Serclaes

... and in really shitty terrain. But yeah, I get what you mean. Iirc the sprinting speed in arma2 was even faster than Usain Bolt on 100m. Granted, I don't know about Usain's peak speed but I doubt you could outrun Usain with boots and combat gear. Edit: Maybe see this for reference: 1:05 shows some would-be fast running.

I would like a little variety in height and width, but I realise it's not easy to to. Iirc the VBS sytem scales the weapons too, in order to keep the animations lined up. Having said that: http://terminallance.com/2010/01/26/terminal-lance-7-good-reasons-to-not-go-to-the-gym/

Not to be jumping on that tin foil hat bandwagon but: do you have a smartphone? ;)

I get this. It's exactly like that for me. But I personally know a guy who had to get his jaw stitched because he got assaulted for nothing in the train. My brother's friend has a piece of metal replacing a part of it's jaw from getting kicked in the face when he was already knocked down, my brother got his nose broken in that fight. The problem is: both happened on camera. These guys figured out that they can get away with beating people up. Cameras help finding these guys and proving what they did. But they don't prevent it. Hell I doubt they're even actively monitored. Money should go into prevention. Prevention in terms of education, deterrance in terms of more security/law enforcement and deterrance in terms of faster sentencing for a better "learning" effect. Edit: Oh and see the problems authorities currently have identifying the guys who dropped that bomb in Bonn. I mean, what the hell is a camera supposed to see from above? Who the hell thought that was a good idea?

Wasn't sure if we still do that. But better safe than sorry and edited accordingly :)

I got this game yesterday from Steam, yay for autumn sale. I've been watching it since I heard about it and it was finally at an affordable price for me. And damn I wish I had more money to spend on that game. All in all I think it's good. In my opinion that game tells an awesome and immersive story with believable characters and I would buy something like that again.

A graphics card is extremely good at calculating stuff. One of the big problems right now is to have multi layered maps. If you have the example of a road network it's rather easy: one layer for actual roads, one layer for modifiers (small road to highway) and one layer for traffic speed. Now Imagine there are roads crisscrossing like 0.25m apart, forming a grid with 0.25mx0.25m squares. the intersections are called nodes. Right now the AI in arma can prefer roads to terrain, prefer cover to open field, avoid areas under fire, circle around moving(or destroyed) objects (requires constant update of grid) and select apropriate ways for its size (infantry, tank) or way to move (plane/helicopter). Maybe something else I forgot. Each is one layer added to the node. But now you could choose: Want to stay stealthy and covered => compute a layer favorising woods, depressions etc to move. Want a good firing position? It's a little more tricky since it requires view but you could to that. Now you have to find the best way along the nodes, which is very expensive by itself. But If you had a lot of processors one could create situation based layers that modify nodes accordingly and then calculate a lot of ways and sort them out in the end. So to answer you question, I think you could put off a lot on the GPU. But basic tactics would have to remain "random" as they are now or stay on the CPU. At least that is my hopefully educated guess. Edit: Maybe easier to understand this: Finding a stealthy way is for GPU, determining whether to be stealthy or not for CPU.

Damn, I really should start patenting stuff I come up with when I'm drunk or bored. Unfortunately this would exclude the ATI owners. If we take the steam playerbase as reference it should be about 30% of players... Edit: Oh and most servers do not have graphics cards.

Thanks for doing this. It's great to have this more direct link to Ivan and Martin to clear up all the misunderstandings. Hope they are doing good, given the situation.

I know what you mean. It's sad that a few tweaks here and there could have made the game so much better. I mean, I enjoy it now but I could enjoy it more.

Relevant xkcd. :) Let's not start on Prometheus. I thought the storyline was plain awful. Though apparently the directors cut fixes some things... But I agree. Even though sometimes I have a hard time following more complex movies, I like having to stay concentrated and still miss some things.

@kavoven: Reading up on Mara I found that LucasArts always had a say in the storyline. I'd bet they will have a say in the episode 7 storylines too. @Max: I think it's because the force literally isn't spiritual anymore. It became this explainable constant and thus dispelling anything around it. I don't care too much though. I didn't even know people were really that nitpicky. Although there is a reason why Lucas wasn't so happy about some of the Star Wars fan base. But then again I can relate to the "Han Shot First" issue...

That's a great timeline, thanks. Reminds me I need to finish the rogue squadron stuff. Well hopefully they won't wipe all that stuff... :(

Unfortunately if you decrease the grid size say by half, processing time should be somewhat doubled if not more. Also don't forget the update of the grid. Path finding is really tricky and there really isn't a lot "optimization" you can do except throw more processing power at it. Edit: Probably the terrain cell size performance hit doesn't come so much from AI as from the interpolation needed between the cells (which probably is computed by CPU). Smaller cells = More cells can be seen = more interpolation. AI still has to navigate around bushes independent of the cell size. Though I guess a big cell size with a lot of cells (= a big map) affects the AI more.

Thrawn is next on my list. Read the Corellia trilogy a few weeks ago. About this expanded universe storyline: are there books covering what happened directly after episode 6? If not it wouldn't really be a problem to put some stuff in. I mean SW: Clone Wars does it too...