ARMA Series (I, II, III) - v. Are there mines in this thread?
1,072 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Magrathea;52746926]I've just bought Arma 3, with only about 4 hours experience.
Is there anything I should try first before joining this group?
Arma scares/confuses the shit out of me. I'm used to playing Insurgency.[/QUOTE]
If Arma scares and confuses you, first, I'd suggest playing the VR tutorials and then the first chapter of the vanilla campaign without any mods at all. It introduces you to combat and movement in Arma and helps you get a feeling for the pace.
That's not [I]required[/I] to play with us, mind you. However, we have a large modpack that adds a bunch of gameplay modifications and systems on top, so it's good to have training wheels before you get on the dirtbike with unsafe aftermarket upgrades. You're totally welcome to jump in head first with us, though.
The big things to know about Arma compared to an arena-based fps, in my opinion, are:
- the AI attempts to track you based on where it thinks you're going; it will attempt to cut you off but you can fake it out (I once had a scenario send me into a town that was being patrolled by AI and after I killed a few sentries I was spotted and got chased down a street; I ducked behind a wall and hid inside the house and then ran out the other side and doubled back up the alley and into a house a block up; from there I watched the AI's flashlights chase "me" over the hill and out of sight)
- the AI can detect you by sound and sight and can communicate between groups (depending on the scenario/etc.); sneaking and stealth, and the use of silenced weapons, is a very legitimate element of play. Light, night vision, and IR are also key; the AI can often see in the dark, and the vanilla Arma 3 campaign was designed to be played with NV, so you may be spotted by things you can't see.
- the map scale is deceptively huge, making vehicles important, but be warned that the AI can spot enemy-occupied vehicles from miles away, well beyond that of infantry detection range, so don't hang out in a car and idle. Headlights at night make a big difference to detection as with all other light sources
- if you have the Apex expansion (which is highly recommended to play with this group; we have missions on Tanoa regularly), the AI can often see through the jungle foliage when you can't; this problem can also occur on other maps, especially older maps (Arma 2/etc. via CUP)
- Arma has a full ballistics simulation including modeling penetration for different round sizes
[video=youtube;cix07R1vlhI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cix07R1vlhI[/video]
Once you're comfortable enough with the basic Arma gameplay and aiming and stamina management, you should be pretty comfortable with our modpack; all that you'll need to know going in is how to set up and use ACRE (someone can walk you through this) and how to use ACE interact and ACE self-interact (otherwise you won't be able to bandage yourself if you're shot and bleed out, like me in my first op with FPARMA :v: ), and then sign yourself up with the heroku site (it uses Steam to auth you) so you can slot for missions.
We tend to play missions on Sundays. We also have a sandbox mode called Comfy Downtime which is designed for ad-hoc scenarios and less-constructed games than a full-blown custom-made mission (since those take hours to do properly). Comfy Downtime lets you access the full modpack weapon/equipment collection, so it's good for fucking around and practicing with things.
One last thing to know: Unlike most, if not all, of the AT tubes in the vanilla game, the anti-tank launchers in our modpack have backblast, which means anyone standing behind you when you fire will get hurt or die. Tanks will also overpressure and kill people in front of the gun when they fire. Make sure you pay attention to your surroundings when pulling the trigger. :v:
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52747034]
- if you have the Apex expansion (which is highly recommended to play with this group; we have missions on Tanoa regularly), the AI can often see through the jungle foliage when you can't; this problem can also occur on other maps, especially older maps (Arma 2/etc. via CUP)
[/QUOTE]
It's not really that they see through it, but that they aren't affected by visual clutter like humans are. If there's a visually complex scene with a lot of moving foilage, people would usually have trouble picking out minor details, but for the AI this isn't a thing at all. So there being an arm a few hundred meters away through the foilage just sticks out to them because they're AI and that's what they're looking for.
[QUOTE=diwako;52736146][video=youtube;_Fl-obfTT70]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fl-obfTT70[/video][/QUOTE]
how do these things even happen ? sorry for english
[QUOTE=Drk;52749050]how do these things even happen ? sorry for english[/QUOTE]
My best guess is between de-synchronization (desync) from a connection hiccup, Arma's historically buggy collision system, and other minor factors, the truck's front left-side tire got teleported forward into the back right tires of the other Ural, causing wonky physics interactions and thus launching the Ural forward at high velocity, and so quickly that ground collision was not properly modeled.
1.76.hotfix out [url]https://dev.arma3.com/post/spotrep-00074[/url]
+
1.76.143185 new PROFILING branch with PERFORMANCE binaries, v05, server and client, windows 32/64-bit, linux 32-bit server
+ additional crash fixes
+ in-sync with 1.76.hotfix (1.76.143187)
details: [url]https://forums.bistudio.com/forums/topic/160288-arma-3-stable-server-176-performance-binary-feedback/?do=findComment&comment=3239147[/url]
note: it has more crashfixes than hotfix
[QUOTE=Tinter;52748315]It's not really that they see through it, but that they aren't affected by visual clutter like humans are. If there's a visually complex scene with a lot of moving foilage, people would usually have trouble picking out minor details, but for the AI this isn't a thing at all. So there being an arm a few hundred meters away through the foilage just sticks out to them because they're AI and that's what they're looking for.[/QUOTE]
That and as elix said, they will predict where they think you're going. So even if you break line of sight with foliage, they'll guesstimate where you'll be based on the speed/direction/stance you're moving in when they last saw you, which is why it feels like they can still straight up see you when you get lit up through 50 bushes.
Some (mainly custom) maps legitimately do have broken foliage though. Even Malden with its vineyards suffered from it at least last time I checked.
I have absolutely fallen in love with this game, but I'll probably wont sign up to this mission or the next one due to me crapping myself with the amount of controls. I'll probably be a onlooker filled with glee at this point :vs:
So what DLC's should I get as well as me downloading the swifty resource pack file thing (which I'm 86 out of 1565 atm)?
Something about Apex?
[QUOTE=Magrathea;52753526]I have absolutely fallen in love with this game, but I'll probably wont sign up to this mission or the next one due to me crapping myself with the amount of controls.
[editline]6th October 2017[/editline]
So what DLC's should I get as well as me downloading the swifty resource pack file thing (which I'm 86 out of 1565 atm)?
Something about Apex.[/QUOTE]
The Apex DLC is basically "mandatory" (it [I]isn't[/I] but you won't get to play on any mission set on Tanoa). I'd suggest you pick up all the DLC, though the marksmen and karts DLCs aren't really much to flip out over so I'd wait for a sale for them.
Jets is cool if you care about jets (and the really big changes with that DLC were part of the "free" base game update to go with the DLC), and Laws of War adds some nifty stuff, but in terms of playing with us, Apex is the single must-have DLC.
There are a lot of keybinds, but in an average play session the typical grunt will use maybe 10 keybinds plus normal movement/shooting keys. The toggles for crouch and prone, push to talk keys for local and radio chat, the ACRE "open radio" keybind, ACE interact/self-interact, ACE throwing, page up/down (or whatever) for ranging their gun/scope, and maybe ACE pointing or turning on/off your safety. If you become a pilot, a vehicle gunner, a squad leader, or something else with fancy extra things, that complicates things a bit, but once you get the hang of the basics you'll be less overwhelmed by the controls.
Thanks for the help! Will do!
[del]Anyone else had an Arma update flagged by Avast, (arma3.exe specifically), or is shit just fritz on my end?[/del]
Nevermind, problem solved.
false positive, sorted with Avast! team in past days
[QUOTE=Dwarden;52755766]false positive, sorted with Avast! team in past days[/QUOTE]
Sick, thanks for the feedback.
Blimey, Is Swifty meant to take this long?
It's been about 2 hours and it's only downloaded 2 out of 1365 files.
It is recommended to download CUP of their website first. It will speed up the process quite a bit.
-snip-
Downloading the bulk-load faster
CUP downloading takes just as long as it was in swifty.
Will just have to run it overweek.
A mission too real for some...
[video=youtube;BNNPNGHwkz4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNNPNGHwkz4[/video]
Nowhere is safe
[t]https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/874120805750034496/78A897203A30BF054C53A468439C1261CF8ECD5E/[/t]
[QUOTE=SFArial;52759945]:ok:
[video]https://youtu.be/Yr0C15i5FMw[/video][/QUOTE]
I am glad someone actually got that on camera. I had no ammo left.
[editline]8th October 2017[/editline]
Also picture:
[t]https://files.catbox.moe/ghormn.jpg[/t]
[editline]8th October 2017[/editline]
Also can we have feedback on the respawn system we used?
"3 minutes until respawn. 3 minutes until respawn. 9 minutes until respawn."
Could be worse. Redgord looked like some slavic freedom fighter without his hat.
[t]https://i.imgur.com/QNWxgMf.png[/t]
I'm glad that duct tape exists, so I could tape off all the flashing lights on my pc at night.
Anyways.
I had my first multiplayer match, namely King of the Hill in Malden. I was a spawn taxi, driving a strider backwards and forwards between spawn and "Tower 2" and sometimes helicopters.
Managed to get a few kills, getting better at this game. Only times I died was when my strider plummeted into a satchel charge. Strider has to be my favourite vehicle I've seen so far. I haven't seen any tanks yet (and I think that's a good thing) :boxhide:
[t]https://i.imgur.com/ccQ4fqm.jpg[/t]
[t]https://i.imgur.com/afHtEQe.jpg[/t]
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/Z10swdx.png[/IMG]
[QUOTE=diwako;52759951]
Also can we have feedback on the respawn system we used?[/QUOTE]
I think it worked fine, although it would seem that the count down didn't update eg i would see 10 mins remaining 2 - 3 times before it would jump down and say 5 mins remaining.
[QUOTE=Gnime;52764845]I think it worked fine, although it would seem that the count down didn't update eg i would see 10 mins remaining 2 - 3 times before it would jump down and say 5 mins remaining.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, it was an issue on how the server sent the information to the clients. Basically I sent the information has "x minutes left". Then that call got lost in the server queue resulting the server sending them out seemingly at random. Thus resulting in confusing messages. That is now fixed as I am handling that display in another way now. Even if the messages get lost and send out at random, you still should get the correct time displayed when dead or none at all when alive.
The timer internally was still working correctly tho, I had my eyes on that. So people were respawned after 15 minutes or manually by zeus.
And some neat little fact. You had in total 6 respawn waves to work with. You got one for free because of an error on zeus' side at the very beginning. You used up all 6. Last wave was triggered at the final assault to the airstrip.
I did like that when we respawned it was near everyone alive. Was this by design or did you (zeus') teleport us all to the frontline?
[QUOTE=Gnime;52765017]I did like that when we respawned it was near everyone alive. Was this by design or did you (zeus') teleport us all to the frontline?[/QUOTE]
Depends when the respawn point was moved. One group respawned at the first FOB and had to drive all the way to the down the map because the current objective hasn't been cleared yet. Another wave respawned near friendlies because that area was taken over and respawn point had moved. There were 2 times I manually respawned everyone near friendlies because the marker has not moved but the area was nearly liberated, so I saved those few people the trouble driving all the way towards the current objective.
ARMA Series (I, II, III) - v. Are there mines in this thread?
