***ArmA 3 Thread***

First time I've had a proper go at an Arma game and i'll be honest.. I really enjoyed it. Comparing it to the free to play Arma 2 the movement is much improved, sort of a cross between Arma 2 and BF3 which I can live with. Guess I've just been used to arcade style movement for too long.

Recoil doesn't seem too bad, especially since you only need a few shots, 1 or 2, to put someone down. Had a good run yesterday at the airport and killed about 8 or 9 people before the server decided to crash, doh.

Also found a rather interesting bug when getting off and on a vehicle. Knew my 'long neck for looking over hills' cheat would be too obvious.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=131237151
 
Whats Wasteland like on A3A? I've only really mucked about on the editor so far & done a couple of coop mission with a mate, I only ask because of the limited number of assets available I'm guessing that making a base is pretty pointless without all the fortifications & emplacements, is that the case or has someone imported those from A2?
 
Coop has been improved 10x now we have revive scripts. Play a mission tonight with a bit more polish than usual. Got the good scripts in there. and its the first time in arma3 iv played actual arma and OH MY GOD. This game is going to blow minds continuously for the next 6 years.

Unfortunately our chief mission makers were not able to get in on the week one fun but they're back now and stuff should start rolling in fast.

I'll keep you guys posted about missions and developments as we go. invite peeps for some gaming.
 
Xordium said:
And of course if you actually use that draw distance like you say you don't seem small objects detailed and you don't see what you would find when you get to that location which removes a very important aspect from any tactical game.
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Small objects don't appear in ArmA also. Look at the grass or how the ground looks further away from the player. It's awful. In both games you have important structures and terrain rendered, so at least that it's in (ArmA 3 has the option to turn that up or down object rendering, which kills performance also and may explain why ArmA 3 runs better than A2).

Of course you'll need to render the players and their vehicles further away în MP, but that shouldn't be much of a problem compared to rendering grass, bushes, small rocks and so on, for a distance of a few kilometers. None of the games that I know of, does something like that anyway.

And there is also tracking the AI all across the map, but in MP, I think that should be done by the server. On my system, around 60 AI encounters, with me taking part of the action, are manageable in SP and if I remember correctly, if I'm not there to see the battle, FPS doesn't take a big hit anyway, which means that fights and interactions done "in the background" (without you seeing it) are not a resource hog. So, the fact that the game tracks AI and players around the map doesn't hurt the performance a lot.

The problem I believe resides in the fact that the game doesn't use all the cores available for the AI, just one intensively. On top of this, the draw calls need for rendering a big chunk of terrain and "stuff" is also hurting A LOT. If you look at the data, how the GPU usage drops instead of climbing when you increase the draw distance for terrain and objects, it shows just that i suppose. I don't know how can that be overcome, but I do like what I saw in JC 2, that's why I brought up the subject.

In the end, I will leave 3 videos of mine ( JC 2 and A2 not recorded for this purpose, but will do) to show a little bit of the words written above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdM_HdrF3fk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnEiTRM0Nwo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65AIDZL-R-8&feature=youtu.be

PS: Another thing guys, let's not forget that Utes ran much better than Cerno, it could be the same here too.
 
ArmA2 AI is 100% deffo single threaded. This is why it absolutely RAPES a server with a lot of AI and more cores does nothing. The headless client went some way to helping this by offloading AI to a seperate EXE leaving the server exe to do all the networking and everything else and allowing the headless client to do AI.

Currently I believe the system is the same but im REALLY hoping they combine those technologies into a single multi threaded server EXE. IDeally with the AI being multithreaded too. This would allow us to make use of our high core servers and get a smooth experience.


I've no idea what the tech is currently like or what the roadmap for development with multithreading is like (particularly server side) but Im praying they make big change in this regard. To the server side particularly where it matters.
 
jakspyder said:
ArmA2 AI is 100% deffo single threaded. This is why it absolutely RAPES a server with a lot of AI and more cores does nothing. The headless client went some way to helping this by offloading AI to a seperate EXE leaving the server exe to do all the networking and everything else and allowing the headless client to do AI.

Currently I believe the system is the same but im REALLY hoping they combine those technologies into a single multi threaded server EXE. IDeally with the AI being multithreaded too. This would allow us to make use of our high core servers and get a smooth experience.


I've no idea what the tech is currently like or what the roadmap for development with multithreading is like (particularly server side) but Im praying they make big change in this regard. To the server side particularly where it matters.
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Problem with something like AI seems to be that it's very hard to completely multithread as it's reliant on the results of it's calculations to make a decision, so you'd end up waiting for the data to be called anyway even if it was on a separate thread - or worse, it wouldn't get that data as quickly as it would on a single thread making the AI pause.

Good read here on trying to multithread AI: http://aigamedev.com/open/article/hierarchical-logic-multi-threading/
 
One thing I have noticed, when you are being shot at it seems the gunshots are rather loud but there are hardly any cracks from shots passing the player, is this just my sound setup or is this the case??
 
MeEsH BaKkA said:
One thing I have noticed, when you are being shot at it seems the gunshots are rather loud but there are hardly any cracks from shots passing the player, is this just my sound setup or is this the case??
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You're right, its not your issue its a game issue. The sound (once modded to be good) in arma2 is phenomenal. At this stage in arma3, its very buggy, sometimes you dont hear weapons at all and there is very little snap or hiss from incoming rounds but rest assured that will come with time. As for the quality of the sounds themselves they're a huge improvement from ArmA2 though not quite as good as some of the sound mods out there. Just now though the technology is buggy and so we wont get the good sound mods coming out until they can properly utilize a good working sound engine. Standard Alpha rules apply here, its not just you.

Rhodri said:
Problem with something like AI seems to be that it's very hard to completely multithread as it's reliant on the results of it's calculations to make a decision, so you'd end up waiting for the data to be called anyway even if it was on a separate thread - or worse, it wouldn't get that data as quickly as it would on a single thread making the AI pause.

Good read here on trying to multithread AI: http://aigamedev.com/open/article/hierarchical-logic-multi-threading/
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Great post, I certainly understand its not easy to "just multi thread it!" >.<

What ever they can do though to at the very least make sure that the AI thread is getting all it can and everything else is segregated from it to other threads will go a long way to help. Or if you could somehow split groups of AI between threads so you dont have all 200 AI working from a single thread... may help. Still again early days and i'm excited for all and any improvements in this direction!
 
New build of Arma 3 (via Steam beta opt in) and Wasteland 1.0.3, a lot more stability and much better framerates in game.

MGT Wasteland50 slots

Join via remote ip 37.59.48.201 port 2364
or filter MGT or OcUK

Password is overclockers
 
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dave_beast said:
New build of Arma 3 (via Steam beta opt in) and Wasteland 1.0.3, a lot more stability and much better framerates in game.

MGT Wasteland50 slots

Join via remote ip 37.59.48.201 port 2364
or filter MGT or OcUK

Password is overclockers
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is that like a normal co-op server dude?
if not where we all playing ? :)
 
Garfo said:
is that like a normal co-op server dude?
if not where we all playing ? :)
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No, it's Wasteland:-

Wasteland is an open plan sandbox game with cars, armored vehicle's, helis and much more.
There are three teams;
  • Opfor - Attacks BluFor And Independents
  • Blufor- Attacks OpFor And Independents
  • Independent - Attacks BluFor, OpFor and other Independents
There are active missions throughout the gameplay allowing the three teams to interact and work together to gain some high end loot from the game.
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Ours should be flowing after this weekend. Ill keep you posted once we get a good collection of missions up. We're a little uneasy on large numbers with a lack of ACRE mod though just now. Gets messy even with 6 guys on TS.
 
dave_beast said:
New build of Arma 3 (via Steam beta opt in) and Wasteland 1.0.3, a lot more stability and much better framerates in game.

MGT Wasteland50 slots

Join via remote ip 37.59.48.201 port 2364
or filter MGT or OcUK

Password is overclockers
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Hows the server like for full on noobs?

This is first Arma iv played and dont fancy other players wanting to go all GI Joe on me :p Was going to join yesterday but had this thinking so stayed away.
 
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