sqb-sma

Spriting flat out in full kit for 15 seconds would've left me winded, especially if I had a guy controlling my character giving me 30 "3 HE underbarrel" grenades and 20 FAKs to lug around. I feel like the stamina drain for jog is a little too quick for gameplay reasons, but for sprint it's fine. Oh, I almost forgot the sounds. Yeah, they're too loud in first person, they should be muted (i.e. chop the treble off) and reduced in volume to around 2/3rds or 3/4ths of what we have now. The heartbeat is fine.

Ooooh, why didn't I think of that. Man, my mission kept going awry and I just couldn't figure it out. Ha!

Thanks, I'm using sweetfx to overexpose them (sort of a Hable Filmic HDR effect, that's become very popular in other games like Project CARS and Battlefield 3/4) and then leaving F.Lux on which makes them go burnt orange (I don't actually see that colour in game because f.lux doesn't work on fullscreen applications). I figure leaving it on is neat for a little variety. No post editing or photoshopping in any of the pictures, apart from cropping out the HUD.

I'm running Altis fine, but using 4.5gb of RAM to do so. I'm guessing that's where the problem lies (I have 8gb so no biggie for me).

Agreed, the church looks amazing (we took some happy snaps in front of it whilst on mission, screenshots on the screenshot thread), but we were very sad to find it unenterable!

And now for some "real" pictures, taken during combat online on the ATR server. (If I don't put a break here the two images combine in a neat way, but not intended) :D Tourist pics Base Disembarking Engaging targets

Some pictures in my favorite... town? City? It's bigger than Chernagorsk so I'll call it a city for now. Altis is incredible Attack Commences Scanning Spotted! Moving in Contact! Waiting for medevac Returning for revenge at night The fight begins anew Time for Opfor to retreat Clearing the town Thanks to ItsThomas for finally teaching me how to make a thumbnail link to the full image! Huzzah! (It's the reason for all the edits... heehee)

One thing I've noticed. AI will fixate on a direction (often completely wrong), but if enemies are spotted they turn and engage, before fixating back on the weird direction. This is an improvement because they used to just fixate and never turn and shoot. Until suddenly snapping around. Now they only snap to shoot, before looking back in that direction. They should probably scan the area where they were just shooting, and flick between threat areas. Rather than this weird fixating. Other than that it's extremely good, these "minor" changes have huge impact.

Dude, check out the gas prices. In the future we have in Arma 3 the price of petrol has soared, the auto industry has collapsed. Combined with the economic problems of the region and the war it entirely makes sense.

No FPS issues but I am getting bluescreens and application crashes! Yikes! I think Altis is really testing my CPU for some reason, my cooler can't keep up.

I think it copped some flack because it just wasn't realistic, unlike the rest of the mod. The sound samples and quality were great, as were the explosions, but the guns (the meat of this game) sounded simply strange and the bullet cracks were plain odd.

Bodies are often sturdier than most things around them during explosions, more likely to stretch than break. There's videos of snipers being hit by artillery/tank shells and being flung, in one piece, probably 150m into the air. There's also videos of roadside bombs sending people 50-100m horizontally. In fact if anything Hollywood has perpetrated the "If you're caught in an explosion you're either just pushed lightly over or there's nothing left of you to be buried" myth. To be honest... I'm more interested in gameplay than the grisly realities of war. I'd like a full wounding system not because it's horrifying, like Red Orchestra, but because it would give the medic something to do. And knowing BIS' opposition to the game being portrayed as something of a murder simulator I don't think they'll dial in the ragdolls too much. I'd actually feel kinda sick if I saw something like the videos people link me in a game like Arma, that combination of horrible sights mixed with the immersion I feel in this game would really impact my decision to play this game for the worst. Wounding and medics I'm fine with, so long as it's in the deeper part of the uncanny valley and not too shocking/sad.

That's right, sun intensity is altered by the overcast setting, no cloud shadows at the moment.

Good timing, the patch with Altis just got released for Dev.

Does anyone have a recording of a round on Chivalry's forest level? The thunder in that is amazing, just like close lightning strikes!

See, I know what you're saying but the way the gun moves around the screen, to me, is like a visual representation of the way sway feels (I sho- HOLY SHIT DEV BRANCH UPDATE. PAUSE EVERYTHING. I REPEAT, ALTIS IS STAGING. THIS IS NOT A DRILL, THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

I'm more excited about those AI changes than Altis. Maps get old fast, gameplay is what keeps a game going (and AI is at the forefront of Arma's gameplay). And I'm glad to see BadBenson not replying to those posts, whether he's shown the immense strength of seeing someone attempt to continue an argument that... should've wrapped up a long, long time ago, and then deciding NOT to reply, or if he's just been AFK. It's been good for the thread, and good for the rest of us. If any of you get into an argument on here, try to recall that it's not you vs somebody else, it's both of you vs the issue (which may be either of you not understanding the problem, NOT NECESSARILY THEM). Lay down all your knowledge and get them to do the same before introducing argumentative techniques, you should be able to find the exact point you disagree on and then start providing evidence on that point alone. If you/them/whoever is wrong is smart they'll change their point of view. If they refuse to... well, they're stubborn assholes, and probably not too intelligent to boot. Now, about the ETA on that patch :rolleyes::D *rubs hands together expectantly*

Altis' landmass is 270km^2 (less than JC2 I'm sure) but including the water I believe it's slightly higher than JC2 at ~1,150km^2 (based on the info we've received, so I could be completely wrong). But then the detail of the landscape in JC2 was... subpar. Bascially a few interesting places with km's of nothing in between. Some scenic areas but some of it was obviously knocked up very, very quickly.

The solution in your video is exactly what I hoped for. I'd love to see this released (if people must play with third person at all XD) BTW: Has anyone got this working with their Rift? So far I've been unsuccessful, and the only video I found was one where he'd bound it to his mouselook (not his head, freelook) so it looked f*cking retarded.

The core problem is that even before you shoot your location, according to the AI, is designated by a factor called "knowsabout". Normally this is at 0% if you're out of sight/hearing range. If you shoot, and this goes to 1%, the AI knows your position exactly, however they have to act like they don't. The AI don't take a location and say "the shot came from there", they specifically know it came from you, however they don't know if you're friendly or enemy or any details so they guess it out. If you kill one of them the knowsabout goes quite high quite fast, they know you're hostile, so they instantly engage. It's a bad system, in reality the best system would be one where AI can easily switch between targeting people and areas (designated as a sphere hovering in the air or a segment of each AI's visible area) which they considering threatening. Why would this be so good? 1) During aware mode a cover map could still be drawn (provided the CPU is powerful enough, this would make the CPU strain for AI movement just as bad during non-combat as during combat, ouch!) with sources placed in some key areas by level designers, AI could look at these areas of risk as they move. Higher awareness modes (combat, stealth) would attempt to remain invisible from these areas even if there's not a single enemy spawned. 2) A bullet is fired into an ambush. With the first round each AI can guess the shooter's position to within 90 degrees. The cover nodes in that area activate and a rough cover map is drawn, the AI find cover and scan. As more shots are fired (assuming a shooter is well hidden) any scanning AI could isolate a position rapidly as soon as another shot is fired. He can then relay the individual's positon to his team-mates who, if the enemy doesn't hide, will now switch from area threat to individual threat. 3) If in individual threat, the game works exactly like now. An AI can hold the individuals of highest threat in its memory and, if it loses sight of them the enemy becomes an area threat again but the individual still traces a high knowsabout-ish factor, so that if either one takes cover and then moves whilst unseen before popping out, it's not like the searching AI has to examine the entire hillside again, once spotted an enemy is more easily respotted. 4) If an enemy team retreats into hiding or takes cover, MG elements or high firepower (RPG) elements in the team can suppress those positions, or even suppress threat nodes in that small area (threat nodes would usually be placed on building corners or small hidey holes, so if a team takes cover that's where they're most likely to shoot back from) whilst the rest of the team repositions and splits into flanking and suppressing elements. I think that introducing that new area threat system would make the game a lot better when it comes to AI. And threat nodes... may not work out in reality but I think they *could* work. Especially if buildings are exported with inbuilt threat nodes for windows and corners. I think the worst thing would be drawing threat/cover maps, this would take a lot of CPU power for multiple threat nodes, and calculating the most "shadowed" (least threatening) area could take too long, making AI unresponsive and clunky if you suddenly hop out in front of one (I know we've got the find cover interrupted task for AI now, but I'm talking about bogging a CPU down so much that it's too slow even for that to work well, it's a real risk).

Here's what I'd like to see: 1) Instead of a black boundry, have the actual eyecups. 2) Use the new fancy reflection mapping and lighting to light these up, with a shadow where the glass is so that a) we can see where we're looking if there's a fire behind us or somesuch and b) it doesn't seem like we have no head.

It's hard, and I love it for that, but double check super AI is not turned on under the difficulty options (you may also want to twiddle with the skill sliders a wee bit). It's a lot harder in dev branch with the new AI, that's for sure, you're no longer way better than your team. I'd reccomend download TPWCAS, TPWEBS or some other AI mod (Windwalkers mod is integrated with EBS, and it's fantastic) so that suppressive fire works against AI as well. I also think its a good sign, as the AI get better you have to treat them more like real players, be more fearful of them etc.

One thing I love about Arma 3's 3d scopes is the way sway works with them. It's very nice that it works the same with 3D and 2D scopes. That said... who on earth thought making the 3D scope so dim, dirty and shit looking was a good idea. It ruins an otherwise brilliant idea.

The obvious problem with the first two would be the size of error. If you move your camera in 3rd person, even just slightly, it would reveal areas invisible from the original, and the player's, position. Meaning you'd never be able to go into 3rd person. With the second one... it could be interesting as it would allow 3rd person if enemies weren't around but then force you into 1st during most combat.... still it could be used as a cheat to detect enemies, so I'd veto that. The third is a very interesting idea. I quite like it... I'd love to see an example video, because if the time taken to hide the enemy is too long you could still get an idea from it. Also it would be good if you somehow demonstrated the player's line of sight, so that enemies didn't just appear out of nowhere. Still, the best solution is just to play first person. There's a reason most shooters are... well.. FPSers. Oh, and no need for the self negativity! These are good ideas, I think you should just make whichever one you think has the best chance of success, test it yourself, and, if you think it works, release it into the wild and see what others think. You're thinking up some pretty abstract solutions to a major problem, which is better than most people on these forums, me included!

Overly blue = sunlight hours between 9am and 3pm (I'd argue that the fog is too blue in general though, but it's worst during high sunlight hours) Pink = Sun is half risen. For default date config that is ~4:55am and to a far lesser extent at sunset ~7:10pm It really is a kind of toxic pink. Why is this unrealistic? Ok, so fog, by its very nature, is opaque. It blocks light. Because of this when the sunlight hits fog you should get a very brightly lit area, the same as a solid object. At some hours this brightly lit area would be pink. HOWEVER the light wouldn't make it far into the fog, and the light colour inside the fog is given by the total ambient light near the surface with a small inverse square falloff as you go deeper in (i.e. the change in fog colour between 10cm and 1m is huge when the fog is directly lit, but between 10m and 100m it's not giant, though certainly is noticeable) At sunrise the fog should be almost grey (with blue influenced by the sky's relative brightness and pink/red/orange from the dim sun at sunrise almost balancing eachother out). During midday the fog should still be grey (if thick enough, remember the inverse square). To summarise: Fog should be grey. Also, during midday the sun's light is almost white, the lit fog should be white in colour, you wouldn't have blue clouds so why have blue fog!!!?? For reference: Thin fog lit by morning sunlight: Later in the morning, thick fog Picture showing surface lighting of fog vs light inside (the colour we currently have inside the fog during sunrise is closer to what the surface lighting should be. Because in this game you spend more time with your boots on the ground I think it should be biased towards the inside fog lighting if biased either way) http://photos.nsmb.com/files/3/vancouver_fog.jpg (104 kB) This still of Arma should show how wrong the current fog colour is during daylight hours (credit to dslyexci, it's the tumbnail for his fog editor) http://blightgaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/fog2.png (592 kB) It needs a lot of work.