mrvibrating

Previous versions of the game kept a rolling tally of player kills and displayed this info to the player when killed, like this: https://i.ibb.co/P4VT5m9/Debriefing.png This was useful for evaluating your performance, and just made for a rewarding end to the mission, especially if you did particularly well (at least up until snuffing it).. As i recall you had the same functionality in Arma1 & 2, but in A3 all you get is the restart / end option, with no run-down on how well you did on that last attempt.. Is there some setting or other simple way to re-enable this functionality in A3 - i've looked for mods or scripts, but no one else seems to be missing this particular feature (which seems incredible to me, but there it is)..?

@DD - thanks mate, i did try it a few times but the behaviour was this: • group started out on the airstrip as placed in editor • after a few secs the vehicles began spawning in the new randomised location.. • ..repeatedly. Each vehicle. Most of these spawns were remarkably successful, it's just that with so many repeats over such a short period, eventually one or two were raining out of the sky.. • ..the spawning-frenzy ends when all vehicles have transported to the new group location, but i lost a Bradley full of troops every time, usually meteorically.. Really appreciate the effort - perhaps it's tripping up on the fact that i'm not spawning vehicles with crew but assigning them manually.. or perhaps its fighting for resources with Alive mod on startup (modest Alive config w/ 200 units a side and max 6 virtual groups active, on i5-11400F / 16Gb).. dunno, but it's not worth the hassle, i've given up on trying to randomise starting locations for groups in Arma3.. at least until BIS fix / restore it natively. For now i'll just have groups set out from a central base, and see if i can at least suss a way to generate viable random waypoints.. but i've started another thread addressing this specifically..

I'm trying to use randomised placement radii for units and waypoints - or at the very least, just waypoints (randomised placement radius for units and groups is too bugged to be useful).. The problem is that any radius spanning a sizeable portion of any map (anything but a perfectly-circular one anyway) is inevitably going to cover an area of water. So, obvioushly, you can prevent units from spawning in a drowning condition by just giving up on using randomised placement radius in Arma3 altogether, so i have my units start out from a central base, and then want them to set off to guard a random waypoint a few km's out.. and, you guessed it, nine times out of ten the game sets them a waypoint way out at sea, which they can't get to, so they don't move.. or else, they'll get as far as the beach then just sit there, unable to progress.. If anyone has OFP / CWC installed, open the editor in the default desert island (or any other), place a unit or vehicle, stick a waypoint next to it, and set the placement radii of both to say 1000.. restart as many times as you like; you'll always spawn on dry land, and so does the waypoint. Somehow this functionality's been lost in Arma3.. and with it, any real usefulness of randomising placement radii.. at least over any radius encompassing water. It's now pot-luck - your mission may be viable, or maybe not, dependent of whether you luck-out with land-based coords or not. But you won't know either way until that spawn or waypoint's triggered.. You'd think at the very least there should be a check-box next to the placement radius value to re-enable terrain-only placements.. ..still, in the absence of that, has anyone else figured a workaround? Also, 'nother lil' question (not worth its own thread) - the way i play is making scenarios in the editor then playing them (no interest in the campaign or mission modes), so i've always appreciated the scoreboard you're shown on player death in OFP; you get to see a breakdown of all your kills, a basic 'debriefing' screen before you're taken back to the editor.. this too has been lost in Arma3; on player death you're shown nothing but 'restart' or 'return to editor' options.. no score, so only vague memories of how many kills you might have, or whether you hit any civs or friendlies.. so is there an option (or mod?) to re-enable that much-missed feature (basic as it is)?

All these suggested workarounds are incredibly complicated compared to simply using the editor as it's supposed to work. The way it works in OFP is quick, simple & intuitive, everything working as-labelled. You only need touch the keyboard to type in the placement radii. The game takes care of the rest; again, for land vehicles, both the spawn and waypoint locations are randomised to land-based coordinates. Thus the convoy spawns on land, and then drives to some random destination on land. Arma3 drops all such checks, and half the vehicles spawn out at sea, immediately en route to Davie Jones locker. Half of those lucky enough to be spawned on land will try to drive to destinations out at sea. Of the maybe 25% that luck-out with land-based coordinates for both spawn and waypoint locations, half of those again get stuck in scenery. At the slightest obstacle, they do that little Arma3 dance where they back up with an oscillating yaw, point directly at the clear exit route then rotate back towards the obstacle (or ped) and drive straight into it. If it's immoveable they'll often just stick there with the drive wheels slipping the tracks. After slaughtering peds they automatically switch from "safe" into "aware" modes and start driving cross-country, leaving the roads altogether. It's far, far worse AI than either OFP or Arma2.. (which was always an in-joke anyway, yet it's got worse with Arma3.. much, much worse..). As you can probably tell, i spent most of yesterday evening at it again (far too long) and ended up in complete defeat just trying to get units to obey their waypoints - if i could get them to move at all, the lead tank would be driving cross-country leaving a wake of destruction even though the waypoint and setBehaviour are at "safe". I had to change the lead vehicle to a car just to make the convoy use the roads. I gave up trying to randomise the start location, beginning at Altis airport in the center as an Alive blufor zone, surrounded by opfor a couple of miles out, with a randomised waypoint placement radius spanning the whole map, much of it thus over water. I just want the convoy to set out from the safe zone and take some random route into enemy territory, in any direction, towards a randomised 'guard' waypoint. Four M1's, two full bradleys and an ammo truck. Must've spent four hours solid just trying to get the group to actually move, at all. Even when changing to a simple non-randomised 'move' waypoint, the convoy just sits there at mission start. FFWD time 4x and wait... nothing. Each retry takes about a minute to restart, then a few more to wait and see if it's fixed yet, nope, back to editor and tweak something else.. on and on for hours just trying to get the damn leader to start moving. Eventually i realised that my presence as the player in cargo of either of the bradleys was part of the bug, somehow - when i get out or eject, the lead vehicle instantly comes to life and starts heading out towards the randomised waypoint. The leader then commands me to get back in the vehicle, and doing so promptly brings the convoy back to a halt. Even replying back "copy" and "done", the leader just sits there, and after another minute everyone switched their engines back off. In trying to get my head around this, i de-grouped the bradleys from the rest of the convoy, making it a separate and unrelated group. I also then tried degrouping all units in the bradleys. In both instances, the fault condition causing the convoy to ignore its waypoint remained my presence in cargo - the instant i get out of the ungrouped bradley, the convoy, that i'm no longer even part of, starts moving. The instant i get back in, it grinds back to a halt. "No way mate. There's no way we're following ANY waypoint so long as you're sitting in that vehicle". Why? Why is it doing this to me? Why does a small convoy that i'm not part of, freeze in its tracks if i climb into some unrelated vehicle as a passenger? Because, obvioushly, i want to ride in the convoy. That's... that's kinda the whole point, of what it is i'm trying to do here.. Small convoy leaves safe zone in random direction towards random "guard" waypoint in or near hostile territory, with player in-cargo as infantry. That's it. That's the mission template. In OFP or Arma2: • hit F2, double-click anywhere on map, place enemy group, double click leader and set placement radius to 9000 (covering whole map), then hit F4 and double click nearby to set a '"guard" waypoint with the same placement radius, "safe", "column". • repeat, for more groups - say 1x mech infantry, 1x tank platoon, 1x sniper team etc. etc., one of each group you want to encounter; to increase density, copy and past these groups as desired • repeat once more for a player group / any friendlies / supports Hit 'play' and you're off. No need for ambient combat mods, group-link scripts or anything. Just using the basic editor GUI functions, everything doing exactly what it says on the tin. Just with everything else vanilla. Add in GL3, SLX & ECP and it gets even more intense, with volleys of heavy cover fire coming in from multiple directions, along with artillery, AI tracking and flanking etc. etc. Those mods are of course automatic and don't need configuring, so literally you're in the action in minutes. And again, you can then just copy / paste that entire mission onto any map, without worrying about spawning units or waypoints over water.. The Eden editor gives the appearance of carrying over this traditional kind of gameplay, but in practice it's incapable of actually replicating it.. and people who still make these kinds of missions rely on workarounds - primarily Python scripts, but even resorting to recording their own manual driving inputs for AI to then follow. Trying to implement this same mission in Arma3 however is clearly a hiding to nowhere. Hours of wasted mission restarts, checking every conceivable error source, just getting the group to actually move with me onboard has defeated hours of patient effort. This, after completely giving up on trying to randomise start locations and waypoints. OFP may have dated GFX, but its comically-bad AI and physics have only got markedly worse in Arma3 it seems. Even Arma2 never refused a waypoint just because i was sat in some other, unrelated vehicle. That's just weird. Spend another week learning to script a mission that i can be playing within minutes in OFP? I'm just in it for the game, not the programming challenge..

Yes that's it, chunks here and there, like i say, exact same behaviour in Arma2. Didn't bother keeping Arma1 installed (i found the engine had horrid input latency). Well done for noticing it still works with drivers only, that's something to start with at least eh.. Just throwing units down and stringing 'em together using the GUI only, you get the above 'chunking' of the group's vehicles into scattered locations. With OFP however you just randomise the leader's placement as you say; provided the rest of the vehicles are set to 'in formation' in their properties tab, you can have 12 spawn reliably in formation anywhere on the map.. and so long as the leader vehicle's land-based only (as opposed to amphibious or air), it even ensures the group only spawn on dry land, so you don't have to worry about the spawn radius overlapping coasts, just set it to '9000' or whatever spans the whole map. Arma3's obviously technically a better software in most respects.. and yet i've always found myself going back to OFP for the 'real deal'.. especially since the Eden update.. mebe i'll give it another go this w/e tho, cheers..

Thanks, nice idea, however all vehicles in the group spontaneously explode on mission start, erupting into the air with energies and ranges between a few hundred meters and from the center of Altis to far out at sea. I restarted the mission about a dozen times, mostly getting longer-range hypersonic trajectories, with a few less-spetacular starts i'd estimate at about a kiloton or so. As i haven't been able to survive a single start and it all cooks off instantaneously i can only guess what's happening, but is the whole convoy spawning the exact-same coords? See? This is why that "in formation" properties attribute was so useful.. ditto for 'in cargo'.. i tried this old suggestion: ..however this caused the infantry units - all set to 'moveincargo' in their inits - to spawn out of their vehicles, on foot, and scattered across the map, thus the mission always starting with the group leaders instructing everyone to get back into their vehicles, now in random locations on the other side of the map somewhere.. Thanks mate, i did discover this myself eventually, but alas it also scatters the convoy to random points on the map rather than just one - going to map view on mission start i can see the rest of the group's disparate locations, all miles away - maybe it'll work for smaller groups i don't know, but my convoy's like 4 tanks, 4 APC's and 4 support trucks, hardly pushing the boat out you'd think.. In OFP i just randomise the leader units' spawn radii, set the rest of the vehicles to 'in formation' and all infantry to 'in cargo' and you have quality random combat in minutes.. Add GL3, ECP + SLX, and trust me, graphics aside, no BIS game since comes close (and i bought all of 'em of course). In fact out of curiosity i tried this mission in Arma2 and it fails in the same way, even though the interface is pretty much 1:1 with OFP.. evidently the code change that broke it must be ancient.. Ah well, since it works well enough in OFP i guess i'll just stick with that for now..

OFP player here, trying to knock up a simple mission in Arma3: • in OFP you can group a bunch of units together - say, setting up a nice convoy - then assign a placement radius to the group leader than spans an entire map.. • ..likewise, you can set this convoy a waypoint that also has the same whole-map placement radius.. Then make an enemy convoy, or whatever enemy units, also with radomised locations and destinations.. So basically you just make the groups, set their waypoints & leader's spawn radii, and the groups all spawn in random locations and follow their random waypoints.. This makes for a very quick & easy mission template, that you can just copy & paste onto any map for natural random engagements each time. It takes minutes in OFP, but after hours of trying in Arma3 i'm at a complete loss - setting the group's placement radius causes each unit to spawn in a random location; the group no longer observing the formation it's supposed to spawn in (as in OFP). I've tried the 'setFormation' innit but that doesn't help. Each group is scattered across the map at launch. Waypoint randomisation still seems to work.. i just can't seem to randomise spawn locations of groups without scattering them (really wishing there was an OFP-style interface for this thing - switching to map view in Eden editor hardly helps, all the attribute controls i normally rely on in the object properties seem broken or missing entirely, eg 'in formation', 'in cargo', 'flying' etc. etc.)..

Are you actually trying to offer a solution or are you just flexing? Because you don't appear to have read the question.. Like i said, i already know how to assign units to vehicles manually (veteran player). The "in cargo" special innit setting was automatic. Furthermore if a passenger-carrying vehicle got destroyed, any survivors would automatically board the next free seat in the group. Manually assigning units with moveincargo doesn't do this - if an assigned vehicle's destroyed, the occupants will instead just run or crawl alongside the rest of the vehicles, slowing down the group. And yes oi course i'm annoyed this perfectly-useful functionality's been removed, because it is annoying when that happens, isn't it? Like many if not most other players, using the 'special' innit settings was a cornerstone of my mission editing technique. Besides "in cargo" you also had "in formation", which would cause a group to spawn at start already in whatever formation was assigned in their next waypoint or the group's setformation parameter.. the official BIS 'workaround' using the context menu also does not actually restore this lost functionality, only setting the group into an echelon-left formation, regardless of any formation set in the group's waypoint. After wasting hours on this last night i went and fired up OFP,, and knocked up a nice little APC war with M1A1's and Bradleys vs T80's and BMP's in about half an hour. That's a classic boilerplate 'quick mission' design for instant action on any map, but to do the same thing in Arma3 seems an exercise in frustration.. it'd be twice as much work, all spent doing stuff that was formerly made redundant by the 'special' unit innit settings. Look like if i want OFP with a graphics update i should prolly get back into Arma2..

Per title; back since OFP days you could assign infantry units to begin the mission "in cargo" of ANY available vehicles in their group, WITHOUT having to manually assign specific units to specific vehicles. So for example lay down a quick convoy comprising some tanks, APC's, trucks and jeeps etc., and then a bunch of infantry each set to be "in cargo", all in the same group: the mission thus begins AUTOMATICALLY using all available seats, with nobody left on foot (provided there's enough free seats). So you've no need to know or plan the free seats available... absolving you of the unnecessary minutia when all you want is a quick result. The BIS specified workaround is to drag and drop groups to vehicles, apparently.. so do i now have to look up how many seats each vehicle has to correctly assign the right numbers of units to specific vehicles? But i want them to fill ANY available seats in ANY vehicles - for instance, what if their specially-assigned vehicle's destroyed? The former "in cargo" init took care of all this automatically... Similarly missing the "in formation" init too.. this is precisely why i gave up Arma for good ol' 1.96 OFP,, the Eden update killed it for me.. 😞 Why remove such backbone functionality? ref: https://feedback.bistudio.com/T84302

The current version is broken (gives me the same error) Try to find an older version - there's one named @GL5SpecialFXv1.zip, 35.1Mb, works OK-ish. Shame this epic mod has been abandoned. Tried bCombat but it has the exact opposite effect - the enemy pees their pants and run away after a couple of skirmishes.. Still can't beat OFP w/ GL5 for a good all-out lead storm. It was like being attacked by an army of Terminators... they just kept coming, flanking, and firing.. Ahh halcyon days.

@Jackal - you don't appear to have read the post you're trying to respond to. @benargee - yeah gamepad's OK if the FPS holds up, like i said above. OFP's unrestrained mouse steering cursor was far and away superior tho.. And glad your DS3 works. Mine doesn't tho - as i said, it's not configurable. For some reason, the controller options screen differentiates between configurable and unconfigurable controllers - and mine appears in the lower section, as an XBox pad with a preset scheme, albeit one that does not work.

ETA: ...another key benefit is that input rate parsing is effectively tied to FPS - when it inevitably bogs down in the heat of action, accurate steering can become hit and miss... but a cursor simply hovering over your desired location is impervious to framerate drops - it's gonna steer in the right direction regardless. There's doubtless other benefits too. It was a brilliant system, taken for granted in OFP (as good design should be), and i believe we've chucked the baby out with the bathwater, on the ever-conflicted altar of "VR realism"...

OFP innovated the perfect solution to mouse-steering a vehicle, with its driving cursor. For those too young or senile to remember, it was a regular free-floating cursor - a little semi-opaque square that could be moved anywhere on the screen. All you had to do was place it where you wanted the vehicle to go. So for example to steer around an obstacle or take a bend at speed, you'd just move the cursor away from the obstacle or towards the bending road. You could drive vehicles stably at max speed, such that your only concerns were grip and center of gravity. It worked as well as driving in real life. In real life, vehicles don't swerve around manically when trying to drive straight, or slam the brakes on to try and take the gentlest corners. Real life isn't a 2d projection on a screen. In real life, we rely on a great deal of sensory feedback - proprioception tells us where and in what positions our bodies and limbs are placed, vestibular and tactile feedbacks allow us to cross-reference accelerations with steering wheel torque and suspension activity. Concessions to VR have to be made to allow naturalistic immersion - a fluid and ergonomic interface quickly becomes transparent - you're engrossed in whatever you're doing in the gameworld itself, instead of struggling with a distracting and frustrating inability to apply your desired actions in-game. Those old Skodas and Ladas used to scream around nicely under fire. But in Arma 3, that little arrow cursor over the wheel is worse than useless - i'm on a double-triplehead system and have to lower my eyes from the road to even see its position. Its sensitivity curve can't be adjusted independently of the mouselook rate, so i have to adjust the menu options between driving and walking. It's a half-measure and not fit for purpose. To top it all off my controller is no longer supported - Better DS3 w/ Xbox drivers, game reports it has a "scheme" but it doesn't work and won't let me edit it (the complete antithesis of the game's traditional unconstrained configurability).. But i digress. Just give us the option to enable the sublime and ingenous OFP driving cursor - those who find jerky swerviness more realistic and immersive needn't use it eh... Please BIS do the sane thing... you've created an extraordinary gameworld, i've bought every version since day 1... I just want to immerse myself in it, which means driving smoothly, swiftly and confidently, like i do in real life.. /rant

wow, nice attitude round here, thanks a lot... didn't know there was a 'special' thread for bugs, this appeared to be the appropriate area from first impressions. peace out bros..

When playing double triplehead i use these profile settings for FOV and gui: fovTop=1; fovLeft=1.8; uiTopLeftX=0.33333299; uiTopLeftY=0.5; uiBottomRightX=0.66666597; uiBottomRightY=1; ..keeps the gui on the centre lower panel and shows a realistic FOV. And it works perfectly, unless i enter video options, upon which the gui vanishes. Hitting escape brings back the main options menu, and now it works normally again - ie. i can enter and edit video options - except now the gui and FOV settings have changed back to defaults. To reset the above preferences i then have to exit and re-edit the profile manually again. It's a minor irritation - i just have to remember not to try edit video settings mid-game, quite managable, but it'd be nice if it could be ironed out in future releases. Arma1 also had the same problem, but OFP didn't. ETA: Just offering this as a bug report, not expecting any immediate resolution..