semiconductor

@toiletuser Well, 2/3 of DLC are paintjobs and the rest is a bunch of tiny cosmetic items sold as a package so instead of paying $1 for each individual item we are invited to purchase them all for a $70. That isn't much different from what Gabe does. The Van is nice though.

I hate (I actually enjoy) being that guy but the former is in no way related to the latter. They could have released a dummy DLC that you can just buy and get nothing in return and then give money to charity but it would still be a dummy DLC. Bottom line, charity doesn't magically make a thing "worthy". It's quite ironic that the best campaign in a "military simulator" (I know, I know, please notice the quotation marks) is a humanitarian campaign. I don't know, maybe BI should start making those Hospital Simulator 2017 games instead of Arma? :D

Yep, I've always missed those tiny things that are detrimental to immersion.

I can't pick what I'm loving more about this mod: the map or the lighting. I think you should certainly consider releasing the lighting as a separate mod for various islands! I can't stand the crappy Mediterranean lighting that doesn't fit anything, Mediterranean included, and I'm would be more than happy to play with ye olde soft and comfy Arma 2 lighting, even with nighttime issues.

Arguably, this reality exists due to "equality reasons". Well, if one considers the word "reason" applicable to that situation. IMO BI should stay out of this trend. If they have resources to implement women as an asset in game so that some guys can pretend that they have a Gaddaffi-style all-female bodyguard unit consisting completely from characters of their favorite gun-related manga - fine by me, I think one friend of mine would enjoy that. But for the sake of all that's holy, let us keep all this toxic, emotional and oftentimes delusional minority-equality-oppression stuff out of the game in the same way that we managed to keep the politics out. If BI starts to push this female (or whatever else "moral") agenda into the game, I'm boycotting it. Not because I consider a thought of equal female performance on the battlefield to be a wishful thinking of some deluded individuals, but because there's more than just two male and female genders, obviously able-bodied and apparently cis-gendered at that. Not to mention all the heightism and fat-shaming that runs rampant through the series since its inception. And don't get me started on russophobia and anti-socialism. Remember that Arma 1 campaign filled with white supremacist sentiment that POC can't solve their problems on their own? In short, stop oppressing minorities, you inconsiderate racist bigots.

So here's the deal folks: in Arma 3's splendid camera there's this thingy called Focus that determines to which distance the virtual camera is focused to. Things that it focused on are seen perfectly while things that are further or closer than the focus distance are blurred. We can create a camera object in-game and set its focus distance via camSetFocus command to obtain the desired effect. But I can't for the life of me figure out if it's possible to set the focus distance of a player's camera ("eyes" that is). What I want to do is to simulate human eye's behavior when looking down iron sights - to put it simple, you either can see clearly the sights or your target but not both at the same time (as it is now in Arma). So when a player looks down his sights, he wont be able to see them clearly unless he uses a scope. Right now I just blurry the entire screen and that kinda fits the bill but I'm wondering if there's a way the set an actual focus of a player's "eyes".

It's completely useless feature-wise.and there's no point in implementing it for aesthetic reasons since it isn't even visible 99.999% of the time.

Agreed. I would love to see the preset values they've used.

Even if there's no way to negotiate with Valve a new functionality for A3 SW, you still have full control over Arma 3 itself. You can just refuse to load the mods uploaded by the banned guy or something along those lines, like those watermarks from DLCs. It's software, not some fundamental law of physics, you can alter and bend it however you like.

By temporarily or, in case of repeated offenses, indefinitely removing his account's ability to upload mods to A3's SW. He might be anonymous but he still owes the account and will experience a negative consequences of his actions.

The point is that they'll face the consequences and be made an example of. That's how fines work, that's how penitentiary system works, that's how banning systems of pretty much every internet resource work, including BI Forums.

The problem is that "caring" itself doesn't solve the problem, an action should be taken and I don't really understand why BI doesn't take it. This topic is being discussed for years already and each time everybody agrees that stealing content is bad and that "something should be done" but nothing comes out of it. Meanwhile the solution is just can't be more obvious. You like what certain person does? You reward them for it. You don't like what certain person does? You punish them for it.

Well, the problem is that the system where offender faces no repercussions for his actions does not work by definition. I know it, you know it and pretty much the whole world knows it, as one wise orange guy have said. The entire human civilization is built upon rules being enforced by negative consequences. Heck, it's the most basic concept that even most of the animals understand. But somehow BI is magically oblivious to it, as if the Czech Republic is actually a completely anarchistic pre-social contract "war of everybody against everybody"-type of society. The current system isn't working by design. You don't punish the thieves, you just clean up the shattered glass, replace the broken locks and then wonder why thieves keep stealing. I mean, come on, even my cat understand this basic stuff by biting me when I do something he doesn't like but somehow when it comes to the mods, we need to have a lengthy discussion stretched over the span of a few years about relative merits of copyright and moral positions of uploaders/modmakes. Just ban the offenders from uploading mods to A3's SW and the problem will be solved. The most effective way to stop the people who deliberately break the rules is to punish them. Don't believe me? Go ask the first policeman you see tomorrow morning, he'll explain you this complex and counterintuitive concept in outmost detail.

The suspension of a Steam account itself might be a somewhat extreme measure, BI/Valve can just ban a perpetrator from uploading mods to Arma's SW or require his uploads to be approved by the moderator, so BI can eat its cake and have it.

While we're on a subject, what repercussions the guy will face other than his upload being removed? I take it that the answer is "none", well, no wonder that all the effort put into "policing" the SW didn't help then.

I didn't upload anything. Moreover, in my original post isn't arguing about the legality of downloaded content (which is most likely was indeed illegal), I'm talking about the way the "repossession" is being handled. Like, I woke up one morning, leave the house and find out that my Toyota isn't where I left it yesterday's evening. It's gone, just like that, no letter from the court, no bailiff, no police, nothing. Naturally everyone's first thought would be that some young men of troublesome upbringing who routinely find themselves in a tight financial situation saw the automobile in question as a viable way to increase their annual income and standards of living.

A bit of offtopic but quick googling tells me that you guys are actually right, with the caveat that I still can demand the compensation from the seller. Live and learn, huh.

Usually that's the case, yes, but I'm pretty sure the item had a quite lengthy description of the terrain. Maybe it was stolen from original author, maybe it was copy-pasted from an another illegal upload, who knows? Well, still it would be a huge improvement to show a notification of some sorts. You see, I was working on a mission on Fallujah and now it for some reason moved to Utes, I mean, all the objects, units, everything is there but on Utes. That's probably a good thing because I think I will be able to just download a (hopefully 100% legal this time) version of the map and copy the objects over but if there was no other versions of the same map I would have lost a couple of days spent making mission. Anyway, I surely didn't expect such invasive behavior, it really goes to show that you don't own anything digital unless you store it on a detached hard drive locked in the safe in your basement (...but even then the government can take away your house).

As far as I know the idea behind it is that the buyer who purchased a thing in a good faith shouldn't be held responsible for the wrongdoings of others. But I'm not a expert so I might be missing something. How could I know? There is virtually no way to reliably identify an author in Steam because virtually everything in his profile (nickname, avatar) is subject to change. The map had been in the workshop for years, there wasn't anything suspicious in the description and it had a huge amount of subscribers. I've never intentionally subscribed to the illegal uploads, I even didn't subscribe to Kickass'es pack of the weapons ripped from other games for precisely that reason. But silently removing the data that I downloaded and expect to be present on my HDD is not a good way of enforcing copyright either. Two wrongs don't make a right. There is a difference between "returning" and "stealing it back when the buyer isn't looking". But I think these comparisons are getting a bit ridiculous. :D

If I didn't know that the car is stolen? Yeah, and here where I live (and I think that in almost any country with Roman law-based law system) I would be a "bona fide" purchaser and therefore would have a law on my side. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that BI shouldn't do anything about illegal uploads but in the same time they shouldn't so blatantly affect the third party. I didn't and couldn't reasonably know that the upload was illegal, so why did BI had decided (taking the example to the real world) to dispatch a SWAT team to sturm my house with milsurp MRAPs just because I've bought in a good faith a rusty 1987 Toyota that was - unknowingly to me - stolen 10 years ago?

Yeah, most likely it was the author but it's the Arma 3 Launcher which "updated" something. They could have shown a notification at least, even if just for courtesy's sake.

Nah, if I wanted to play a retard card I would just pretend to be you, PuFu. You know, the guy who for years just can't get off his high horse thinking he's so righteous because he argues with everybody on particular forums in the Internet. I don't really care what chain of events, technologies, network protocols or physical processes led to the removal of the content as long as it was initiated by BI. Then go take a look in a mirror. It's been a while.

Today I've discovered the other side of the issue. Came home, booted Arma to continue making a mission I've been working on and found that the map (Fallujah) isn't there. Apparently it has been removed from Workshop for whatever reason (judging from a couple new "re-uploads") and someone at BI decided that it is an appropriate course of action to silently remove the content from players' PCs without even notifying them, let alone asking for permission. Now I don't care whether the removal of Fallujah was justified or not, stay the fuck away from my PC, Bohemia. I'm the one who decides what stays and what gets thrown away on my HDD.

Hey, no need to be sad, there is a lot of women of all kinds, shapes and sizes. But you need to leave your mom's basement to actually meet them. Too bad that after spending 4k hours in Arma I forgot where the stairs at. :C Good catch, women and female characters would have been way too much for us to handle. Concerning the DLC, I can't get rid of the word "diplomacy" popping in my head each time I look at the icon. I mean, there is a circle (point? area? group?) and the shaking hands which represents an agreement. I'd say that it would be a new gamemode or mechanics but it isn't possible to package either in the DLC form with current BI policy.

Thanks for letting us know. Keep us posted if you happen to dislike something else.