dnk

Just going to leave that here. I realize we're talking primarily about aiming inertia here, but this is surely related.

These comments are good.Weight-based inertia/stamina modifiers would be nice.

As much as I dislike getting into arguments with kids who in all likelihood never even heard of ArmA until a few weeks ago, there's a point to be made for the larger issue:Where is the community going to go exactly? CoD? BF? RO? TF? A quick read of the forums will show the fans of this series don't see any real competition for the milsim genre, just general distaste towards mainstream FPS gaming and other franchises (though many can enjoy both ArmA and mainstream, it does seem to be the general feeling). Nothing currently in alpha/beta that I have noted at least compares to OA/ACE2 as a milsim. With OFP2 being such a dud, ArmA's basically alone right now as a standalone title here. Plus, many have built up communities around the game over years, and that's a big reason they will stick with it even if there was competition, which there isn't. Some will eschew A3 because they can't play it, but these aren't the ones complaining about FPS oddly, since their machines are old as dust and they don't expect them to handle it, not because they're $1000+ new gaming rigs (the primary complainers, and certainly with good cause, though overblown with rhetoric/idiocy by many such as yourself). Some others will eschew it because they realize it isn't COD with bigger maps, and they were never really the target demo anyway (and despite all the complaints from the core community, it really doesn't seem like BIS is pandering to them much at all with it's current design imo). Personally, I have a decent-ish CPU and a crap GPU, and I'm wholly content with the performance I'm getting, given it's an alpha and all. I do plan to upgrade before launch, so I hope they fix this issue for higher-end PCs, but if not I guess I've saved myself a new GPU purchase, eh?

Not the fire key, but the optics key, as in ACE, which makes a lot more sense than the fire key.

No, I was talking about both the visual aesthetics AND the flatness. Neither look nice, though certainly having some shadows makes the mod trees less flat (but still, they look fairly flat to me).

Eh, JSRS for ACE2 is pretty much the best crack/whiz sounds for being shot at I've heard, and the ambient noises are top-notch. I DO love the higher contrast between gunshots and all other SFX with A3, though. Guns are LOUD, and now they feel it moreso than in any mod/ArmA game I've tried yet. They just need to work on adding more reverb, which always makes guns sound better ("Heat" did this about perfectly for movies). With all these valleys and rocks around, should be a pretty reverby sort of place, imo.

Currently, A3's damage is similar to the 7.62NATO in ACE2: usually 1 shot, but sometimes 2 unless in an extremity. This is with an intermediate round (the 5.56 in ACE2 is a lot weaker and takes more than 1 hit often), but with all the advanced body armor of the next 25 years... I'm not feeling it to be a good balance or even realistic, and it means we're lacking wounded/downed soldiers and a proper wounded system, as in ACE and even vanilla A2. Obviously, the devs know how to implement this, and have in the last game, so why is it missing, or am I just missing something in the editor? I dislike this in both iterations of the game in this respect. Wounding needs to be more common, and for A3 wounded animations for incapacitated soldiers should be included. STATISTICS Nah, I've read those studies years back. It's true: it takes time, especially with adrenaline, for a direct hit to really incapacitate someone, CNS aside. No personal experience, but the statistics are there. Speaking of which, generally combat casualties are hugely skewed towards non-fatal, yet in the alpha it's more like 90% fatalities from shots.

Eh, all of those trees look pretty unappetizing, no offense to anyone. There's just something they need to do with the mid-long LODs. Clearly, they can do it given past games, so I'm guessing these LODs weren't a priority for the alpha release. At any rate, it needs fixing.

Play the alpha actually. It's roughly comparable to what's in A2 - I sense very little change in strafing and coming to a stop. It might be a bit (67-100% of OA) less inertial, but that's fine since it's the future and I guess gear is all made out of carbonfiber and nanomaterials or something :cool:

Yeah, the model textures need some serious retexturing/shading. The lighting and dynamic PP being toned down and the improved clouds and much less Z-fighting at distance and better character textures/models and the terrain textures are much more varied and realistic/detailed looking are a few. It's not like 2x better, but it's still a collection of serious improvements, especially as it's only in alpha.

Believe voices get distorted on purpose to model real-life interference of distance/terrain. It's a feature, not a bug, no?

Fact is, there are a ton of stores that don't let you return merchandise that was on sale when you bought it. That's what this is: merchandise (a $60-70 game) that's on sale (for $35, possibly half off, or at least close) in advance. It's a preorder-on-sale. Eventually the preorder-not-on-sale will come out for maybe a bit less than the final retail price, which I would assume could be cancelled like any other merchandise you never actually got to use. But not only do you get this merchandise on sale, you also get to partially use it as well.It's like going into a store, buying a suit for half price, then being allowed to take it home before tailoring and wear the pants only while they fit and tailor the suitcoat, doing so, then saying they don't fit well and claiming you've been ripped off because they won't let you return the on-sale merchandise. And you're some sort of idiot for expecting them to fit properly when they haven't yet been fitted and tailored. Oh, and don't run around buying things without seeing what the deal is first. Try that in the future, you will feel less buyer's remorse, but then given that you're unwilling to wait more than two weeks for an ALPHA to become 100% optimized as much as other gold release AAA titles, well, I guess the patience required to hold off on hitting "buy" is lacking here... Dwarden said they'd found the likely culprit and will fix it (not a 100% guarantee, but that's exactly what you're asking for here, the devs' acknowledgement, and there it is). I guess it's hard to find these needles of hope in this giant haystack of wild ranting angst, for which you have helped water down the useful posts with more of that wild ranting angst stuff. Still, maybe try chilling tf out while it's in alpha. Could work to your benefit.

Yeah, that'd be pretty awesome but would also make understanding other players (already can be difficult with all these Brits/Aussies around) a bit problematic. Still, I think immersion trumps it here.

Well, you can always give MG units higher stats. I do need to do longer testing (mostly just <1min test setups so far) with these values still. Thanks for the info, I'll be looking into all that soon.

0.1-0.15 and 0.3-0.4 for aimingaccuracy and aimingshake works well for me. Regular difficulty is 0.46 for everything. I've heard that in real-life combat it's like 20-30 rounds per hit on a target at range, and something like 4:1 for close quarters. I think these skill numbers fairly accurately model this reality (but I wouldn't know personally).

My 2 cents, and I'm still learning about how ArmA handles the AI scripts, so excuse any ignorance, but I want to see this improved as much as anyone. How hard is it to AI map a level for cover and use it in the scripting (say for an intern or other lowly programming grunt)? My idea is to take "tiles" (or square meters or some such breakdown of the map) and give them values based on the amount of cover provided in a set of directions (whether it be N, S, E, W, or N, NE, E, etc, or multiples of 60-degrees or whatever). Then further aggregating these into another map (not literal in a visual sense) for overall terrain cover quality. It then should become a lot easier to send the AI from cover to cover and to act smartly in non-desert terrains. Basically, if they know what direction they need cover from and where they're going, they can choose from available terrains that provide cover in the appropriate direction using the data from the AI map and path to it. Further mapping could include values for quality of LOS on certain directions, so if providing support/suppression/engagement is more important, they can choose a tile with both cover and good LOS instead of just cover (in the case of being suppressed). For example, an AI is being actively suppressed by enemies from due north. This activates a "findcover" command, which then looks for nearest tiles with moderate/good cover from the north. Then the AI gets pathed to that tile and moves out to it. Currently, AI just stand up, deer in headlights, and take it. Another example, an AI in a city is ordered to engage a target while not under attack. It knows the location of the target and then looks for a tile with a LOS number in that direction high enough to be at least equal to the distance between said tile and target's tile, while not being too far out of formation. It moves in and should generally be able to start engaging. Currently, AI will just sit around inside a building staring at a wall instead. If the AI can't find anything, perhaps this can be taken into consideration when choosing whether the group remains in place or moves to a new location. Additionally, a more aggregated map (and non-directional) can be used so the AI knows when it is covering generally "open" ground, where it should employ a base of fire element and a rapid movement element to cross. I think a lot could be done with this, simplifying dynamic AI scripting with some pre-"rendered" (or laboriously stitched together by an intern) mapping. Let an intelligent human go through and evaluate maps at a given resolution in "hot spots" of CQB (anything with significant amounts of settlement), and let a more generic algorithm construct all the natural terrain outside of these areas based on object placements (like, a given tree model would automatically give certain cover values in all directions in adjacent tiles). I'm sure you could literally draw/paint the map first then have another program translate the color scheme into a much (disk size) smaller numerical map(s). This gives both the intelligence of a human to the AI in the places it needs it most (evaluating terrain, LOS, and cover), while not impacting the performance much, if at all.

I absolutely agree. I thought I mentioned this, but I clearly forgot. It's both issues, but probably the one mentioned here is more important. "Head on a swivel, wait, scratch that, head on a pike." Any info on debugging that? I would like to get more into the nuts and bolts of things here. This could be solved by the AI map mentioned above, giving different cover values for direction of cover in addition to quality. Then it's a simple matter of locating the nearest directional cover tile and pathing to it, then letting the typical cover usage programming take over.For this form of the AI map, each tile would have 4 or 6 or however many directional values you like. You can then aggregate these directional values for the overall tile value (when considering movement when not being actively suppressed). Well, if they aren't going to find proper cover and they're otherwise in the open in an urban environment, it's the next-best thing to keep them alive for more than 5 seconds.Anyway, a final note regarding accuracy. I'm currently finding a value of 0.1 for aimingaccuracy and 0.3 for aimingshake to be fairly appropriate. They still get kills up to 250m in under a clip, but they're not all super marksmen between 75-150m anymore (under 75 is near-instant death with any reasonable setting). 0.15/0.4 for can make the mid-far range less "ammo spew"y. I wouldn't push them much higher, though, unless you like short firefights. After considerable testing, aimingspeed seems to have no noticeable impact at all right now. Also for spotting distance, they seem to be hard capped at about 200m, though they can engage from much farther if a squadmate sees someone.

Delta Force 2 had great long-range grass drawing, though it was quite blocky up close (but then it was the 90s, I think). Basically it was drawn to infinity and near-total concealment was possible (though there was always that one pixel that would give you away), especially with a ghillie. I think they used a totally different rendering approach, though, so it's unlikely to be useful for ArmA. Still, it is possible...

Yeah, that ST vid is about as good as it can get (features, not implementation, and not the behind the back one). AA had good grenades as I remember them: cookable, easy to predict, 2 firing mods (under/overhand), easy to use overall. They're definitely broken in the alpha, but I'm assuming that's a placeholder for something similar to A2's system, which was weak as could be unfortunately. It may look realistic to have the grenade coming off the hand from an outside viewpoint, but it makes it very hard to use grenades accurately and therefore effectively. I rarely use them even with ACE because of these difficulties.

After an hour or two of messing around in SP... The Good The skies are a LOT nicer - huge improvement in that part of the environment. The AI seems a lot better at handling MOUT situations, though with big gaps still. I like the added weather controls and clarity. The lighting is gorgeous. Seems like a big improvement, and without all the 'overly dynamic PP' that A2 had. The new stances are cool. The new inventory system is more modular, which I like. The Bad The terrain is still fairly lacking, and the rocks look out of place - poor blending in with the surrounding terrain. There appear to be no rivers still - extremely lame for a hyper-realistic milsim to have no inland water. The AI is up to its usual stupid all the same. The new inventory system is also a bit of a headache and harder to use than the old one (scrolling?). Some bugginess with controls, but that's to be expected. The island is pretty sparse and lacking in settlement. The weaponry - I'm sure they'd still have early 21st century weaponry around, much like we still have decades-old weapons around, and certainly older models still in production. Do I really want to play with fake future weapons? No. -1 again on 'hyper-realism' when you're in scifi land.

i5 3350P GTS 250 1GB 2x2GB DDR2 (1066 I think) 7200RPM HDD (WD) Get 30-40 FPS w/o AI on most of the map on medium-high settings (no AA), 1600x900, and 3500m viewdist. 10-20FPS with 100-150 AI in the city. I'm content with the performance, but plan an upgrade to a 9750 this summer, perhaps another 4GB with RAM so cheap.

Someone give this man a medal, then include this (or something similar) in the next update.

I agree this is very needed. Such bland mid-range textures were acceptable in A1, less so in A2, but they really shouldn't still be around in A3, especially since this is where a TON of action happens in these games - 150-350m away is prime firefight distance, yet that's where the engine suffers the most? And while we're at it, there's another thread dealing with a related mid-/far-range rendering issue, except for how models are obscured by the grass: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?148861-Rendering-grass-at-long-distances-My-thoughts-about-it

Yeah +1 to having map tools in the stock game.

Play With Six As much as I dislike their GUI and design, it does exactly what you want for addons.