OOPz

Ill try not to shout too much coz once you start swearing at people.. they do tend to stop listening, but i really am not happy right now. This is without doubt the worst thing i have ever seen in a BI game (and iv played OFP, and (i believe) every version of ArmA, so im no noob), i have had a huge amount of my time wasted on this POS mission..... and frankly, i feel patronised for the first time ever playing a BI game. When the mission started i actually thought to myself 'sweet, i get to play with a mini-gun'.... but no, unfortunately its just 'that' crappy mounted weapon mission which turns up in every shooter eventually... only this time, really not very well done. The biggest single problem is that you have no control over the vehicle, if you want to stop you can either hold the trigger, in which case the driver stops quickly bouncing the weapon around, or you can tap the trigger, causing him to stop more slowly, but in a more controlled manor, im not sure which is best as either way i waste about 100 rounds waiting for the vehicle to stop bouncing around. Would it really have been 'that' tricky to hook up the AI slow/forward/fast/reverse/halt commands? Because most of the bad guys seem to be positioned behind ridges or on the backs of hills, by the time you have waited the second or so it takes to actually stop, the bad guys will have invariably hit you a few times... but it doesnt kill you, like it should... no, it just makes the view all blurry and covered in blood... so you can no longer see said bad guys.. you know... so you can kill them.... which, really doesnt work... at all! Well, you make us grind thru this for what feels like about half a day, then just for fun, an APC jumps out from behind a wall... but it doesnt kill you either... at least if your quick.... right?.... coz, if theres one thing we all know, a 50cal round in the chest is only a mild irritation while youre in a mounted weapon. Oh, the hilarity! But if that isnt irritating enough, you then have us grind for another few hours until finally... a hind pops up from behind a hill.. coz if theres one thing we all really need after we have burned off all our ammo its a f'kn helicopter at the end of the level. So, lacking ammo to kill the thing, and having absolutely no other method to fight or avoid it... i quit and started again. Grind grind grind... and finally back to the boss fight with enough ammo to kill it Seriously.... its a boss fight!... what the f were you thinking, i find it hard to believe that you guys actually have that little clue as to why we play your games, but if i wanted to play this crap i would'v purchased just about any other FPS on the market, i dont expect this level of patronising, time wasting crap from BI, its simply unacceptable. Dont get me wrong, im a huge fan, this is just about the only game out there that actually allows any form of tactical thinking, the only one which actually challenges the user to learn and keep learning. Other than a handful of stupid but forgiveable things you have done in the past, i have nothing but faith in BI and its products, i buy things like this PMC addon without even really checking the detail of what it adds... just to show support. but if youre going to start pulling crap like this. youre simply going to loose me. Seriously, if you have to tweak the AI so the APCs, Helis etc cant shoot straight, and if you have to set the player to have such a high damage tolerance that he can get shot in the face with numerous 762 rounds (and i suspect doing the same to the damage threshold on the hind, coz.. theres no way a real one could survive 'that' long in the firing line of a minigun)... there is a clue in there.... a clue saying DONT DO THAT, ITS MORONIC!. Whoever designed the mission needs a good slap (at best) coz apparently they just dont understand how ArmA works, and have tried to pack something that would have been better off in call of duty (or some other patronising crap shooter) into ArmA for no apparent reason (i could forgive you right up until the point the hind showed up) In the future, if you absolutely must include this type of thing, dont put it in a campaign, where it cant be skipped, chuck it in the scenarios where im not forced to deal with it before i can carry on.

love you!

yeah, just being able to control the vehicle would'v been sufficient to save it..... and loosing the boss fight at the end.

indeed, rail-roading the player really isnt right for a BI game, theyre best when we just get given an objective and are then left to work out how to achieve that on our own. i was expecting this to be a fairly unpopular mission, but im actually a little surprised that not a single person has stepped up to say they like it, normally everything i get upset about (for no real reason ;)) provokes at least a small number of people telling me im an idiot. i guess the message is clear, eh

o.k... after quite some slog, removing start options and mods, making a new player profile and generally breaking my whole setup i have found the problem it doesnt work when the game is in windowed mode. as soon as i switched to fullscreen the behaviour changed dramatically, bullet tracking works much more reliably (not telling me 'could not track bullet XYZ' almost every time) and the ballistics data button started the confirmation bong noise and now reports as expected. (i cant seem to get the bullet cam working anymore tho, either fullscreen or windowed) so, that could be something to look into? (when i said "the basic ballistic readout" i was referring to the string of white text that can be seen on your screenshot on the first post ([AK_74] impact: elev:-0.85...)) anyhow, im up n running now, thanks :)

o.k.. thanks, problem however is, i cant find how to display the ballistics data. iv tried everything in the comms and action menus with no joy.. the elevation hint will show, but not the ballistics data (assuming its on that same button), what am i doing wrong?. oh, and the markers dont seem to work here either? (A2OA, latest official patch)

its a minigun.... spraying is what they do.. telling people not to spray with a minigun is like drinking in moderation... wheres the fun in that. and, yes.. obviously... i had nearly 2k left at the end the second time i played thru... but i really didnt have any fun, at all.

nope, should work either way, but sometimes it just doesnt work at all. due to bug. you get booted every time if you are looking thru the gun optics (or at least i did) this is actually how i ended up stopping the vehicle most times, its a little slower than firing and kinda breaks the flow, but at least it doesnt waste the ammo

yeah, he will. i had the same numerous times but i didnt bother to mention it as its exactly what i expect from ArmA driver AI.... it does kinda suck even on a good day

now iv had a few beers and got on with other things, including the very entertaining tank hunting mission that follows i should say that i do stand by everything i said, but the vitriol caused by the irritation of wasted hours should probably be toned down about 50%. no joke tho... most patronising thing ever to come out of BI, please dont do it again

I can reformat data easily enough, however im not seeing where i am supposed to copy it from?. the above description makes it sound as if it should be displayed below the basic ballistic readout (elevation, distance, height etc) which is showing fine.. but there is nothing there (nor any obvious method to select and send to copy buffer) i dont know if arma's scripting would allow external file access, but how about just dumping it in a text file in the mission dir? assuming not... someone please explain how to get at the data

um, anyone?.... using setBldgBeh with a long wait time does not actually make the guys stay in buildings?

Im trying to get foot patrols to occupy buildings for a little while between waypoints. using _setBldgBeh = [5,50,60,60,1]; they will very occasionally enter a building, but will immediately turn around and wait outside (not stay at the building position for the full minute i expect). is this right? also... i know theres a note saying that not much works with setBldgBeh, but in utes, zargabad and takistan (the three places iv tried) it appears that virtually no buildings... at all... allow this. im using pretty much unmodified everything, standard DAC_external setup (only changes are the values in the setBldgBeh arrays), a few logics to get the tips/reports on screen and zone drawn on the map, and one zone spawning infantry. if it wasnt for the fact that the guys do occasionally enter some buildings (for a quick look) i would be certain i was doing something wrong, however.. they do, so i merely 'suspect' im doing something wrong, i really dont know.. anyone?

yeah, doing good, yourself? sounds like your well on the ball with the update... i cant pretend im suprised, good man! :)

any other nvidia card can be used as a video out (tho, i suspect PCI-E is required to make it work efficiently). Because its running windowed the main card does all the work and the secondary just allows you to hook up more screens (and work as an 'almost' dedicated physx unit too). i suspect the same is true for an SLI rig (but im just using an old 9800), both cards would do the work as one unit, then the master sends the window content out via both. if you want 3 wide and are looking to buy hardware for it, i strongly recommend nvidia over ATI unless you happen to already have display port monitors (which, basically nobody does), it works out a LOT cheaper. (and trust me, you DO want 3 wide, especially if you like to fly helis, it makes a huge difference)

i am running A2 in windowed mode on a triple screen system (in 12:3 mode), the problem i am having is that every time i start A2 the window setup and resolution i configured previously resets to fill only the center screen at 50% 3D (pixel) resolution. looking at my ArmA2OA.cfg i see that the correct values are indeed stored upon updating the settings in game: Resolution_W=3838; Resolution_H=1024; winX=-1279; winY=18; winW=3838; winH=1006; winDefW=3838; winDefH=1006; Render_W=3838; Render_H=1006; I dont know for sure what all of these are, i believe the first two (Resolution W and H) can be ignored as they are the fullscreen mode (and im running windowed), but i forced them to the same res anyway, just to be sure. winX + Y are, i believe the coordinates of the top left of the window, the numbers in the cfg are correct, but the game actually starts at 0,18 winW + H = width and height of the window, again, correct in the cfg but i actually get (i believe) 1280*1006 (1280*1024 - title bar) winDef i have no clue about, but its set the same as everything else too. and Render W + H is the actual width and height of the rendered 3D scene (which is then stretched to the window size), the cfg has the correct numbers, but upon starting A2, these always revert back to 50% (1919*503) I know its not exactly life ruining to have to drag the left and right borders out then pull up the video options and set 100%, but i am getting a little tired of having to do it every single time i run the game :/ Im currently running A2 1.54.72888 (latest non-beta), but this has been happening since i first got triple screens setup, somewhere around the 1.03 or 4 era. OS = Win7 Ultimate, 64bit GPU = nvidia gts250 with drivers updated today. If you'd like to know anything else about the system, just ask.

iv tracked it down, at least a bit... it appears that arma windows simply wont start with any coordinates outside the primary window, and i think it tries to maintain the % pixel res, not the values, thus when it is forced to 1/3 of its intended width on startup, it runs at the 100% res i set, which is 1280 pixels wide... when i then resize the window to be 3 times wider, it wants to run at 33%, but its lowest setting is 50%, so it uses that. :/

Iv been playing with the BAF addon for the last few days, its got L115A3's.... but frankly, ours is better! ;) only bugs iv found sofar are the sonic crack reported above and the scope zoom isnt working any more. anything being done to it at the UKF end?

from chatting on IRC, IIRC its simply something that never got coded, we get first focal plane behaviour because nobody ever got assigned the job of writing the script to zoom it in for second focal plane /me shrugs

My thanks to da12thMonkey and the UKF guys for getting this working. The meshs took me.... um.. lets just say 'quite a long time' and move on to the next subject asap before the horror kicks in again ;)... but, i'd never have got the technical side of it done myself. Yup, Its doable, my record is 2625m (during calibration)... which is the upper limit as the round vanishes beyond that point ;) Glad you guys are enjoying it, it certainly is a serious weapon. If we can get that bolt animation done that would be great :) Also, glad to hear theres not a lot bug-wise in OA, i dont have it yet.

im not sure, but i think bullets stay alive based on time, and its 4, maybe 5 seconds. with a high powered rifle this equates to about 2.5km

oh, cool... i missed that thanks :)

Tutorial == save the above text via any text editor, to a filename ending in .sqf (e.g. bulletcam.sqf) place that file in the same directory as the saved mission file (i believe these are always called mission.sqm) this is normally under /[your user profile]/missions/[missionname].[mapname]/ finally, in the init field of the player character put: this addeventhandler ["fired",{_this execVM "bulletcam.sqf"}]; (with the name you have chosen in-place of 'bulletcam.sqf') great script Big... but it is MASSIVELY unreliable with high powered rifles... like, it only works for about 1 in 6 shots... and given that pretty much the only use i can see for this script is for long range sniping... kinda ruins everything. any chance you could work out a mod to allow it to catch the bullet better?... maybe displace the 'get' coordinates by a value along the muzzle bore, if its possible to get the muzzle velocity that will give that value, right?... otherwise, we can just enter it ourselves? (i dont know arma scripting at all, but that seems fairly logical, right?) ---------- Post added at 15:20 ---------- Previous post was at 15:18 ---------- oh, and it seems to NEVER work for the first round... any way to force it to init without firing off a test round? (im trying to setup a sniper mission where the player should in theory only fire one bullet... so... ya know 'eek' :/)

great work, does almost everything i wanted :)

no, but i may do if i were prone with a rifle