sproyd

And this... is why you do soft launches. Imagine the press if A3 had no public Alpha, no Beta and no Dev branch and it just launched in a couple weeks time. Notwithstanding all the extra bugs it would have had that have been ironed out through the HUGE open alpha and beta, all the gaming press (and prob some regular press) would have had headlines "Arma 3 unplayable" akin to what happened with many games i.e. SimCity etc which adversely affected sales.

Everyone has their own opinion on Arma 3, opinions which unfortunately tend to be generally quite dramatic and black and white! Personally I was a day 0 downloader of the Alpha and have played it almost everyday since. I think I have a pretty good understanding of where its been, where its at and where its going and I couldn't be happier. Well, sort of... because as usual I have become acclimatised to the game having logged 257 hours on Steam (including Editor time mind you) and the quirks seem to become more normal and acceptable if you will. However, there seems to be some nascent modders that have come out of the woodwork immediately prior to Retail release now that the build has stabilised and I am here to tell you - you need to check out these mods. They are absolutely transforming the experience and taking what A3 vanilla is really good at (graphics, weapons, sandbox) and lifting them to a whole new level. Links to must-have mods are in my sig but here's what you should be looking at. JSRS is Back Yes its some of the biggest news on the forum but some of you may have missed it if you weren't cruising the mods:discussion sub. JSRS by LordJarhead is one of the best mods form A2 and overhauls the sound system. Its in very very early Alpha for A3 but oh god is it good. Having played so many hours I was getting very tired of the 6.5mm gunshot sample and this elevates that sound and many others to high levels. Not to mention sonic cracks from overhead rounds and being able to hear distant firefights echoing through the valleys... Go get this now. TMR TMR introces a range of features but mostly to do with weapon behaviour. This resolves pretty much all complaints about "too much recoil" and feels just right to me. Other features include cool changes to the rocket launches. FFIS FFIS or Fire-fight Improvement System vastly overhauls AI behaviour and its hard to believe this was whacked together by one guy. Firefights now take a lot longer and you are much less likely to take a 9mm between the eyes from 200+m. Even AI vs AI firefights feature suppression, evasive tactics, flanking, high use of cover (like a normal firefight). Mid-Range Textures by Bad Benson This is an old one but essential nonetheless as very uncharacteristically, BIS hasn't addressed the very poor mid-range textures. May become obsolete if Retail includes a patch on textures but don't hold your breath. Essential mod to stem eye bleeds. And in tandem these 4 mods will reinvigorate your Arma 3 and once Altis launches we will hopefully all be in ... Arma Heaven.

Wow! Altis. This is certainly a fantastic map. I was able to get 30FPS on 8,000 view distance with just myself in a heli flying around. However GPU utilisation was at 54% which indicates the CPU was working very hard at that view distance and that is a i5 4670K @ 4.2GHz so... At 3,000 view distance I was sitting on about 60FPS, GPU limited (GTX 760). My biggest gripe is the revenge of the low-res mid-range textures. Bad Benson's mod doesn't seem to treat most of the textures on Altis.

Dude turn on AA! You could cut yourself on those jaggies (or does AA just not turn up in screenshots?)

Just would like to say that this worked a treat for AT/AP mines also. Been googling for a bit and there is a lot of old stuff about detecting mine deactivation regarding getpos as the mines change pos once deactivated. However, this is much simpler and simple is good. Thanks!

Playing Supports Showcase the Mortar Explosions are great on my end...

This is covered in the latest version v0.7. The guide is starting to take shape and I'm happy with the direction. ---------- Post added at 10:07 ---------- Previous post was at 10:06 ---------- I think things like force lights on is dictated by combat modes. ---------- Post added at 10:10 ---------- Previous post was at 10:07 ---------- Yes I'll look into this although you need to be a bit more clear. When you say pickup and drop do you mean AI coming to pick you up and drop you off? I'm assuming that the Combined Arms showcase Heli drop-off and pick-up (at the end) is what you are after? To be honest I've never scripted something like this but I will look into it for you as I'd like to know. It might be going slightly beyond the 'simple' moniker of my Guide though.

I know what you mean, although I wouldn't say its an annoyance. The great thing about Arma's modability is that you don't need to have mod a, b ,c and d you can just have mod a and d if you so choose, although this creates a bit of fiddling. In terms of auto-updaters PwS works well but unfortunately most mods aren't on there and some on there are out of date so its by no means a perfect solution (except for say CBA).

Yes of course CBA as well which is a prerequisite for most of these mods to work. Yes, at the moment you won't be able to play any of these mods on MP. However, the mods are still in Alpha testing phase mostly so need work before they are finalised. However, many mods already have bikeys so if you did want to host a server for your friends/clan with these mods enabled you can - and people have. Just not available yet on big pubs. Anyway, even in JSRS's heyday on A2 it wasn't running on most servers despite it unanimously improving the experience. I remember my server search filter was just 'JSRS' - that's how important it was to me to use it. ---------- Post added at 08:32 ---------- Previous post was at 08:31 ---------- Like A2 just mod to your heart's content. FFIS and TMR work well together and vastly improve the AI infantry fight situation. Check it out! ---------- Post added at 08:35 ---------- Previous post was at 08:32 ---------- ACRE is of course great if you play a lot of MP (I've never used it as I'm not really part of a clan). STHUD is great too and I used it heavily in A2 but I guess doesn't dramatically change the A3 experience like FFIS/TMR/JSRS. However its a must-have mod for sure if you want tighter squad control and situational awareness. I'm interested how it plugs in to FFIS which can see members of your squad rout - will they still be visible on the STHUD once they've temporarily left your group?

Okay, welcome to v0.7 featuring new additions including markers, briefings, random spawn points and other goodies. Check OP for download.

Well its the long weekend here in the UK and a rainy one in London so my plan of attack is that I plan to attack this guide. Expect an update some time soon, hopefully I can get it to v1.0 before Retail release. I know its currently seriously lacking in some crucial areas so will try and devote some Steam-time to that. I thought I'd spend the whole weekend playing Splinter Cell Blacklist but it turns out that its not very compelling so I'm back to Arma, albeit I have to first build some kind of IKEA furniture called Kvidinge (how do you pronounce that, I mean seriously...). Oh and some of you might have seen my mission Don't Kill Josef made it to the top 3 on the Steam Workshop which was cool and I managed to get loads of feedback. I think its since dropped back off as the rankings are cyclical but was fun to see. Check it out if you haven't already of what kind of mission you can make with fairly basic mission making skills.

Try x

Sorry Tao, I'm a bit confused as to what the changes are to suppressors? Apart from the damage/velocity alterations what is this about needing the right thread etc? What implications does that have in game? I played a Vehicle showcase with this mod last night and I didn't spawn with the suppressor on the Katiba you normally start with...

Excellent, look forward to testing the update. Played a round of Vehicles showcase last night with this mod together with TMR and FFIS (links in my sig) and it was excellent. After destroying the cars, I was driving to the radio tower when I got a flat. Had to jump out at the bottom of the the foggy valley leading towards Agia Marina and fight my way through with troops coming at my position. As I've got a new computer I hadn't set up my virtual 5.1 yet (Asus Xonar U3) and I had just been playing with my monitor's speakers. I had to pause the game and install the card, so I could better pinpoint enemy fire as with FFIS they flank you and with the increased depth from JSRS having good headphones and soundcard helps you to pinpoint where the fire is coming from. Died a couple of times I'm pleased to say (as should be the case).

Not sure if its FFIS or BIS but there seems to be excessive use of prone when assaulting a position. I made a large (10) group to assault Camp Maxwell and they kept moving up, dropping to prone, then standing up and moving up again... I would of expected to go to crouch when not moving but assaulting a position/executing a move waypoint in combat mode. Anyway that's neither here nor there as the ensuing firefight almost resembled watching a human firefight. Pretty cool I must say with the enemy flanking together. I might just make a YouTube video of it.

FYI the TMR guy is looking at implementing wind - hopefully your two mods don't clash as a lot of ppl seem to use them together.

I think you can tell from the sounds how hard its blowing and then you can also tell based on the 2d foliage listing level what direction its blowing. Although I have yet to test the effects. My Don't Kill Josef mission is probably a good test as I have wind and gusts turned right up on that.

I'm at work so can't test but am interested as to how AI will accommodate for this?

45 ACP classname looks to have been changed again... what is it now? I can't seem to find any classname database that has the new name... I have the last one which was 30Rnd_45ACP_Mag_SMG_01 Preesh!

Thanks guys but what gives? The mags won't take.

Okay I think I found a glitch that is unrelated to this classname. For some reason it won't add mags to the loadout as if the loadout is full but there is spare room. Can someone test this? This is the init field for the unit - a green army team leader - adds no mags. this setcaptive true; this addmagazines ["30Rnd_45ACP_Mag_SMG_01",7]; this addWeapon 'SMG_01_Holo_pointer_snds_F'; this addPrimaryWeaponItem 'optic_MRCO'; this addWeapon 'hgun_ACPC2_snds_F'; this addHeadgear 'H_Watchcap_sgg'; this addUniform 'U_I_CombatUniform_tshirt'; When I add removeallweapons this; to the front of the init, I have an empty loadout but get 3 mags... why 3, why not the 7 requested?

Anti-Material Rifles with TMR + JSRS are Basically a god-fearing BOOM with a shite of a lot of recoil knocking you off scope!! Had to get back on target to see whether I hit. I've never fired a rifle of that high calibre so not sure how accurate the sound + recoil are but they certainly make you want to engage at 800+ metres rather than 300m like some think is appropriate with these things.

I can't explain how he's done it but I set myself up for a 1 on 1 battle with an autorifleman just to see how he would behave (+TMR mod) and I shot him once. He then proceeded to kill me but I saw him faceplant dead in my killcam about 30 seconds after I died. I'm guessing he bled out. ---------- Post added at 22:11 ---------- Previous post was at 22:10 ---------- Its a ragdoll death though so not sure if that will tickle your fancy ---------- Post added at 22:12 ---------- Previous post was at 22:11 ---------- Those good for nothing sons of bitches!

That's what I've got - not working in Stable - can anyone verify?