pvt_ryan

Any updates? Are you planning to have another release candidate before full release?

Do you have any plans to finish this terrain?

Between you figuring out the mid-range texture problems on Sahrani and the latest engine update that fixed the texture tiling glitch on old maps, this sounds better and better every day. The only other terrain issues I can think of are the pond glitch and the "Use of Land_fuel_tank_big may cause binarization" error. My group is very excited to make the switch when CUP gets a release- we vote modular as well. We'll also look forward to the addition of the improvements from SMD Sahrani and JBAD Buildings.

Any plans to update the editor previews now that the satellite texture tiling/tartan glitch has been fixed?

Really looking forward to a complete version of this one!

Good to hear this project is still alive! Unfortunately my group initially opted for A3MP in quite an arbitrary manner, and it's all but impossible to convince the other members that making the switch and downloading AiA would be worthwhile in light of the fact that it's just as dead as A3MP. We'll certainly be utilizing CUP Terrain when it gets released, however.

Let me preface this post by saying that I am not aware of how ArmA games traditionally assess how much "damage" a weapon does, so please feel free to fill me in. However, the idea is that this thread focuses more on the future of damage modeling (in ArmA 3 and beyond), and takes a more comparative aspect in terms of evaluating ArmA's current models with respect to other games currently on the market. I haven't seen any topics dealing with this, so excuse me if this is redundant, but I think a discussion of what "stopping power" entails can not only change how we approach FPS's, but also teach some of us about firearms in the process. Anyway, to the matter at hand: So I'm sure as many of you are not only gamers but also firearm enthusiasts, you're aware of the controversy that goes along with the notion of "stopping power", at least in that sense that said quantity could be measured in a way that would facilitate any definitive form of comparison between firearms. Well, as both an FPS gamer and an amateur weapons aficionado, one of the most interesting things for me to observe, both over individual series' lifespans and between FPS series, is how this issue is tackled by developers. If there could be one single aspect of a game's mechanics that was most representative of its developers design philosophy, it would have to be damage models (although recoil models are almost equally interesting), at least in my opinion. The most obvious models for stopping power, in order of increasing complexity, are as follows: A single constant- Each gun deals a certain amount of damage that does not change across ranges (most older games use this model for the sake of its simplicity) Two constants with a damage gradient- Each gun has a certain maximum damage level that it deals up to a certain range, beyond which damage drops off until it reaches a second constant corresponding to the gun's minimum damage, regardless of range (as seen in CoD) A linear decrease- Damage drops off linearly from point blank until at very far ranges it practically equals zero Some sort of curve- Introducing a third variable into the damage equation in addition to range (such as a bullet's specific ballistic characteristics or the potential for over-penetration or fragmentation) will generally produce some sort of damage curve rather than a straight line. That's all fine and well, but the crux of the matter is how said constants are determined and said curves are calculated. One of the most striking things is that the first two categories above are usually merely based off of popular conceptions of how much damage a weapon should do- often it even comes down to "bigger guns do more damage", or a precedent set by other earlier, popular FPS games. Only slightly more ambitious would be actually factoring in the caliber of the bullet fired by the weapon in question. While such a model does have the advantage of being markedly more realistic than relying on how firearms are portrayed in the popular media, given that most modern-day cartridges are standardized this does have the potential drawback of ending up with many weapons having similar or identical stats. Some series such as CoD avoid this by somewhat arbitrarily readjusting damage in the interest of balance and variety and so cannot be considered to fall under this category. The next level of complexity would account for either barrel length or muzzle velocity (of which barrel length is one of the primary determinants), which would be determined experimentally. The BF series claims to do this, at least in BF3, and it is a definite improvement over the aforementioned models, but it still ignores how various ballistic properties can affect a bullet's behavior mid-flight and so it cannot produce a true damage curve. The following category of stopping power models would correspond to those designs that calculate how different bullets' dimensions and masses cause them to behave differently at varying ranges. Often said characteristics are summarized in a value known as the "ballistics coefficient"; I'm unsure of how many FPS series actually delve into this level of detail. An even more advanced stage in modeling stopping power would be to make allowances for over-penetration, which refers to when a bullet completely passes through the target and therefore hypothetically does not transfer all of its energy. This would have the interesting consequence of concluding that each weapon has an optimally effective range, below and above which its performance decrease, meaning that from point blank range damage would increase for some distance before it finally began to decrease in the usual manner. Finally, the most difficult (at least from my perspective) but comprehensive damage models would somehow predict certain aspects of terminal ballistics that are often seemingly random, including expansion, fragmentation, and yawing. The first refers to how a bullet deforms and increases surface area as it encounters the target, the second is rather self-explanatory, and the latter describes how a bullet can rotate perpendicular to its length (pardon the poor description). Obviously these things are extremely complicated to estimate and they have as much to do with what the target consists of as much as the actual gun and bullet themselves, which is why these models are far beyond the scope of mainstream FPS's. For an ArmA noob like myself, where exactly do previous ArmA games fall on this scale? What improvements (if any) to damage models would you like to see with ArmA 3? What do you think the ideal "stopping power formula" is, in real life or in the context of video games? Also, feel free to correct me if you feel that I have anything wrong- part of the reason I have written this post is to serve as a little learning exercise for myself. Also worthy of note are the decisions that must be made with regard to how these values should be measured; often one can compute a theoretical value for things like muzzle energy easily enough using basic physics formulas, or one could actually test fire these weapons and use the experimental data. Neither method is necessarily better than the other, since ultimately video games must rely on an equation to output a damage value. Which do you think is better in the context of a military simulation like ArmA 3? inb4TL;DR

Is it just me, or is there no airfield anywhere close to Kavala? I understand that the man airport is in the middle of the island, but isn't it kind of strange that there's a dirt airfield in every corner of the island except the most populated one? You'd think that they could have fit one in somewhere around there, so can anyone think of a reason why there's not an airfield anywhere close to Altis' biggest town? Maybe I'm the only one who's noticed this, but it seems a bit strange to me. Is anyone else bothered by this?

Lol, maybe so! The lack of helipads is another thing, maybe owing to the fact that there's little military presence (in the form of military bases) near Kavala either...

Yeah, Bohemia has clearly made an effort at achieving this, but with Altis' size in comparison to Stratis, some of the things that stuck out in Stratis (the chapels, military encampments, or radar spheres) don't really stick out that much in Altis. Even simply naming more of the features that are already there might help this (giving a name to the mountain range in the northwest, or the central plains, or the major roadways). But at the moment I'm personally not convinced that there's enough reason to explore different parts of the island just for the sake of it; once you've seen one chapel or medium-sized Mediterranean town you've seen them all.

Hey everyone, so the "official launch" of A3 has now arrived. Hopefully most people figured out that this is a launch pretty much in name only, and had the sense to buy the game earlier on instead of paying the higher price and having expectations of more content. Even though there seems to be plenty of whiny threads here by people who seem to be missing the point (about A3 being a platform for multiplayer more than a singleplayer game, and forgetting the fact that Bohemia acknowledged that there will be missing content at launch a long time ago (withholding it is preferable to releasing it in a super-buggy state), personally I'm happy enough with the current state of ARMA 3. Like many others I do hope for more fixed-wing (and also rocket/missile launcher) assets in the future, which it seems Bohemia will be providing when they can, and otherwise my only actual complaints are the clipping between soldiers and the terrain and the poor vehicle damage model (for which I've made a support ticket). That said, the primary purpose of this thread is to make a suggestion regarding Altis, which has been generally well-received so far, and rightfully so. Most people are slightly disappointed by the inability to enter unique buildings (such as the hospital in Kavala), and I can understand that. However, I would argue that if anything Altis requires more unique features, even if they are superficial in nature. The main issue I have with Altis is that- in part due to its almost unfathomable size- I can easily appreciate its beauty and amazingness as a whole, but when it comes to individual locations it can be slightly underwhelming. The most memorable parts are the unique bits- the salt flats, the swamp, the castles, Altis international airport, even the dried up dam, etc.- but there simply aren't enough of them. Even the cemetery they teased during the most recent livestream turns out to be a somewhat generic asset found in many different places. I can tell that Bohemia has made an effort to do this with the research domes, solar farms, and wind turbines scattered throughout, and while those contribute nicely to the overall aesthetic, they don't really distinguish individual locations. One or two impressive bridges spanning creeks or valleys would be one example, or more unique buildings (though this opens the question of whether they would be enter-able). It's great that there are so many towns in Altis, but ultimately there's little to distinguish one from the next aside from the layout of the streets. There's no real sense of variation in character between the various settlements in Altis; of course, they're all picturesque seaside/mountain towns, but this is a double-edged sword at times. When trying to communicate with others during play, there's not really much in the way of landmarks to reference from. On a broad level, Altis is a breathtakingly beautiful, but at the moment everything sort of bleeds into everything else. I know defining the locations by the engagements that take place at them is the ARMA way, but in the absence of any in-world lore, I still think Altis could benefit from more unique assets (landmarks and monuments alike) scattered throughout. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough; lemme know what you think.

-snip-

Hey, I'm completely new to the ARMA series with ARMA 3 and I'm looking for a group that can offer a tactical/serious but patient/friendly environment, preferably for PvE missions. I'm getting into ARMA now because I like the look of the core ARMA experience, and not just because of DayZ (which I've never played) or something like that. In fact I don't own ARMA 2 and I'm unsure whether I'll pick it up anytime soon (this alone seems to disqualify me from certain groups that still focus on ARMA 2), and I'm definitely looking for a group that mainly does ARMA 3 stuff. Given that I'm new to the series there might be a bit of a learning curve for me, but I'm definitely determined to adapt and learn in a serious environment. Military roleplay outside of the game might not be my thing, but I'm willing to start off as the scrubby AAR or whatever is needed. I won't be starting to play until I finish upgrading my PC in a couple weeks, but I'm 100% sure that I will be buying ARMA 3 at that time. I do want to jump right into the coop gaming scene so I can enjoy the game as much as possible from the start, as the game seems like it could be a bit intimidating at first. I'll have all the necessary communication tools, but go ahead and send me a PM if you think you have a group for me.

Facepalm. Right.

Are you unfamiliar with the meaning of the word "future", buddy? I assume that as a seemingly successful studio BIS will be making such decisions for future titles at some point. After all, this isn't an ARMA 3-specific subforum, in case you didn't notice.

I hate Steam unequivocally. 'Nuff said. Hopefully enough people posting in this thread will actually play into BIS' future decision process.

inb4lock

I'd rather not convince BF3 players to move to ARMA... If you're into the gimmicky games, you should probably stick to them.

I believe I've heard arguments that this also represents the dramatically increased acuity of the center of our visual field, and those tend to be my favorite. Because (this may actually be a surprise to some) the farther you move away from the center of visual attention, things get progressively blurrier. It's only the constant movement of our eyes (saccades) from one point to another that give the illusion of an equally blurry field of vision. I guess ideally you would have a gradual zoom ability as opposed to "zoomed in" and "zoomed out", but at any rate ARMA is probably ahead of the curve enough to have anything like this really. This may be what the poster above me was meaning to say; I'm not quite sure.

I notice that he dismisses the throw strength "charge up" option without much stated reason for this. I can see a couple reasons why this system might have a couple advantages and drawbacks in comparison to Dslyecxi's system. First, instead of two distinct levels of force/trajectory with which you can throw a grenade, a charge-up would ostensibly allow a more versatile continuous spectrum of possibilities. However, this versatility comes at the cost of the annoyances of a time-based system (i.e., "Do I really want to have to be paying this much attention to how long I am holding the grenade key during a combat situation?"). A charge-up would also potentially solve the issue with grenade throws elapsing too fast in some regards, depending on its implementation. That said, this issue could of course also simply be solved with more cumbersome animations for grenade throwing, but if there is going to be a long warm-up period anyway then by some arguments you might as well be letting the player tweak throw strength during this time. However, a system that doesn't restrict grenade trajectories to certain preset arcs would seemingly fall victim to another complaint I've heard (either in this or the other thread, I don't remember), which is the argument that the initial direction of the grenade (before it is affected by gravity) shouldn't coincide perfectly with the viewing angle because this leads to players having to aim up into the sky (hopefully I've paraphrased this correctly). I suppose that in this case grenades could always be thrown at the same angle (probably around 30-45 degrees) with the charge up directly affecting the distance of the throw... but I'm really not sure whether this would be preferable.

I think the point is that typically people (especially those wearing heavy loads) tend to not all-out jump to climb up stuff like rocks in real life. Although I like to jump the occasional waist-high fence to show off sometimes, vaulting is a more logical alternative in most cases. Where vaulting doesn't work is for horizontal leaps (which are very different from bunny hopping), though again I'm not really sure whether even that would have too many uses.

Doesn't this have some risk of reducing the need for effective communication/callouts? "Contact!" "Where?" "Just check my feed!"

Nope, blind fire around a corner becomes unbalancing in a third person view, because it's not actually blind. I definitely agree that you should be able to modulate the amount of force with which you throw a grenade, and there should be some sort of indicator to make this more than a guessing game. I think older Arma titles may have had this kind of system, or maybe it was modded in.

I don't see the problem with adding horizontal jumping if it has a cool-down period (a second or so might be fair, without being too unrealistically restrictive), dramatically cuts your stamina and sprinting ability, and increases aim sway for a couple seconds. But that's only if there are situations where you need a more or less horizontal jump (if between rooftops or balconies is the only such case then I could easily do without).

The map(s).