Reply With QuoteI know, but if they want me to pay full price I expect 3rd party DRM not to be in my Steam version.Originally Posted by Telefrog
Arma2 initially came with FADE even on Steam.
I know, but if they want me to pay full price I expect 3rd party DRM not to be in my Steam version.
It's not a DRM is going to bother you. FADE is just an invisible, ingame, check of your cd-key.
Steam itself if more bothersome, if we talk of DRM.
I am OK with CD key check.
Steam is very usefull to me.
It's funny, because it seems they don't want to tie them down with Steam, so the game won't use Steamworks.
Funny, because they happen to have problems with the multiplayer platform (Gamespy), hacking/cheating, the modding system, etc. All these areas could be improved with Steamworks, which have a proven multiplayer infrastructure, VAC as anticheat, and the new mod workshop.
DEGRADE (ex-FADE) is always present ...
64bit is not needed as our 32bit game is LAA (Large Address Aware)
so we can directly use 4GB and we were for years able use indirectly way more ;)
TurinTur , you too naive thinking STEAMworks can solve e.g. cheating problem or 'radically improve' multiplayer structure ...
btw. GameSpy SDK is used in way moregames than STEAM even sells in total ...
I don't think is going to solve "everything", but at this point I think is a more mature platform than Gamespy / Battle Eye.
If I had a dime for every time that FADE kicked in on my 100% legit CD key from a retail package, I would buy another game.
I don't think there is any system that is going to do away with cheaters. Regardless, I'm not sure what that has to do with Arma 3. I've always thought the Arma series was more about gaming with buddies than competitive multiplayer anyway. It's not like the MLG is going to pick it up for pro events and league broadcast.
As for GameSpy... Yuck. Like seriously. The fact that it's used in "way more" games than Steam isn't winning any converts here.
It's weird to see the devs talking about being so excited about better terrain, volumetric clouds, lighting and HDR. IMO that's not the main things players expected to see improved from Arma 2. For example, no improvement in how AI treats grass is very disappointing.
Things I would like to see in Arma 3
-New action/commands interface
-Improved AI:
*AI that treat grass like an human.
*AI that doesn't need 3 minutes to cross a road intersection because there are a pair of parked vehicles near while driving.
*AI that knows it should run like hell if an enemy tank appears, instead of firing their small arms at a MBT.
*AI with better strategic judgment, instead of relying on scripts
-Intuitive editor
-Improved "dynamic voice" system (2... is... down!)
-Free Firing from vehicle windows/seats
-Better animations and cqb (this seems to be done)
Sometimes I think Bohemia are very... graphic whores. They pimp out a lot the graphical part of their games, even if most people can't enjoy the graphics like the promo screens until a pair of years pass by; their biggest changes from Ofp to Arma 1, from Arma 1 to Arma 2, and from Arma 2 to Arma 3, is in the visual side, while the base gameplay is almost the same. The editor is the same, the AI is improved but still have lots of the same flaws than 10 years ago, the voice system is the same, the order system is almost the same.
The funny thing is how they say in the interviews that they have limited resources and budget, they are not a big company so they can't improve all the areas they would like; except they happen to have resources to the graphical side of the game, reaching very high levels there.
I don't know anyone who thought Chernarus was small and the game needed a island twice as big, but there is Arma 3 with a scenario even bigger and even prettier.
This.
Very much. It applies to almost all the games out there. I think I know only one exception where news about HDR, terrain, volumetric clouds, lighting etc. would be good news, and that's Darf Fortress. :)
Yea Turin, Gamespy is the absolute worst MP platform one could ever pick. But VAC isn't any more or less secure than any of the other horrible anti-cheat systems. Cant say I have ever really run into cheaters in ARMA, probably due to the "cost of entry" compared to say, COD, not to mention that I generally play COOP stuff in Arma so there really isn't any incentive to cheat. That said, there have been incidents with people taking over the servers and killing everyone -- or just idiotic TKs not being kicked by admins who are to busy telling people not to use bad language.
Anyhoo; Cant wait to see whats new in ARMA3 :)
Warning: Rant
I'm playing Arma 2 again for the last 3 days (ACR and Fallout campaigns) with lots of missions on forested areas and with lots of vegetation, and definitively, definitively, they have to rework fully the visual contact/known information of the AI in Arma 3. Right now it's my most desired change.
And I am playing with way less than the maximum AI skill.
Even after all their patches they still "cheat". Technically they don't, the theory is they can't see through trees or bushes, but their perception in so good, they effect of camo/lightning for them is so negligible, how they can pinpoint anyone with a brief sighting and some sound, it's all superhuman. Basically, it's like they were playing always with thermal vision systems implanted in their eyes, all white over black, for them it's obvious when they are 3 hostiles at 200 meters prone in the ground, they shout the contact in 0.1 seconds, even if I need to watch carefully for a pair of minutes from the same perspective to see anything suspicious.
If they can see not a person, but a pixel that is part of the foot of a person, in the middle of several trees and bushes, for 0.001 seconds, they see and "know" the hostile.
I would like to have a debug mode where a line is raycasted each time an AI have a visual contact with someone. In that case I'm sure we could all check out the ridiculous AI vision in the game, penetrating several layers of green over green to finally pinpoint a green point.
I hope the new line of vision commands done for Dayz will be used as base for the new system.
That sounds absolutely broken for such a "realistic simulation".
I'm really interested in Arma III but if this broken mechanic is still true for Arma III then I think I'll skip it.
I had a big problem with that as well. It's frustrating sneaking through a forest for 15 minutes only to have some random AI a couple miles away shoot you through the foliage.
And gamers hate it every single time games do. It's been one of the biggest complaints about things like Saints Row 2 and Borderlands on PC. Gamespy is literally the worst multiplayer architecture you could pick to use. There must be some reason to do it from a development standpoint, I can only assume, but please believe me when I say we wish you wouldn't.
The most funny thing for me is when not only my allies, but my own character, "myself", from my very own perspective, start to say "contact!, enemy soldier, front at 200 mts!". I can only wonder of the wonderful super vision my alter ego have to detect them not one, but four or five contacts when I only see a beautiful green scenery. I use scope and start examining the direction they enemy is, even doing a mark in the map in the enemy position (shift+click on map) and there is no clear LoS to that point!
And both ally and enemy AI uses the same contact report system than "yourself".
Another problem comes with the vehicles, several have improved vision to simulate the optical systems they have, but it seems the very much reduced angular vision doesn't seem to be as well simulated. In other words, a 7x scope have a few degrees of vision, not 90º, so if you don't know where to watch exactly, it isn't that useful, but the enemy AI can use it with wonderful results.
In Ofp was fine because the terrain was pretty sparse of vegetation and there wasn't any grass layer. In Arma 1 the landscape had a grass layer that made things difficult, but it was in part desertic / tropical landscape, so again not a lot of green stuff. In Op. Arrowhead both Takistan and Zargabad were like a fictional Afghanistan, mostly arid, so again no problems. The problem is in Chernarus where there is a lot of grass, bushes, trees, etc, and the palette itself of the landscape blends perfectly with the soldier uniforms.That sounds absolutely broken for such a "realistic simulation".
I'm really interested in Arma III but if this broken mechanic is still true for Arma III then I think I'll skip it.
Arma 3 will be in a Mediterran island, there will be some vegetation, but not as much as Chernarus.
But apart from the scenario itself, yeah, as I say they should rethink the actual system.
I was thinking that part of the problem is the shared info between all the members of a side. To simulate how soldiers talk between themselves and communicate the info they have, be by voice or radio, the AI share the info they have (what they see and hear). Which is nice and realistic... if a single soldier sees a enemy in a building, the normal thing would be to say it to the rest of the squad. But it depends of how it's done. Because it's all immediate, automatic and it happens always, in practice, not only every soldier have a superhuman eyesight and hearing, but it's a gestalt mind which can see and hear the entire battlefield for a dozen different points, as each soldier always knows what every member of their group (or even side?) knows, in real time. The net effect is a even enhanced feeling of AI cheating.
Now, I know there are limits of what simulate. I doubt very much Bohemia can simulate a realistic chain of command communication and limited or even erroneous shared info. But what it can't be simulated, it can be abstracted, in a way or other. In other words: fix it, if it can be fixed it "realistically" (with "simulation"), fix it unrealistically. But fix it.
Maybe it could be abstracted based on acquisition delay, slightly varied randomly between actors and increased with distance.
New images
http://www.gamestar.de/index.cfm?pid...&fk=93058&i=11
Hah hah hah!!...
I laugh, because is better than crying. You see, I just was imagining trying to move this on my computer...
Yes, the Arma games have always looked great in still images.
Dwarden - the Gamespy mp interface and matchmaking is horrible beyond belief for new players. You are used to it, but for even those of us that have been around... I HATE mp on anything outside of Steam and I've been gaming longer than you (OK, if you also had a giant "Pong" console for the tv we might tie).
But if Gamespy is royalty free I could see your motivation, but if you're saying it's even remotely comparable to Steam you are in heavy denial. This is coming from me = a rabid BI fanboy.
The interface is not part of Gamespy, that's pure Bohemia XD. Gamespy only gives the apis to make the mp connection, I suppose.
That said, I don't have lots of problem with the server browser. You see all in one look in a single window, there are filters for both names, ping and number of player (with separate minimum and maximum players) and you can reorder using each column with one click. It could be improved, still.
===> Steam friend's list for mp <=== makes it so much easier to jump in or join a game without massive planning ahead.
It's specially annoying when playing DayZ, since you can't see the servername once you join it so you have people asking in global chat what server it is so their friends can join it.
Yes, that's a clearly missing feature. I mean, friend management.
you can see server name in player list, push I key
also technology is what matters for us ...
btw. i'm not rulling out STEAMWORKS, the thing was when we adopted and reevaluated the systems each release, GS won in our tests for NAT and server listing ... that's all
1.62.96015 beta addressed some bugs with server listing introduced in last month ....
Last edited by Dwarden; 08-16-2012 at 02:38 PM.
NAT support is important.
Also important is correct information on how to set up for connection if you find yourself behind NAT.
All to often you find shitty guides on the internet that tell you to "open port 80, 443, 23623 TCP and UDP"... without specifying IN/OUT and whatnot. It really shouldn't be to hard for someone with the tech specs for the title to write exactly what ports and what direction and even to where and for what function. (Not saying this is related to ARMA as is, but who knows what the future will bring) :-)
I would like to see most of what everyone has mentioned so far be addressed: UI, Gear/Equip mgmt, Netcode, better performance out of reasonably specced systems, and non-pixel-hunting-more-tactically-sound AI.
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