Radtoo

I feel that the editor in ArmA3 is actually slightly better than the rest of the ArmA3 UI. But yes, it's bad overall. I feel that many games created by amateurs have a better UI (those amateurs that use un-themed default UI elements arranged in a weird overall layout). My guess it's because of the (absence?) of the UI framework BI uses. Maybe BI could and should stick something better on top of the game so it look & feels nicer and so that windows and fancy scrolling iconified colored tree/list dialogs in a fold-up window like nice editors have can be properly supported? Well, Cryengine is one of the best as far as its editor features are concerned... and probably also AI & path finding & threading & other stuff CC:GM / ArmA3 seem to have some trouble with. Must be difficult stuff to implement, I imagine. But I think desiring an editor with many of the features you described isn't too picky, no. Expecting all of Cryengine's editor features might be a bit much, though...

No... with non-random, rapid-firing instakill weaponry, a player who's just very fast and skilled with shooting will pretty much outgun any tactics with less skilled players that you might have. He/she already does when you have movements speeds like in Warsow or Quake or such games. It's only going to be harder to overwhelm that one good player with slower movement speeds than these faster games have. On the FPS side, ArmA is just not close enough to pushing very skilled players to their limits so that interesting stuff can happen. It'd just be a boring match and not good for e-sports. On the strategy side, I don't think the command aspect of the game will compensate for anything. Granted, if a 6v6 or so could be fought with 125 or more fairly competent AI units under each player's command, that might suddenly become interesting for e-sports. It'd make for a decent show, and there's always something surprising that the other team could pull off. But ArmA is currently a long way from supporting that or anything similar.

First: I was wondering if there's any word on whether the Java GUI would allow for interactive on-screen layers / canvas' that can interface with the game, so we can have proper keyboard & mouse GUI elements as well as visual things like, IDK, a red "hot" painted machine gun or a new inventory system in mods, using Java? A quick search didn't tell me. And with C/C++ -whose immediate execution platform is usually the OS they run on-, you get a lot of reports on OS security flaws (and a lot of patches for them) when you look for it. Never mind that there are also many frameworks and programming techniques that did / do have security problems systematically. No need to panic over C, C++ or Java, It's just the nature of complex code. That said, Java applets (the ones that run in browser plugins, specifically - which is not the same as Java applications in general!) have been completely useless to most people and often a security / privacy risk. I suggest you turn these off. Now, what's also nice about Java is that you actually have quite fine-grained control on the VM what is allowed to run, and how. Even with the standard JVM, BI (or a player itself) could ensure nothing writes to another folder except the game profile folder where 100MB are available for it, and that everything only runs on the fourth CPU core with no access to sound, for instance (this may or may not be relevant, I just picked random constraints). And it would generally work across platforms. If they used an external / standard JRE, it'd be far more secure than ArmA 3 itself, I imagine. At least I'm pretty sure a lot more people are paid to investigate and deal with Java security than ArmA3 security. Granted, I imagine if this JRE has the sort of ingame access to game features it'll require to be "good" for modders (basically, it would know everything about everything), people surely could also use it to cheat - "exploit" in the wallhack and aimbot and "find the right guns on bodies 2km away" sense. Not that I care much for the game being cheat-proof, myself - I'd rather have more fun-to-play mods with sophisticated features.

I think there are nonlethal hits too, and hits vs vehicles certainly have a damage value that isn't kill or not kill? Putting an estimate in there would already be pretty good, and maybe just the raw values on how rapidly the bullets will drop and how much damage is reduced at range or whatever actually controls the mechanics of a weapon. That's one of the few things I'd like to know before picking the scope up. Then I'd like to know what RCO / ARCO / MRCO means. And then I'd like to know about how much they magnify, what weapons I can stick the scope on, and whether it'll provide accurate distance lines for all of those weapons... things like that. I'd of course also like to be able to get the same information when it is already attached to a gun. Even if all the information landed there and all mods also updated the manual perfectly for their choices of numbers and things, it'd still be the far more inconvenient approach. Just about every other game can provide information like this in their ingame interface so you don't have to remember it all by heart or refer to the manual when you actually wanted to just pick up a new weapon / vehicle and go fight adequately with it. I see no reason why ArmA3 couldn't, so I feel it should take the better, more convenient approach. All right. I hope it'll get more interesting and more clever. Uh, did it work any better back then (due to different game mechanics, perhaps)? Because I feel it's not working now. Arguably, yes, I can keyboard select up to 10 units or so (with the function keys) and tell them to move somewhere, or come back to me, and they'll reasonably do it (though they don't seem to be in a hurry?). But everything else doesn't really work. RTS style commanding would be different and way more powerful / convenient. First of all, I cannot select them with a mouse "lasso" area selection on the map or live or even by clicking individual unit "cards". I have to do it with keys, apparently. Second, the mouse pointer is only weakly context sensitive (the menu only seems to change for vehicles and enemies? I can't select an infantryman, click on a house, and tell them to open a door or anything like that, apparently). In fact, I almost cannot click or mouse-over anything. Third, there's apparently also no command queuing (move to middle of town, get into chopper north of town, fly chopper to other town, unload). Fourth, there is practically no visual support to tell icons and arrows or other visual support to tell you what actions you've ordered in the past and what the exactly consequence of ordering an action would be. Say, ordering your 4th unit to get in the vehicle actually gives you a long solid line arrow across the map, reminding you he actually will walk across the map, rather than a striped arrow that would indicate he's coming over in a vehicle. And then there should be a "boarding" icon on the card he wants to get into, too. I also don't get LoS or firing area indicators for units on the map, or team markers on the map in the team's "center of gravity" or other such things. There's just very little information. In the same vein, support calls and such are also in the wrong menu (why are they on an unit?) and iconless. Besides I don't get any indication for what's theoretically available but currently unavailable or such, or how long it takes until I can call support again, or w/e. Last, most of the functions that I'd hope for when I command units appear to be missing. No formation drawing, no patrol / repeat, no retreat areas for wounded units, no way to tell a specific medic / mechanic to heal units in an area (which may be patrol/repeat), no "spread out"... usually RTS have at least some of this functionality. Even if you're only aiming to control squads, a "group up and storm that house / that courtyard" or such would be nice. This surely also ties into AI, though...

Good: * The game runs fairly well. * The map we play on seems pretty nifty, with all the structures. * It seems the game engine supports quite a lot of features that can be used to make mods-in-a-map. Not so good: * (Automatic?) LoD as well as various video settings seem to significantly affect how well I can see through most vegetation. This is so annoying! (Yea, I can and do turn off grass, but I can't turn off tree leaves, as far as I can tell?) * I wished we could wreck all manmade structures and vegetation, but many things seem invulnerable? Frankly, a system where these have HP and -even unconvincingly- eventually despawn is still more fun and less immersion-breaking to me than invulnerable objects. Bad: The user interface is just weak. It's pretty unresponsive on all elements. And it lags very badly on some, for example the unit orientation or the red lines going to the mouse pointer on the map just aren't current pretty much all the time. It doesn't seem to provide a lot of vital information. For instance, in the inventory, I'd like to see a description of a weapon, the effective range, the amount of damage caused, whether it can be used against armored vehicles and which ones, and which keys on the keyboard operate each thing. Or as another example, I'd like to be able to call up the same kind of information for vehicles I stand in front of or look at on the map. Really, the more details provided, the better! Commanding is such an annoying chore, also mainly due to the UI. A hierarchic list with only one level of options displayed is probably one of the worst choices possible for commanding (never mind that it doesn't even seem to allow to be operated with the mouse). Is that a placeholder or is that seriously the approach for commanding units in ArmA 3? I myself really hope the game gets PC RTS-style controls and some visualization and unit hierarchies and stuff, so units can be commanded with some ease on the map and in first-person mode. This game certainly gives pretty ample opportunities for commanding things around in theory... but using a hundred key presses to merely get nine infantrymen to kneel on a hill and watch down / the horizon (or whatever they ultimately are supposed to do) is just tiresome, not fun. [*I also think the AI isn't very convincing about (not) spotting you, and how it acts in general. I don't know if a semblance of realism or interesting gameplay comes first for this game, but the AI seems to not be very optimized to provide either. [*] AI pathfinding seems weird very often and disasteriously fails sometimes. Isn't it possible to do better here, either? There are certain open source projects offering all the code needed to do well.

Hey, I think the v9a archive you uploaded is incomplete. I get "unexpected end of archive" and cannot extract the last map "isladuala" from it. Re-downloaded the file with another browser, too. EDIT: I also noted that the AI teams seem to have some money problems. In the commander's "team orders" view the number does not change, and it sometimes even features low negative numbers. There might be some bug there. PS: I really like the improvements you made to Warfare BE, especially the AI changes and more starting vehicles. Makes the solo / coop play I want better than in vanilla. Thank you for your work!