semiconductor

But surprisingly enough Valve didn't make Workshop for the sake of "progression of civilization in general". They did it because they want to tie both players and developers to their platform in order to become a monopoly and milk every cent possible out of those who became dependent on them. I personally don't like an idea of Workshop (and Steam-only distribution in general) for this exact reason, not because I'm some sort of backwards religious fanatic whose holy book orders him to install mods manually. We already have EA, we all saw how it ruined some of the most amazing series for the sake of profits and I don't want Valve to became another EA that can dictate its rules to the entire PC gaming community.

That's actually a very funny joke. Both parts.

Thing is, our favorite computer games are products of meetings between developers and publishers, they aren't simply materialized underneath project lead Christmas tree. :D So we have to consider the harsh reality before making requests, otherwise they might happen to be unreasonable or infeasible. As a matter of fact there is a game (albeit with simple rules and world) with tough, challenging AI already — chess. There is no need to buy Deep Blue to compete against it and basic version is free, just navigate "All Programs > Games > Chess Titans". Difficulty 10 AI have won against me in less than 5 minutes without cheating, shooting through grass and spotting me from the other side of the map. It was a completely fair victory for AI but there's a problem — it wasn't entertaining for me to lose, especially so quickly. Result: none of us were entertained and one of us was unloaded from memory. Thankfully, there is an ability to make it less advanced but more entertaining, just like chortles have said, so the game still remains playable even for total amateur like me. The point is: advanched (most effective in achieving its own goals) AI is not really suitable for a game. General-purpose AI and game AI are like a commuter train and rollercoaster train. Former should deliver maximum amount of people from point A to point B with maximum speed, comfort and with minimum expenses, i.e. it should be cost-effective. Latter doesn't have to be fast, comfortable, cheap or easy in service within reasonable limits, it even doesn't have to deliver people to point B. Instead it must somehow force its passengers to feel emotions, preferably positive ones.

Why do you think that laziness and stubbornness of your friends is somehow a community's problem? Yeah, same. It's only a matter of time when Valve will try to make fortune off enthusiasts work again. After all, they are private company that does things solely for money, not because they like certain game or its community.

Not exactly. Computer game's AI should not be complex or hard to beat — it should be moderately challenging and interesting to compete against (noone likes to compete against a superior opponent). AI behaviour should be predictable — otherwise it will be useless for campaigns/co-op missions (for it's main purpose that is). AI should be cheap to develop — it's unlikely that Billy Gamerson's parents would give him $3000 to buy a new installment of his favorite computer game. AI should be undemanding towards PC's resources — there is no point in AI if most of playerbase can't even play with it. I'm afraid that advanched self-learning AI fails in all of these categories, especially in first and second. Too hard, too advanced or too autonomous AI would not be fun and "not fun" is basically a death verdict for a program that is designed to make people entertained.

Yeah, you're right but still Feedback Tracker is the best bet to attract BI's attention to an issue. You see, even if somebody from BI stumbles upon this thread and reads its in order to understand whether this is actually an Arma 3's bug, chances are that certain problem is outside of his competence or he doesn't have time as there is more pressing issues that he have to address or he can simply forget about it. Moreover, I'm pretty sure that he will have to create corresponding ticket on a feedback tracker himself because rest of the team should be aware about all known/being worked on/fixed issues.

There is a feedback tracker ( feedback.arma3.com ) for such kind of reports, consider creating new ticket there. Those issues might be caused by mission (KOTH in your case) not Arma 3 itself so try to reproduce them in editor without any mods before reporting.

Congratulations on release! :) It's great to see that one of the most intresting Arma 2 maps has finally made its way to Arma 3. B)

Hey guys, just a small suggestion concerning upcoming vehicles pack: please consider implementing FFV for tank's and other armored vehicles (especially Russian ones) crew positions, instead of porting over Arma 2's default "hatch-holding" animation when turned out. As I recently figured out, commander's ability to use a binoculars significantly simplifies searching for enemy units and can sometimes make a huge difference in combat.

A small question: will tanks be fitted with FFV ability in the future? While firing itself is not extremely useful, a possibility for tank commander to use his binocular while turned out is huge advantage.

Just learn the basics of the game in singleplayer/editor. There is nothing to familiarize with - most of the servers are (zombie)survival or BF-alike game modes anyway. If you want realistic gameplay, you have to join one of milsim communities and someone from that community will explain to you how that certain community prefers to play (many of them have training events and "tactical" guides). But in case you just want to hang around a little, try one of the public servers hosting Domination/Insurgency/Capture The Island missions since they aren't heavily dependent upon teamplay and sometimes even don't require you to join server's TeamSpeak. Be sure to check the rules (usually in "Notes" section on map screen) and tasks though, it will give you an idea what's going on.

No, it's just a sandbox game albeit somewhat complex one. Yeah, one can make it sort-of-serious by calling himself a "Team Leader" and walking around with friends in a wedge formation but anybody can do the same in Minecraft.

Probably not, judging from the gamemodes you listed. Arma is slow-paced large-scale game and its AI designed with realistic behaviour in mind, not CTF/DM/any other dynamic gamemode set in small area, so they will not behave in a way suitable for such types of missions. Also, AI isn't very good in cities and extremely poor in CQB. PvP is not ideal either — there is too many engine "features" to exploit starting from seeing/walking through walls ending with taking no damage after 20m fall. What is worse, there is (afaik) only one non-survival, non-freeroam non-modded PvP gamemode widely available - King Of The Hill by Sa-Marta. In fact, if you want to play in MP something besides Wasteland (survival), Epoch (zombie survival) and Altis Life (GTASA MP) you have to join one of the existing groups or create one yourself. Arma 3 is indeed a great and unique game that offers unlimited possibilities to create (if you're into spending days in Editor :D) but it isn't similar to the games you played.

Congratualtions for reaching this milestone, guys! Your hard work is very appreciated. :)

Five of us are checking wiki article for two days straight and yet we can't revive anybody. :( I have a wounded rifleman right now, he was slightly injured by Stinger backblast. His pulse is 79, his blood pressure is 125/83, he has 1 Minor Bruise on his head and right leg. He is not responsive and has no pain. CPR isn't helping. After 10 minutes we decided to try to inject morphine, epinephrine, epinephrine, morphine and then transfuse blood — no luck. What should we do? Is this how AMS should work?

We are currently playing with Advanced Medical System and while we really like it, we have run into strange problem: our medic rarely can revive anyone despite careful examination of wiki article. Suppose I got shot with AKM. Squad medic can't find pulse but blood pressure is normal. He bandages me and transfuses blood while another squad member gives me CPR, still no pulse at all. After 15 minutes of CPR medic tried to administer morphine out of desperation but still no luck. In other cases we have tried epinephrine, no effect either. Is it an intended behaviour? What are we supposed to do in that situation? :) BTW, is there any difference between blood, plasma and saline in current version?

Very nicely done! :) Good to know that Wargame's famous long-range low-altitude anti-helicopter system has made its way to Arma. :D

I totally forgot about those. Well, it seems that I was wrong - I've watched Greenfist's video and paid a close attention to the AI's spotting in-game and found no signs of AI retaining knowledge about player longer than necessary. In fact, I'm quite surprised how well BI managed to implement AI's targeting. I've based my opinion on knowsAbout command page (see helling3r commentary) but it seem that at least infantry's knowledge value drops instantly after player's disappearance. Perhaps tanks indeed have somewhat different behaviour due to their obvious spotting limitations. I bet that some part of futuristic warfare fans is mildly disappointed by that fact. :D Is it a typo? :huh: Both the dictionary I use and Google Translate states that 'cop' is a synonym for 'top' although Oxford dictionary doesn't confirm that.

Thanks, I tried to disable addons one-by-one again and it turned out that AdBlock was the cause of the problem. :)

I can't login with Firefox 39.0 (when I try, login window just shows 'processing...' icon and then nothing happens), even though I have removed bistudio.com and forums.bistudio.com cookies and disabled addons that could cause the problem. Everything works fine under IE 11.

Yeah, old forum was better IMO. While I can get over with overall design, why font is small and faded when there's so much unused space between posts and on the sides of page? New forum looks like some long-dead archived forums you can stumble upon while searching for a RtCW walkthrough. Besides I can't login with my Firefox for some reason, login popup just sits there doing nothing. Removing bistudio's cookies didn't solve the problem, I had to use Internet Explorer to login. :(

There is an AI feature that can explain some cases of shooting through foliage: AI doesn't lose knowledge about enemy immediately after it broke LOS. I believe that knowledge decreases gradually over a certain amount of time. Suppose there is an OPFOR tank, BLUFOR player and a small hill between them. Player moves on top of the hill and gets spotted by tank, tank's gunner rotates turret towards the player. If player hides on the slope of the hill, tank will still aim towards player through the hill and in some cases will follow player's movements with its turret for some time, even though nobody from tank's crew can see player. And here's the trick: if player instantly teleports behind the tank, its crew will be aware of player's completely new position, instantly rotate turret 180 degrees and aim exactly at him. Maybe something like this applies to the forests too — even though players are hidden by tree cops, AI still retains the knowledge about them for some time and continues to engage. Players obviously try to return fire, that fire increases AI's knowledge about players, AI starts to make an accurate shots through trees creating an illusion that it can see through foliage.

The general tip is: never try to command AI directly. ;) Issue an order to the fireteam/squad and let them handle it on their own, don't interfere. The infantry AI itself is fine (for a game): it behaves realistically and in the same time can, in most cases, do what it has been told to do, given that the order was reasonable. The problems begin when human replaces AI commander — mostly because there's is no way for both sides to reliably communicate with eachother. You have no means to tell AI what exactly you want it to do and, on the other hand, AI can't tell you what's the problem. But an AI can 'communicate' and command itself almost perfectly. So when you need to command an AI, treat it as a separate unit under your command — set a task for it but don't bother with execution details, let AI prove that he is indeed an AI (even though somewhat dumb :) ), not just a 3D model that should be moved by player. Also keep in mind that AI is just a simple algorithm that can't understand concepts like 'cover', 'maneuver' or 'tactical objective', and, unless mission maker said otherwise, AI will always use a basic foolproof routine that allows it to react to the changing environment but never is the best choice in any situation. Sometimes they will fail miserably but I'm afraid that's the best we can have in a highly dynamic sandbox until the advent of some groundbreaking AI technology. On the bright side, BI promised some improvements concerning AI cover-taking and spotting abilities at least on upcoming Tanoa terrain so things will improve in the future. I don't think that AI behaviour works that way. Basically, Aware state allows AI to get ready to fight but when the actual fighting begins there is no point in remaining aware anymore.

Although I'm sure BI will try to optimize engine, the amount of foliage will most likely compensate any optimizations. At best performance will remain the same. Interesting way to say "Tanoa is going to be great mostly for missions that benefit from dense environments". :)

I hope not. Team Fortress went somewhat similar way and now it's a sad wreck of once amazing game. I really hope that BI will not expand the 'sandbox' approach (after all, a jack of all trades is the master of none) and start to make it's own quality content instead of covertly outsourcing work to the modders.