falcon_565

Hi all! I'd like to address and discus a major limitation of the current ARMA engine which I feel could be addressed in a way that would vastly improve gameplay. Currently the ARMA engine does not support terrain deformation or phasing objects with the terrain in any way. This means that it is currently impossible to make any sort or fighting position, trench or prepared position that has any part beneath the level of the terrain. Unfortunately this forces any existing prepared position to consist of material built up above the level of the terrain. Having positions built solely above the terrain negates or impairs many of the benefits of prepared positions including their superior concealment and survivability. One possible solution would be to include the ability to phase objects into the terrain. This would allow players to occupy empty space in models that are placed like current static objects but push away the terrain around them. I think this would be an ideal solution because it would allow mission makers to place these objects in desired locations specific to their intentions. In addition with some simple scripting it would allow players to create these positions during missions. An example of a similar solution implemented in VBS. Using this method would also allow for a wide range and variety of different types of prepared positions to be made easily. However there are two types of positions that should minimally be included. First a basic infantry fighting position: Also a basic two-tiered vehicle fighting position: *note this isn't a true two-tiered fighting position, which allows the tank to reverse into a hide position. ARMA is perhaps the closest thing available to a true infantry simulator but the lack of fighting positions both for personnel and vehicles is sorely missed. Modifying the engine to provide this ability would greatly enhance both the tactical depth and flexibility afforded to mission makers which in turn gets passed into the missions they create. In addition implementing this on an engine level would allow island makers to easily create micro terrain features such as ditches next to fields and roads. All of these features in summation drastically increase the survability and effectiveness of units, particularly the infantry which in turn would help to negate the unrealistic advantages currently afforded to some weapons systems. I'd be interested to hear what other people think of this engine limitation as well as any alternative solutions that people may have.

TEASER VIDEO mjmzHYrJ4Sk MEDIA Hires Album 1 Hires Album 2 Hires Album 3 Schwemlitz Schwemlitz is a 5x5km terrain centered around the town of Schwemlitz located 20km from the former inner german boarder. Encompassing rolling wheat and asparagus fields, thick forests and small farming towns the terrain provides a suitable battlespace for modern and cold war era missions. The terrain and the encompassed towns are designed to be as realistic as possible. The layout of the towns and the buildings are taken from real world data and modeled the best of our ability in the ARMA2 engine. The terrain eschews the ARMA2 clutter system in favor of clutter objects to allow rendering of grasses and crops from orders of magnitude further distances. In addition forest microterrain has been slightly exaggerated to provide a realistic level of cover in forested environments and maximize gameplay potential. While the terrain was designed with infantry centric gameplay it will also serve both armor and mechanized missions in the sweeping fields in the north of the map. Features: - 5x5km 1:1 real world terrain - Micro Terrain Forests - All Buildings Enterable - 1 Large Realistic Town - 3 Small Realistic Towns - 3 Realistic Hamlets - 1 Rail Station / Light Industrial Center - 2km rail line on embankment - Numerous small irrigation ponds - 6km long system of irrigation canals - Realistic street signs DOWNLOADS Mirror1 Mirror2 REQUIREMENTS mbg_buildings_3 mikebart's vegetation We going to try to work with bushlurker to reduce the size of the Carraigdubh dependency with a possible unique pbo including only the objects Schwemlitz depends on. FAQ Q: How do you install this? -Extract the archive and copy its contents (@Schwemlitz) to your ArmA 2 main folder. -Run the game using a modified startup parameter Startup parameter example: "C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\arma2OA.exe" -nosplash -mod=@Schwemlitz;@carraigdubh;@mgb_buildings3;@mb_veg_adv_v0.9 Q: What's the grid zone designation? 31U PD KNOWN ISSUES 1. There is a weird shadow/colorization on some of the trees at range under certain lighting conditions. We are working with the author to fix this. 2. The skybox in the North and East has non existent mountains in it. Please report any issues on our Dev-Heaven page. CREDITS Falcon Lancer Assistant Developers: Impulse 9 NouberNou Test Team: Beta CroMagnon Tinfoil Krause jackal_ German Authenticity Team: Jake Peril Zumroc Special Thanks & Content Contributers: Bushlurker Mondkalb Mike Bart Nicholas Bell Mongo Marseille77 Arma2 Map Maker Channel We've spent a lot of time working on this and we're happy to finally be able to share this with the community. Please let us know what you think and feel free to post any suggestions/criticisms, we're always looking to improve our terrain!

Actually it is not performance heavy at all. Our new terrain is about 17x17km and we have tens of thousands of grasss objects (every field, open space, along roads) with almost no performance hit. The models are extremely simple and easily rendered. We can help supply you with these high performance models if you are interested. One thing that we discovered is that performance is extremely dependent on the number of different objects that need to be rendered in the frame. If the game has to load fewer textures then the performance is markedly better. This is particularly important with regards to vegetation within built up areas. Although it's slightly less visually appealing try to limit the number of different types of trees and bushes you are using to get a large performance increase. The same goes for any forests that you have on your map try to pick 2-3 tree types and stick with them. I'm guessing your terrain will suffer form the same pitfall that our terrains do; because we are modeling rolling fields with very little gross elevation change the game will have to render to the view distance most of the time. ARMA does not account for objects when deciding what to draw, only terrain occludes the scene being drawn. This means that most of the forests on the map will be drawn in their entirety the majority of the time, which can be resource intensive if you don't make good vegetation selections. I recommend experimenting with different vegetation to see what gives you the best performance, some is much more intensive than others.

Hey guys great looking map so far! It's very nice to see some 1:1 realistic terrains being made. In reference to the ditch and grass problem I would look at how Lancer and I solved the problem in the Schwemlitz terrain for ARMA 2. By using grass objects (essentially bushes) instead of clutter objects you can create fields and grassy areas that are both rendered at range and prevent the AI from seeing through them. Additionally we implemented a ditch system using objects to represent the various ditches and irrigation canals. While both of these solutions worked well we are attempting to improve on them for our next terrain. One idea we've had is creating some better grass clutter objects that can be destroyed by collisions so that people or vehicles moving through fields would leave tracks and destroy the crops. We'd also like to work on making the various objects blend better and look more realistic, closer to the look of the clutter. Anyway we'd be more that happy to help you guys if you need some advice or resources, just let us know. I'd be awesome if we could pool some resources to work on some objects that could be used across multiple maps.

Nice work Nou! :cheers:

Wait so the hidden selections aren't specific items of gear, i.e. mag pouches, bayonet, canteens etc? Also could you elaborate on the technical issues with the 7.62 pouches? Furthermore having at4's and LAWs on the packs would absolutely allow you to carry them. The whole point of this is that all of these things are used in conjunction with some major scripting to make a system that more correctly and closely represents what gear you have on your model.

Can we get a list of all the hidden selections in the model.cfg. I'd like to develop a script for my missions that will change your gear based on what you have on your person, i.e. drop your bayonet no bayonet on your gear etc. Also for the next release a few things to consider adding: 1. NVG mounts on the helmets. A hidden selection like the dust goggles would work great. Makes everything look better if you want to do later 90's stuff and not have the NVGs attach to the helmets via magic. Ide 2. Make the extra 7.62 ammo boxes with shoulder straps hidden selections instead of a backpack. This allows the solider to carry a rucksack or launcher in addition to extra mg ammo if necessary. Ideally each box would be it's own selection for 4 total so if you have 1 extra box then you could make only 1 appear. 3. Make 2 extra alice pack models, one with an M72 tied on (on the side or top) and one with an AT-4. I can probebly get you models for those if you want them and you can just copy and paste them onto yours. This would allow a solider to carry a launcher with a ruck at the same time. Also would lead to an awesome implementation with ACE's on back feature. While I appreciate all the work you put into kitting out all the units but the way you made your addon leads to major possibilities for high level users to create some awesome gear scripting that allows in game models to very accurately represent the actual ammunition and gear units posses in their inventories. I and others would love to capitalize on this possibility and create what would undoubtedly be the gold standard for gear and unit addons moving forward. This is more than a matter of form as it adds tremendous gameplay value to be able to quickly survey your fire-team/squad/platoon and discern what assets are available to you as a leader.

Sounds like everything is in hand. I am eagerly awaiting the release. The only two things I think need to be added are two things yet to be realistically implemented in ARMA. Those are proper cold weather gear and MOPP gear. Honestly I think these units are already well on their way to being passable as winter equipped with the winter thickness BDUs and gloves etc. So for me the number one request post beta would be MOPP gear, coveralls with a hood that could be up/down, gloves and overboots. Currently it's pretty much impossible to accurately represent any large scale conventional war with ARMA. I would much rather see MOPP gear than more special forces kit that only was used by a few hundred people.

Not hard at all. Making them ACE compatible does not make them ACE dependent. PM me if you need help.

Lancer is going to release this as soon as he can. He's been busy. Sorry but it will be out very soon.

How does tomorrow work for you? :)

Hires Album

Indeed I did forget to credit you. My apologies. It's fixed. As far as the buildings those are the MBG buildings, you'll have to talk to Mondkalb about it.

This will happen, along with an adjoining 15x15km terrain.

Amazing work, I'm loving the cateyes on the helmets. I've got 10 1990's mechanized kosovo missions that are dying for these models, looking forward to release.

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Agia Assault By Falcon Version 1.0 Date 08.03.13 > DOWNLOAD Scenario Bravo Company 3rd Battalion PPCLI conducts an attack to seize the northern part of Agia from insurgent forces. Features - 61 Player Coop Mission. - Equipment and Time Limit Parameters. - Realistic mission scope, objectives and AI scripting. - Scoring system that allows for (BLUFOR Defeat, BLUFOR Minor Victory, BLUFOR Major Victory, BLUFOR Total Victory). - Battalion Radio Net Simulation. - Spectator Script - No Respawn - JIP compatible - Real Canadian Forces ORBAT (well not really but best I could do with vanilla). Notes Quick mission I threw together for vanilla Alpha Arma 3. Not as detailed or realistic as I would like but I might update it later. Playable with just one platoon (28 players) but the scoring system is balanced for a company attack. Credits: - Mission by Falcon - Beta, Nou, Sandiford and Krause for basis of a few scripts - HeinBloed for the basis of the spectator script.

This is a bit of a huge request but I thought I'd throw it in. Any chance of seeing MOPP suits? In particular if we could get a model at MOPP 2 and one at MOPP 4 that would be awesome since you could easily have the players dawn protection in game. Also I'm pretty sure a lack of well modeled CBRN stuff is the only thing keeping Nou from making a chemical 155 rounds and a complete warfare simulation. Any potential major conflict at this time would have certainly been fought in MOPP 2 and MOPP suits would also be great for some Gulf War 1 and 2 missions.

Not to mention the entire end of the cold war, Panama, Grenada, and Kosovo

Scrimed out helmets would be awesome.

Thanks, I'll be releasing a version with some more substantial tweaks in the next few weeks.

Have you tried putting the AI on combat mode when they drive through the city? This causes them to ignore roads. Also I suggest just using a lot of waypoints spaced closely together in urban areas. Hopefully you can get the AI to bend to your will!

Understandable, but honestly the people with the skills and interest to make the models have most likely already done so and so they're distributed among the various already released addons. Getting someone to make them for you again probably isn't going to happen, you could ask for permission and conglomerate their efforts but it looks like it you're on your own. I really appreciate the level of realism that you're going for here but just keep in mind that most people won't use the default loadouts for units. Mission makers almost always have scripted kits. Anyway I'm eagerly awaiting the release keep up the good work. Also not to beat a dead horse but TheChaos is right I think the models could do with a more dirt/grime and overall a bit more of a washed out look. For reference here's a re-texture for some cold war dutch units that have a reasonable amount of weathering (only gripe is they went overboard on the boots, they should still be recognizably black).

What weapons in particular are you trying to replicate? There are a lot of weapons mods out there already and pretty much every US infantry weapon from the 80s-90s I can think of has been modeled. The only weapon I can think of that is lacking in a high quality implementation is the M60 there are only two that I know of floating around a cut down spec ops/para variant and a standard variant both which have an ok model but use a crappy ladder sight which is very hard to use in ARMA. I'm not an expert on weapons so I don't know exactly what the sights on the M60 were like...

No, I think you just need to know what the named selections are. By the way any chance of getting an earlier release of just the units? Everything is looking fantastic and I think there's plenty of people who would love to get their hands of the units regardless of the status of the vehicles, weapons and equipment.