Hind. But a Hind is darn tough and there are a lot of them. The optics on a TAC-50 are more precise than a Dragonov. But the Dragonov sights are easier to interpret. ACE is a set of tools to make ArmA/ArmA2 more realistic. You as the player should take those tools and use the one weapon we can never provide - your mind. Think creatively and you can beat anyone. Fail to think and someone else will kick your butt across the map and back just for giggles. I've played on ACE servers and done just that using vanilla weapons as a lesson to those that mistakenly thought über weapons would counter having their brain in neutral.

Think the idea of any stats is bad and too confining. For example. There is a huge meatgrinder going on in a city because the "commander" thinks a frontal assault is a good idea vs heavily entrenched forces. I and a clan mate ignore that and swing around to the other side of town, slip in past 4-5 guards and blow up the radio tower. Which cuts off reinforcements and causes said city to fall to our forces 5 minutes later. My partner and I killed no one, nor did we die. Others killed dozens of enemy troops and died a couple times along the way in a pointless struggle to gain ground. Who did more to move the mission along?

CH Products controls for rudder and joystick work great. The ability to tune the performance curve is a major win.

With regard to the time alteration idea. Umm.... no.

The possibility of delay in HK weapons is a bummer for me too. "Sasha" [1], the HK417L with Leopold scope, is my favorite weapon for infiltration/recon. Just remember, ACE2 1.0 is not even out yet - it's still being worked on. If a feature does not make the 1.0 release then there is the 1.01 release. Sooner or later HK's will get out there. No one touches Sasha. [1] Yes, that is a nod to TF2. I tend to rattle off weapon's specifications like the Heavy Weapons Guy and and quite protective of my toys.

WRT - zombies, ninja, gore. No, that stuff is for other mods to provide.

For vanilla - that is true. But mods do bring wind into play a lot more. Otherwise it's just flags and smoke effects for the most part.