joostsidy

I don't agree with this, you will always have these people. IMO the biggest complaints are 'drive-by' complaints from people who don't visit the forums regularly and do not take the time to learn more about Arma's development. I can see how for some people game development is hard to understand but IMO there are two main reasons for that: 1. How big organisations work: with your hobbies you can say 'hey I feel like changing this today, just try it, etc.' If you work with other people in teams and you need a stable software platform, you need to go through different channels for even small changes. That's why BI cannot 'throw in an extra vehicle' in the final dev weeks of Contact for instance. Is it BI's job to explain this to us? 2. How game dev works: I create games as a hobby and a bit professionally. It is hard. This morning I could play Arma for an hour, but instead I worked on a tree. I have been working on trees for a couple of hours the last few days because some trees are hard to make and there are a 100 ways to create a 3D tree. It is hard to explain to game PLAYERS, how hard game DEVELOPMENT is. Even creating a modest mod for Arma (a retexture) can take many hours if you haven't done it before. IMO everyone should try to create a game or mod to appreciate how much effort it is (it is also fun! 🙂 Another important point: I think my boss and my team-mates are allowed to ask me in detail how much work I spend on certain things, for other people it is none of their business. At the end of the day BI is not our friend 😢 that you can share everything with, it is a company. I think BI is doing a good job considering company transparency. If you pay attention, they regularly tell us what problems they are dealing with, respond to feedback, show their roadmaps, have little dev-interviews, film their offices etc.

It is painful to watch, especially since I am a tank fan. I'm not an expert on the case but my guess on the cause of these problems is that at the start of A3, BI tried to use existing new physics and car simulations, to speed up and improve development. Unfortunately, these systems were not so suitable for tanks, it was very noticable on gear boxes for tanks, the tanks were very underpowered. To solve this, BI applied some tricks like adding gears and maybe fiddling with the mass of the vehicles to make them seem more powerful. However, if you fiddle with physics systems, you can get strange results, like the jumping or automatic un-flipping you can sometimes see. On top of all of this is the limitation of the terrain features, the Arma engine has problems with vehicle models intersecting with other models or the terrain with high velocity or force. This can lead to unexpected high counter forces that result in launching of vehicle s in the air. These characteristics are related to why helicopters fuselages cannot roll and flip over when they crash. The Arma engine would launch them in the air, because their hull models intersect badly with the terrain. So I think it is a game engine limitation with many layers that might not be fixed in Arma 3 at this stage in development.

It is called 'hull-up position' in tank tactics and it is a feature, jeez, this is a military simulator, you have to know how it works. 😉 And why didn't you post this in the official NO BIS NO thread where all the complaints go? 😉 @denzo no hard feelings 🙂

Well, the Arma robot wields a shotgun and can punch CSAT in the dick.. That's enough for me.

I saw a picture of the Promet's flash which looked nice, but aren't muzzle flashes supposed to be blindingly bright, making the old ones fairly accurate?

Will AI target the human player more than an AI opponent with a comparable role/rank/behaviour or is it a myth?

In the promotional materials you see an alien sphere kind of thing. My guess is that in certain missions, you have to find all of the alien spheres with the new special radio device. Are these artifacts randomly distributed across the map? In actuality yes, but according to the story they will be visible nodes of an underground network. This underground network does not really exist, it exists only in the story to give some meaning to the artifacts. How do I know all this? My tin foil head told me 😉

All the terrains unfortunately have parts that are practically unusable by AI, for instance Tanoa has many beautiful rock outcrops that AI infantry can't navigate. These are technical AI and game limitations that won't be solved in A3. The terrain creators had a choice of making maps AI friendly but bland or more ambitious but with parts that are stretching the limits of the game. A mixed AI squad will definitely have trouble passing bridges, for starters you should switch them to column formation, they will not do this automatically.

Do I see OFP's christmas tree over there??

Your 'addiction to deployable bridge system' and 'deployable bridge is spooking my mind all day and night' is the perfect mindset for an aspiring mod creator to provide the perseverance to complete a specialized mod for the community. 😉

I've got the same HOTAS. There are so many variations possible! - I like countermeasures under the pinky trigger on the stick - I've got flaps and gear under the metal switches on the throttle - Put slingload under a button that you can activate without moving your hands or the controls by accident, because slingloading requires such accuracy. For instance reachable with thumb on the throttle.

waitUntil {sleep 1; {alive _x} count allPlayers == {_x in _helo} count allPlayers}; _helo doMove (getPos myTarget); I like this (untested) solution. You could put the condition ({alive _x} count allPlayers == {_x in _helo} count allPlayers) in a trigger or waypoint as well if you don't want to script too much. I noticed this is a little older post, but you might still find the solution useful for this or something else. There is also a special scripting section on the forum that you might find useful.

These faint markings are obviously photographic evidence of UFO's in the distance, don't try to distract us. You can't not prove that these are in fact not ET ships at all, hence alien fleet confirmed..

Perhaps a silly question, but have you looked at the options and reduced the deadzones to zero? Also, the answer to the question of buying extra gear to play Arma is always yes.

Maybe because BI wants to keep the option open to change them here and there. You do only full release on definitely finished products.

You forgot the most important part: Inkscape, a free vector graphics tool. 🙂 I love this program.

Your pictures remind me of historic pictures of soldiers wearing four wristwatches (from slain enemies..) 🙂

No, BI understands their product well. They couldn't get their vehicles working properly with the new physics system and other design challenges, therefore they switched to a more infantry centered approach which is also emphasized in their promotional materials. It's possible that they thought it was not the ideal outcome, but they had to cut their losses to make progress.

haha, well I am curious... I'm afraid the ET part is mostly a theme to bind the assets together. I don't really expect drivable UFO's or actual aliens to show up. Although... I was surprised by this expansion so I can be surprised again.. 🙂 EDIT: reading the description again, there are at least some alien vehicle surprises in store..

As an original OFP player, I too remember the experience of a very cool serious military game. On the other hand, even in those times, I recognized aspects of the game that were totally unrealistic or just buggy/glitchy. And so we had fun with the silly stuff as well. In my mind Arma has always been a quirky game besides the serious aspect. I believe BI knows their game and their team's strengths and weaknesses really well. I suspect the Amsterdam team got the green light for an expansion, but it had to be mostly done with a (limited) asset developer team and without engine changes. They could borrow materials from other projects to get the most out of the project. With this in mind they decided on: a terrain, some CBRN stuff, some Russians, some basic vehicles, etc.. To bind these assets together they created the Contact story, an approach that would definitely stand out and attract attention. I expected nothing more from BI this late, so appreciate it very much that they deliver this, very balanced IMO, content that can be used for both serious and fun missions.

My moderately interested friends who only play the game with me to do me a favor immediately asked me to create farming missions when I showed them the trailer.. 🤨

I like it! It seems to be a flexible collection: suitable for silly missions, more serious X-Files stuff or just use most of the content for normal military gameplay.

If the UFO's don't have interiors I'm gonna be super pissed! 😉

It gives a bit of the Alien (Movie) vibe with the elongated (scanning?) light effect, so I'm also betting on aliens or alien technology. Hopefully no chest bursters.. 😮

This is why you should not believe anything on the internet at face value (I am sorry, I work as a Library education specialist 😉 As far as I know BI committed to support CDLC teams here and there. To me that signals that we are guaranteed it's not complete crap, worth money to some people and is in some cases even super-cool (in which case I am going to buy it). I disagree with his statement that their artwork (style) is superior to Arma 3. I based mine on watching the trailer for the CDLC a couple of times and reading up on some reviews. Still an impressive work by these first CDLC creators though.