Serious suggestion after seeing vietcong

[frag]

Hi guys,

First of all, great game! I play almost every day. I really like the mission scripting power.

I have just one serious suggestion for OFP 2. Take 2-3 hours and make a firefight in Vietcong (the game). The aiming, peeking and moving is so natural that you don’t even think about it. It’s a feeling that I never got in OFP. You run, jump over a log, and peek over it just enough to fire your weapon. Same thing while leaning behind a rock. You can’t understand what I am talking about if you did not try the game.

The enemy uses the environment so well, it’s unbelievable. The dive behind rock when you firing at them, they run from one tree to the other while you is recharging your weapon. They try to flank you while their friends make covering fire. They are not limited to run/crouch/fire.

Briefly it’s the most advance-fighting engine I saw.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like OFP, but you just can learn while peeking at competitor products. I know Vietcong is more arcade oriented than OFP. But the natural fighting system (aiming, peeking) is worth it …believe me.

Frag

[Gollum1]

I know what you mean, altough the AI might only at first glance seem "unbelievable", they practically have no idea what they´re doing, they just run around in random directions and sometimes advance in your general direction http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/tounge_o.gif

But I know that cover plays a very large role in Vietcong, as in real life. In OFP you can´t take cover anywhere except the occasional rock or sandbag.

[frag]

About the random moving ... that is possible. But there is something you will agree on. They use cover when you fire at them. I can't remember how many times I laugh seeing them jumping behind a rock when I started firing at them. They hide, pop to fire, and hide again.

I like too the way our aiming is unsteady (always move 1-3 mm on the screen). It makes the firefight longer and more realistic (I shoot with rifle very often, and it's very difficult to have a straight steady aiming). Yesterday, while playing Vietcong... I had to empty 2 magazines to get rid of a VC popping from a distant log with a heavy machinegun. I was SO HAPPY when I finally shoot him down. In OFP as far as I see a pixel of the enemy, I can shoot him down with one bullet.

Another thing struck me. It’s amazing how fast they are reacting. Cross one at a corner and you better be fast on the trigger … or you are dead meet. In OFP, the enemy is generally slow when you surprise him around the corner of a house. You have plenty of time (even to change your weapon), before he sees you.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I LOVE OFP. Just want them to add pressure in firefight.

Frag

[Gollum1]

Another cool thing about VC, you know when the enemy are taking cover behind rocks they pop in and out of cover very quickly. Sometimes the muzzle flash and recoil of your weapon makes you unsure if you actually hit your target or if he popped back into cover. The you slowly walk toward the rock to confirm your kill and if he pops out again you almost have a heart attack http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/biggrin_o.gif

I think the accuracy and recoil of the weapons in VC is just right and would fit well into OFP. A fault that VC and OFP have in common are big muzzle flashes. IRL, you rarely see a muzzle flash in broad daylight, just a puff of smoke and sometimes a partial flash. I know from personal experience.

[haunted]

Quote[/b] ], just a puff of smoke and sometimes a partial flash Whereas at night u see a flash for longer?? The muzzleflash in OFP is white anywas so it is harder to see at daytime

[frag]

Another cool thing about VC, you know when the enemy are taking cover behind rocks they pop in and out of cover very quickly. Sometimes the muzzle flash and recoil of your weapon makes you unsure if you actually hit your target or if he popped back into cover. The you slowly walk toward the rock to confirm your kill and if he pops out again you almost have a heart attack  http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/biggrin_o.gif


LOL It's so true about the "Is he dead?" ... It happened to me to discover one behind the rock, only hurt. Guess how fast they are using their AK-47 in that case!? As you said, I had a heart attack...

[ZIKAN]

Yeah, most FPS games tend to have this 'Hollywood' muzzle flash effect. The effect they use in films is kind of misleading to anyone not familiar with firearms in general. Blank firing weapons as used on TV and in films mostly produce this huge muzzleflash effect, it might look good but its certainly not an accurate representation. Also if you are producing alot of smoke from the end of your barrel, you have far to much oil in there!

I agree though Vietcong does bring some features like you stated that OFP2 could do with.

[Gollum1]

Also if you are producing alot of smoke from the end of your barrel, you have far to much oil in there!
No no, just a puff of course. On a Finnish Rk-62 assault rifle (mechanical copy of AK-47)

[Heatseeker]

VC is almost brilliant but too small http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/sad_o.gif , when you advance slowly into the dense jungle of high rez vegetation with sun rays between the trees and insects, butterflyes, and birds coming out of nowere awakened by the sound of your footsteps... unfortunetly the maps are almost claustrophobic, if only we could have such outstanding graphics, models, and "live" jungles in a opf size terrain http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/sad_o.gif .

[Baron Hurlothrumbo IIX]

Real weapons do have a big muzzleflash IRL but only for fractions of a second. Thats whats wrong with games - the muzzleflash stays for far too long (mainly because the smallest interval they can animate is one frame)

[CopyCon]

The muzzle flash thread can be found here (http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard311/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=57;t=30769)

[Heatseeker]

Ok, back on track, the firefights in vc are very good, opf2 should have something like that, the a.i. should peek, shoot and reload their weap behind cover. If you use supressive fire they will take cover and your men will advance, really cool. The firefights in opf always felt too short, there is no movement, no real solid cover, one burst and yer done...not to mention how agressive the a.i. behaves in the forest, its like the vegetation isnt even there for them http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/rock.gif .

[Hellfish6]

Real weapons do have a big muzzleflash IRL but only for fractions of a second.  Thats whats wrong with games - the muzzleflash stays for far too long (mainly because the smallest interval they can animate is one frame)
In my experience, you can rarely even see a muzzle flash unless it's night. Most flashes, especially daytime ones, are just quick little burps of translucent orange that are gone before you realize it.

[frag]

mmmm just finished the game. One of the point I forgot to talk about is the atmosphere. The jungle is so dense and real that you finally forgot that you are at the front of a computer screen.

If OFP2 can offer that level of immersion and a similar fight system, but on a big map ... THAT will be THE wargame. PERIOD.

[Goeth]

Personally i hope that bis don´t take anything from that shitty vietcong game, it was very lame game. I played it maybe the half of the campaign and some mp and neither one was good. I really didn´t get the jungle feeling when there were huge unpassable texturewalls everywhere.

[Heatseeker]

@<hidden> June 14 2003,12:49)]Personally i hope that bis don´t take anything from that shitty vietcong game, it was very lame game. I played it maybe the half of the campaign and some mp and neither one was good. I really didn´t get the jungle feeling when there were huge unpassable texturewalls everywhere.
No, not "take"&#33; BIS does their own stuff pretty well, but there is some really awsome stuff in that VC game, the textures, vegetation, models, a.i., sound, weapons, animations, etc. Its unfortunate for us that current hardware cant andle such impressive detailed stuff on a larger environment like OPF, and the firefights were the best ones i ever had in a single player game ever. It made me wonder how bis is gonna recreate vietnam setting and jungle warfare in OPF2 http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif .

[Baphomet]

First of all, to my knowledge Vietcong suffers from many symptoms of (pseudo realistic FPS) Syndrome... smaller maps mean that you can script or get the ai to do things that when using a much larger and unperdictable environment would be much more difficult. When you decrease the scope of the game. You have more options to focus on the smaller details... like guys leaping behind rocks or fancy vegetation etc.

Another problem of which I would have to seriously consider even playing ofp2 is if they adopted what many pseudo realistic shooters do and make an "expanding ring" dispersion system. This system is inherently flawed to the point that I refuse to play any game that uses it.


Basically what it is, was a bunch of goddamned lazy developers told some monkey to shoot some bullets in a board or a paper target and collected the grouping info (how the bullets patterened...) then drew a circle around it... then converted that info into to the game. The problem is then the bigger the aiming circle gets (in most games unrealistically wide, especially in games with small maps to keep the dispersion in ratio to the smaller spaces) the more likely you are to have ridiculously stupid things happen like a bullet flying at a 45&#39; degree angle to the left... the right or down&#33; This is because that imaginary circle is simply the area in which the random chance of a bullet can exist in. Which is stupid... A bullet originates from the barrel of a gun it doesn&#39;t fly out of the center of your field of vision and project in some random direction within an invisible circle that magically expands as you run... tell me something. If you&#39;ve ever handled a gun. Does the barrel get bigger the more you move around and shoot? No. It&#39;s the lazy way of modeling dispersion instead of calculating the actual position of the barrel and projecting the bullet using reasonably realistic bullet physics model (As ofp does).

Ever notice how on the player model of the gun and when aiming the gun itself the bullet originates from the muzzle unlike any other pseudo realistic game like counterstrike or anything using that unreal tactical engine? It&#39;s why I can&#39;t play any other game than OFP. I just get way too pissed off at how obviously lazy the developers got. I forgot what this topic was about so I might as well quit while I&#39;m ahead.


I&#39;ve got to stop posting these mini-novel-length diatribes.

That&#39;s another thing. I&#39;m sick of people complaining about how bad ofp looks... when you model terrain of 100km in size thereabouts or any significantly large expanse... you have to consider the economy of performance. You cannot compare any shitty small scale game and it&#39;s graphics to ofp&#39;s expansive and significantly less fettered potential. OFP is about large scale combat. Even BF 1942 pales in comparison to ofp as nice as it looks. I&#39;ll take functionality over nice looking bushes.

... I promise I&#39;m done now.

[Snakezz]

I agree 100%,dont make OFP2 Super-Enhanced-Graphics,or otherwise people who played original OFP wont even be able to play the 1st level without 1 hour of loading and 2 hours of lag,what im saying is,just enhance the graphics just a tiny bit,and fix the rest,fighting.etc..

[Heatseeker]

I agree 100%,dont make OFP2 Super-Enhanced-Graphics,or otherwise people who played original OFP wont even be able to play the 1st level without 1 hour of loading and 2 hours of lag,what im saying is,just enhance the graphics just a tiny bit,and fix the rest,fighting.etc..
Perhaps BIS can come up with some better rendering system, oclusion maybe? what you dont see doesnt need to be rendered right?, and if you take a look at some latest models (camel pilots, Nogova civies) you notice how much more perfect they are compared with the horrible old soldiers. I would like to have the best graphics possible, if the game is suposed to be realistic they should make it look real too, without sacrificing gameplay ofcourse http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif

[CopyCon]

I agree 100%,dont make OFP2 Super-Enhanced-Graphics,or otherwise people who played original OFP wont even be able to play the 1st level without 1 hour of loading and 2 hours of lag,what im saying is,just enhance the graphics just a tiny bit,and fix the rest,fighting.etc..
To be able to fight in the top of games 2004, OFP2 needs a lot better graphics, not just a tiny little bit. With games like HL2 and Doom 3 on the way, the standards will be ways higher than they are today.

[Heatseeker]

Graphix or not i think the main reason of this thread was gameplay elements, like having solid cover and the abilitie to lean around corners and use supressive fire that would force the a.i. to stay in cover, there is much detail and stuff in current OPF but solid cover is almost non existant, we should be able to use tree logs, small walls and other objects to avoid gettin hit and the a.i. should too http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif .

[Soul_Assassin]

dont u dare make 20 hours of walking in complete blindness in the tunnels of Vietnam...............thats what made me press the Uninstall button on VC

[Spy17]

I also liked the system of taking cover in that game. The use of the radio was although very nice (including calls for ary fire). An other thing I liked was the way soldiers walk and cross obstacles they screwed that up a little by adding jumping, it really looks stupid.

[Baphomet]

OFP doesn&#39;t need to compete with halflife 2 and doom3 for the simple reason is they&#39;re not even remotely similar. Some people just don&#39;t get that you must learn to sacrifice trite shallow details to achieve an overall versatility and expansiveness that OFP allows. I find nothing wrong with the original soldiers. It&#39;s people who obsess over the position of armpatches and small insignificant details which might railroad the development of ofp 2 into being another shitty ghost recon.

I care about what&#39;s pertinent to what the game achieves... I care about decent physics. I care about decently modeled wounding system. I care about graphics too but only to an extent that they convey well enough what&#39;s going on. Yet still allow the game to operate on a broad scale without shelling out eight grand for a machine.


Unfortunately as one mentioned... Occlusion in my opinion would be a bad idea. They have it in certain games and things literally pop up really close to you. No in a game where you should conceivably snipe people or fire weapons or simply see more than a kilometer away... occlusion would just be a bad idea.

[Scooby]

BIS could definetly take interaction with terrain from vietcong. It was well done.

[Heatseeker]

dont u dare make 20 hours of walking in complete blindness in the tunnels of Vietnam...............thats what made me press the Uninstall button on VC
Im sorry for this small offtopic but you could have just pushed the "F" key for flashlight, used light sticks to mark intersections or mark walls with your knife http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/biggrin_o.gif .

I have a feeling tunnels will not be part of OPF2, i just dont see how that could e done on this type of game engine.

[Blake]

But please don&#39;t praise Vietcong&#39;s jungle atmosphere....it simply is nonexistent. Walking throught those limited jungle canyons/texture walls made me quit after 1 and a half; missions finished - I just couldn&#39;t shrink my head into that. SEB Nam pack has more nam feeling than Vietcong ever had. Firefights seemed good for a while, but everything is so in the environment is so limited that all those neat AI tricks might be just scripted too.

But like all of us I want to see better AI in OFP 2 when it comes to it&#39;s sense of self preservation and sneakyness with the same vast environments OFP 1 had. Then that would be something.

[Frizbee]

@<hidden> June 14 2003,13:49)]Personally i hope that bis don´t take anything from that shitty vietcong game, it was very lame game. I played it maybe the half of the campaign and some mp and neither one was good. I really didn´t get the jungle feeling when there were huge unpassable texturewalls everywhere.
I have to agree. Vietcong was the worst thing I have seen in a long time. But then I have another reason for not wanting OP2 to take after Vietcong. Bugs.

In Vietcong I encountered a large number of problems on two seperate systems (and no, it wasn&#39;t an illegal copy before anyone asks) The first of these was a "blinking" gun, which meant that you could hit nothing except in a fluke, even at point blank range.

Another was enemy and friendly people falling through the ground so they couldn&#39;t be hit, but they could still shoot you.

And the last, was a bug that meant you could only run backwards.

Not very good imo.

[Ebud]

dont u dare make 20 hours of walking in complete blindness in the tunnels of Vietnam...............thats what made me press the Uninstall button on VC
Lol... I almost did as well until i read to hit the "L" key for the flashlight http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif After those stupid tunnels it was smooth sailing.

I really have to agree that I loved some aspects of that game.

the amount of cover

the use of cover and being able to lean around and over cover

the ai using cover... don&#39;t care how scripted it was, or how much you guys thought it was a shitty game, if you don&#39;t do mp, or think about how "scripted" or shitty the game is, it WAS immersive. WAAAAAY more than the SEB pack in my opinion, just for the simple fact that the ai did try to use cover most of the time, and I could suppress them to where they would hide... fluke of the game on my end, but I never for once worried about the AI being bots... they acted more intelligently than most RL people the few times I did play OFP online.

I wouldn&#39;t say copy this game, but it does have a lot of elements that would really add to the ofp2 design.

[Tibby595]

( I&#39;v only played the SP demo)
i liked the sounds ur mates make
EAT LEAD COMMIES&#33;
followed by 30 seconds of machine gun fire
3 by him
the rest by me...
oooops
i did like the aiming and that, just trying to take out sumbody 15 m away was difficult
ne way i liked the cut scene, sept the jungle detail was shite
i cud just make out m gun fire coming from a tree
but trees don&#39;t hav guns...
ne who
if BIS fit all the things we&#39;re asking for
we&#39;re gonna get game of the CENTURY.. nm year

wot BIS need is to look at all he uva games, listen to it;s public and then they&#39;v got a good game..
it&#39;s not much, is it?

[Baron Hurlothrumbo IIX]

Quote[/b] ]In my experience, you can rarely even see a muzzle flash unless it&#39;s night. Most flashes, especially daytime ones, are just quick little burps of translucent orange that are gone before you realize it

Yes. Your eyes don&#39;t percieve them because they are too fast, but if they are captured on film they are exaggerated as the film is over exposed.

The ones in OFP now are about right if they lasted about 1/100th of the time they do (impossible though)

[chris330]

This is only a month old and plenty of life left in it yet, well I hope so as I have recently bought the game. Liked it alot for about 4 hours or so. Then it dawned on me how badly ruined those brilliant initial bits are by crap, piss poor mission design and an absolutely ridiculously flawed AI. Fighting against these AI on anything above easy/normal difficulty is like being right back in the bad old days of single player on Rogue Spear. I have lost count (literally) of the amount of times I have been shot (first time) by a supposedly poor to averagely trained casual soldier from a great distance away the second he pops out of cover with a grease gun (not exactly a dragunov is it?http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/rock.gif?). Don&#39;t get suckered into buying this game, it is really bad. I dont know maybe the guy who oversaw the inital parts of the game left just before they decided to do the tunnel bits (yeah no shit they are boring like you wouldn&#39;t believe http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/mad_o.gif ) Sorry but I am now uninstalling it, I regret buying it http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/sad_o.gif

[Heatseeker]

^^
Unlike OPF there is solid cover available, use it http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/tounge_o.gif , the game isnt really that hard, OPF can be harder and alot more frustrating most of the time, and yes the a.i. is unpredictable and a little tough but i find their tactics alot more believable than most other combat games out there. There are many gameplay elements and cool features in that game that i would like to see in OPF2, the devs even went to nam to capture footage, screenies, sounds, etc. The weapons are very well done and i think they are acurate to the real thing, i think the games lacks larger maps and some realism but has really great gameplay, graphics and sound http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif .

[USMC Sniper]

I completely agree with Ebud, on everything he said. The OFP AI aren&#39;t that intelligent, admit it. They don&#39;t do much more than follow waypoints, go prone (or crouch 5% of the time) when they see an enemy, and fire until they die or the target dies. The Vietcong OFP hide from you behind a tree, pop out for a few shots, hide again, maybe crouch and move to a new location, and again pop out and shoot at you. I REALLY didn&#39;t like how OFP&#39;s AI always went prone. Even if Vietcong had those textured walls, the jungle feeling was there. Most of the time actually I didn&#39;t mind the walls, since the levels weren&#39;t THAT small, and there were many trees that actually made the levels seem larger. IMO the level where your helicopter crashes in the jungle is absolutely amazing, the atmosphere is captured exquisitely, with flies and mosquitoes flying around the bushes, the distant commands of the Vietnamese, etc. The developers travelled to Vietnam to get the atmosphere right, and I think that helped a ton.

[Heatseeker]

Some more things i liked:
You dont run into the jungle, in OPF you run all the time, it was cool to walk carefully into the jungle paying atention to the point man, earing the sound, very realistic.
To fight in the jungle, ever tried to fight a.i. in the forests of Everon? Almost impossible http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/sad_o.gif .
Hand grenades, you pull the pin and throw them in the air or you can roll them on the ground, very nice touch.
I still like OPF more than any other game, i just had a better time playing VC than i had with resistance http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/smile_o.gif .

[chris330]

Without doubt the fire fights are more realistic. The jungle feeling of sneaking around in cover is there. In OFP it doesnt really work at such close quarters. Loads of good things yeah, but I feel it just isn&#39;t finished. Often in fact it is way too hard. You must admit if this game had a bit more realism rather than arcadeness in it it would be great. But at times in vietcong there were flaws in the AI that are bad. And I also felt at times that I was having deja vu from standing infront of slot video game machines from way back for all the realism and chance I had of getting through some of the levels. The boat one for example http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/crazy_o.gif

[baff]

the muzzle flash is dependent on the type of charge in the cartirdge, movies use "high burn" ammo it makes a massive flash, also it really explodes, with the associated weapon stresses and bullet velocities.


couldn&#39;t agree more with the fluid animation in vietcong, jumping over logs, is class in a glass.

can&#39;t say i was especially in love with it&#39;s ballistics, but i played worse.

again i don&#39;t expect to see maps with that level of terrain complexity. in ofp2, i&#39;ll much prefer simple old tree sprites and 2d bushes, subtley blended with Ginormous maps you could fly a mach2 jet fighter over, forests you could spend a week in, big old sea&#39;s you just want to water ski along for an hour or two.