tacticalnuggets

I have a lot to discuss here. As always, my criticism is out of love for the ofp/arma series; nothing cant be solved. I wish I could sum it up in a few words but the general conclusion from most of what I am about to say is this: If BIS does not come up with plan to deal with the old community content properly, in their next flagship milsim sandbox, then BIS will probably die as a company. Assuming their next milsim sandbox is based on the enfusion engine, then their needs to be a plan for the enfusion engine. Arma 3 has kept backwards compatibility towards its older games. For instance, all the mod scripts, mod assets, and game assets are able to be imported into Arma 3 without having to do rewrites. Often, there is the need to update deprecated functions, asset compatibility configurations, and refactoring in order to import stuff. But the main point is that none of this was insurmountable, and as a result a lot of community content has built up. In fact, there is now over 17 YEARS of community content. In fact, there is so much content that in order to calculate it you would have to be a scientist specialized in the field. In which case, the only way I am going to attempt to come up with an average and uncertainty range on the number of mods is if I get paid. But if you insist on some kind of number, Arma 3 alone has over 57,000 mods on its steam workshop; that's not counting the thousands who run closed communities, create mods for themselves, or just want to be independent. The number of non-steam workshop mods could exceed that number. But again, Arma 3 is 5 years old out of 17 years of mods. So while the steam workshop and independent mods consist of what has been made or imported into Arma 3, there is still the potential aspect to get into. There is over 12 years of un-imported content that can still be imported with the will and capacity to do so. I cant throw out a number at this point, but if I have to say something, I'd say that the amount of community content is astronomical relative to most other games. Community content is what forms the backbone of your flagship titles, BIS. If this community content is not properly handled in your upcoming flagship title, you could create the biggest blow back you have ever seen, ruining your company and its customer base. I agree that from an individual perspective, a fresh start sounds appealing. But in this case, your going to remove the very soil you plant in, and your game crops wont grow anymore. I think the biggest indicator is the current "death spiral" that I cant help but point out. I do not want to start a rant fest, but as other community members and youtubers have pointed out, your most recent titles are getting mixed feedback, and you have built up a list of these titles. There is a lot of alpha phase monetization going on, while the games themselves are struggling to get out of alpha and seem to be failing overall. I do not know what kind of profit you guys are making off of your products, but I cant help but think that you guys are exhibiting a pattern of "lets try this. lets try this. lets try this", knowing that you need to push something out that people like quick or your not going to be around for that much longer. But one may wonder why you guys are not just dumping more money into your next flagship if you have gotten much better reviews for your previous flagships. I think its because you KNOW that you have hit the wall, and that dealing with the community content in your next flagship could destroy you, and so your company is afraid to deal with it immediately. Instead, you are willing to gamble with these new premature titles until you can come up with a solution. Which could be ok, but there is a temptation. A lot of company employees would rather play it safe and cash in on these situations. Sure, the company might be done and ready to close, but at least the current employees can get their paychecks before we are done. Employee morale is a huge factor that tends to make these periods of waiting for solutions death spirals. I have more to say, but I need to stop for now.

I'm not seeing much of an argument for why Bohemia ought not make enfusion backwards compatible with sqf. Its not like they are planning on adopting another companies engine, unless I am mistaken because i've been out of the loop for many months. It would seem to be worth it. Many platforms, languages, and frameworks do this as legacy support. And I'd wager Arma/OFP deserves the title of a platform.

Agreed. There obviously needs to be major improvements and innovation to release a new flagship title. But there is a precarious situation BIS must deal with that other developers dont have to deal with. Its what makes arma games so unique, and that is its abnormally massive number of mods and community content.

I disagree. The users should read through it, so they don't have to search around the internet for mod statistics, or manually find the kinds of reviews their recent titles are getting. I never said they would "automatically" be backward compatible. I stressed that the process can indeed be involved, but the point is that its possible. And continued backward compatibility for users like the CUP crew is exactly the problem. The CUP crew have poured years of effort into their imports. I would stress that the shear volume of content played a role in the length of the effort. Some stuff does indeed require too much effort to bring forward compared to its pay off, but the point is its possible to do. You have heavy hitters like the CUP crew and thousands of other mods out there, some with years of work like CUP. There is inherent value here. By stripping away that value, people are going to feel the burn. Its not a matter of legality but a matter of how people will react when it finally dawns on them just how much value has been lost. And in most games, there always seems to be some triggered fanboy out there, ready to throw a tantrum as well. But we are smart enough to be above these means of argumentation, are we not?

Project NEMESI5 presents the Rotation Menu System AUTHOR: Goschie VERSION: v1.2.10.9 DOWNLOAD: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B61D4bNCvEl9ZVZkdl80eTRvcjg STEAM WORKSHOP: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=640835448&searchtext=Rotation+Menu+System REQUIREMENTS (FOR MOD ONLY): - CBA A3 (http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=18767) What is it? - The Rotation Menu System is a context based action menu, designed for external interaction with other objects. - Any object, door, ladder, or hatch with a RTMS menu attached to it will present with a menu icon. If it's expandable, a fluid rotatable menu will appear for easy interaction - All default external actions are already apart of the system, which means get in gunner, driver, ect, are all included. - The Rotation Menu System is fully expandable and modifiable for any user, with an infinite menu structure. What this basically means is that a sub sub menu is always possible for any menu item. (see part 3 in tutorial). - The system seems to work better than arma 3's action menu, especially for doors, gates, and other once confusing obstacles. Occlusion also seems to be better. - Making menus (see part 1,2 in tutorial) is relatively easy and powerful, and will allow object and class based custom menus. - There may be some missing actions for special kinds of objects in the game, but hopefully through user feedback any bizarre special cases will be remedied. - The system is fully script based, with no additional addons (besides CBA for the mod version), or dialogs, or strange initialization requirements; this means its vanilla (I have made it into a addon/mod as well) - For the mod/addon version, you can still add and remove all your own menus at runtime. Basically, you have no loss of functionality besides adding/removing menus during RTMS's init process. - NOW WORKS ON NON ARMA 3 MAPS! (AiA/CUP included) - NOW HAS KEYBINDINGS FROM CBA! - NOW HAS PERSONAL MENU AND QUICK BUTTON! - NOW HAS INCREMENTAL DOORS! Controls? - Enabling scroll override by opening up your personal menu with tab, will allow you to use your mouse to navigate through menus. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOpAz217iow) - Use the 4 arrow keys on bottom right of your keyboard. Up selects -> expands -> activates menu items. Down closes the menu in the opposite order. The side arrow keys flip through the different object icons around you, but then you have expanded an icon, the left and right arrow keys will spin the menu around. - Use the space bar as your "quick button". Lets you quickly open/close doors and hatches, climb ladders, and call whatever main script you add to your own menus - Hold the tab key to open up your personal menu, and then scroll and use the quick button to select an item in your personal menu - While holding the quick button on a door, scroll to incrementally open/close the door for "sneak and peak" style action Previews! Updated: Tutorials! part 1: part 2: part 3: Change Log -------------------------------------- Version 1.2.10.9 (latest) Bug Fixes - A potential floating point error was fixed to prevent breaking during a major arma 3 engine update Version 1.2.10.8 Minor Changes - RTMS Options are saved to profile - Added disabling/enabling option of vehicle menus, and specifically menus on people/wildlife. Version 1.2.8.8 Bug Fixes - Fixed doors not opening due to bad BIS update of door config statements Version 1.2.8.7 Bug Fixes - No more freezing at beginning of game as cache system optimizes itself - Cache distance grows for classes added at runtime (like large buildings) - Particular buildings that lack important door selection names fixed (you can now use them) Version 1.2.8.4 Bug Fixes - Issue with changing vehicle seats on dedicated servers (MP), would spit you out of vehicle Version 1.2.8.3 Minor Changes - Added mouse/scroll override to personal menu in RTMS Options - Mouse/scroll override will allow you to use mouse buttons 4, 5, and scroll wheel to control the rotation menus - Quick weapon switch disabled while mouse/scroll override enabled Bug Fixes - Fixed more rpt errors linked to personal menu state - Fixed bug where hitting down menu key would reselect if menu went out of view then came back into view - Disassemble was still accessible on static weapons while gunner was taken Version 1.2.5.8 Bug fixes - Hotfix was incomplete, causing selection to be in the wrong place. Patch should be stable now. Apologies. - last hot fix inadvertently caused the personal menu to break when you get out of a vehicle without personal menu being held on - rpt spam related fix Version 1.2.5.5 HOT FIX Bug fixes - fixed rpt error zero divisor Version: 1.2.5.4 Major Changes - Added rotation menu to personal menu and all default menus show up in your personal menu upon entering vehicle Minor Changes - Menus now correct with zoom - Menus now have two new parameters, _conditionHideIcon and _isInternal - Menu with _isInternal set to true will add it to your personal menu upon entering vehicle - Cache distance now adapts to largest "class style menu" _distance setting, where the object size is used when set to _distance = "ADAPT" - Default menus now put vehicle seats in "Vehicle Positions" sub menu to be clean Bug Fixes - Adding lots of menus using SendRequest, on the same frame, would cause ProcessRequest to bug out (menus would not be added properly) - If a direct object menu was attached to an object already being used by a class menu, the cache distance would still override an object supposed to be displayed - Terrain would cause rotation menus to deform - Small objects/vehicles that would think you were not close enough to an excessive degree Version: 1.1.10.8 Bug fixes - Green circle for quickbutton/possible selection no longer gets confused when lots of icons are cramped together - No longer tries to cache hidden buildings for selection icons such as doors - Includes all static classes for doors/ladders/hatches, a lack of this was causing things like ladders on radio towers or walls to not get displayed properly - Occlusion drastically improved for buggy doors, thus allowing the doors that were not getting displayed on AiA/CUP/Custom maps to finally be displayed - Really small vehicles like quads and go-karts were disabling get-in sub menus if you were really really close, this was fixed so its not disabled Version: 1.1.10.4 Major Changes - Personal Menu, Quick Button, and door incremental scrolling Minor Changes - Door system now works on AiA/CUP or any other maps that have buildings using the term "door" in there UserActions config at all - CBA Keybinds - Scrolling to incrementally Open/Close doors and hatches - Quick button can activate the main script of menus without selecting them (opening doors, hatches, and ladders when using quick button by default) - Occlusion no longer uses vegetation - Occlusion improved by using center of mass - Slightly improved performance when sub menu open - "ADAPT" distance type added for menu making (use "ADAPT" for the _distance variable when you wont know how close you should be to make it appear) - Default menu for vehicles now adapt to the vehicle size when displaying main icon - Default sub menus for vehicles are now disabled if too far from actual object model (no more cheating by jumping in the object while far) Bug fixes - Fixed memory leaks in object uninstalling (some variables not deallocated) - Fixed memory leak for RTMS_DeleteMenuObject (condition namespace not being removed/deleted) - Fixed bug where object main icon would appear twice if multiple direct object menus attached by no class menu attached - Fixed bug where menus created for building structures would conflict with doors/ladders/hatches default menus Version: 1.0 - Added @RTMS mod to the download, so you can run the system in addon/mod form (no need to add to every mission, but wont be vanilla) - QUICK FIX 8:46pm PST 9/24/2015 Accidentally uploaded @RTMS with the wrong paths. It will actually work now lol. RE-DOWNLOAD IF YOU GOT BEFORE THIS TIME

UPDATED! VERSION: v1.2.10.9 DOWNLOAD: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B61D4bNCvEl9ZVZkdl80eTRvcjg STEAM WORKSHOP: https://steamcommuni...ion Menu System

I, among many others I know, will expect both passive and active protection systems (in tanks) to be a standard for their third but unofficially fourth iteration of Arma. And if the tank dlc does not adequately include these protection systems in tanks, I will be extremely disappointed and dock -75% to my rating of it on steam. This is not operation flashpoint; this is not arma 1 or 2; this is ARMA 3. Its been almost 18 years, almost two decades, since they began making a military simulator game. Electronic warfare and active protection has been more relevant than EVER in this day and age. If you are worried about balance, make a script command that turns those systems off, so you can keep the missions out there consistent if need be. But I can tell you that the majority of the community wants those systems. Scratch that... NEEDS those systems. Tanks are pathetic right now. They are only slightly better than the IFV's in terms of being effective, and almost exclusively rely on the the absence of competent air power (anything, including pawnees, can obsolete 80's era tanks). To say that air power is always dominant is not an argument, its an excuse for not putting more effort in the game. Another important point is electronic warfare and protection systems make the game more intellectually stimulating. Tanks have become much more than a low-brow rolling chunk of metal with a cannon on it. Especially in the sense of conventional war. Pure armor is becoming less relevant with the prospect of other rising military powers. Its only natural to recognize its importance for an accurate military simulator.

Unfortunately that would cause MP to be not so fun, as you would lose control of your gun (but i guess that is subjective in general). This was mainly created for issues with context, so if there was a lot of interactive objects really close together you could tell them apart. But you can also open doors, climb ladders, and other stuff instantly, as well as scroll open doors. Might wanna check it out if you have not tried those things. But I understand what you are saying.

Why play this old game when new games, based on same engine, have come out?

I'm pretty sure this problem was never ment to be, but as it stands I am getting no missile warnings or radar data for incoming missiles in the Tigris or other AA vehicles. I think it could be a bug, but i'm not entirely sure.

So in an AA vehicle, the radar is all chopped off for me. Also, the center of the radar is the big vehicle icon and its resolution makes it hard to tell which way the vehicle is pointing sometimes. Is there a way to adjust the size/position of the radar?

They were using a bugged script in their door config statements, so I fixed it an renamed it lol

UPDATED! VERSION: v1.2.10.8 DOWNLOAD: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B61D4bNCvEl9ZVZkdl80eTRvcjg STEAM WORKSHOP: https://steamcommuni...ion Menu System

UPDATED! VERSION: v1.2.8.7 DOWNLOAD: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B61D4bNCvEl9MjE3TjJtYndZQjQ STEAM WORKSHOP: https://steamcommuni...ion Menu System

Looks like I fixed the issue while still keeping the original functionality.

You are absolutely right, but its an important variable for a few reasons. The variable is computed such that the menus attached to a class containing a massive object, are still cached into the system, and keeping it cached rather than detected by some function every frame is more efficient. (because the cache scans every 0.5 seconds) The other reason is that if somebody adds their own custom class based menu, the distance they use could exceed the default of 20 meters. Fortunately, buildings/structures in door, ladder, and hatch detection are separate from this. But somebody could attach a menu to the class of a house. The idea was to keep each pass of caching in objects (scanning) at the most minimum distance possible, as I believe the worst case performance impact is proportional to the cube of the radius scanned. I should have some kind of fix by Saturdays update. If I cant make anything work by then (still keeping RTMS_GetMaxDistance), I will just use your first solution.

UPDATED! VERSION: v1.2.8.4 DOWNLOAD: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B61D4bNCvEl9QU95X3c1UnNOQzA STEAM WORKSHOP: https://steamcommuni...ion Menu System

Hey guys, just recently I have been doing more arma3 stuff again. I found an issue with dedicated servers and seat changing. I will try to release the most solid fix i can come up with by monday.

UPDATED! VERSION: v1.2.8.3 DOWNLOAD: https://drive.google...VWd3R0hUWkQyblE STEAM WORKSHOP: https://steamcommuni...ion Menu System

Because there is evidence to suggest Nato has actively been trying to assimilate Ukraine, and according to international law, the annexation of Crimea was at the very least partially legitimate. And there is also very strong evidence that most of the novo separatists are not actually getting their weapons from Russia, but from Ukraine itself. But most of those weapons, especially armored vehicles, are not in Ukrainian service, so how can this be? Well, its hard to exactly prove either which way when many vehicles that are not in Ukrainian service are actually in STORAGE. So they are available, and the counter argument again degrades into "you cant trust Russia, or you cant trust Ukraine", ect. But lets assume Russia is fighting a proxy war, which is certainly a possible and reasonable assumption. What makes it morally wrong? You have a government that has fascist connections, political intrusions by oppositional countries to Russia, such as Nato, and you have a large territory of People who believe their culture and language is fundamentally different to western Ukrainians. It would be highly logical to at least give your neighbors weapons to separate. These people are not like ISIS or the rebels in Syria, they are not trying to overthrow the entire country of Ukraine and supersede their ideals. The interest in Ukraine keeping that territory is a pure matter of resources, and not about the interests of the people. Counter arguing any further, for instance against the idea of Russia controlling East Ukraine as a puppet state (ignoring Crimea at this point) is diving into the realm of conspiracy theories, grounds which I will not argue on.

The majority of this thread sounds like middle aged men getting all hyped up by the anti-Russian Nato propaganda, something which they were exposed to a large portion of their lives. The arguments on here are poor. On one side you have Russia obsessed people who could give a rats butt about the atrocities Russia has committed, and then on another side you have people who clearly live in the walls of Nato, currently the most powerful force on this planet. But anyone who has been paying attention has seen the lines blur a lot. Even before Russia has become highly military active in the recent years, Nato has continued to build its world power, flipping governments they want control over and sometimes leaving certain countries in ruin. Nato has become highly corrupt, and has surrounded Russia in response to BRIC. Our news sources reflect the bias heavily, and so too has the Russian media. I have explored the darknet in search of just what the hell is really going on, and I have found a lot of benevolent content seemingly blocked by popular search engines, not using wrapped protocols or anything special. As the facts stand, Russia, despite having a sociopath for a leader, has deployed its military in much fewer countries and at a much shorter distance than the United States (the leader of Nato) has in the last 15 years. Russia has taken action within the scope of international law in Crimea and Syria. In Crimea, the lines are much more blurry though, if we take the "world vote", what Russia did was wrong, but if we take some of the facts at face value, then it was legitimate. But, again, the problem remains that the "world vote" is Nato. And to make it even more strange, there have been exposed conversations of Nato actively assimilating Ukraine at the time Russia decided to go into Crimea. The entire problem is one of chicken and egg, who fired first, ect. In a situation like that, you have to look at geography, who holds power, and clear motives. Once you do that, Russia clearly looks like its acting out to stop Nato from cutting off its country and monopolizing resources. The US and Nato have clearly been pursuing this in at least the middle east. Vladimir Putin's selfish action have coincidentally been unselfish for his country; they have been an attempt to restore the balance of power back to the east. As far as all eastern countries being "inherently evil"... I dont buy it..

Every change you made has been implemented in the dev version, only your bug fix was beef'd up a bit. Dev Version 1.2.5.9 Download: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B61D4bNCvEl9cEgyV3FiaThualU

My suspicion is that would work, but I usually do not change code until I fully understand its root cause. What I do know is that commenting out Man_Class will only remove the external menu icons from near soldiers (inventory stops being disabled on them when they die, so you can pick up their guns). Hmm.. I made the same changes you made and cant get the error to pop up. I will go ahead and post up the latest dev version again with your script change idea.

Is the error critical, in that the mod breaks? I am in MP right now, with some people doing crazy crap with the vehicles, and i cant get the error to pop up. I will keep trying though and report back.

Well that got a little crazy this week. I have not coded/scripted for months and had the 1.2.5.4 update just sitting on my computer. Apparently, it needed more testing.. lol.. Anyway, Update 1.2.5.8 available v1.2.5.8 Bug Fixes - Hotfix was incomplete, causing selection to be in the wrong place. Patch should be stable now. Apologies. - last hot fix inadvertently caused the personal menu to break when you get out of a vehicle without personal menu being held on - rpt spam related fix