windies

As Tonci put it, the reason people were up in arms over the axed feature's was because of how that information was released and the timing of that information, I.E. after they got our money. It's not that BI promised feature's and failed, though I'm sure there would still be some criticism, not nearly the amount and lengths of what they saw post ArmA 3 alpha/beta. No one has a problem with a developer saying, "We want to try to implement this", but what's annoying is when you're sold something with the "loose" promise that X feature will be in and then find out 6 months later that it won't be and you find out from a 3rd party source. It just makes it look bad.

If they're bone dry and have nothing to fire, yes.

What about if you already own DayZ? Seems kinda pointless to have to buy it again.

I think what he meant is that the AI should be able to or be doing this by themselves.

It's not like I don't get the concept that they're burned out with ArmA, but why release ArmA 3 like it is now? I understand, but I'm also a consumer, a customer, not BI's friend or confidant or long time lover, I'm here because they sold me a product and I bought the product based on their advertising, marketing, and developer released statements. So as much as I can understand "Hey guys you're burned out I get it", I'm still a customer here with a product that feels half finished and a lesser quality and quantity than previous iterations of the product. I know this game and this engine has much more potential than we see, but none of it matters until the developers focus on tapping into it and fixing the existing problems. That's really what needs to happen, because content be damned, if this is the last ArmA then as much as I hate to say it the community will more than likely keep content flowing. I don't think it's their job or their obligation by any means, but the community can't fix deep rooted engine issue's and source code issue's unless BI releases the source which I highly doubt will happen. That's really where the focus should be as far as BI themselves. I was secretly hoping that this might actually be the ArmA game I always wanted, that it might fix some of the long standing issue's with the series and the engine. Anymore though I just kind of see it for what it is, and the way everyone makes it sound, we might as well just give up any hope and let BI be BI, let them move on to another project so hopefully they can pull the same thing more or less again with another series.

So then it's OK to excuse what ArmA 3 is and the support it gets and the forms of support it gets simply because the developers are "burnt out"? Does that now nullify the criticism, the problems and the potential feedback? I don't get that attitude or that mentality, that because they're BI and you feel like they've provided you quality in the past and you're loyal to them, you feel it's OK to "give them a pass this time". You exude it by placating what's happening as the norm and just excusing away the issue's with poor excuses. Even if it is the last full fledged title that we ever see, and I agree with you pretty strongly that that is a likely outcome, does that mean it's OK to just leave it in a state of stasis in terms of bugs, content, feature's and just the overall aspect of what makes it a "game" in the first place? Yea, some things do get done and there has been movement in some directions but quite frankly it's all been moving sideways rather than forward. It's always two steps forward, one step back and sometimes one step forward and two back. One thing that seems to be common thought is that this will in all likelihood be the last standalone ArmA that we see and honestly the looking forward blog by Jay Crowe cements that idea to me because it's referred to as a platform rather than as a game, and while we've always kind of considered ArmA to be a platform for modding, I don't think that it's ever been so blatantly stated before. If that's the case though we really need some work put into the engine and put into the feature set in order to make this last. Otherwise it won't be a boycott that kills this game but the game and the engine itself. ---------- Post added at 00:10 ---------- Previous post was at 00:07 ---------- Then it's destined to die and ArmA 3 was a poor mans hurrah I guess. I dunno what else to say. I guess it was just a way to infuse startup funds into DayZ

I feel completely the same way you do man.

All the discussion or complaining in the world won't matter unless BI themselves actually do something about it. If complaining doesn't do it, then maybe loss of funds would. It's like saying if you gave EA a trillion dollars and mass complained about BF they would change it all of a sudden. They're focused on the money, you're complaints mean nothing if they have your money and it's like that with any business, even with BI. I think BI does care about the community, but I think that care has to stop at some "business point" where the potential for profit outweighs the cares and criticisms of the community that's still going to support them even if they ignore those cares and criticisms. It's the last thing I want to do, to say don't support BI, but it may be something that has to happen. I would hope that BI wouldn't let it get to a point where community action would be the downfall of the franchise but if that's the extent of their "community support" then so be it. You can't change a business by throwing money at them for doing something wrong and expecting them to change when they make money doing the wrong in the first place. You can't positively reinforce something negative and expect that negative to magically change into a positive. There's no incentive and no reason to do so, you have to introduce a reason to do so. I would hope discussion like this, seeing the community reacting to problems like this, in this way, would show them that they are at a critical point.

Very nice looking!

At this point, pretty much yea.

Nope, in fact I tried it with a mission of mine and gave up in frustration. As for the engine discussion on BI's ambitions being too high, It's blatantly true. Look at soldier protection, their ambition is set on implementing it as realistically as they possibly can with what they currently have, but it's completely over ambitious to think you could realistically implement soldier protection in the way they are doing it without other systems in place to enhance and support things like body armor with knockdowns and wounding or incapacitated states. Over-ambition has been a natural occurrence through every iteration of RV and every iteration of ArmA/OFP. It's not exactly something to be crucified for, but it does tend to leave things in an unfinished state because you initially think "I'll fix this when we have the proper systems in place" and they never are put into place and before you know it it's been 12 years and it's been a bug in your software for that long and you're struggling to fix and catch up all these bugs and oversights from over-ambitious goals.

Then why implement something that you know you can only get half right and forget about the dozen other important things you are doing? This is what I'm talking about, they start one task, then get interested in another without finishing the first task they began.

That's the frustrating part, when you see things persist past a reasonable point and it goes from "hey guys you should fix this" to "guys you really really need to fix this", and still watching it be skipped for some ambitious side project. I saw work being done into the AI configuration and it was actually starting to go somewhere, now it's on to soldier protection with nothing major being done with the AI in awhile. It seems like BI picks something, does it halfway and then gets bored and moves on to something else, It's almost like someone with ADHD. Soldier protection kind of feels like a band-aid this is what we can do right now but it's not perfect fix, and it's really lacking in some situations without any kind of incapacitated state or proper wounding and ballistic simulation of vests or even just proper simulation of the area's a vest would cover. It's not about being negative for negative sake, but these are real issue's, they may even be issue's that keep me from buying the next title if they persist. That's why I voice my criticism about it, because I don't want it to have to come to a point where I no longer support BI or ArmA because I like ArmA and I like BI. I try to keep it polite, but sometimes when something sucks, the only thing to say is that it sucks and no amount of sugar coating is going to make it sound better unless you excuse the fact that it sucks, which is what most people seem to try to do.

Most all of the "improvements" you mention are from tweaking the limit value's and not actually changing the behaviors that govern what the AI do.

Quick update to it to keep client code from executing on the server. Same link as above.

Thank you for that, I knew it had been mentioned here on the forums quite a few times but couldn't find references for it. I never said it was some impossible to break Aramaic code, but I said it does make the job 10x harder at least and it's not always easy to go back through code that's undocumented and change things without breaking other things that you had no clue were even there. I expect the reasons for why we don't see a lot of under the hood work done is simply because some things are too hard and they are unwilling. As far as I've seen, the only improvements have been that they have increased value's so the AI aren't dumb outside of the 200m range which has many tradeoffs like AI spotting being quite super human as they can now detect where you are easily in a couple shots even in cover. No actual work on AI spotting routines or their behavior's, simply numbers tweaking which isn't bad but it's not phenomenal either.

Why do we need a breakthrough in hardware when RV can't scale to the hardware we currently have? As for island size, I simply asked as a hypothetical, IF it's a major cause of performance problems then do we really need islands of that size?

Do we need 300 sq. km maps though? I love big maps, I love lots of area's to explore, but do we need these sized maps in ArmA for ArmA to be interesting, and I mean at the cost of performance, playability and stability? Wouldn't it be better to have smaller but detailed maps that fulfill the both the trouble area's as well as being interesting and functional within the scope of ArmA? What's the fascination with increasing the size of the maps if the engine can't handle it, beyond the fact that you're increasing the size of the map for the sake of increasing it's size and that WOW factor. In that regard, I definitely feel like BI's ambitions were too high in a negative way. I'm talking from the perspective of the road we are on right now which is heading in the direction of ArmA 4 in the same boat as ArmA 3 currently or whatever sequels/DLC/Expansions that are coming after ArmA 3.

So was I, must be why I created a ticket at the request of a developer and uploaded a sample mission demonstrating the cause and effect of the faulty module and then forwarded it to said developer so he could focus on it and then posted said tracker ticket in this post so it could get more exposure and thus more pressure to fix it while mentioning a workaround/similar way to achieve the same effect. Please though, continue on with your stimulating and "on topic" conversation.... :) .

I wouldn't mind a winter setting either, it just doesn't jump out at me as the first thing.

How are people still getting trolled by Neurofunker at this point?

I found that using something like FHQ task tracker is both much easier and much more fool proof than the modules because the modules seem to break very easily. I've been learning scripting for mission making purposes so I could actually release my missions and without the help of Varanon and Alwarren I probably would have been frustrated beyond belief and just given up. I would give FHQ Task Tracker a try if you haven't already, it's really very easy to use once you understand it.

Truth is that the engine needs to improve. Sometimes I think, can they actually fix RV, I mean is it doable to "fix", so to speak, the things wrong with it? I know it's not easy feat to implement a parallel environment into an engine not designed for it, but it's doable and the thing is I think we are in dire need of it. The things this engine needs are the hard things to implement and at times I wonder if we don't have them because BI isn't up to the task. I know it's critical to say and negative to some degree, but I honestly wonder if the reason we don't see improvements in the problem area's is simply because they can't be improved, the team lacks the skills to improve on them etc...? I'm not trying to insult anyone, but skill limits are skill limits and It's one of the main reasons why I wonder about why we don't get any real engine improvements besides beautification it seems most of the time.

They don't call them bushwookies for nothing!

Pacific theater would be awesome with some sort of jungle type setting.