bad benson

no idea how exactly this works but shouldn't the fact that a jungle is a lot of the same objects repeating maybe even sharing textures help? i think you should also mark your speculation as such until you have actually played the expansion. just saying :p

arma 3 on macbook air? 70%? hm. i'm pretty sure the game is unplayable on anything but mid to high range. the demographic you describe does not play arma 3 at all because they can't. my specs are recommended and i can not play most large mission in MP (dom like stuff) above 20 FPS (mostly below) no matter the settings. i tried endgame a few times and nope. not smooth either which is a shame because i liked the concept. but PvP with FPS jumping up and down is a no go. and all the people i know who have great pcs get around 40 FPS with a lot of dips (so not average). not talking editor here ofc. some call that "plays okay". to me that's broken. wasn't that big of a problem in arma 2. maybe it's something that happened when they put in physX or something because it sure isn't graphics settings related. and that's the reason i would never update my pc just for arma. because it won't fix it. it will just move you above the border of playability. but if there is tech that can be used in arma that would make an update 100% worth it. by all means!! good will towards the devs, who btw have mentioned performance (as if it was a new feature..) and DX12 on E3 publically as goals, is one thing but let's stay based in reality. everyone knows that arma has performance problems. it's not this made up phenomenon by people who don't know how to use graphics settings.

haha wow. didn't think i would witness this happening in my lifetime ;)

yea but i think there's a difference between COD's backyard levels and old ass engine and arma simply requiring a lot of hardware already as is due to its scope (and other reasons ;)). the problem with arma has always been that it didn't even run great with the most uptodate hardware. arma needs technology updates badly. if it means alienating people playing on a toaster, so be it :p to me that's the biggest flaw. having bleeding edge ambitions in terms of scale but not using bleeding edge concepts and tech. the reasons for that are another story. just saying.

yea i know that but there is technically no difference because both require you to reupload the model file which then makes it accessible to people not owning the game, binarized or not. as for reverse engineering. is that a term used in the EULA to differentiate? because on its own i don't see it being a bad thing. it's what modders do all the time. it's pretty much the essence of it and what happens everytime a new feature gets released. yea. i'm pretty sure that was a response to those black MXs and the general history of simple reskins being such a hassle. but overall inconsistency remains which for example means no retexturing of houses or even trees (season versions anyone?) to create more variations for map makers. i'm just giving examples of situations where i thought "this would be cool...nope...not allowed...too bad". well yea obviously. i was more indirectly asking for a precedence of model.cfg changes being allowed, or even visual edits, by coordinating with the devs since so far these things are "illegal" afaik. and again all of them require reupload of data making it possible for EVERYONE to download. that's my point though. how does it protect their IP if they release the stuff later anyways. and how is the potential damage bigger if the game is still uptodate? hence me asking. like, is it ok once they feel the models are outdated and they can do better now? would be great to hear a dev's perspective on this. i just want to fully understand the concept and motivations. yea i agree. and it can be a blurry one. so having good examples and stuff can help draw the line more clearly and hopefully more logically. also, i'm the last one to take HJ's side since i find his attitude towards fellow modders more than questionable but i have to say that in those examples he stated the models being vanilla and made by BIS, same for the model.cfg. so in terms of "claiming as your own" and all the other ethical stuff this could be a good example for devs to draw lines or say "this is not over the line" or similar.

i just realised i totally misread the list of things i quoted from your post. i thought it was someone having uploaded RHS and HLC among other things in one big pack. so that kind of thing is what i was refering to. sorry about that. i didn't know BIS would tolerate that. is it something that would go through on the forums too (as in providing actual addon downloads)? keep in mind i'm talking about very specific things for a start. like for example adding memory points to all vanilla characters or similar stuff or just editing the frikkin model.cfg for that matter (just that would be so insanely useful). i feel those things should be allowed since all not allowing it does, is cripple modding possibilities. although it would be great if visual edits would be allowed too. i mean. isn't it kind of weird to others too how delicate even releasing reskinned black MX rifles was? or the fact that there aren't a lot of nice user made camos or more detailed roughed up versions available for the weapons. or maybe that's the general way it is already possible? ask devs and you can do anything? and then releasing the content as samples later. i never understood that. is it the artists' pride (i get it, just curious)? and if so, why do they release the stuff later? are they afraid someone will make another arma using those models? i never fully got that approach. i personally am mostly not interested in using helmets for my own addons or stuff like that. i want to add features. so getting the models later for me personally usually does nothing. as for the models in that example being from the DLC. i didn't think of that aspect. good point. that's of course a more obvious problem since it would potentially allow the average Joe who already owns arma 3 to get content from the DLC for free.

seeing those collections i wonder, if people even know that can make a collection of addons on the workshop. it's a great legal way to link existing addons (by the original authors) together into a collection that is almost/pretty much treated like an addon by the launcher. good for server owners. maybe BIS should do some educating. like a quick video tutorial on how to use the workshop and all its features. the opticalsnare hjohnson case also showed that by doing it the right way it can be ok (config patch with requirement for original addon). i always wonder if people know these ways to do things. i think if rules are strict, they should be explained properly. and another thing that i don't want to actually report but use as an example to get some feedback by BIS. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=437115291 this addon looks (not confirmed) like it's edited versions of arma 3 models. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=425997626 here he also mentions that he edited the model.cfg which makes me assume that he debinarized models. now instead of reporting those i'd like to make BIS aware of them as examples of what totally SHOULD (imho) be allowed. this these addons do no harm and basically add onto existing content. it would be really great if BIS could finally get a little more tolerant in terms of addons like these and we could maybe get more loose rules when it comes to editing vanilla models. that would allow a lot of possibilites and i honestly don't see any harm being done here. if this leads to those being flagged, well then my bad and i'm sorry, but i thought they are very good examples of what really should be legal imho.

hm. you can use whatever you like as long as you're in SP or on a server that allows it :p but if i remember correctly, updated just means more versions. i can't recall having changed a texture without keeping the old one. that's why there are so many options in the addon because some people really like the darker high contrast ones while i personally like the more subtle stuff. so there shouldn't be anything you miss out on from an older version if you use the newest version. i guess i should update the first page. i mainly posted these sendspace links for foxhound so he can get the files and upload them to armaholic. with Enhanced Movement i sent him PMs to avoid this kind of confusion. in short: use the armaholic version to make sure to be able to play MP.

the car throwing is pretty unique and awesome looking. i can't test this but judging by the videos you got something nice here with the whole huge hordes world war Z kind of vibe. performance and AI seem to be pretty solid. great to see something creative. i mean zombies are usually kind of overused but you put a nice twist on it so it's more interesting. your mod deserves a fancy name though. the thread title is funny but kind of underselling it too ;)

i liked the hint at exploring the whole thing even underwater. i'm just having fun reading into stuff here but i hope that means the underwater is going to be more densly populated and interesting. especially in terms of height differences. i would love to explore some steep cliffs underwater leading me down to a place of no return ;)

i think he (semi) has a point on the large patches of jungle though. of course it's hard to say from the few camera flights in the video if it's something to worry about. but i think BIS should make sure that they add a lot of rough paths and clearings to make the dense jungle more interesting, diverse and better for gameplay and AI. it's going to be annoying if you can't even reach most places with a light vehicle. that could make the jungle gameplay very one dimensional (infantry vs infantry) and repetitive. but there's still a lot of time to do more of that, if needed. so no need to be fatalistic about it (YET:p). i just hope too that there is not going to be a lot of the same jungle repeating covering a lot of areas. i also hope the vulcano is going to have something of interest inside of it. otherwise it's just a big old landmark taking up a shit load of space.

ah sweet! thx Papanowel! didn't see the talking part yet. dx12 confirmed for the expansion. great! i'll make sure to have huge expectations for performance improvements...no pressure :p "green hell" sounds awesome to me. i always wanted something more wild. hoping for some places of interest that are not based on civilisation but rather little water falls and rock formations, maybe even some temple ruins, inside the remote jungle. would love to get lost in the jungle and navigate via natural landmarks and stuff. i'm also hoping the whole dx12 update will also mean some new rendering stuff. i think epecially for rain it's crucial that they finally look into some techniques to dynamically increase material specularity globally. the jungle setting more than ever requires rain to look actually wet.

i just glanced over the thread this morning to see the video. looks very pretty. i had wished for some actual footage of a player walking through the terrain and especially the jungle. i like it though. i didn't like the holiday feel of Altis but i think this is different. a jungle is a setting that makes sense for military stuff equally in terms of what people are used to seeing. south american anti drug operations, vietnam war, ww2 pacific theater. greece. not so much. so i don't quite get that complain. i also saw some talk about focus on civilians and even frikkin dinos. is any of that even based on info provided by the devs or are people just making shit up? i'm genuinely curious. some sources on it would be cool since the thread is growing fast. just a thought on people saying there is a civ focus based on the video. keep in mind that this was a TERRAIN reveal. so all the vehicles and stuff where just ambient additions to make it look a little alive. i'm sure. the military stuff will be shown later. again. not expansion reveal. TERRAIN reveal.

ah i see. i was interpreting it wrong based on what you said. should've taken a closer look instaed of glancing over it. after taking a closer look i see it now. i wonder what exactly you did though. did you just make a normal map from the diffuse? seems like it since the bright sand seems raised. either way looks great. i think i haven't seen such fine detail in a sat normal in arma yet.

seeing your avatar and the location under it made me wonder how detailed the under water is going to be. so far the feature is just a gimmick to me, atleast the combat, but i'm still curious if it's going to be worth exploring and more beautiful than Altis/Stratis.

yea but they added it in arma 3. so for Chernarus they just removed _mco and added parallax maps for close range. imho Altis and especially Stratis could make better use of the sat normal map. Takistan with all those bare hills could've benefited a lot too. in general it is most useful on smaller maps though i think. then you can get some real detail in there. not sure what the limits are for sat res.

that's my point though. atsche said himself that it's for adding details to the distance. you make it sound so bad just because it's no solution to midrange blurriness. :p i realised you would know how normal maps work. i was just going into detail to show that this is useful/awesome in its own context eventhough it's not a fix for that specific problem. not what it's designed for anyways. although as a side note: i remember talking with someone (maybe Bushlurker) on the terrain maker channel on skype about how one could try to abuse the normal map as midrange fix by just putting different noise types into it. not sure if anyone ever tried it. and i personally think it's a dead end for several reasons. the main one being that it's down to light source angle how it's displayed. another one being that it would not be able to be used for what it's good at anymore.

haha wow. great minds think al...damn nevermind lol. and good to hear man, can't wait...pew pew pew

yea they are. they pretty much show what per surface character midrange textures could look like ingame.

what he did there is make a normal map from the same height data as the height map originates from. the difference is that the normal map can have a higher resolution. so while the engine uses a smoother less detailed image to generate the terrain mesh from, the normal map will, given the right lighting conditions, create the illusion that the terrain mesh is more detailed than it actually is. which is pretty awesome and valuable in itself. you are right about closer distances being another problem though. the above described method is still very awesome and useful though. especially considering that most (if not all) satellite fotos of rough mountains are full of shadows which often requires faking the area with flatter not original data or having ugly dark areas (like sadly some armverse maps). this is the cure for it. not used by many sadly. still not fixing the midrange stuff. agreed. sorry about going on about it. it's just something i messed with and that fascinates me and should totally be used more by terrain makers. ;)

i'd say that this is very similar to the prone turn issue. it needs lowered turn speed. that would be totally enough imho since you can't shoot while sprinting anyways. would need to be a capped max turn speed though and not just lowered sensitivity since that can easily be countered with huge mouse movements. since you can shoot while being prone, prone needs a little extra thing that would be a turning animation you can not shoot in. much like crawling forward the hands should be occupied with actually making the movement happen. i think momentum systems go beyond those basic limits usaully. stuff like gradual animation change and movement speed for starting and ending a sprint etc. it is more often done in 3rd person games i think because it can feel weird in first person as someone mentioned about GTA 5 1st person. could be maybe fixed with well tuned inbetween speeds or even seamless speed adjustment. how cool would that be? infact. something tells me that GTA could have seamless movement speed when you use a gamepad. not sure. never played it with one or on a console.

did you succeed? i remember trying this in arma 2 but never succeeding and no one i asked about it thought it was possible. i'd appreciate some info, if you have some. thx in advance.

mother of god! is that data from world machine? looks awesome. too bad you're not releasing stuff anymore :(

the idea of populated towns with complex behavior in this engine is pure utopia. simply ain't gonna happen. never gonna perform properly since very basic scenarios can already struggle as is. it's like what someone mentioned about the occasional car in addons like tpW. it's a tiny detail that adds so much. no traffic. just one car once in a while. who needs populated towns? i want to be surprised by a lone civ running into my sights screaming because i almost shot him. i'd rather have civilians act as simple as animals or as mentioned reversed zombies. loiter and when in proximity and "aggroed" by gunshots running away from you instead of towards you. almost like COD fish AI ;) or take startled flocks of birds as an example. instead now we have dudes jogging around casually (because AI can't sprint for some reason) aimlessly without any logic and going prone (do they still do that?). atleast they already kinda move away in open fields. urban areas can get messy though. as froggyluv mentioned. basic self preservation maneuvres are not working well for AI period. @defunkt: yea looks more like highres sat map. hard to say though since we don't know what to look for without knowing how a potentially new system works.

i don't think though that civilian behavior needs to be complex at all. the problem in arma 2 was that it felt mostly broken, slow reacting and just weird in its outcomes (going exactly where it's dangerous or just going prone in the middle of the road and freezing). what i'd love to see is a super simple AI only for the purpose of ambient civs. almost like a reversed zombie script. something that can be applied via a module or something to keep the capability of armed civs using normal AI. like simply running away scared, including hands over head anim and sounds, from gunfire, explosions etc. and hiding behind cover or in a house. have them use random phrases when you get close or even have them stop and put their hands up when you aim at them like in GTA would be great. just simple and effective. not based on the normal AI at all. and based on close proximity. it's just for ambience anyways.