Outerra forum
Outerra Engine => Off Topic => Topic started by: Blackhawk998 on May 20, 2011, 11:21:14 am
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Well, since no one else has posted on here from what I can see, I figured I might as well do it. Considering all the billions of times that people have gone on about how Arma 3 should use the Outerra engine. Anyway here it is:
http://www.arma3.com/
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Yea, we noticed the PR enhancement action that BIS was doing us :D
But Arma3 is too soon for the technology ... and given how happy their players are now, and how mediocre their competition is, I feel nothing really bad would happen even if Arma4,5 were on the same RV engine.
Unless there's something better coming, of course :)
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I was going to post aboot A3 and how it seems rushed and fail and colorless. I love the arma series. I love it because it tries to be realistic. You run and jump realistically (ie don't jump at all.) I love it because the map(singular) is huge... lol. And I love it most of all because most call of duty players don't.
Now behind all that love is a wall. A wall I have built to hold back the rage and hatred I hold for the game(sim) in secrecy. The AI is loathsome. No other game has the contrast between enemy accuracy and path-finding ability so widely stretched. The AI thread on Bohimia's site is filled with hundreds of posts complaining how the AI has killed them from 1000 meters out from a helicopter while they were running through a wood. It is also filled with posts by me expressing the ... disappointment with Ai path-finding and utter retardation that the AI seem to possess.
Example. I have 20 AI soldiers and or 8 AI tanks (I roll armor). I give a command to all my AI to go to Chernogorsk. What they do now is try to go in number order. And I don't mean try. I mean they take all FUC__NG DAY to shuffle around and proceed at a slow pace to where I point them in order.
That means literally 8-9 mnutes to go from this
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v504/F12Bwth2/th_AIBunched.jpg) (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v504/F12Bwth2/AIBunched.jpg)
To this
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v504/F12Bwth2/th_AIOrdered.jpg) (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v504/F12Bwth2/AIOrdered.jpg)
You can get around this by selecting every AI or AI driver and individually sending them to a destination. But that is more work for me and doesn't guarantee they show up at the same time which strategically, is a real problem. So usually I have to send them just outside a town and hope they aren't picked off one by one on the way there because they will spread out 200-500 meters apart.
So now that AI is dealt with lets get on the the VR engine. I HATE IT. LOD may as well phone it in. Tests have been run to show it is usually a disk problem and you need a fast hard drive to remove the LOD lag. Not just fast, a damned RAM-DISK.. The word optimization must not translate into Czech very well as they haven't done it. Server instability creeps up over a few hours and starts breaking things. The lack of real physics make vehicles a joke. And even with a 9 mile by 9 mile map flying a jet at realistic speeds means constant circles.
The last complaint Ill dish out is the desaturated color spectrum the series is progressing too. Arma 1 was OK, Palm trees and white sands, green forests and blue sky.
Arma 2 is set in the fall in a Bulgarian country. So dull may be the case but I doubt no vibrant color exists in all the country. Its a sepia filter over earth tones. I have even seen a user made patch to apply to OA that removes the exaggerated color correction but why it is there in the first place is beyond me.
Now Arma3 gets some screenshots released and I swear I don't even see the sun. Was it stormy in this shot? I can't tell.
(http://www.arma3.com/screenshots/scr01.jpg)
Sounds are good, effects are good after some modding. The games controls are sometimes un-responsive but also completely customizable. Me being an arrow keys man I customize every key on most games but Arma2 is a special challenge with double tap, hold and modifier keys. Not to mention my wheel and pedals and joystick get involved. Using my gas pedal to run/walk based on how far I push it frees up some keys.. And Outerra needs analog movement support!!
FOV is also infinitely adjustable so going triplehead can be an exciting event more-so then other FPS. It does screw up many elements of the UI such as the compass but I am sure a mod could correct this.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyHeYrFuCcw[/video]
So.. 13 months from now will I buy arma3. It is entirely dependent on the arma mod community and the state of OT. Even a tatra and a pistol vs bunny rabbits and moose makes a superior military sim to all of arma as long as it is in Outerra.
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A good reading :)
Well, what can I say. The engine - it's the usual terrain paging engine with apparently not so good LOD management. The thing is, someone must model every thing there first, then it gets packed and the engine must be able to stream all the assets as you go. Getting an effective LOD from this representation is not the easiest thing under the sun.
Comparing that with OT: LOD management first, procedural content, vector data representation that scales.
And I really dislike the desaturated colors in games too. And what's worse, we've had people telling us that we should desaturate the colors in OT just because it's oh-so-modern.
Vrrr, as Angrypig says. When he's more like an Angrydog.
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@ZeosPantera: iam with you for most of your points, but not about the oversaturated colors you mentioned.
if you load the maps in the editor and dont add the "environment color" module or add color corrections, you have natural and rich colors.
most of the campaigns, missions, screenshots and movies use color correction effects and most of the time pretty heavy color corrections wich are looking unrealistic tough.
if you install CAA project and launch Sahrani in ArmA II you will notice that the colors looks exactly the same as in arma 1.
edit: the arma 3 screens have realy strange coloring, but iam sure that its just color corrections for the screens, the island itself will have realistic colors for sure. bohemia uses color corrections to underline the story/setting of the given game, in this case it has to have this desperate greyish look. but i realy hope we will get some screens of the island itself soon, the mediterane feeling is definitely not present in the screenshot (and not intended).
@Cameni: yep the PR enhancement went pretty well for you guys, i come from OFP/ArmA/ArmA II too :)
the main advantage of outerra would be the realistic size of the environment compared to the buildings and vehicles, Zeos is definitely right that this looks and feels soooo bad in arma series...
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(http://www.vgcats.com/comics/images/070119.jpg)
Best Comic Ever
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ha! I h-ATE bloom...biggest piece of crap invention- well it just got abused. It's the games industry's equivalent of the music industry's autotune. :rolleyes:
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ha! I h-ATE bloom...biggest piece of crap invention- well it just got abused. It's the games industry's equivalent of the music industry's autotune. :rolleyes:
Ya one game of bad company 2 and your eyes go bleeding.
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ArmA 3, looks like they want to recycle ArmA 2 with better graphics and have me spend tons of money to run it pretty.
No, i wont. Im tired of graphics hurting my gaming, i need gameplay and optimisation.
Bit like Outerra, by the looks anyway.
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Pretty Colorful looking from the E3 footage.. [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R8hWxgFMfY[/video]