The Fighting TTLGers present: Arma 3 (a TTLG Coop Saturdays spin-off) - by Thirith
Thirith on 21/3/2021 at 16:05
On a different note: we've been using more helicopters recently, and I've found this guy's heli keybinds to be a real improvement on the game's default keybinds. He does recommend some kind of headtracking, and while I have that myself,* it's obviously not something I'd recommend to anyone to get just for Arma unless they're likely also to use it in other games. The keybinds, though, will give you better control over helicopters than the default settings.
[video=youtube;Kjwz5qRDhV4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjwz5qRDhV4[/video]
*In my case it's courtesy to the Tobii 5, which offers both eyetracking and headtracking without the need to wear a sensor. I know that Malf has had issues with Tobii's peripherals, though. TrackIR works pretty well, but I find the sensors to be quite the faff, and I don't particularly like the headtracking when you're playing as an infantry unit.
Thirith on 3/4/2021 at 16:43
Though we had a decent-sized team of six people, with Briareos H, Demagogue, henke, Jeshibu, Malf and myself, today's session was a mixed bag, with us facing meatgrinder missions and technical problems. The first two missions brought us up against enemies with X-ray vision, and way too many of them, as we tried to first bust a drug operation on Tanoa and then rescue and extract a VIP in wintry Chernarus.
The third mission was one of the tried and trusted Dynamic Recon Ops, and while it's always a bit of a faff to grab the right equipment, these missions much more reliably produce playable, fun missions. We survived an airfield assault near Zargabad, blew up an enemy radio tower, then took out a local HVT called "Goblin" (with a name like this, I guess he was fated to die at the hands of a player group) and finally stole an enemy vehicle - though, as Malf drove off, I got shot in the back and only barely made it out alive.
Thanks to everyone for the session - I hope you enjoyed it, in spite of the overly brutal two first missions. I enjoyed hanging out with everyone (when we weren't getting cut to ribbons) and I'm looking forward to the next game, which will probably be in two weeks' time. I'll confirm here and on Steam, as always.
Public service announcement: For those of you who ran into the problem with the 'H' key not bringing up the medical menu, go to your Settings --> Common and delete the binding for "Last Help". It's not like you ever need those in the first place. If you think you might, you can always set it to Ctrl+H or something.
Thirith on 4/4/2021 at 14:52
I've not yet had a chance to look at the video I recorded yesterday and I'll be away for a week, so I can't say yet whether I'll manage to put together a video of yesterday's chaotic and often gruelling session. However, I can already announce the next
Arma 3 coop session
Quote:
Date: Sat, 17 April
Time: 3-6pm UK timeAs always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's online.
Malf on 4/4/2021 at 16:53
I was thinking about your video recordings yesterday Thirith, and how the new medical system might impact them (long periods of downtime with nothing but a black screen and only the voices of those nearest to you seem to be quite common recently!)
I think I asked before, but is there any functionality in ARMA 3 like Quake 3's demo recording?
In Quake 3 (and the previous Quakes), you could issue a command to record a "demo" during gameplay, whereupon the game would record all gameplay telemetry to a small file. After you'd finished playing, you could then load up that demo file and switch between player viewpoints at any point, even moving the camera around freely.
Finally, you could render it out to a video file, retaining all of your viewpoint switches and camera moves at the highest graphical quality.
If ARMA 3 supports something like that, that would strike me as being the best way for you to put videos together (alhough my brain itches when I try to understand how third-party, modded voice comms could be recorded by such a feature).
The only alternative is asking everybody to start recording at the beginning, then sending you the (large) video files post-game.
Thirith on 6/4/2021 at 08:48
It's not impossible to record
Arma games like that, it seems, but it's definitely not easy; I'm only aware of the biggest YouTube channel that does
Arma content doing it very rarely. ((
https://youtu.be/5CC9gmF2re0) The guy does a neat analysis of a recent mission here.)
At the same time, it's actually easier to edit around the ACE3 unconscious state than it is with other health/medical systems, where you still see your surroundings but have little control over where you're looking. You can cut on a black screen quite easily.
I also have to say that without considerably more work on the videos I prefer to go for a condensed version of what it was like to be in the mission, which includes the fixed perspective (i.e. mine). Doing something more intercut could be cool, but it would be massively more work, taking more time than I want to put into these. It'd be different if I was better at editing, probably, but I don't think I'm ever going to be good enough at it to warrant putting in three times as much work.
demagogue on 6/4/2021 at 10:06
The whole process could use being sped up just a bit, on the order of the old system with the little dial.
And it's already a mod so it can't be too hard to, you know, mod.
Thirith on 6/4/2021 at 10:28
I'll see to what extent I can tweak the settings to speed it up, but I have to say I wouldn't feel confident enough to mod the mod - it is highly complex, and Arma is an extremely fickle beast to begin with. It's so easy to break something, and we'd have to test every tweak on a dedicated server.
Saturday's session was also not the best intro to ACE3, with two gruelling, meatgrindery missions. I think we had a better time of it the last time we played, though we will have to take stock of what ACE brings to the table once we've played with it for a couple of sessions.
Anarchic Fox on 11/4/2021 at 16:34
Quote Posted by Thirith
I also have to say that without considerably more work on the videos I prefer to go for a condensed version of what it was like to be in the mission, which includes the fixed perspective (i.e. mine). Doing something more intercut could be cool, but it would be massively more work, taking more time than I want to put into these. It'd be different if I was better at editing, probably, but I don't think I'm ever going to be good enough at it to warrant putting in three times as much work.
Yeah, if y'all had yourselves a (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3pU0VqEFVs) Soviet Womble knockoff, I bet the videos would be fantastic.
Thirith on 17/4/2021 at 18:29
In spite of connectivity issues, I had a great time at today's session, which was joined by henke, Malf and Demagoggles. We had three objectives to complete on the beautiful island of Altis: assassinating an HVT, destroying a weapons cache and capturing and interrogating an enemy officer. Well, we completed two out of three. We also shot Malf in the head just to be able to patch him up and put him in the helicopter while he was off IRL for a phone call (you can't put conscious units in a chopper, they have to do that themselves).
We also tried out Close Air Support by A-10 Warthog and heavy artillery shelling, which may account for us not finding the enemy officer: chances are he'd been blowing into tiny little bits. Good times!
Thirith on 18/4/2021 at 17:07
I'd planned to make a video of yesterday's session, since it had everything: mid-air collisions, heavy artillery, A-10 strafing runs, AH-64 Apache attacks... but it turns out that the video I recorded didn't use my actual mic to record my own audio, so I'm just silent for the entire three hours. It probably thought it was better to record via the Oculus Rift mic, even though the headset wasn't plugged in...
... but I did make a short video of henke finding out that you do indeed crash if you fly into the Altis power lines.
[video=youtube;7jEoXxgcP_o]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jEoXxgcP_o[/video]
Also, I'll be doing the next
Arma 3 coop session in two weeks:
Quote:
Date: Sat, 1 May
Time: 3-6pm UK timeAs always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's online.