kerodan

A bit offtopic but: Yes, I am fault tolerant even though I have some experience of the "good old days" and am very happy that we passed them. To this day, I still remember downloading a 21MB patch for Spellforce at 4-8kb/s just to install the damn thing on launch day. So much for the release of a fully finished product. You can be harsh as long as you want but BI will not dumped their current AI system in this stage of development. Way out of the scope of post-release development for an engine that may not even see a next iteration in ARMA 4. Improvements are the things we can and should look forward to. In my experience, this depends on the combat mode. If you group them up and put them in "SAFE" mode, they form up nicely and will reach their destination. In "Combat" mode this will - unfortunately - not happen.

For the moment, yes. Weirdly enough I noticed that changing the elevation of the vehicle (-> letting it fall half a meter) fixes many issues of the AI getting stuck on open roads. I totally agree with you on that account. I was also disappointed by BI reallocating their ressources. Especially if you consider how much progress was achieved in a short amount of time by a dedicated developer. However, I also believe that it is not productive to call the whole system broken. It is in many cases functional and servers a purpose but it definitely needs improvement. Although I hope that BI will refocus some attention on driving, I do not believe this can be achieved by stating that the AI is completely broken as this is no resonable base for a productive dialogue.

I did and I never encountered severe issues like that since the overhaul. Furthermore, I am not disputing the fact, that the driving AI has issues. In general, I am just annoyed that the term "broken" is thrown around every time something is not working as expectedly. In my book "broken" means that it is completely and utterly useless. Well, my comparison is situated in the realms of ARMA and in comparison to ARMA 2 my statement is still valid. Bumping does not happen in my convoys. They may take a weird turn here or there but they do not drive into each other. In contrast, infantry being killed by vehicles is happening and there is definitly room for improvement. But, in my experience, this issue is not very consistent and seems to be related to performance issues (i.e. the resources of the client who has ownership of the ai or the general server performance).

Can you please stop referring to the driving ai as "broken"? Based on my experience, especially if you remind me of the 1 year mark for the overhaul, the AI is driving better then ever before. Sure they sometimes still get stuck in certain places, circle around invisible obstacles on open roads or just stop entirely for no apparent reason but this does not justify to call the underlying system "broken". Also, most of these situations can be resolved by using Zeus if time allows it. So please stop exaggerating and report your specific bugs in a responsible manner. Exaggerations like that will not likely convince BI to shift its priorities.

Yes, people complain a lot about this issues but never mention the situations where they occur. I have been playing ARMA coop for over 4 years now (so A2 OA and A3) and never perceived a game-breaking flaw concerning these systems. In my experience, most of these complains could be easily resolved by setting up the AI configuration properly. So I would agree with you, that BI could invest more resources in making the AI configuration easily accessible and document the subskills in more detail (for example, I am still looking for a definitive answer to the question if the view distance setting influences the AI's visual spotting range). However, I would not agree on scraping the whole AI system as I am repeatedly astonished by what the AI can actually do given the unpredictable situations thrown at it. On a different note: Why is everybody calling the current iteration of AI driving 'broken'? They still drive far better than before work started on improving the driving system and I haven't noticed any glaring issues with the current version. But I still hope for further improvements, of course. ;)

I would actually argue, that it is okay to allow monetization for server owners as it guarantees the owners to cover their costs (although I am also skeptical if these costs actually need that big of a compensation). But monetizing the server should also entail paying the addon authors a share of the generated income. So, if you chose to monetize a modded server, every content creator benefits from the money generated by the monetization scheme. The problem with this concept is - of course - that it would need a more active involvement by BI to bring the different content creators to the same table...

Why not? A character's personality can change if you provide appropriate reasoning for understanding that change. It is a natural process occuring all the time. Bringing this crude example for yours back to the original topic: Bohemia provided reasons for using other assets and this is reasonable to many maybe not all. I understand it however and am very happy with the changes they made.

VBS and ARMA do not only have different developers but also use different engines/iterrations of the same engine. So this would be cross-company and cross-engine feature implementation. Along this line of thinking you could also demand that Spintires has deformable terrain so it should be no problem to implement this feature in Frontiers' Elite Dangerous (I am exaggerating of course).

I would suggest to keep an eye on the DayZ Standalone development and their devblogs. They are in the process of implementing a new animation system and it is very likely that we will see this system (or an adaptation of it) in future ARMA games.

Although I whole heartedly agree with you that naval combat on that scale is out of the question for a game like ARMA, I would really love to see some kind of naval asset which can be used as a base of operations. A place where I can store equipement and provide players with a logical starting/regrouping position to mount a submersible or RHIB. If it can also house a chopper and be moveable at the same time, all my expectations concerning naval-based operations would be completley satisfied.

I can only speak of my stable branch experience at the moment but I do not really see the need to provide extensive feedback as I do not encounter alot of critical issues. Small issues like a vehicle running into small objects or getting stuck taking a certain turn are still present in some situation but are these things to report? In my opinion they are not as I suppose that these issues are getting smoothed out over time and can not really be fixed for every difficult spot on any given map. They just implied one the last page that changes to tracked vehicle AI are coming at some point.

Not wanting to derail the thread but are there any game engines with such a feature? And I mean games which, like ARMA, do not work with some kind of voxels for their terrains?

Exactly this. Furthermore, you can try all the assets (except Tanoa of course) for free in virtual arsenal. I really do not get what you are complaining about? Do you want that the player base is split based on DLC content?

When I compare it to my experience in A2 it is a huge step-up! Maybe it is due to me playing mostly small coop missions (10-20Players max with 100++AI) but my FPS doubled in comparison to the FPS I got in the same kind of missions in A2. Futhermore, you are forgetting the Geometric Occlusion feature added with Eden which improved FPS in cities tremendously in my opinion. Of course you cannot compare it to the changes made in DayZ where some achieved performance jumps from 30 to 90+ FPS but do not sell A3s improvements that short...

Can you elaborate on how you came to this conclusion? The release of Apex was only a few months ago and entailed a lot of new issues for the devs to fix. In addition to the demands to fix this or that issue made daily on these forums. So it is kind of natural to have a "slower" period, although they still managed to pull of some nice feature additions to EDEN. Does not really look like they start "abandoning" A3 to be honest. We will know more when we finally get a glimpse at the next road map but for the moment this kind of seems exaggerated in my opinion. Concerning naval assets, I would also BIS to embrace their diving/swimming feature a little more. It seems to be tacked on and is not really useable for long missions (equipment constraints due to the rebreather, slow speed of submersibles etc.). Would love to see a naval asset which can be used as a small base of operations out on the sea but do not have the feeling we will get it anytime soon. ;)

If you are referring to the AI driving overhaul, this as not been implemented yet for tracked vehicles. Only the behavior of wheeled vehicles has been changed. Have a look at the changelog of the last mayor update for any new commands that have been introduced.

Someone else encountered the bug that a vehicle in a convoi will turn around for no reason at all and drive back to the last waypoint? After reaching the last waypoint, it will then turn around again and try to regroup with the other vehicles in the group. By the way: Collision avoidance on route seems not to be calculated for the individual vehicle but for the complete group. This should normally not be an issue but becomes apparrent in situations like the one just described. My straggler keeped running full speed in oncoming vehicles like they did not exist. Edit: Just looked at turning around a convoi in the middle of road: It seems to me that not only is collision avoidance only calculated for the whole group, it also does not consider vehicles belonging to the same group. Means the leading vehicle will turn nicely on the road and than smash right into the following vehicle. Maybe an area you could do some tweaking. ;)

Although this is true, you have to consider the implications of such a change. For DayZ this was an okaish investment as it only pissed of people who expected a working product right of the start or had no idea what kind of work was involved in such a change. Aka switching out huge chunks of your underlying engine code while also developing assets and the like. Speaking of ARMA 3, it is not feasible to do such a thing as it is a finished product with a huge amount of user-made content. Content which would be put in jepardy by making such drastic changes at this stage in development. Best guess is that they will consider switching to the Enfusion engine for the next installment of the game but not before. Otherwise, they would have no window to prepare the endless creators of user-made content for the changes to come and provide them with a reasonable explanation of why their content - most likley - will not be useable anymore. Introducing such drastic changes in a DLC or Patch is just bad policy in this regard as it not only annoys the user-base your game heavily relies on but also forces the studio to further invest in the conversion of all original A3 assets.

Please elaborate on the "billion of bugs"? In my experience, A3 runs very well (did so since the beginning) and the amount of bugs is total normal for a game of this scale/modability. Furthermore, the comparison to A2 is just mind-boggling due to new tech beeing introduced in A3 (especially concerning unit loadout) und many vehicles in A2 OA (I assume this is the title you are referring to) beeing either ported from previous titles, which had a similiar setting, or having a very high number of variants of the same model. Concerning the topic: I also have the assumption that A4 will be based on a version of the Enfusion engine. As can be seen by DayZ, it seems to be the next step engine-wise and to some degree designed to accomodate backwards/cross-game compatibilty which is essential for a game like Arma and BIS as a developing studio.

setConvoySeparation I played around with it a little bit but I am not sure if its effects result from the command, by coincidence or from me setting the speed limits of the drivers. BUT the effect is only visible (if at all) on the vehicles in the back of the convoy. The vehicles in the front (especially the leading vehicle) will keep on trucking and not hold the same distance to the following vehicle like the vehicles in the back do.

Well, after adjusting my script to spawn convois (setFormation is a real requirement now ;)) and observing the effects of the patch I must say: Great work! Wheeled vehicles and their pathfinding is tremendously improved and the vehicles now try do activly avoid infantery units. Have seen way less roadkills since the patch which is just awesome! Problems I spotted: - Hemett trucks still have some problems with turning around steep corners in cities but I would guess that this will be improved in the future. ;) - When coming to an intersection and the AI is supposed to drive straight over it, they sometimes make a weird turn where they drive onto the intersecting road and than turn back on their original route. It looks like they want to avoid an invisible obstacle on the central point where the two roads intersect. - Bridges on Tanoa are still a bit fussy. Some vehicles pass, some do not. Could not figure out a pattern yet. Keep up the great work!

No, sorry. Haven't worked with the new lightning update at all. Maybe have a look at this old thread: https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/191021-160-terrain-config-update-example/

Dear all, I would like to share the source files for our map project Sosopol with you. The project was started by a clan mate and me in 2015 and was actively developed for a couple of months. At this point in time, development has, however, been dormant for over a year and we both do not see us coming back to it. Therefore, I would like to contribute the source files to the community and, especially, everybody interested in creating maps for ARMA. For the people who want to see a higher resoultion picture click: here The source files include the SatMap, MaskImage, Heightmap, Configfiles and some placed objects (mainly forests and the like), While the mask and height map are not finished, the SatMap is completely reworked including the removal of buildings, the replacements of huge forests areas and the inclusion of additional islands to enhance the gameplay potential of the map (would only need some updates concerning the road network). It is, in my opinion, the hidden gem in this file package and I would be glad to see it included in ARMA in some way as I put a lot of work into it. ;) Technical Infos: 4096 x 4096 x 2.5m Heightmap 10240x10240 SatMap & MaskImage The config files are not updated for the new visual update! So be advised that this will probably be your first task to handle when you decide to get your hands dirty. ;) Furthermore, you will need the pro version of L3DT to get access to the height map files. The free version does, to my knowledge, not support height map files of resolutions over 2048x2048. Due to size constraints, I was not able to include the reference materials for the SatMap but everything else should be there. If any essentials files are missing, please let me know. Instructions: The map should be ready for TB. Here is a little summary of what the different folders contain. Folder "sosopol": Contains all the relevant data for the map. First, it should still be possilbe to just pack this folder with pboProject to bring the map into the game. Second, you can use the included files (like SatMap, Heightmap, and Mask) to setup a new project in TB. Most of the configs should still be useable. The only exception being the lightning config which is not up-to-date to the new standards introduced by the visual upgrade which was released before APEX. Folder "sosopol.Cache" and "sosopol.v4d": Files that are created and required by TB. Theoretically, you should be able to open the original Project file ("sosopol.tv4p") by copying the complete folder "sosopol.Cache" into the folder "Terrainbuilder" as well as all the files included in "sosopol.v4d". Depending on how forgiving TB is, you maybe have to change the name of the folder "Terrainbuilder" to "sosopol". Folder "SourceData": Includes the heightmap in L3DT Format and the source of the mask file. These do not have to be put in your pDrive and can be opened by L3DT or a photo-editing software of your choice, respectively. Folder "Terrainbuilder": Contains the various layers with already placed objects, road shapes and used object libaries. Can either be used for restoring the original project file or be imported in a new project. Bring the whole thing into the game can either be achieved by rebuilding the original project structure (as outlined above) or by setting up a new project file and importing/copying all the relevant files from the folder "sosopol" and "Terrainbuilder". The latter is probably the cleanest/safest way. For instructions on how to do that and an overview on the file structure, I advise to have a look at the various guides on map making (like for example The Atlas Guide) or consult the official discord channel on terrain making. Download: Source Files (Google Drive) Cache Files (Google Drive) .v4d Files (Google Drive) Deprecated game-ready Version (Google Drive) Have fun and good luck! Kero

If you are really stuck on this issue, you could just take the Altis/Stratis Lightning Config as a first reference. If you use the mikero tools, you should have a copy of them in your pDrive (A3/map_altis or A3/map_stratis).

Just google the official arma 3 discord server and connect to it.