instagoat

Good thread, though being the pessimist I am, and in the light of the sparse information available, I fear it won´t grow large. I´ll see if I can contribute something though. I love community art projects

Well, I feel accessibillity means the following: To ease access into the medium, by reducing thresholds of difficulty, complexity and scope, to produce an easier to understand, oversee and use product. Accessibility in the general world, for example in architecture, means stuff like ramps, elevators and other things: essentially "helpers" that allow people to interact and get into a building in an easier fashion. Useabillity on the other hand I understand as this: To provide tools and pointers to a complex object that allow unlearned users to quickly understand how to use and employ it. In game terms, tutorials, control scheme, general information design and clarity. In the general world, useabillity in a building would concern itself not with making the building less complex (it needs to be as complex as it needs to be to fulfill its purpose, obviously reduced to the absolute minimum possible level of complexity), but with providing a clear layout, maps, path labelling and such things. As for the console: Console games suffer from outdated technology in the platforms (compared to the most recent developments in PC technology), very strict coding requirements as I understand it, as well as a very limited amount of controls compared to your average PC. I wouldn´t know how to efficiently map arma´s control scheme to an xbox controller without taking a -lot- of commands out. It´s not impossible, just difficult. However, that´s not to say that I advocate needless complexity in the game just for the sake of it. In fact, I´m a friend of reduction. Get an Idea, and then trim it down until it´s pointed, well developed and delivering just the thing you want to deliver. With Arma 3, I expect that to mean less Units, less maps, less Missions, but everything much more well made, tightly wrought without bugs and hitches, reliable mission design, excellent story, voice acting and art design. Arma 2 is a very awkward game to get into because it tries to be everything at once, all the time, while also swamping you in tons of content. It is too much, everywhere. If the basics are down, they can again be expanded upon infinitely. Arma 3 needs to be a neat, finished, good game. If it is that, addons, expansions and DLC, along with the modding community, will make it grow to similar sizes we´re familiar with from Arma 2, and maybe even to sizes similar to OFP in its heyday. My thoughts, for what they´re worth...

I have to emphasise though, the distinction wasn´t made by me, but by somebody else in one of my threads. All credit goes to him, whoever he was. I don´t have time to dig up the thread now and search. I´m sure they know who they are.

Someone in one of my threads kindly pointed out to me the difference between ACCESSABILLITY and USEABILLITY. FORMER means taking out parts that are "too difficult" to cater to a broader audience. LATTER means adding tools so everybody can use every part of the game mechanics, without taking anything out. We should not talk about accessabillity. It means, quite literally, dumbing the game down until it fits a broader audience. DR and RR tried that, and fell flat on their noses. What BIS should go for is useabillity. Improved tutorials, improved controls setup, better information design troughout, and ease of entry with no unsurmountable difficulty curve. The gameplay is fine. Leave it be. Work on the problematic fringes, which hinder people from actually getting to the fun part of the gameplay! My two cents. Also, to the person who pointed this out to me, thanks again. This slight but important change in vocabulary needs to take hold in the community, also so BI becomes aware of it. If we want Arma to remain as good as it was, and get better, we should try to bring the point to them that we don´t want a watered down game, but an improved game.

Not what you thought it was. In anticipation of the lame screaming guy with gun photo on the case (no offense, bis) I went ahead and built a CD case with a "blue" theme for Arma 3. Inspirations come from the BF3 header with the soldier walking towards the camera, as well as the Arma 3 theme BI has already set up for us. The case features a rather crudely drawn SBS/Skull logo on the back, and a unique artwork on the front, built using lightly overpainted screenshots, as well as stock-pictures found on the web. As such, think of it as a photo collage. Hope that me making a new thread for this is okay, as I felt this didn´t belong into the wallpapers thread. Full Size here: http://i.imgur.com/5Vkon.jpg Edit: Corrected typo in motto. Sry SBS, shit happens

It´s a very cool piece of technology, unfortunately, not really going anywhere until we get room temperature superconductors. But if we do, super cheap maglev trains all the way baby. Time to replace the airplanes unless there´s an ocean in the way.

Since anonymous has no leadership, no organization and no real credo apart from the rules of the internet every moralf...dude can make a video of himself with a V mask and be anonymous. It only becomes official if anonymous in sufficient numbers rally behind a cause, such as operation leakspin (related to the leaked US govt. cables) or operation chanology (the protest against Scientology, which is still going on by the way.). Otherwise, this is just some video by a guy in a mask on the internet.

This kind of multi-layered system I thought-experimented with early after Arma 2 came out, and I couldn´t come up with a satisfying solution. Pointless commands notwithstanding (such as the redundant wait for me order), there is so many commands left that it is difficult to arrange them in any meaningful and easily useable manner. You either have a shallow and broad system like we have now, with 10 menus with up to 10 sub-menues each, or a deep system with two to six top-layer menus, with one or two sub-menues each, each again with one to four commands. The current menu is only advantageous to arma veterans, who have the muscle memory of years behind them to figure the commands. Everybody else is just screwed. The labelling is partially atrocious (such as "advance" and "flank", which should say "Take point" and "Take flank guard"), and the sheer amount of commands available is mind-boggling. So, the flowchart doesn´t convince me. What I really like, though, is the "time slowdown" when opening the command menu: this is a must-have solution, in my opinion. It is already implemented in SP when using the teamswitch menu, and should go for the command menu too. This would simulate giving an instant command (irl, officers don´t have to navigate ten menues to issue verbal commands), as opposed to the "person freezes as he navigates the menu" issues we get right now. It should be a difficulty setting, enableable for all difficulty levels. This Idea, I am fully behind, for what it´s worth. The rest, good direction, but supremely difficult to do well.

Credits go to the guy who took the photo of the flame, to Sabre for his OCP US army Units, to the ACE2 mod and BI for providing the game and everythings. Actually wanted to practice source lighting, turned out to look extremely similar to the lighting on the BF3 poster thingy, so I added logo, background and text, and voilá, instant wallpaper.

Wow my bad. :V Will fix asap. The omega is a reference to objective omega, as referenced on the Arma 3 page.

That´s okay, it´s what I like, after all. Everybody has their own preferences. Part of the intention of starting this thread was to get some discussion going, as to what kind of case people would most like. What I did there´s sort of a sketch. I think what everyone can agree on, though, is that future Arma artwork should be less noisy than it´s been. The screaming soldier is a bit overrated and overdone by now. The Arma X case-art is a good step in the right direction, I think. Less is more.

I´m just gonna put this out there. Wall Street is not a cause. It is a symptom.

My greatest wish is a good storyline, with interesting characters, which will become as legendary as Zork, Monkey Island, OFP and Metal Gear Solid. That is all.

I am hot for this mod. You guys are doing a great job, keep it up! Arma forever!

Cyber Warfare will become more important in the future, along with economic warfare. Any buildup to a potential WW3 would be featuring a lot of this, so I hope BI are taking note of these occurances and maybe building some of this into their own stories. As for the real life, wow, this sucks. I guess the security systems will need to be overhauled after this...

Gameplay technicalities aside, what I am most afraid of running nose first into the dirt is the story pretense. I´ve already made a thread saying how illogical the equipment seems... But seeing the ending of PMC (the bad-bad one),

Gotta say, the MW3 SP trailer sure has gotten me hot.... for Arma 3. MWs story so far has been so stupid, even the silliest and backwards concoctions BIS can come up with will be more realistic than this. Plus, Arma 3 will display a WW3 that, equipment and strategy wise, will be more realistic, ie, centered on europe and not the US mainland. And I´m sure the A3 gameplay will be much, much more satisfying than the endless orgy of explosions this game seems to be.

Try slowly peeking around a corner. I´d upload a video, but my net is incredibly sucky, so I have to make due with words :/ I agree, deliberately walking around corners works fairly okay, even though you can still get stuck in doorways unless your weapon is lowered. What I mean is peeking around a corner just enough to, for example, offer a narrow field of fire trough a doorway into a street. I guess it has to do with the slow responsiveness of the keystrokes (ie, the fact that you hit a key, and the character only moves shortly afterwards... at least, that problem is present on my rig.)

Traders are in it for the profit, and the recession in the 20s has shown that you can make huge profits and consolidate power even in such an event. Traders do what´s best for their institutions or themselves, and not what´s best for the public. And even if the guy is an attention-horse, he still has some valid points. What is personality quirks are shouldn´t matter, only wether there is truth in his words or not. The system (god, such a dirty word to take in one´s mouth. But I guess I´ll just have to deal with it) in place is terribly complex, yet with a little bit of insight and research, very transparent. Central Banks buy bonds from the states of their localities, be it the ECB or the Fed. The money for those bonds is printed, and handed over to the state. The state works to get it into our pockets. We put it into banks (many of which are stakeholders in the central bank, thus controlling its actions indirectly), where we receive interest. Businesses and private persons get credits from banks, at interest. The interest has to come from somewhere: either somebody is going to loose out (since interest is by definition the creation of money out of thin air, if money isn´t transferred from one place to the other internally to the system), or money will have to be created. Back to the bonds. The bonds also have a sort of interest on them, which is paid to the central banks by the state: the state doesn´t have that money, so they need to sell more bonds to the bank to get more money. Rinse and repeat. Money is the pivotal thing in our lives: without money, we literally starve. Political processes in our time revolve around money, and politicians do as the big money tells them (if they don´t, they can´t get their campaigns funded, and wash out from the political process). We elect the pre-selected politicians, who then act as free or un-free as their alignments made them. Money thus is a critical factor in how our countries are run. And who controls the money, ultimately? Not we, not our politicians, but the banks. At least, that is how I understand the system. I only read a handful of documents, among them the official dox of the IMF on fractional reserve banking, the relevant wiki articles, and am currently reading Tragedy and Hope. If I am misunderstanding how the whole thing works, I´d be delighted to be corrected. because frankly, if this system is really as I understand it, there´s every reason to be unhappy with it. And I don´t have enough time on this world to waste it by being unhappy.

For the movement, it -is- clunky. There is no degrees of freedom, it´s just on-off animations. You either move, or you don´t, while in real life, you can very exactly define the scope, speed and pace of your movements. For example, try to move around a corner slowly. You have to tap the move key, "twitching" into place, instead of doing it with one smooth tap of the key. The animation system of Arma so far has been archaic: it´s the same system from operation flashpoint, just with new and more diverse animations put into place. Some of these are decent, some are very good, and some are not: but the quality of the animations isn´t the problem. The problem is the fact that the movement itself is clunky and robotic. In this regard, the floating camera used in almost all other shooters (apart from Trespasser, maybe) is more realistic than Arma, in the regard that it allows more fluid and intuitive movement. I like the physicality of the body in arma, though, the fact that you can see your body as you move, and have it interact with your environment. That one´s a keeper, but something needs to be done about the ancient, on-off type movement/animation blending system. One other point of discussion has been the complexity of the controls. I agree that a universal, contextual use key would be rad to have. Reducing movement keys would free up space for other functions. However, a lot of the functions mapped on the keyboard are hard or impossible to remove, without breaking the depth of the game. This brings us back to player training: everybody with half a brain can learn the controls, they just need to be taught how to use them. Finding everything out on your own can be frustrating, and should be something the game teaches you. People play the game to have fun and enjoy themselves, not to spend half an our sifting trough keymap options or reading keymap cards, and then train themselves for two hours in the editor how to use the keys, and THEN have fun and enjoy themselves. I know in any other game than Arma, not being told how to play the game would be reason to bring it back. I know mass effect frustrated the hell out of me because it only told me things piecemeal, and in-story, instead of in a closed of training arena like games of old (Think System Shock 2, Half Life 1). Arma 3 needs a player academy type of setting, where the basics of milsim gaming are laid out for the player, and where they can learn in a safe environment, with rewards to enhance the fun. (This can be as simple as a voiceover telling them how well they are performing, and doesn´t need to be lame stuff like unlocks and achievement lists.) Once they are trained, they can confidently go into the missions, campaigns and multiplayer, and enjoy the game for what it really is, and not the frust-fest it´s been for noobs so far. My two cents.

That person deserves to be shot in the foot for not being able to deal with taunts on the internet. What the fuck. If you´re so immature that you´re ticked off by a kid shooting you and calling you names on the internet, you´re involved in major asshattery. Where did this person grow up, Loonietown? :I I mean, srsly. Getting upset over the internet. Serious fucken business right there.

Arma´s suppression mechanic both for the player and the AI is kind of, well, nonexistent right now. All that happens is that you shake a little more, same goes for the AI. That is all tidbits, however. I think to be warmed up to the hobby, new players will need to have the heat turned up slowly, so to speak. I am really interested in hearing what the devs have planned for that in Arma 3, how they´ll be easing the players in or not.

Before I say anything else, I think he is right. And it´s not a conspiracy, its simply how the system we and our predecessors chose to implement is running. This includes the monetary system, the fractional reserve banking system that is standard in the western world, as well as other things like hedge fonds and the likes. If yoou think this is a conspiracy, you probably don´t know what you´re looking at. This is no secret. If you think it was, you´re misinformed. Just as an example of the insanity that is one of the pillars our economic system rests upon, wiki article on the fractional reserve banking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking As for 911, I don´t buy what the conspiracy theorists are saying. I´ve listened to their stuff for two years, radio shows, blogs, books, and all it seems to be is a big circlejerk of the same five people living off each other, and a big, gullible crowd of airheads backing them up. That has nothing to do with how the world is run, by the way. How it is actually -really- run. We are, ultimately, not ruled by our elected governments, but by those who provide the funds to those governments. In europe, these funds come from the european central bank, which is a completely independent body with neglible accountabillity to the government. It can set interest rates, and provides loans and cash in return for government bonds. Meanwhile, large, independent banks are stock holders in this institution, and I get the feeling that the ECB doesn´t answer to the governments of the EU, but to the banks that have put money into it instead. That makes it ultimately not a tool of the EU, but of the banks. As the saying goes, money rules the world, and the banks rule the money. As far as this being a conspiracy theory goes, I think it´s not: it´s a product of a 200 year long process, which was largely random, forced by history and the foresight of a select few states and statesmen, businessmen and bankers. It might have ended up differently, but that´s not for us to worry, because here we are, and the system in place is what it is wether we like it or not. My two, uninformed cents

Good note on the words, I´ll use usabillity from now on. Thanks for making that clear, I really should´ve paid more attention there. Would be nice if BI themselves would also switch the terms, and be clear on wether or not they´re permanently cutting anything in favour of the bad buzzword. As for the cadet academy, good Idea. Maybe that´s something the community needs to provide, however. I doubt BI have the time and manpower to provide an extensive set of connected tutorials.

Hi editing boards. I have searched around and haven´t found anything helpful... problem is the following. I have a small FOB full of dudes. They are attacked by Takiban. Now I want the garrison to give a report if they´ve taken a certain amount of casualties, and call for reinforcements once a different amount of casualties is taken. The latter should trigger the go waypoint for airborne assault troops and their chopper. I am completely clueless how to go about this, I don´t understand scripting at all, and I barely know how to use triggers. Please go easy on me <:( Cheerio Insta