instagoat

This is probably due to the increased rendering distance for objects that was introduced with the 1.05 patch. Before that objects weren´t drawn far out enough to make this obvious. I noticed this too, however, it only becomes really apparent on maps with really clutter-free, jagged hilltops. In Cherna, for example, you hardly notice it at all.

Hello, BIS I´ve been playing some stealthy sneaky missions recently, and had an Idea regarding how to make the AI react more realistically on the battlefield. Right now, they have a solid system to simulate realistic reactions to situations on the battlefield, deciding to retreat, being suppressed and searching for enemies they have spotted. However, I think a more advanced system to simulate stress and fear would be helpful, especially for stealth-missions. To my Idea: Instead of using scripting solutions, I think it would be great if this could be made as a placeable editor-module. The Modules would come in two forms: Individual and Global. The purpose of the Modules is to create more advanced stress simulation for the Units affected by it. Each Unit affected would be assigned a "Stress Level". This value would be compared to their skill level, and yield different results for each skill level. For example: A 8 man group of insurgents (all with less than 50 % skill level) are assigned to a global Stress Module, with the stress level placed at 0 %. 0% Stress means the Units are completely relaxed and not expecting any threats. Their spotting range and speed are reduced, their reaction time is reduced and they will be more prone to panic when attacked. Now this group stumbles over a group of US Marines sweeping trough their area. These have high skill levels and are also attached to a stress module, with their level placed at 50 %. They would spot the enemy quickly, they would react with coordination and not be prone to panic once the air gets a high lead content. The Insurgents, because of their low skill combined with low stress, don´t spot the Marines until they open fire. The Insurgents take casualties: Low skill + 0% Stress + No spotted enemies + Casualties would immediately catapult the stress level to 100%, and have the Units fall into a panic. Panicking Units would begin to spray bullets into every general direction, and ignore orders as they try to get into cover. Units that are panicking also should even detach themselves from their parent Unit and hightail it out of the combat zone (Desertion) if skill level is lower than a certain level (say, 25%). The Marines, as soon as the enemy begins to return fire would probably raise their Stress level too, and would begin to favour rapid fire over single shots in an attempt to bring the threats down as quickly as possible. Similarily, if a Unit of insurgents, placed in a forest at night, with stress-level set to 50 % comes across a board, they may mistake it for an enemy Unit and begin spraying the forest in an attempt to kill the perceived attacker. Right now I think some kind of tool like this would make for more realistic scenarios, and you could play some nice tricks in missions using this. For example, you could deliberately raise the stress-level of an enemy Unit by picking them off one by one, and at some point they would break and run for it, making it easy to eliminate them. I am not sure if the current AI does support things like this in its Vanilla state, however so far I don´t feel it does. I hope this is at least a little source of inspiration, somehow. cheers

Wow, yes! This is fantastic. The original Conspiracies had a better atmosphere than Stalker:SoC, (and I only got to play it for about 30 minutes because due to some corrupted archive the scripts of the first trader bugged out) a fact that caused me to be really disappointed in SoC because an OFP mod had done it better than GsC managed in 7 years of development. Really looking forward to this!

I´m a sucker for the moody broody post-processing and the vignette (the darkish borders), but the dirt-in-the-eye would only make sense when you are wearing goggles. For the blood, it´d be really cool if BIS came up with a system by which you could visually judge just by looking down how badly hurt you were. I know only one other game that -kind of- tried to do something Similar, which was Trespasser, but that one wasn´t really great in how it was designed. I´d rather have BIS stay on the safe side and add these movie-esque effects again, rather than add a system which potentially adds MORE actions than there are already in the game. Hitting a button to clean your glasses or a complicated system for checking yourself for injuries would be a little too much. This is a game, and ACE2 is already pushing the boundaries of where it remains fun.... anything beyond that is overkill

Wow. Just.... wow. How can you make all these promises and exagerrations in your advertising, and then crop up with information like this? Talk about bad business practice. By now it feels as if nobody at CM knows what the hell they are doing, or this was one of the most ruthless, calculated schemes for releasing a bad game on a good name I´ve ever seen. Rather shocking...

I think the AI needs to be much more autonomous with the main gun, or at least get a setting with which it will automatically engage. Especially for platoon and company level leaders this would be true: I know in the german army (where my father got up to Company commander in an armoured battalion in the north) that the Company Commander in the leader Tank doesn´t give any directions at all to his crew, who act completely autonomously to give him leeway in commanding the other units and keeping oversight, without needing to fuss with telling his driver which ditch is the right one to hide in and which target the gunner is supposed to engage. In that respect I´d love to have more autonomous behaviour in Tanks: maybe this could be tied to the rank setting of the vehicle itself, instead of the crewmembers, or its position in the high command structure. Right now, tanks are a bit of a fuss, with lots of button mashing and hit-and-miss commands involved.

For the rifles: Vanilla Arma2 doesn´t support adjusting windage and elevation, as there is no wind deflection anyway. This, however, is added by Ace2, including the tools like Range tables and Windspeed gauging devices, ranging binoculars and spotting scopes. Ace2 mod thread is here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=92466 Ace2 features list: http://ace.wikkii.com/wiki/Features_of_ACE2 For the positioning: I think the AI makes no difference between a skylined and non-skylined object. I´ve not tested this, though, so I may be wrong. To slip away from your pursuers you need to be quick. The AI is very adept at moving on your position, and they will work together to find you. Instead of just the guy who saw you, you will also have to contend with his squadmates: 12 eyes see more than two. Once they are alerted, they scan their surroundings much more carefully. They don´t have x-ray vision, however, and a good hiding spot away from their search area will usually yield results. Get at least 200 meters away from your last position before hiding, that works for me most of the time.

THe X52 is excellent value for money. Stay away from Logitech sticks, though. None of my friends who had one ever got them to work properly for any length of time. I´ve had my X52 for two and a half years now, and it´s still in very good shape despite almost daily use. Saitek in general offers very decent quality for the price right now.

It is there to reduce difficulty. And it´s not the best solution, because it makes the hitting/missing of the AI feel completely random. You can stand for minutes in the open, getting shot at and maybe take one or two glancing hits (which will do nothing except make the screen blur and then go monochrome), and other times somebody fires a single shot and you´re gone. The AI in Arma 2 isn´t so difficult because it´s, I would say, more realistic. Firefights in real life last very long, with a lot of ammo expended per kill, however, most of that fire is directed against covered targets. In DR, even if you´re in the open and a clear target, you´re still going to be missed. If you put yourself behind cover, the benefits appear marginal, especially because you can´t properly exploit the cover (no incremental lean, no actual sense of having a body). The AI in OFP:CWC is much more deadly than the AI of Arma and Arma2, partially because of the lack of cover on the maps, partially because of their inherent shooting skills.

The AI is likely not too inaccurate, but too aggressive (borderline suicidal). They move around a lot, and don´t exploit cover, outright ignoring buildings. I don´t understand the whole discussion about the precision. There are much more pressing matters, such as consistency (you never know wether the AI does what you told it to do.) and its being suicidal, ie ignoring killzones, not withdrawing when unable to spot an enemy shooting at it, or when superior enemy forces such as tanks appear on the scene. (They only withdraw when they have taken 50 % casualties or so depending on their skill setting.) I´ve also pondered about "objective logics" which force the AI into different behavioural patterns. For example, a "defend" logic placed in a town would force the defending AI to occupy buildings, automatically lay mines in the street and set up fire-pockets and ambushes, while the other side would get an "Assault" logic, which forces them to slow and deliberate advancing. Right now I think the urban combat that will be likely be one of the more common occurances in Operation Arrowhead would be less than fantastic: At the base, the AI is the most excellent I´ve yet seen in a game. However, they are still lacking in the details, and sometimes sorely so.

I thought echelons didn´t do anything to the individual AIs means of aquiring targets and shooting them, but rather their reaction speeds, coordination and group tactics? Unless I´m mistaken, that would mean that an Echelon doesn´t do anything to their predication/precision, but only to how long they take to spot, target and move on you.

I don´t know where else to ask this, and it seems to be redundant to make a new thread for a tiny question, so I´ll put it here and see what comes up... I was wondering if there´s any way to manipulate the depth of field and HDR aperture manually in any way, apart from slowing time down and mashing the screencap button until a picture with the correct object in focus and the right exposure comes up? That would create a whole new world of possibillities if it were possible. Thx in advance for any answers :>

I think the AI is okay now. The only problem remains in the consistency: it bugs out way too often and does stupid things. Once that´s fixed, they´d be rock solid.

@Vilas: In most cases, the shops have already paid for the games they take in stock before they are bought by customers, apart from preorders I guess. So even if people give the game back to the store, Codemasters would still keep the money. Marketing wise, the game is very well thought trough front to back. No system to port missions from PC to Console, no Mission Editor for Console, no modding tools, locked files and the way it looks also a load of locked/read to ship Content for DLCs. Lots of dependancy on CM for new content. On top of that the marketing campaign pre-release and how that whole thing ties in with the game itself: brilliant! Unfortunately, such a good marketing layout doesn´t make for a good game. But as long as people swim with the stream and allow Codemasters to make more money off the brand, they will go with it. I think of CM not as a bunch of individuals, but as a non-anthropomorphic personality, with the single minded goal to increase its profits and market reach. And like many companies, it looses touch with the customer base during that process. Which is why I appreciate Indie developers such as 1C Maddox (Who are sort of Indie), Icepick lodge (Who have made the fantastic Pathologic, and The Void), Tale of Tales and indeed BIS, because they don´t just make the more creative, daring and outworldish games, but they also stay in touch with their communities.

One problem here is how people are either taking things way to personal, or are out to flamebait. ^- case in point.It´s right, it´s only about games, and everybody is entitled to their opinion and their way of presenting it. However, partially, this thread has begun to skitter in the directions of childish trolling, and it´s painful to watch. Then I remember that after all, this is still the internet, and some people know no restraints, and everything is more or less okay again. Still, it leaves a bitter aftertaste to see how people go about treating each other in here, especially because I have been and am OFP fan from day one, and I like this community and all that stands behind it a lot.

Performance always has been a problem in the OFP series (I include Arma and Arma 2 for obvious reasons.) At 1000 m viewdistance, and 20 full groups per side in a large battle, I get about 10 fps in OFP:CWC. I run Arma 2 on 60 fps flat when no AI is around. THat some of the vegetation has an overly strong impact on performance is true, however. I think it has to do with all objects in view suddenly switching to close LODs... I´ve not checked this, but I also observe that in other games, zooming in causes performance drops because the LODs suddenly switch. Arma 2 is -nowhere- near as bad as Empire, though, so at least that is something. DR draws its performance from doing comparatively little at the same time: the only real superlative is the drawdistance (which is impressive to behold, I have to add), but the rest is rather low. There is only one or two types of grass clutter, very few trees, a handful of buildings and that´s it. The textures are relatively small, and don´t seem to use -any- kind of advanced shaders beyond self shadowing and dynamic shadow effects. Arma 2 seems to use massive textures, very detailed (and very varied) soldier models, very high resolution models for all terrain objects, vehicles and foliage, never less than three or four types of ground clutter in the same scene, and on top of that it adds weather effects, butterflies and pollen, leaves adrift in the wind, dynamic shadows, reflections, etc, etc. DR draws its nice looks from a very tight colour palette, and a very clearly cut-out visual language, as the devs put it in one of their videos. It´s got style for sure, but I think from the responses, it wasn´t what people expected. In gameplay terms, it´s awkward too, at times. I once waited for nightfall in the demo level, just to find that when using NV the picture was way too bright, and too dark without it, even when the sun had completele disappeared. So in the end I ran around with the flashlight on all the time. DR has a lot of other fancy gadgets vanilla Arma 2 is missing, IR lasers for example, or the somewhat weird thermal vision. It -sort- of has the edge there, but it feels as if it´s not really trying to keep it. It doesn´t just feel soulless and incomplete, when you think about it, it even comes across as a bit half assed. That the AI is decent doesn´t help it out of its ditch. I think the only thing Codemasters can learn from this is that you don´t ruin a name such as OFP in the way they did without suffering for it.

I´m not sure about the AI in either game being smarter than the other. At least the AI in DR seems to be consistent in its endeavours, from what I could see from playing the Demo. It´s not excellent, I´ve not seen them do anything particularily clever while playing the demo, and the way they pepper you with rounds while never hitting anything no matter the difficulty setting (who designed that anyway?) is turning them into cannon fodder unless they get really close or severely outnumber you. In Arma, the AI has it´s moments of excellency, steady periods of non-noteworthy mediocricy and then downright attacks of stupidity. For example when I told my team to get out of their bradley, the turned around and started running against it instead of around it. When the bradley then turned to rejoin formation, it crunched all of them underneath its tracks. "Oh no, two is down...." The only time the AI was absolutely consistent and clever was in Empty Wasteland, where you fight your way trough this village with the people you met. I think this was scripted, though: There was always somebody next to me, covering me, people are always observing their sectors, moving from cover to cover, without getting stuck, confused or even shot. I was the only one dying consistently in that mission, in ten or twelve retries I needed. I would bet it´s scripted to be that way, even though I can´t say for sure as I´ve not dared touching the pbo for fear of spoiling it or something. Vanilla, without scripts, the AI is still unable work with buildings on its own, it doesn´t change formations on the fly, it doesn´t re-arm itself without being told to, it still carelessly rounds corners and doesn´t recognize killzones, it doesn´t use smoke grenades, and it reacts slowly to threats. (Meaning, not to being shot at, but rather to having a tank appear on the scene. If nobody in the squad has an AT weapon, they will still hang around until half of them are shot before deciding to retreat, instead of clearing the field immediately.) That the Arma 2 ai CAN work wonders, though, has been proven by a lot of Player made missions, and the EW campaign. It still needs aids for that, however. My main reason for sticking with Arma 2 instead of any other game right now is the expandeabillity, and the sheer amount of things you can do using the mission editor. I can spend hours in Zelenogorsk playing a Dog and chasing cars, or trying to land AH-6s on the tip of the telecomms tower, or jogging around the countryside with SecOps and ACM on, to see how long I can manage to survive. All of these situations take seconds to set up, maybe half an hour if you want to fiddle around with the init.sqs a little bit. To get the kind of range of things you can do In Arma in DR, a long time will have to pass. Aside from numerous dubious design choices, the awkward community support, and an apparently dull campaign and missionscape, the lack of new content, and the lack of things you can do are the biggest turndowns for me in DR. That the AI in Arma 2 is dodgy sometimes, that the fps are low sometimes (though on average I get 10 fps more than with OFP:R in the same situation) or that it doesn´t have a proper physics engine is offset by all the other things it offers. It even does moon phases, tides and the correct starscape for the location and time of year! The sky in OFP is just a repeating decal of stars... (which doesn´t matter, because you can´t seem to get rid of the compass anyway. Again, the design choices.). At least with BIS I know that as the game continues to be supported, it can and will only get better. oh, And sorry for the massive post :O

A -very- modestly photoshopped screenshot.

I played around with this a bit too. Fun little tool... The new way it´s set up makes enhancing the pics so much easier. Pictures came out too big, though, so it´s only mini-pic links.

To be honest, I´ve -actually- not figure out what exactly this does. In the OFP options, you can set the amount of objects (Editor Objects, presumeably.) to any amount between 20 and 256. I think this means the total amount of Editor Object the game can render at any given time. I think this has been discussed -ages- ago back when OFP was released, so information on this seems scarce. Right now I believe that it basically says the same as the fixed max amount of objects in Dragon Rising, except that you can scale it freely to fit your computers performance. So instead of a maximum of 63 + 1 Units, you can get 255 + 1 Units on the map at any one time in CWC. If I´m incorrect, I´d be glad if somebody else could clear this up. As for BIS being a niche developer, I think that they´re actually on the bigger end of the Indie developer´s scale. OFP was successful back in the day, but then it also had the Codemasters advertising machine behind it. If Arma is lacking anything, it´s publicity (which is horrendously expensive when thorough). What happens if you spend too much effort on graphics design and advertising can be seen in Dragon Rising, meanwhile. Even though as an arts person myself, I have to say that if anything, the Dragon Rising graphic design is pretty coherent and nice to look at, even though clumsy in parts. And why they have photographs of Army Soldiers on the front end when the game is about US Marines, I´ve not understood anyway.

Well said. It´s been sort of clear from release day on that DR wasn´t in the same league as Arma 2. By now, seeing the constant comparisons between them has grown a little tedious, and the flaming that´s going on sometimes is downright disappointing (Mostly in the other forum, even though this thread hasn´t been -entirely- civil all the time either.). It´s quite amazing to see what people can squeeze out of that game, even though it falls "slightly" short of the mark, and they have my respect for that. If anything, for the names sake, Dragon Rising should be compared to OFP:CWC. CWC for example has a scaleable Unit cap of between 20 and 256 (Editor Objects). No tether in multiplayer, and expandeable to infinity. I´ve checked out the new version of the 40K mod recently, and normally I´m using Sanctuary´s WW4 mod inbetween playing Arma 2 and these Indie games I have, on top of tons of other addons and Islands. And after almost nine years, it still has a strong community behind it. The way Codemasters pulled off the game isn´t only an affront to the OFP name, but the Community that´s been behind it since day one. If they had pulled it off correctly, and made everything as transparent as BIS does, instead of having an expensive marketing team ruin the game (while making fancy devdiary videos) by trying to stuff it into three non-compatible markets at once, this whole affair might have gone down differently. Unfortunately, not so.

Oh right... actually, I´ve remapped the keys so right click to assign/aquire targets works along with reveal target as in Arma and OFP. Much more comfortable to command squads too, that way.

True enough, but I think, at least in the near future, neither of them could afford an armed conflict with the other. They both have nukes, they´re by now economically dependant on each other to a meaningful degree, and they have a common adversary to hold them together, which is the SEATO and NATO countries. I have to say though, if the basic storyline is interesting, and most importantly the missions are good (Sort of the drama of EW but with a feel of a modern Iwo Jima to it, except everyone speaks russian.), the whole political background becomes almost irrelevant. DR didn´t do it, so there the awkwardness of the conflict stands out like a sore thumb.

I think the Arma 2 community has such great mission makers that something much greater could be produced than the shoddy DR campaign. Just copypasting for the sake of showing off would be rather low, between Arma 2 and OF:DR there isn´t even a contest. If at all, it should be copied to OFP:CWC, to show that an 8 year old game can put on a better show. I think the whole Russia vs China thing, if it should be realistic, wouldn´t work, though, since they have a military and economic alliance (Shangai Coop Organization or whatever it´s called.) A JSDF + USMC vs Russian Marines + VDV and PLA would be more realistic. Throw in some North Koreans and Taiwanese soldiers for good measure and you´d have WW3 in the sea of Japan. No matter what missions will be released, though, I´m looking forward to this Island. :>

I always point the Jav at a target and hold down the right mouse button while tracking. Before 1.02 it sometimes didn´t lock up, however, after that it manages to strike the correct target in 9 out of 10 attempts if the line of sight is reasonably clear. What would be awesome though would be an actual Javelin Aiming interface... that´d be one feature I´d like to see in Arrowhead.