pvt_ryan

Just a quick post, because I don't have the time to write much, but with all these terms being thrown around- ballistics coefficient, drag coefficient, form factor, sectional density, cross-sectional area, and so on- (although of course there's no problem with using more precise language for discussion's sake) we have to remember that all of these quantities are very mathematically related to each other, to such a degree that there would be little advantage to having each one modeled separately in a game like ArmA 3 (with the usual obvious technical disadvantages), so then it becomes a question of which of these measurements is the most versatile. Which does the best job of not only simulating performance over range (through the medium of air) and penetration upon reaching the target (in mediums such as armor or tissue)? What do you guys think?

I agree.

Of course. I would separate terminal velocity into "muzzle velocity" and "bullet shape/form factor" because some people would rather drag coefficients and their effects (mainly decreasing velocity) be ignored for the sake of simplicity, and they would be able to just choose the "muzzle velocity" option (as opposed to choosing both as you presumably would), but like I said, I forgot to include muzzle velocity anyway. :j: I wish I could edit the poll, but I don't see any way to do so.

Dammit, just realized I forgot barrel length/muzzle velocity in the poll. Well, I'll just assume that since that's already in, in one way or another, everyone wants it, but I'd rather see the velocity be a function of each individual weapon instead of each cartridge.

Updated with a poll, including the issue of body armor that was ignored in my OP but brought up by others. With regard to the poll, pick which options you think should be simulated (meaning that not all bullets should behave the same way in each of the listed respects), and you can pick as many options as you like, but keep the value of simplicity and technical limitations in mind. Also, thanks for posting all the helpful and interesting resources, everyone.

True, I hadn't even considered the possibility of using randomized dice to simulate terminal ballistics. I think with different dice for each ammo type that would do a more than sufficient job of modeling fragmentation and yawing while keeping things as simple as possible. Penetration probably couldn't be represented by a die though. Well, I think penetration (both in vehicles and soft targets) is a must for any simulator. In both cases I think the best way would be a simple version of what some here have called a component-driven damage model. I'm not asking for ArmA to simulate the locations of individual vital organs and bones and what not, but there's nothing too terribly limiting about different damage multipliers for the limbs, torso, and head. Also, the maiming thing (having slower movement when shot in the leg, having considerably more recoil or less accuracy when shot in the arm) and bleedout potential do go a long way towards making combat more immersive. Hmm... yeah, wind is something I'd love to see in a simulator, but generally it doesn't have a big impact on bullet damage (unless shooting into the wind would slow the bullet down significantly). I'm thinking about making another thread that would summarize factors such as recoil, bullet drop, wind, and any other things pertaining to accuracy over range much in the same way that this one deals exclusively with wounding/stopping power. I really like your idea about having different types of ammo for each caliber. In fact, the distinction between the damage of normal rounds and the lower damage was one of my main reasons for wanting penetration simulated (in one way or another, whether it be a simple value programmed into bullet statistics or actually calculated in-game), and has everything to do with the overpenetration that I am talking about in this thread. Although I'm not sure the hollow points would go over too well with the strictest of the realism crowd, I think a tradeoff between standard ball and AP rounds would really add to depth. Looks good, I really like it! Yeah, let me clarify that I'm not saying the game has to have this hugely complicated formula that it has to go through for every single bullet fired in the game- models that reduce these variables to single values that can either be measured experimentally outside of a game or simulated by a random die are certainly sufficient in my opinion. It's just that I think these variables cannot be ignored in a "military sim" like ArmA. Indeed, instead of completely eschewing an upfront numerical damage model altogether to focus on a completely organic wounding system, I like your idea of having a dual model; bullets do a certain amount of damage upfront, and cause bleeding which deals damage over time. Bleeding is another aspect in which a good penetration model is beneficial; a big question is whether there would be an exit wound that would cause additional bleeding. Well, that system sounds good to me. A system that distinguishes between stopping bleedout and actually healing would also be great in my opinion. Thanks for the info and ideas; I tried searching for threads before making this one but nothing terribly redundant showed up with the keywords I used. ---------- Post added at 05:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:28 PM ---------- Indeed, the issue of what realism actually entails is a huge discussion in itself, for sometimes real life can be seemingly random, so does a certain amount of randomness then belong in a simulator or should a game like ArmA stick to strictly theoretical models? There's no perfect answer. Indeed the barrel length/muzzle velocity is in most cases the only variable between guns that is relevant to how much damage bullets do, or close enough to being that anyway. You're right that even the "fudge factor" could be a single value, but at least to me I think I might rather see a little bit of chance in that or not bother having such a variable at all. Yeah, that's along the lines of what I'm going for, and a binary model of penetration failure or success is sufficient for most materials, but I think the game could really benefit from treating soft targets and materiel (including vehicles) with a little more detail, making it possible for a bullet to either be absorbed/deflected by armor, penetrate partially and eventually come to rest somewhere inside the target, or fully penetrate and create an exit wound. The same would go for vehicles, and how much armor each individual part of the vehicle has should also be factored in.

Ah, I guess I misinterpreted that then. Constants for muzzle velocities (and the barrel lengths which they would derive from) are certainly an efficient and sufficient model for damage over range in my opinion. Really, the only disadvantage to that system that I could imagine would be if there was a very large number of weapons, some would still end up with identical stats, and of course such a model would also fail to account for how a growing understanding of ballistics has led to modern cartridges having much better performance than older ones. Although, that's only problem if the firearms in the game represent a broad historical range, but even then it's not a huge issue at all. Perhaps then the next step for ArmA's damage model is to have a more realistic representation of penetration instead of bothering with the meticulous specifics of external ballistics. Indeed, obviously memory resources are always an issue and for a series devoted to realistic simulation like ArmA probably the primary limiting factor. At least simpler models do have some advantages- every time you introduce a new variable, the damage "feels" more random, which may be seen as frustrating for those who want reliable kills in a multiplayer context. In this way, there are sacrifices that go along with more "organic" damage models. Hmm... that's interesting, one would think that if bullets could penetrate soft cover they could also penetrate tissue; of course not having such a feature doesn't hold the game back, but it could be nice to have (within reasonable technical limits) and simulating penetration would kill two birds in one stone. It sounds like if ArmA's model has any room where improvement would be both practical and significant, it's penetration. ---------- Post added at 03:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:50 PM ---------- Ah... nice work. I love to see the community take games to the next level. ---------- Post added at 04:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:52 PM ---------- Indeed, I am very aware of the fact that this is a contentious issue, which is why I avoided proposing a specific equation of my own and only focused on which variables were being factored in. Indeed. Great post, I feel significantly more informed now. I will say though that it's my belief that applying ballistics to a video game is a bit simpler than you present it to be. Of course, there's no doubt that ballistics in real life is very complicated, and each aspect (internal/interior, external/exterior, and terminal) is equally important, but for the purposes of a video game that is not the case. In real life the two main applications of ballistics (at least the ones I can think of at the moment) are military ends and forensic science. Forensic ballistics requires one to work backward to the source, which in the context of the video games is largely irrelevant. Alternatively, for the sole purpose of calculating stopping power/damage/injury, interior ballistics are only relevant insomuch as it affects external ballistics, and external ballistics is in turn only significant in its effect on terminal ballistics. In this way the theoretical details of internal and external ballistics can be ignored, and instead the relevant quantities can be measured experimentally, which takes out a lot of unnecessary computations (unless of course the game in question is more concerned with ballistics theory than real firearm performance). If internal and external ballistics can just be summarized and represented by simple sets of values, then the only sub-field left for a game like ArmA 3 to excel in is terminal ballistics, as ominous as it is. Indeed, most mainstream FPS's ignore terminal ballistics altogether under the clearly wrong assumption that external ballistics accurately predict damage/injury. This is why terminal ballistics are in fact an area of great opportunity for a series like ArmA. Obviously certain things like yawing and fragmentation are likely overkill and too CPU intensive anyway, but I think one could make a good case that more realistic penetration models could really benefit the game.

Wow, thanks, those are some useful resources, and definitely pertaining to this matter. I wasn't even aware that there was a Wiki! :D

Hmmm... wow, I actually expected the damage models in ArmA to be a bit more complicated than that. That's not necessarily a hugely bad thing in the game, but I for one would like to see a more in-depth model, even if that just means taking barrel length into account (which is a very important part of a firearm's performance). I mean, I'm no programmer, but if I can easily calculate (relative and theoretical) stopping power while taking into account barrel length (or experimental muzzle velocity) on an Excel spreadsheet, it seems like it should be something they could put into the game, even if they had to move a couple of things around in the code. I'd generally agree, but ultimately such a complicated model can be useful for balance purposes because it generates a curve that allows each weapon class (ex. submachine gun, assault rifle, sniper rifle) to excel at its intended range. for example, one big problem that other FPS series have had with regard to weapon balance is that (in line with traditional thought) for sniper rifles to be powerful at far ranges they must also be powerful at close range, which gives rise to playstyles that blatantly contradict how sniper rifles are used in real life (don't worry, I'm not accusing a game like ArmA that has more hardcore fans of having a "quickscoping" problem, but hopefully you see the point). A damage model that takes over-penetration into account would actually predict that a sniper rifle bullet would (due to its high velocity) over-penetrate at point blank range, doing potentially less damage than it would from a more reasonable distance. Whether this is truly at all realistic (as this assumes that energy transfer is the primary determinant of injury), I am not sure, but it is a very interesting and arguably useful consequence to using such a model, and as such more complex models shouldn't be immediately dismissed as worthless. Indeed, there are certainly other aspects of the game mechanics with room for improvement, and ultimately I'm sure everyone would love to see the end of seemingly oversimplified "hitpoints" systems. However, seeing as video games by nature will always be computer programs, damage/injury would always have to be reduced to numbers at some point, so we can never truly do away with quantified damage models. We can only improve our ability to hide the numerical nature of hitpoints by adopting more complicated damage models, which is why I think that a more in-depth model is called for even if there are changes in how injury is assessed in the game. Like I said though, I know very little about coding, so I could be completely off the mark.

Yep... and the funniest thing is that it's uncommitted players like him that cause the ArmA veterans to be deathly afraid of anything that mentions accessibility in the first place. Sort of a self-defeating prophecy, eh? "Hey guys, accessibility isn't a bad thing- it would just make the game more exciting for a lot of players, and don't you want more people like me playing ArmA?" *discussion ensues* "Right then, I'm bored! To hell with ArmA..." :j:

Let's be honest, how much of the discussion in this post has centered on these supposed sacrifices in the gameplay? None, because no examples were given. The discussion has essentially become about the distinction between usability and accessibility, and that's what my posts are concerning. If everyone was so concerned about keeping things on-topic, they would have just used the same term as the OP, which if you look at the thread title is "playability". Instead, people before me made this into a rant about what connotations "accessibility" may have to them. Anyway, I'm sorry if it seems like I'm arguing semantics, but ultimately my point is that accessibility isn't always a bad thing; in fact, often it can be very good. Now, let me say I do appreciate the current manageable size of the ArmA community, and so I'm not hoping that it becomes much more popular, but I think the assumption that if it did become popular it would necessarily be because BIS "sold out" or "dumbed the game down" is unfair.

I read the OP, thanks, and the OP gave no example of how ArmA was doing so, so that hasn't figured into any of the responses in this thread. Why don't you instead reread the true definition of accessibility, and the examples of it that I gave? The fact of the matter is that while "accessibility" with its connotations has become a sort of dreaded buzzword with respect to video game development, its true meaning is not something that people should see as a necessarily bad thing, and unless you can give some evidence that BIS will dumb the game down, I'm not concerned to hear the developers talking about improving accessibility. Look, if you want to insist that players of COD and BF are immature and unsophisticated, or even on average unintelligent, that's your prerogative, but don't ignore the essence of what the Wikipedia article is saying and trivialize a genuine issue because you're set on what you imagine to be the meaning of the word "accessibility". I'll say it one more time: Accessibility just refers to making a game available to more people; whether sacrifices are made with respect to gameplay in order to appeal to certain audiences is a different issue. If you don't want ArmA to be more accessible just because you would feel less special if more people played it, just say so. If you're so afraid of hearing the developers use the word, give some examples of what you fear may happen in terms of individual changes to gameplay.

You're ignoring that many things outside of changing the actual gameplay and "dumbing the game down" can improve accessibility. There's making an existing game known and available to wider audiences, and there's changing that game so it has more appeal to said newer audiences. Those are two different things; the first one is the true definition of accessibility, and the second is what the term has come to mean in the gaming industry and how "accessibility" is being referred to in this thread. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_accessibility Even in video games, and even when it does refer to making certain changes or accommodations to special audiences, accessibility most often deals with the special needs of the disabled. Now, if you want to argue that the average COD player probably has some sort of mental disability, that's another issue altogether.

Alright, yes, there's a difference between accessibility and usability, and usability indeed means what people are saying it means, but accessibility like others have said generally does not have a negative connotation. It just means making the game available to a wider audience. Things like letting you either download the game or buy a hard copy, translating the game to more languages, or even advertising the game in a way would increase accessibility. It's not necessarily "dumbing down" the game for the masses or "selling out" to a big publisher, it's just making sure that everyone who wants to play the game is able to. I'm not saying that you guys aren't talking about something that we don't want to happen to the series, but I think "accessibility" isn't quite the right word. Maybe "accommodability" (probably not a real word), since that implies that one is making certain concessions to newer audiences?

Also, though I possess an irrational hate for all those programs like Origin and Steam, it really doesn't matter because most of the issues such players are having with BF3 are technical things that will probably be fixed or improved anyway. The kinds of players that will switch over to ArmA from BF (like myself, when ArmA 3 comes out) are those who are unsatisfied with the direction that the design philosophy of that series is taking, towards more "accessibility" and appeal to the casual masses. So yeah, this is irrelevant, I'm afraid.

Of course, but this discussion shouldn't just be limited to the costs associated with physical memory, but also the time and effort it would require BIS to put into this as opposed as to some other feature. Of course, any suggestion has such an opportunity cost, but given that 2000 already seems like a fairly large number to me, I for one would rather have the developers put in more work on AI so at least there could be 2000 well-programmed civilians as opposed to 3000 not so well-programmed ones. Obviously it's all a matter of personal opinion though, and there will certainly people who hunger for an in-game society that's more realistic purely by numbers, I suppose.

Perhaps I was a bit unclear, but I certainly realize that only NPC's across the island wouldn't eat up the same amount of memory at any given time as one right next to you, but in the end the fact of the matter is that it takes up space if it's in the game. I trust BIS to make a good, informed decision on the matter because simply there's no reason or incentive for them not too.

Wow, that is truly one of the most impressive things I've seen in a video game/simulator. How possible is a similar but perhaps slightly simpler system in ArmA 3? 20%? 10%? Or is this a job for a mod?

Well, I think the semantic distinction between them is largely contrived, but it fits the purposes of this thread. Also, where would "streamlining" (another related term someone mentioned) fit in? Hmmm... that's a very interesting perspective, and definitely not one I've encountered with previous games I've played. Although I do hate to see content cut short, with a playerbase that has as much dedication and vision as ArmA's seems to perhaps it'd be better for BIS to focus on ironing out the mechanics and features of the game. Yeah, in the context of the thread I'm really not sure whether ArmA's sandbox style map counts as more or less accessible than a traditional FPS map, given the fact that other more casual series like Grand Theft Auto use a similar approach... One thing is for sure, it's the most impressive video game environment I've personally come across.

Hmm... the XM2010 ESR is another option for that role... I myself also always like the .338 Lapua Magnum variants of the AI Arctic Warfare and the Sako TRG-42, and both of those are fairly modern... Hmmm... yeah, probably either the AK-74M or the AK-200 or AN-94 Abakan if BIS is feeling more adventurous. The AKS-74U would be the obvious choice, but the AK-105 is another possibility.

:eek: Yeah, I definitely wouldn't think so, but I heard a BIS dev say in one of the videos that the small patrol boat we've seen was completely of their own design, so you never know... Haha... yeah, I'll change my name to Viktor Reznov as soon as I see any FPS/military game not feature a single Soviet/Russian weapon! XD *puts on flame suit*

First, I don't know why the FAMAS is always brought up in these discussions about what people want in games (tell me there's some other reason than it was in COD), as no one of military significance other than France uses it (and I know some of you wouldn't even consider France to be of military significance- fair enough), and otherwise its just a pretty standard bullpup assault rifle. I mean, I'd rather see the classic Steyr AUG or the British L85 if we really want to see bullpup assault rifles... Also, yes it's true that you have named many of the major miltary firearms manufacturers, but China and Israel are two big ones you're missing, and I guess France, Italy and the UK also deserve an honorable mention. Also, smaller countries like Austria (Steyr and Glock), and Switzerland (SIG Sauer), Serbia (Zastava), the Czech Republic (Ceska Zobrojka), and even Poland also have their share of interesting firearms, and I'd love to see a game like ArmA feature at least one gun from each of these countries. More on topic, let me first say that I'm not aware how which factions are planned to be on either side of the main conflict in ArmA 3 will affect weapon choice, but I do have some ideas for weapons. My favorite weapons (besides American) are Soviet/Russian and Chinese weapons- so many of them are so deviously unique (and I guess I also like them because both countries through history have used a variety of calibers), whether built with integral silencers like the AS Val/VSS Vintorez rifle family and the Chinese QCW-05 SMG (hell, Russia even built a subsonic bolt-action sniper rifle, the VKS Vykhlop). Although of course at some point you want weapons that military forces have actually used (the whole realism factor)... It will be interesting to see how much the developers actually take liberties with creating their own futuristic weapons, as opposed to basing them off of current prototypes.

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I'm a noob, but 40 civilians per village sounds fine to me. Don't want them getting in my way at any rate... According to wikipedia the total population of the island is around 18,000. The 2,000 cited by the OP comes out to 11% of the island population being represented in-game. Taking into consideration various factors that would lead to various segments of the population being less conspicuous than others (children for example) and therefore the fact that those segments would be less represented in the game, that means one could interpret that 11% to be much higher. Also one must take into account decreasing marginal returns- each additional NPC would take roughly the same amount of technical resources to maintain (I'm no computer expert though, so I'm really just speculating), while adding less to the gampeplay experience. So even though having 3,000 NPC's might be mathematically closer to reality, if the last 1,000 are just placeholders, do they really add anything to the game, other than allowing you to cite a more impressive number when people ask how many NPC's there are?