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When the Arma 3 Epoch mod is released..


ToejaM

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For all those people talking about military hardware not vanishing, (most of) you are two things in the apocalypse, dead and the actual cause of this vanishing hardware. People seem to forget that it takes a lot of time and practice to learn to fly a jet or a helicopter, maybe a little prop plane isn't so tough but that isn't military now is it ;) 

 

So you all go running to these places for the Military stuff and either blow your own face off with a weapon you cant handle, or crash trying to take off / fly / drive / land a military vehicle. With so little knowledge of how to use and maintain these things they would not vanish, but be destroyed or rendered unusable very quickly. The key thing to remember also is that there would only be a small amount of these things in some places like Chernarus, (things do not respawn in real life) so most of it would end up out of circulation very quickly also.

 

Personally I hope for a more gritty survival game with dayz epoch, gathering whatever supplies you can, in whatever way you can. Where a tin of food more valuable than any gun.

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  • 4 weeks later...

It would be great if the Devs made the game with realism/hardcore settings available to all via a toggle system....for example, any community hosting the game should be able to select between self bloodbag-aided bloodbag, or AS50s on or off.....you get the picture.

If all the modded scripts that we saw enhance Epoch A2 were available by simply selecting on or off, then you'd have one hell of a popular game on your hands.

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It would be great if the Devs made the game with realism/hardcore settings available to all via a toggle system....for example, any community hosting the game should be able to select between self bloodbag-aided bloodbag, or AS50s on or off.....you get the picture.

If all the modded scripts that we saw enhance Epoch A2 were available by simply selecting on or off, then you'd have one hell of a popular game on your hands.

 

That's what makes the ArmA community special, it has so many scripts and addons, all optional.

The Epoch Devs should focus on the core base code, anything else is for server admins to decide if they want.

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We know that already, but why in earth would it be a bad idea for the game to come with them already installed? I don't get your logic here.

The toggle system could help people like me run a server without having any knowledge of coding or scripting. Currently you need to be clued up to run modded server.

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We know that already, but why in earth would it be a bad idea for the game to come with them already installed? I don't get your logic here.

The toggle system could help people like me run a server without having any knowledge of coding or scripting. Currently you need to be clued up to run modded server.

 

One very simple reason is that adding them to Epoch means the team will need to support all those extra features. 

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Support all those extra features? The game is built on features is it not?

What I'm saying is any features that some servers use and others don't, like god zone, could be written into the game but with the ability to simply turn them on or off.

From reading this forum I can think of several love or hate features.....

God Zones.

Self blood bagging.

First person third person.

High end guns.

High end vehicles.

Then there's other features that would allow server owners to determine how hardcore they want their server, such as....

Refuelling at stations/ rely on jerry cans.

Towing & lifting.

Destructible or none destructible bases.

Etc etc....

Why, if the above are written into the game, would they need any extra attention than the standard features just because they can be turned on/off? I really don't get it.

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While I agree somewhat about the military side of it, the practicality of air transport would be overruled in the time spent in maintenance a couple of things apply. Skills are learned and taught, so it is conceivable that anything could be learned. 

 

Firearms are easy to operate and maintain. A road licence to drive a tank in the UK can be obtained in 3 days or less including training. Russian military hardware in particular was designed with ease of maintenance in the field. Any military presence would mean enough spares, munitions to keep the force garrisoned there.  To the point of military sim, hate to disappoint you all the hardware from Arma 2 is already in Epoch its up to server owners to allow what they want and Epoch makes a great platform for a post apocalypse zombie game with armour. Don't judge until you take a horde out with some artillery. 

 

I can pretty much guarantee if the world was to end tomorrow I could find a firearm, ammo, body armour and a lightly armoured vehicle within 30 minutes, in a city with a population of less than 200K and little military infrastructure we have so many supermarkets that food and water isn't an issue and some of these can be found in less populated areas. Even then I would be hitting B&Q and clearing out the racks for seeds.

 

Personally if you want the pointlessly boring and gritty try Standalone from what my brother was saying it ticks most of those boxes. If Epoch was to be set some time after the event then people wouldn't be clearing out supermarkets looking for beans, or running from place to place they would have settled, fortified and be producing most of their own food. 

 

I do agree with Skydog, built in customisation is where it is at and pretty much the best thing about the current Epoch mod is that people who run servers have the ability to customise. I am not saying everything should be included and switched on by default but addons could be put forward and put on an "OK" list by the devs for inclusion and anything suspect, broken or hard to update not included. 

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Support all those extra features? The game is built on features is it not?

What I'm saying is any features that some servers use and others don't, like god zone, could be written into the game but with the ability to simply turn them on or off.

From reading this forum I can think of several love or hate features.....

God Zones.

Self blood bagging.

First person third person.

High end guns.

High end vehicles.

Then there's other features that would allow server owners to determine how hardcore they want their server, such as....

Refuelling at stations/ rely on jerry cans.

Towing & lifting.

Destructible or none destructible bases.

Etc etc....

Why, if the above are written into the game, would they need any extra attention than the standard features just because they can be turned on/off? I really don't get it.

 

First, they would need permission from the various authors to include their work in the mod. I'm sure this wouldn't be much of an issue but they've already stated before that they don't approve of many scripts because they believe these fundamentally alter their vision of Epoch gameplay...and that's fine, but it means they're not likely to add things like self-bloodbag or safezones. Any of these desired customizations are left to server owners to add. Plenty of tutorials and guides out there, you don't need to be a scripter or programmer to understand them. Most of the time, it's simply 'copy this here, and paste it there'. If people can't follow that, they probably shouldn't be managing a server anyway. Secondly, by incorporating these new features into Epoch, they are assuming responsibility for the proper function and maintenance of this code moving forward. To the end user, it's just flicking a toggle on/off, but there's a lot more that goes on in the background...that requires lots of work. Server owners already have significant control over how they want their server experience to be.

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Instead of asking for permission to use something that doesn't exist yet (I assume) on A3, couldn't they just write their own?

Or is it a case of whoever thinks of something first owns the intellectual rights to the idea?

Surely there is no God Zone scripts already in circulation for A3 is there? And even if there was, couldn't the Devs just write their own version thus not requiring permission?

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Instead of asking for permission to use something that doesn't exist yet (I assume) on A3, couldn't they just write their own?

Or is it a case of whoever thinks of something first owns the intellectual rights to the idea?

Surely there is no God Zone scripts already in circulation for A3 is there? And even if there was, couldn't the Devs just write their own version thus not requiring permission?

 

You're right, there was some Arma 2 context thrown into the thread at some point and I got the comments mixed up. So yes, if they were to add these extra types of features, they'd code it themselves. I still don't believe they'd add that type of content though. 

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You're right, there was some Arma 2 context thrown into the thread at some point and I got the comments mixed up. So yes, if they were to add these extra types of features, they'd code it themselves. I still don't believe they'd add that type of content though

 

I think you're right because I remember reading previous debates regarding God Zones and the Devs didn't appear to like them. They make perfect sense to me but that's another debate.

 

 

Nevertheless, I can't wait for it to be released, hopefully with something to replace the zombie,s as a game without an adversary would make servers with low numbers boring and defunct. For me there has to be something that attacks the survivors, whether that's wild animals, aliens, Russian mutant soldiers or flying piranha fish I couldn't care less, but it has to move from zombies as that wanker Rocket seems to think he owns the intellectual rights to anything featuring a zombie. I wouldn't mind but he ripped off the idea from The Walking Dead in the first place.

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We know that already, but why in earth would it be a bad idea for the game to come with them already installed? I don't get your logic here.

The toggle system could help people like me run a server without having any knowledge of coding or scripting. Currently you need to be clued up to run modded server.

 

 

Support all those extra features? The game is built on features is it not?

What I'm saying is any features that some servers use and others don't, like god zone, could be written into the game but with the ability to simply turn them on or off.

From reading this forum I can think of several love or hate features.....

God Zones.

Self blood bagging.

First person third person.

High end guns.

High end vehicles.

Then there's other features that would allow server owners to determine how hardcore they want their server, such as....

Refuelling at stations/ rely on jerry cans.

Towing & lifting.

Destructible or none destructible bases.

Etc etc....

Why, if the above are written into the game, would they need any extra attention than the standard features just because they can be turned on/off? I really don't get it.

 

Adding in anything means you have to QA(quality assurance) test it. If something else you add into the code breaks it you then have to figure out what went wrong. So what adding in a lot of toggle driven options would do would mean they would have to set up test servers with every possible combination of options on and off. Example for just the 4 most popular changes people make:

Self-Bloodbag: on - Tow: off - Trader God Mode: off - Plot Pole: off

Self-Bloodbag: on - Tow: on - Trader God Mode: off - Plot Pole: off

Self-Bloodbag: on - Tow: on - Trader God Mode: on - Plot Pole: off

Self-Bloodbag: on - Tow: on - Trader God Mode: on - Plot Pole: on

Self-Bloodbag: off - Tow: on - Trader God Mode: off - Plot Pole: off

Self-Bloodbag: off - Tow: on - Trader God Mode: on - Plot Pole: off

Self-Bloodbag: off - Tow: on - Trader God Mode: on - Plot Pole: on

Self-Bloodbag: off - Tow: off - Trader God Mode: on - Plot Pole: off

Self-Bloodbag: off - Tow: off - Trader God Mode: on - Plot Pole: on

Self-Bloodbag: off - Tow: off - Trader God Mode: off - Plot Pole: on

So now on each of those servers they would have to QA all the other systems in case something like having Self-Bloodbag breaks some other scroll-wheel interaction. Maybe Tow and Self-Bloodbag together break some obscure scroll wheel function. So it isn't just double the work to add a feature they didn't want in their system as an option, it is much, much, more work than double. 

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I wouldn't mind but he ripped off the idea from The Walking Dead in the first place.

 

He ripped off the idea for the latest rip off of the idea? 

1. His Zeds are infected, not "walkers" they don't shamble around and can be killed by more than brain trauma. If anything he ripped off "28 Days Later" and/or "Quarentine".

2. While "infected" zombies are a more recent thing, zombies as a metaphor for Western Homoginized Brain Dead Culture has been around for a lot longer than "The Walking Dead". When Romero dies he is going to come back and try and eat your brain for implying that anything could rip off "The Walking Dead" which is really a rip-off of his own works. ;)

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Lol Merc, it wasn't the zombies I was referring to, it was the so called 'experiment' his game was trying to achieve. Btw I think the cretin was just making that up instead of just admitting he'd like a Walking Dead scenario game.

I played DayZ before I even heard of Walking Dead, and when I finally did watch it after a friend recommended, from top to bottom everything in the show was in DayZ. The show came first, so to me he clearly ripped it off and past it on as his own. You may have guessed I can't stand the guy.

As for your technical post above,

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It's just more content that needs testing, all scenarios, and if all combinations work then you're good to go, no?

It is an exponential increase in workload... for things the mod developers don't want in their game to begin with.

Imagine I own a restaurant franchise and I have decided on a menu for that franchise that does not include Mexican food. However, when I sell my franchise to others there is a clause in it that they can add to the menu as they wish but the core dishes on the menu are what the franchise in general focusses on. So individual locations can add their own items to the menu. This is much like the setup of Epoch. 

Many people have added a Thursday Night Taco feast to the menu at their location and they think I should develop the recipes for the franchise so they don't have to figure it out and the ingredients can be added to the normal shipping route and such. However I have no interest in offering tacos. Why would I put tacos on the general franchise menu, go through all the work of setting up distributors for the products needed for those ingredients, and market test the resultant recipes to see which best represents my franchise... I don't want Mexican food. 

At least as a franchise owner I would be getting paid for it. VBAwol does this for free and doesn't want those things in his game. He is willing to make some changes to make it a bit easier for the server owners to add their own special menu items, but he is still not putting it on his menu and then crossing it off. ;)

 

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Lol Merc, it wasn't the zombies I was referring to, it was the so called 'experiment' his game was trying to achieve. Btw I think the cretin was just making that up instead of just admitting he'd like a Walking Dead scenario game.

I played DayZ before I even heard of Walking Dead, and when I finally did watch it after a friend recommended, from top to bottom everything in the show was in DayZ. The show came first, so to me he clearly ripped it off and past it on as his own. You may have guessed I can't stand the guy.

As for your technical post above,

 

"LOL" Skydogs...  :rolleyes: 

There is a Walking Dead game. It is a pretty good game by all accounts. 

I think you missed out my point that nothing in the show and DayZ is really the same. "Walkers" are undead, Infected in DayZ are not. In Walking dead you have to headshot those things to finish them. In DayZ you can shoot them in the legs enough and they will bleed out. I mean I know we have all been to the CDC offices, the walled in towns full of survivors, the prison, Hershal's farm. I remember the time when Rick used a KSVK to take out UH-1H that was spraying the group with gunfire... Oh wait... 

On top of that I was pointing out that The Walking Dead is just the latest rendition of Zombie fiction to come along and the comic book and show that came from it are simply derivatives of Romero's work right down to needing a bullet to the head to stop them. 

As I stated, if Dean copied anything it was "28 Days Later" and saying he copied The Walking Dead is laughable considering how poorly the two match up.

 

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Nice analogy there, and you hit the nail on the head when you said VbAwol doesn't want it despite most of his successful franchises having the tacos on the menu. His standard franchises however are struggling with low sales but he's not bothered because he doesn't like Mexican food.

He then sets up a new chain of restaurants and offers them as franchises, but this time, after getting feedback from the successful A2 franchises that offer chilli laden dishes, he includes them as standard in the new A3 franchises but with the ability to ommit them if the franchisee so choses.

Due to the simplicity of getting a successful restaurant off VbAwol, many people come and invest in one of his franchises. The franchises become so successful they donate some cash to reward VbAwol for his hard work and flexibility.

The franchisees that love AWOL's bog standard menu so much and mirror it in their own restaurant sadly close down after a short while because no fecker went to dine in there.

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Merc, zombies/undead aside, DayZ vanilla was about surviving the man eaters while trying to survive the environment. Players grouped up and made camps, armed themselves to the teeth, went on raids to hospitals and military camps and also fought with other survivors. Now I'm pretty sure those scenarios featured in Walking Dead too

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