pez2k

It's already been noted in the bug tracker, so BIS should be aware of the problem. There are a few related BAF weapon bugs, like a silent 40mm and 7.62x54 L7A2s, hopefully they'll be cleared up by the next patch.

The default configs for the G36s are a bit messy, this error is normal.

One of the SLX mods lets you holster your pistol, but unfortunately it needs a menu action to do, rather than using the default lower weapon key. I'd definitely support the ability to lower and/or holster any weapon. The game suffers slightly from the inability to lower launchers too, something bulky like a Stinger blocks a lot of your view and the lower weapon key puts it away completely. It's awkward having to aim down then look up just to be able to scan the area for enemies. The binoculars would also benefit from ungluing your hands and eyes from them, it's much more natural to wander around with them in one hand by your side, raising them to your eyes when needed. You could basically have the current pose with them held to your eyes as an aimed animation, the binoculars held at chest height in both hands as a ready animation, then the unarmed animation set with binoculars in one hand for lowered / movement animations. Since they'd no longer be permanently aimed, it should also allow you to run with binoculars like other weapons.

Vehicle physics as a whole need a bit of a revamp. I'd like to see even basic physics settings like a torque curve and gear ratios introduced in the next game, so that vehicle performance can be based on some sort of real data rather than some abstract figures.

I was counting the M4A1, M4A1 ACOG, M4A1 Aimpoint, suppressed M4A1 etc. as one weapon since you'd handle them all identically, in the same way that GRAW2 handles a SCAR-L, SCAR-L ACOG, SCAR-L Aimpoint, suppressed SCAR-L etc. with the same animations. Basically, the actual guns in each rather than each individual setup, and sticking solely to guns since launchers are rather different with a lot not being reloadable in the first place. It is definitely just eyecandy. There are several other feature requests that are way more important, never mind bug reports, but you can't polish something too much. If it wasn't so trivial I'd even suggest BIS should try to make strings like magazine names more consistent, rather than 'G36 Mag..', '20Rnd STANAG', '.45 ACP' and so on. It's a case of making the game look more professional and finished. It's really just a reflection of BIS' approach to games development, we have a game that does a very wide range of things in quite accurate technical detail, but sacrifices some prettiness and polish to do it, in complete contrast to the likes of COD:MW2 where everything is shiny but you can basically only shoot and jump. Bottom line though, like has been brought up, is time and budget. It's not like a lack of fancy hand-waving would stop me buying the next BIS title, but it'd be nice to see.

Arma 2 has roughly 30 guns, but you'd need nowhere near that amount of animations. The AK47, AKS, AK74, AKS74, AK107 and RPK-74 would all handle pretty much identically, so there's six guns catered for already with one set of animations. GRAW2 has about 18 guns, but all have unique animations. For the amount of effort that it took per gun, bear in mind that GRIN, the developers, added in the fully animated M1014 and the actual code to handle shotguns at all (loading round-by-round, multiple projectiles per shot, etc.) entirely as a free patch because some fans wanted a shotgun. It's not exactly profit-destroying, even for a small company like GRIN (although the stupidly bad reviews for Bionic Commando were). Also don't forget that I'm not arguing that BIS should spend hundreds of hours being as detailed as GRAW's animations. There's a huge gulf in detail between multiplayer-synced third person fire selector animations and having literally two reload animations for guns at all. I'd be happy if they just aimed anywhere in the middle of that area. It doesn't have to be motion captured even, I'm pretty sure they didn't get a guy into the studio and have him reload a PKM like you do in Arma 2. The GRAW mention was solely pointing out that it's feasible to do even entirely with full-skeleton animations.

Yep, neither time nor effort are free.

The two Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter games on PC also simply placed the camera in the third-person player model's eyes, including having collision models for weapons, but still had detailed full-body animations for every weapon to the point of having a fire selector flick on the Glock 18. It's not an impossibility, it's just a matter of time and effort.

It doesn't necessarily have to be entirely accurate for every gun. Simply having more than one reload animation per weapon slot would be miles ahead of where we are now. A lot can be reused too, a simple mag out, mag in, right hand side charging handle animation will roughly fit any AK, the SG550 series, FAL, FNC / Ak 5 series, removable mag SKS, M14, G36, and so on. It could even be split, so there's a mag change animation then a charging handle. Mag changes are as simple as regular weapon or bullpup, with the option for niche cases like a Bizon or P90 if you want to get complicated. Then you have a left side bolt release, right side charging handle pull, left side pull. An AK would be regular mag change then right side pull, an L85 would have a bullpup change then a right side pull, an F2000 bullpup then left side pull, an M16 a regular change then a left side release... Suddenly you have less wafty animations, and a lot more variety, with a total of about five animations. LMGs could pretty much just replace the mag change with a left side belt swap and right side belt swap and they're covered too. A different pull for bolt-action weapons, and a fumble on the top right for fixed-magazine weapons and suddenly we're getting a lot of things covered. It doesn't have to be pixel-precise to be better than what's there now. A P90, Garand, PKM and M1014 all have the same reload animation and time, which is useless. Look at the classic Counter-Strike and its custom model releases for just how many weapons will fit decently on one set of animations, and a game developed by two people on their own time that still has a couple of dozen sets of arm animations.

In your case of the SCAR inheriting from M16_base, you're not modifying M16_base so all you need to say about it is that it exists. class M16_base; You can then inherit from it with class SCAR_base : M16_base { (code) }; just fine.

http://tactical.nekromantix.com/wiki/doku.php?id=arma:config:cfgrecoil Useful site to bookmark, has a fair bit of information not on the BIS wiki, and vice versa unfortunately.

tracersEvery = 4; lastRoundsTracer = 4; Fairly self-explanatory, the first one is how frequently a tracer is fired, in this case after every four bullets, and the latter is how many bullets at the end of a magazine are tracers, in this case the last four. Note that these go in the magazine definition rather than the ammo. However, more pertinently for your question, this is the ammo definition for the PKM: class B_762x54_Ball : BulletBase { hit = 12; indirectHit = 0; indirectHitRange = 0; cartridge = "FxCartridge_762"; visibleFire = 22; audibleFire = 18; visibleFireTime = 3; cost = 1.2; airLock = 1; model = "\ca\Weapons\Data\bullettracer\tracer_green"; tracerScale = 1.2; tracerStartTime = 0.075; tracerEndTime = 1; airFriction = -0.00096; };

UKF do it by binding a script to a key combo that replaces your weapon with a working laser with the same model with a working flashlight. It has several drawbacks, not least that the weapon swap means your gun resets muzzles, firemodes and optics modes, and is reloaded.

Yeah, Steam only allows you to buy the expansion if you own OA on Steam. I have a Steam Arma2 install with a DVD copy of OA merged in, but since OA isn't bought from Steam I can't buy BAF from it either.

If you have a look in the XML files in the YAS autoconfig in the first post, you can probably work out where to download the files from manually. I'm not going to be specific though, in respect of the AAW team's decision that people should use YAS to download the mod.