Reply With QuoteElGuapo, You have a total fetish for dust and debris, don't you. :)
I agree that scrolling text interface is awful. Seeing something along the lines of the command rose from BF2 would be an improvement, IMO.
For me, more important that the unchanged interface, it's the unchanged MAN. AT. 2 OCLOCK. FAR AWAY.
ElGuapo, You have a total fetish for dust and debris, don't you. :)
I agree that scrolling text interface is awful. Seeing something along the lines of the command rose from BF2 would be an improvement, IMO.
I do. I don't know why. One of the things that stands out in this gen's games are not just the destructibility and details that are put into the maps/levels, but the artistic, realistic way in which the audio and interface come together.
Let's take something completely unrelated to graphics. How about spotting? Both games handle spotting like this:
Place your cursor over the thing to be spotted. Press the spot key. Enemies (and in ArmA, civilians, and other things) now show up on your in game map, which is updated in real time, but only based on current information. You access this map the same way, via a button that takes you to the map screen (and which, realistically, obscures your view).
Here is where they differ. BIS thinks they are selling a simulation, when really they are selling a game. So in ArmA, your feedback goes like this: Your guy says a stuttering, disjoined, immersion breaking, artificial sounding, monotone recorded "Man. Far." that kind of sums up all the feedback in the game. That stuttering, 1980s technology, text to speech parsing.
DICE went another direction. Their feedback for that same thing is:
1. A gameplay reward (points, both for spotting and if your spot leads to a kill). You may argue this kind of stuff doesn't belong in a sim, but then what were the "armory" minigames for? Clearly BIS recognizes gamers love that kind of stuff.
2. An aural feedback that sounds like a real soldier over a comm system calling out realistic info. It's all pre-canned, just like in ArmA, but presented so much better. "Yeah, you've got an enemy chopper in your AO". "I've got hostile armor on the move. You might wanna bring up some AT".
That's a very simple design decison that should have been changed the day someone at BIS played the first Battlefield game that did it that way. It's just so much clearly better, why stick with the old way?" there is absolutely no way something like that is a technical issue to overcome. It's a design choice. One that disappoints Every. Single. Time. At 2'oclock.
This is coming from a guy who's been playing sim games since well, I don't want to tell you how many times I watched a replay of a Grail downing my f-16 in Falcon 3.0. So you know, I love sims. But BIS, I think as they discovered with the Day Z mod, is more than in just the milsim business. They have a unique product no one else has and if they just put in a little more effort to polish the interface and add little touches... man, they could give DICE a serious run for their money. And by money, I mean more money for everyone at BIS.
/end rant. But I'll still buy it! :)
Video is year old. Just an fyi.Originally Posted by ElGuapo
RPS interview
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012...z/#more-111863
I appreciated two things in that interview. They acknowledged the improvements (ragdoll, animation) are merely evolutionary to bring it up to minimum modern standards. They also didn't pretend like they wrote a whole new engine, like Bethesda did during the Skyrim marketing campaign.
They mentioned how people commented the old UI in the demo of E3, and how they should also work on it.
Yes. The UI is my biggest cockblock to getting into this game. I've already seen the nice new inventory UI, but when they said in that RPS article that they needed to work on the command interface and that they had a dedicated group working on UI... sold!
Second part of the Pc Gamer interview (first part I put it in the Dayz thread, as it was more about that)
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/23/da...z-into-arma-3/
"Buchta: At some point I got really pissed off with the level designers’ work on the open terrain… They simply needed to understand stuff that we’re trying to do, trying to do some compositions of stuff. Then I simply placed myself with a machine gun, removed their weapons, and said, “Okay, move from this place to here.” And I just starting hosing them down."
Epic.
Hah hah, I thought of quoting something of the article. Exactly, I thought in the same sentence!
It's interesting how mention the difference in the new terrain. They mention being, generally, more open and flat (and therefore making engagements happen at bigger ranges) than their previous games, but the urban areas and outskirts are bigger, more dense and maze-like.
edit: more to the point
https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.9...9.916667,25.25
65% of the landscape is pretty flat, and the rest is more rough but not that much: the higher points are 300m hills.
Is this explained in the options page? Maybe they should think about explaining that in the tooltips if it's not. If this is the type of thing that can easily trip up a player setting things up, they should take that into account.Hall:: But part of the problem is, people think, “Oh, I’ve got a moderate system, I’m going to set everything to low,” but you can actually get bad performance from doing that. Because it puts everything onto the CPU.
Crowe: Yeah, like shadows for example. If it’s on normal, it’s run by the CPU, if it’s set to high it’s on the graphics card. Even things like chunks of data, if you have very high quality, it’s a bigger chunk and it’s easier to load.
yea. was thinking the same.
The little info you have in MAx Payne that show the memory usage is helping a bit to tell you what is happening.. having the options tell you that "this will push cpu usage" and perhaps some detailed info (options) in addition would be very helpfull when setting options.
That article reminds me I'll be missing out on half the fun because I don't have a multiplayer group and don't want to invest in it. I guess that's why DayZ is so great -- it's multiplayer game I can play solo.
Maybe I'm wrong. Are there servers, mods, or game modes in Arma 2 where it's easy to pop in and out and have fun like Battlefield 3?
Depends on the game mode obviously, but yes it was pretty easy to join and group up with randoms and do missions, some were like really srs bzn but i didnt pay much attention to them.
You could always run one of the built-in Warfare scenarios in single player. You just go to the multiplayer menu, start up a private LAN game, and select a warfare scenario. It'll save your game state so you can pop in and just play for a bit now and then (i.e. try to capture the next town). AI will take care of the opfor and all of your empty squad slots.
I have a lot of fun putting the AI commander in charge, and running around capturing objectives. It can be a bit goofy at times thanks to the dodgy AI (I love the Benny Hill escapades which sometimes arise when trying to put your squadmates in a flippin' jeep), but it can also be rather intense and challenging.
Helpful manual for Warfare can be found over here.
Try Domination, Evolution, Insurgency, Warfare/CTI, A&D/AAS missions.
Though I don't know how it's the multiplayer of the game right now, with dayz invading the previous community.
What has always annoyed me with the ARMA games is that there is this inconsistency in design aspiration and the capability of the terrain.
For instance, the enemies have real-life accuracy, but the problem is that unlike in real life, there is nowhere to hide if the enemies start shooting if you are in any kind of open environment. In any kind of natural setting, you can almost always find some kind of cover. The details of the terrain provides this kind of granularity.
But in ARMA, the terrain polygons are perfectly flat, and usually going prone doesn't really help much. And this causes shooting engagements that are over really fast ending in either side being totally wiped out (which doesn't really occur in real life).
New screenshots
LOD seems to have been improved. Those rocks round the camp are visible both from nearby and afar in the first two screens. Increases immersion tremendously for me. The constant transformation of objects like in Arma 2 (or worse in Skyrim for example) really makes for a weird experience.
ArmA 2 LOD switching is 8 billion times worse than Skyrim. It flickers back and forth (z-fighting or whatever it's called) and doesn't fade in smoothly like Bethesda's engine. The ArmA engine may hold higher detail at longer distances for a given level of performance (I don't know) but it's not worth the glaring graphical distractions when the game is in motion.
Improving this is one of the most important things for ArmA 3.
Agreed.
I hope we are able to disable BLUR and "FOCUS" instead of having it all bundled as 'post processing' this time.
Put an 'advanced' button there and let us adjust EVERYTHING, with information what everything does as well as what it will tax, CPU, GPU, FPU, MMU, MEM, DISK ;)
Support video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOt1X...layer_embedded
It's kind of funny how they end the video commenting in their intention to streamline the clunkiness, polish it and open the game to more people... and in the same video they show the same command system than in Arma 2.
Hopefully it's just that they haven't replaced the interface yet! I'd much rather have a command-rose with submenus or something, I found the ARMA2 interface to be unintuitive and inconsistent. Maybe I would have gotten it down had I spent more time on it, but fighting the interface is one of the primary reasons I couldn't get hooked.
New images on PcGamer
Dwarden, I was thinking... Bohemia should introduce the sound filter for voice comms (the ping sound at the start and the end, the background noise...) like ACRE does. It's a very cool, very immersive effect.
The images are nice and all, but I'm starting to shrug at them. We need to judge this game in motion at our preferred framerates. All the screenshots for ArmA 2 had no impact on my experience with the game.
I know this is the hype thread so I'll be quiet now. :)
Well, that's applicable to every game ever. Nice screenshots won't serve for anything if after the game plays at 10 fps :P.
What is good with ARMA engine is that it never runs too fast ;-) So you always feel your HW upgrades have an impact on the games you play :)
I.e. in BF3 you might put 32x AA with a new video card, instead of your previous 2x AA or even none and jump around like an idiot. But in ARMA you'll put your draw range to 7KM instead of 2KM.
A somewhat negative/vague Q&A
copied pasted from here http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=17263Q: Will there be a separate coop-campaign? And for how many players?
Dan: We have instead decided to focus upon a singleplayer campaign and varied set of coop and competitive MP game modes and scenarios, which should offer something for everyone. Numbers will depend upon the results of internal and community stability testing of our alpha.
Q: How do you enhance the editor?
Dan: We've had to cut short our more ambitious plans regarding the editor recently. Due to missing resources, our goal in this area is currently to focus on improving the usability and experience of the classic mission editor from A2OA.
Q: Will there be any new multiplayer-options and will warfare return?
Dan: It's still too early to speak in any great detail about this, as the multiplayer code and gameplay is still mostly work-in-progress. We would definitely love to see some large-scale multiplayer in the game, but it all depends on how successful we will be with the game's general multiplayer capabilities.
Q: Will there be a Demo?
Dan: Yes. Sooner or later.
Q: Will there be a 64-bit-version?
Dan:No. There is no reason for this.
Q: How do you plan to enhance the mod-support?
Dan: We're looking to develop a whole new platform to support mods, but it's not currently available, so I'll not make any promises or reveal more information just yet.
Q: Will there be more factions then the ones you already disclosed?
Dan: No, there won't.
Q: How did you enhance the sound?
Dan: We are aware that sound was not perfect in A2. So we put significant effort into all parts of the sound pipeline. Beginning from sound recording hardware and technology, processing the samples, engine support for stereo sounds, filters and multiple sound samples for different values from game controllers (distance, gear, environment/place).
Q: Will there be a proper stealth-system and even stealth-weapons like a tech bow or knife kills?
Dan: Speaking of the vehicles, we did not specifically work on any stealth technology. In terms of infantry gameplay, we are trying to be rather realistic; therefore, we don't plan to work on any arcadish "stealth mode". Melee and weapons like harpoons or crossbows are on our wishlist, but these are preceded by many more important features.
Q: Will the game require a Steam-activation?
Dan: We are currently evaluating this. Most probably, we won't be bound to Steam, but we will use some kind of protection.
Q: Will the AI no longer be able to see through grass, and how will the grass be displayed in multiplayer?
Dan: Unfortunately, there's no progress on this. Staying the same so far.
Q: How did you decide which weapons, vehicles and aircrafts to use in ARMA 3?
Dan: This was mostly a matter of their visual appearance, as we wanted to create the impression of a not-so-distant future. Also, there were some people's personal preferences playing their role in the selection process.
Q: While improving the command menus, which games did you get inspiration from?
Dan: Particularly in the case of the command interfaces, it is hard to draw inspiration from the other projects, as there are not many games around as complex as Arma. Our designers looked at many tactical and shooter games and explored the ways to improve the presentation of the GUI in general, but they also considered the lessons learned from our previous projects and player's feedback.
Q: Will the campaign be playable without take the AI by the hand all the time? How do you want to avoid frustration by AI-mistakes?
Dan: In Arma 2's campaign there are a certain number of characters you couldn't let die. In A3, we're trying to be a bit more brutal and allow most anyone to be killed in action.
Q: Which DirectX 11 effects will be used? (Tesselation ...)
Dan: This is a pretty new area for us, and we’re in the middle of our DX11-specific optimisations now, so let us finish that before we reveal more!
Q: Can the player steal the uniforms of other dead players in multiplayer?
Dan: We decided to limit this only to uniforms affiliated with a player's side. Although we were considering allowing the player to don any uniform at the start of development, it appeared that such generality would bring some very complex issues with AI and multiplayer rules. Also, it is against the Geneva Convention.
Q: Will there be support for Nvidia 3D Vision?
Dan: This issue is in the queue. We'll try, but I have no closer insight on this just yet.
Q: What are your DLC-plans?
Dan: There are no specific plans currently, just a few ideas that pop up as we continue development.
Q: What mods or ideas from mods will be integrated into ARMA 3?
Dan: We did not directly use any community mod, but we cooperate with several community developers who contribute e.g. to the animations system.
Q: What were your biggest problems developing ARMA 3?
Dan: There were quite a few new people in the team from the beginning. We've lost some time following dead ends, and having to start again from scratch. It's literally impossible for a new guy to embrace all the Arma features and make a new feature consistent with all of them. From the other side, everyone is beginning sometimes and it's impossible to pass all knowledge to him/her at start. The sandbox has become HUGE and everything is related to everything.
Q: What are you most proud of in the game?
Dan: It is great to see Real Virtuality receiving some features the team and the fans of the series were longing to see in the Arma series, e.g. the overhauled lighting and HDR, volumetric clouds or improved physics. Also, the scope of the Arma 3 terrains is amazing, and they make our game really stand out.
Q: Did you cut anything because it just didn’t work the way you wanted it to?
Dan: Many times. I think this is usual development process in every game studio.
Q: What kind of system do I need to run ARMA 3 propperly?
Dan: i5-2300 / Phenom II X4 940, GeForce GTS 560 / HD 7750, 4GB RAM, 25GB HDD, OS with DirectX 11 should be perfectly safe. There are few specifics, which I would like to analyse and explain in upcoming developer blog (maybe as a part of another blog post). Please note, the game isn't in a final or even close-to-final state. These specs are just a close-to-final guess.
As customer I dont want another DRM on Steam version (not counting Steam CEG).
64bit version would be nice.
Steam Workshop would also be IMO very usefull for this game.
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