chortles

Unfortunately I'd say that BI leadership sort-of talked themselves into a corner/burned their own bridges, by talking up engine limitations (such as performance/optimization) when it came to Arma 3 in such a way that, by their previous framing, there would be no point to an Arma 4 without an 'entirely' different engine... and BI leadership hasn't shown any indications that said Enfusion engine is anywhere near ready to 'out-Arma the Arma engine', or even anything directly related to gameplay at all, only screenshots of content creation tools. (The so-called 'Reforger leak' has yet to be verifiable, and DayZ reportedly is still powered by a version of the Arma series' engine at its core, albeit with the rendering and animation systems replaced by an early iteration of Enfusion's renderer and animations, so it cannot be said to be an up-to-date glimpse of what's possible in Enfusion.)

I confess that I wonder how this compares with the 'drive and fight with land vehicles' behavior of so-called AAA games...

@tacticalnuggets Bohemia hasn't announced any plan to adopt another company's engine for Arma -- afaik Enfusion exists so that the future engine is something in-house, even if that means the years-long development results in it being still outdated/behind "industry standard" in some ways like (even if different from) the current engine -- although they have used Unity for non-Arma projects such as Vigor Ylands and Unreal for Vigor.

@chrisb I believe that you may have misinterpreted bent.toe; I took them to mean that not that DayZ console money saved the company as a whole but rather that, in their opinion, console revenue influenced Bohemia to keep up the promise of continued DayZ PC development instead of (at least openly) 'cutting perceived losses' and wrapping-it-up in a way analogous to the current state of Arma 3. (For all that the remaining Arma 3 devs may fix and/or try to fix, Tanks DLC was arguably Bohemia closing the door on engine-level gameplay features -- see how Contact's stuff relies on a mix of SP campaign scripting and config changes that can unwittingly mess with other content.) I'm skeptical of the first sentence for several reasons, one of which is that Rocket already had console in mind (though not priority) in the months before the standalone was first available for sale, and another being that apparently at least one DayZ dev claimed that budgeting was set independently of sales (in response to claims that the standalone's scope/ambitions grew after its initial sales on PC were so high). Unless you've got a source to contradict that or to say that things changed much later/very recently... As for keybindings... considering what you say right afterward I'm skeptical as to whether you're posing that question in good faith. That being said, I notice that Bohemia's already headed towards 'industry standard' choices via their keybinding presets (G-for-gear-whoops-grenade jokes aside, two examples of the latter in Arma 3 would be Wx2 -> LShift for sprinting and adding weapon slots to the number row instead of the number row being exclusively for group commanding) and they've implemented partial solutions such as hiding action menu entries which have a keybind. However, whereas a comprehensive UI overhaul in Arma 3 could have broken existing community content, it would seem that 'Arma 4' would be Bohemia's chance for a 'clean break': no existing community content to be broken post-launch, and the removal of SQF in favor of Enforce Script aka EnScript may have already made it impossible to 'drop in community-made content from the previous game and see what happens' as in prior Arma games (I'm thinking of the first few months of Arma 3 modding)... so who's to say that we'll end up still needing so many keybinds in the future instead of them having been nested into submenus? (Alternately, PC could just have the advantage of having both methods available.) As far as the controller, for now I'll say that while the DualShock 4 and Xbox One controllers each have only four face buttons, four shoulder buttons, two sticks (plus their push-the-stick-down clickable buttons), and a D-pad, between those and tap/double-tap/hold there's a lot of possible button mapping combinations. Speaking of UI, I don't know if "inventory Tetris" would meet your definition of "ruining the game" but people have wanted some inventory solution that took volume into account (or at least an item/weapon/magazine/piece-of-equipment's longest dimension) instead of an arbitrary mass value as in Arma 3, so I see no obvious reason that Arma 4 designers should rule out DayZ's inventory system out of hand, much less reuse button mappings from that; I would say that the same goes for its world interaction mechanics such as different context-sensitive actions between left or right mouse/shoulder button taps, and/or holding for 'partial fill/unfill' actions made possible in DayZ (such as mag repacking)... and whether or not ACE3's interaction menu is your preferred solution for an action menu replacement, I'll note that radials with nested submenus have been a thing as far back as Dragon Rising while people have over the years advocated replacing the action menu with a radial irrespective of controller compatibility. Allow for slices to be dynamically added/removed/resized to allow for community-made slices/submenus, break the seeming console limitation of D-pad-friendly quadrants/octants in favor of any number of slices which can be freely selected (mouse for those who have one, analog sticks for controllers), and I think you're on to something... FInally, you declared that you "find consoles pointless since it's just a limited PC", but one aspect that you may have overlooked is that while the Arma series is notorious for favoring Intel CPUs and higher clock speeds the DayZ iteration of Enfusion is compatible with the AMD Jaguar-based octo-core (two quad-core modules) CPUs in both PS4 and XB1 with reported clocks of 1.6-1.7 GHz (2.1-2.3 GHz for PS4 Pro/XB1 X). If Bohemia leadership directing engine development in this way ends up meaning that 'Enfusion-powered Arma 4' is the first in the series to finally play nicely with AMD CPUs (much less hey, multi-threading) on PC...

I'm pretty certain that this was game balancing -- while you're right about the Shikra's own detection ranges, the BW2 can detect the Shikra at 3 km on IR (2.5 km for the BW2's IR sensor x 1.2 for the Shikra's irTargetSize value) and even the Shikra (Stealth) can be detected at 9 km by the BW2's (15 km for BW's radar x 0.6 for Shikra (Stealth)'s radarTargetSize value), while the in-game AMRAAM-D's 1 km range advantage is paired with wider fields of regard for its sensor (100° vs. 65°) and its initial/maintaining lock cones (140° vs. 90°) vs. the R-77. (The AMRAAM-D has cmimmunity=0.97500002; to the R-77's cmimmunity=0.97000003; but I'm not sure how relevant that is.) I'd agree regarding the A-143 (IRL the Lithuanian Air Force had a L-39ZA in recent years) but go further with the To-199 Neophron: don't just "readjust" with BLUFOR missiles, but also both include an active radar and undo Bohemia's post-Jets changes to the CSAT Neophron's flight performance so that the LDF's 'air-to-air Neophron' could at least take on the A-149 Gryphon even if it can't match the Shikra. (See the "fighter attack" version of the M-346 including the Grifo-346 radar (archive link).) I just checked dev branch and both the FIA and Syndikat lean on FFV (Assault Boat, Truck, and Van Transport) and technicals. Syndikat's MB 4WD gives the advantage of front-seat FFV over the FIA's Offroad while the Offroad (HMG) has higher-caliber ammo than the MB 4WD (LMG); Syndikat also has the RHIB, the Caesar BTT, and the M-900 (albeit the aircraft don't have FFV) while the FIA has the Fuel Truck, Offroad (Repair), and Mk6 Mortar. As for the LDF though, so far in-game the renamed/reskinned Mora (FV-720 Odyniec) is the sole LDF armor and the renamed/reskinned Hellcat (WY-55 Czapla) their sole aircraft, with currently-identical loadout options; for fixed-wing see my above suggestion regarding fixed-wing.

What you're concerned about seems predicated on Bohemia Interactive changing course to seeing console as the primary platform and revenue source, as opposed to "the other way around" which would mean a multi-platform release with PC as primary platform 'and whatever we can get from consoles', which it seems was the calculation for Arma 2 until the XB360 specs reveal made that impossible. (It's not like Bohemia hasn't already demonstrated such a favoritism within PC via the macOS/Linux ports with all of their limitations!) Even with that out of the way thanks to Enfusion, I don't see Bohemia changing course unless they thought the well was dried up on PC... which is why I'm not 100% convinced that DayZ was "ruined" by its console releases. From the outside looking in it does look like the potential revenue on PC was always or at least from very early on limited, so without console money would 'the end' have come for DayZ that much faster? That dynamic definitely sounds like it won't be the case for a future Arma. Also, I say 'whatever we can get from consoles' since I imagine that a console player base would either be self-selecting or "picked this up on sale because it looked fun how do i get started", which Bohemia would have taken into account. If one of your concerns is PC players becoming outweighed by console players… have you seen what the Discord is like every time there's a Steam sale?? Come to think of it, all this talk of "you have to decide!" reminds me so much of some of the discussion from the months after DayZ mod went big (and already changed Bohemia presumably-irrevocably)… EDIT: and of course, when it comes to questions of controls (re: 'consolization') and UGC, there was already Operation Flashpoint: Elite... to say nothing of Bohemia just outright not having DayZ modding on consoles (yet if ever) versus PC.

Re: 'worked out a way to offer them to console players': It's not as if Sony's never dealt with UGC, if that's what you were referring to; I still remember LittleBigPlanet for PS3. Once upon a time I remember similar concern about Valve/Steam...

There's any number of moves Bohemia made during Arma 3's development and post-launch that could be deemed to have 'ruined' Arma for someone... from Steamworks, to launching-as-scheduled (meaning that the SP campaign was post-launch 'free DLC'), to dropping the 'Lite' DLC method, to the setting itself, to CDLC, and now Contact DLC (which apparently devs have been trying to do for years now)... though based on your wording I imagine that you consider something or another to have done this 'ruining' already? Although, speaking of DayZ, I suspect that between the front-loading of purchases when the game first went public, the foregoing of any paid DLC (meaning no more money out of anyone who bought before a price increase), and the reputation of the game in previous years impacting new sales, someone at Bohemia realized/decided that there was only ever going to be so much money to be made on DayZ without console releases... Wouldn't this come down to how much money they 'see in PC' by that point? Some developer studios/publishers that do multi-platform releases may see & treat a PC release as 'bonus money', but having a console-capable Arma 4 lets Bohemia-as-a-publisher have the other way around as an option, unlike last time (boldfacing by me):

@bent.toe What chrisb said... it was already too late for Arma 3 on PS4/XB1 before any of those three were announced. At last check though, whether or not Arma 4 actually comes to console (e.g. if Microsoft and Sony won't come to terms with Bohemia Interactive on how to handle user-generated content), at last check Bohemia Interactive seems to want it to be console-capable...

@bent.toe In that case it pretty much comes down to a mix of hardware limitations (PS4 and Xbox One), software limitations (Arma 3's Real Virtuality 4 engine)… and while Bohemia has had their eye on consoles as shown by DayZ's PS4/Xbox One releases, it may be years before that game's engine -- at last check, Bohemia's plan is for all of their future titles to run on that -- is at a level that will be capable of presenting 'what Arma does best', and as if not even more importantly: a bunch (if not the majority) of the community-made content that has been a starring attraction for Arma 3 players is not compatible, hence why no Arma 3 on Enfusion... DayZ's notorious history demonstrates what can happen if a game changes engines mid-development, and that's was before modding was publicly available to be broken by an engine change. Heck, there's a history of Arma 3 modders complaining about smaller changes within the same RV4 engine breaking their mods/missions... @VanZant Did that last line travel forward in time from 2012-2013 or something? Claiming that Arma should be free of awkward influence is a very 'horse has left the barn' thing to say considering all that Bohemia's done in the years since DayZ mod with Arma 3...

I dunno about stopping, but Bohemia Interactive's been saying for years that they were winding down/reallocating people, and here's the former project lead (now project lead on Contact DLC) reiterating hours ago that "the full-time development team is very much reduced as compared to years ago. On the platform-side we primarily focus on critical issues, things caused by new third-party software updates, multiplayer security, etc." and that "We want to cater to as many as possible things, but less is feasible now (also since backward compatibility with the full game and mod library is increasingly challenging)."

I remember that in the case of sensors, something was done so that any aircraft which had radarType = 4; in its config was automatically granted a set of info panels including a sensor display, even if it was limited (I believe with only 2 and 4 km 'zoom') and had no sensors, which I thought was a notable case of foresight from someone at Bohemia Interactive for 'backwards compatibility'/'forward porting'... dunno how that would work with replacing scripted CBRN or EW though.

I wouldn't be surprised if this fell by the wayside due to 'the engine as of 2011-2012 couldn't actually do this'* followed by 'after the disaster of the end of 2012, publisher wants the game to be launched by the end of 2013', the latter of which was the direct/explicit cause of going Steamworks. * As far back as soon-after-E3 2012 the then-project lead admitted that enemy-uniform-swapping had been dropped not just due to Geneva Conventions but also due to issues in MP.

Now that RobertHammer mentions the difference, it looks like Bohemia's AKU-12 and RPK-12 are right out of that second image link in the same "what if the prototypes entered service as-is" way as with Arma 2's "F-35B", even moreso than Battlefield 4's iterations (its AKU-12 had a different muzzle and its RPK-12 had a different bipod arrangement and no drum magazine). Which I suppose is consistent...

As unfortunate as the news of ceasing your own work on this may be, may we hope that your offline life is stable despite these issues? EDIT: The news of remission more than outweighs the hiatus of your own work on this!