2.3 update

Medivac

Doggin' at a spot near you
- v2.3 - AA:SF (Q-Course) /Supposed to be fall 2004/
* Players who successfully complete SFAS during the summer and fall will advance to Special Forces Qualification Course (Q-Course) missions to explore new roles such as 18D � Medical Sergeant, 18B - Weapons Sergeant, 18C � Engineer Sergeant, 18E - Communications Sergeant, and 18F � Intelligence Sergeant. As players successfully complete each phase of the Q-Course they will gain new attributes and capabilities that will propigate across operational missions in America�s Army.[Dev]nXain wrote:
"Q-Course" is a major expansion focusing on the SF experience. It is due out in the fall of 2004.
[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
v2.3 will include 3 new weapons (one of which will indeed be the 'door breacher').
[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
A couple of the maps for v2.3 are going to have some sweet urban combat.
[Dev]DJ-MonkeyBoy wrote:
Yes and we hope to improve the old ones. In the near future SF training of ODAs will be expanded. For example in Q-Course there is Language Training where players will learn critical components of the America's Army "OPFOR" (Opposing Force) language. Players will also go through SFAUC (Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat) training, which is modeled after actual Special shoot house environments. There is also SF Weapons Familiarization where players will learn how to employ new Special Forces weapons within the game.
[Dev]Cyan wrote:
Q-Course weapons: At E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) this last May, we unveiled the PDM (Pursuit Deterrent Munitions), Door Breacher and BDM (Bunker Defeating Munition). The PDM is a frag grenade that you can drop on the ground which sends out small trip-wires and detonates if anything moves through the proximity of the munition. When the PDM is triggered, it pops up about 5 feet in the air and detonates. These can be tripped with other grenades, bullets, M203 grenades and rockets. The Door Breacher consists of duct tape, det-cord (which is a tube of explosives) and fuses. The Door Breacher is taped to a door and automatically blows up after three seconds. There is a very small kill radius on the outside of the door where the Door Breacher is taped to it, but on the inside, there is a large arc referred to as a "cone of death". The BDM is modeled as a really large AT4 / RPG rocket and does about twice the damage. The BDM is not for use against human targets and will not benefit the player unless it is used against a destroyable wall or building. It will destroy walls or small buildings to gain access to areas that were previously blocked off and will add different routes to change the flow of gameplay but cannot be used to kill players.
[Dev]Kermit wrote:
As a major innovation, players will experience an infinite number of gameplay scenarios with the implementation of random spawns, random objectives, and carryable objectives. Players will be able to employ new weapons and systems such as the Door Breacher, the Bunker Defeat Munition, and the Pursuit Deterrent Munition. In addition we will have new training missions in language and weapons familiarization allowing players to take on all the roles in a Special Forces.
As far as the UT2004 code, one of the features that we're particularly excited about is the Voice Over IP feature. We're planning on tying this in to the squad organization to really emphasize teamwork and leadership. One other note, as you probably know, UT2004 also added vehicles to the Unreal Engine. Unfortunately, I can tell you now that Q-Course will not have vehicles in it. After that though...well, you'll just have to wait and see ;-)
[Dev]technoloG wrote:
America's Army is a team-based, tactical game. With that in mind, communication is critical to a team's success. Fortunately, we use a great core technology - the Unreal Technology, and the latest updates have included in-game VOIP capabilities! This will be implemented in our Q-Course version.
 

Medivac

Doggin' at a spot near you
- v2.4 - AA:SF (Overmatch) /Supposed to be in Spring 2005/
* AI, driveable vehicles, heavy weapons, new gameplay elements.[Dev]nXain wrote:
"Overmatch" is a major expansion focusing on the SF's ability to control the battle space when faced with superior numbers of Opfor. It is scheduled for the spring of 2005.
[Dev]nXain wrote:
Our primary goal in designing the Overmatch release is to bring a taste of how the Army really fights battles into the game. Overmatch is about a group of well trained soldiers using their training and resources to dominate the battlefield despite being outnumbered in men or materials. Achieving this means taking a very different approach to creating the Overmatch levels than what we've done before and thinking of vehicles and heavy weapons as very important strategic resources that must be used intelligently. I'll put it another way... you don't want to loose your Humvee to enemy fire. It'll put a hurting on your ability to accomplish the mission, not to mention getting home after the battle.
We will not be following the current game design fad by loading up the game with all kinds of vehicles that you can jump in and instantly become a one man armor offensive. There are a lot of examples of that approach available right now in the marketplace (some of them very fun and some not so fun...) Overmatch will include vehicles and heavy weapons in a limited way that keeps the game infantry-centric for the players, offers mobility and access to items that can't normally be carried around, and expands the types of encounters players will have on the battlefield. You'll need this as the enemy will have some pretty heavy hitting weaponry on his side aimed at you.
In the long term (past Overmatch), I think it's fair to say one of the underlaying goals of the project is to continue to expand the battlefield playspace and to make it more and more represenative of the Army experience while keeping the game in tune with the realistic paradigm that has been successful for it so far. Since the Army has such incredible ability to be anywhere with whatever firepower it needs to fight and win, this is going to be an ongoing challenge for us devs.
[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
Expect to see several useable vehicles in 'Overmatch'. They will be designed to be as realistic as possible (yet still be fun) and their use in-game is designed to closely resemble the way the real U.S. Army uses these vehicles.
[Dev]blaster5k wrote:
Since Overmatch will offer a new mode of play, it's safe to assume that there will be new scenarios for you. What they will be, or how many, I'll leave it up to you to wonder about. :)
[Dev]skyhuntr wrote:
The SF variant of the HMMWV will appear in Overmatch in 2005.
[Dev]nXain wrote:
The Stryker will not go into the public of "America's Army" until after version 2.3, "Overmatch" (to be released next year.) That release will introduce heavy weapons and vehicles to the game. More infomation on future releases and included features will be released during development later this year. //NOTE: old post - shift it to 2.4//
[Dev]Cyan wrote:
The version Overmatch will include a much more robust implementation of AI than America�s Army has seen before, and will most likely work in the co-operative mode. AI is not something that can just be made quickly and takes a tremendous effort. A lot of design and quality control goes into getting AI seamless and implementing it in such a way that the outcome is a quality, bug free, realistic and immersive experience for the player. It may be implemented differently per level depending on the design most suited for that level.
 

Medivac

Doggin' at a spot near you
Future Maps and Trainings:
- SF Blizzard, SF Extraction, SF Compound
- SF Hospital XE, SF Sandstorm XE ( ? XE - Random spawn points ? )
- SF SnG, Hanklin Live Fire Range, ? SF Water Treatment ?
- Language Training, Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat Training, SF Weapons Familiarization (Training in Q-Course)
New maps spotted in ASE, bye PsychePsyche: (Map names ARE case sensitive)
- Slum & Havoc /Running version 2.2.1/
Current beta version is 2.2.7.[Dev]DJ-MonkeyBoy wrote:
In the near future SF training of ODAs will be expanded. For example in Q-Course there is Language Training where players will learn critical components of the America's Army "OPFOR" (Opposing Force) language. Players will also go through SFAUC (Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat) training, which is modeled after actual Special shoot house environments. There is also SF Weapons Familiarization where players will learn how to employ new Special Forces weapons within the game.
[Dev]Cyan wrote:
I have been working on a CQB (Close Quarter Battle) urban mission in my own time between maps I had to release for a couple of months now. It just recently became part of the next release, SF Q-Course and I am now getting art and code feature support from the rest of the guys on the team. The map is based in a foreign city in the middle of a factory-warehouse district. The Assault spawn out on the street and in the alleyways around the edges of the building they must Assault. The Defense spawn inside and must protect the objectives down in the lower levels of the building from the Assault. The setting is based at night, with the use of Nightvision Goggles. It has not been decided whether this will be SF-IF, SF Exclusive or Rangers. There is long distance advanced marksmen, close quarter room clearing and large outdoor gameplay included in this map. The BETA team is really enjoying it and have remarked that the community will love it.


Weapons:
- M4A1 Sopmod - laser, flashlight, thermal scope (ANPVS10), ? bayonett ?
[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
Unfortunately, you most likely not see the M4A1 SOPMOD side rail mods in this version of the game. However, they can likely show up in a future 'next gen' version of America's Army. We experimented with side rail mods for a while and we found that they were going to take a ton of development time to do right while not really doing that much for the player in-game.
[Dev]technoloG wrote:
We would like to redo many of our older weapons. This means not only graphical and animation updates, but functionality updates as well. We have access to some of the most realistic information from the U.S. Army, which we use to design all aspects of our game. So, if the M249 is moddable in real life, you can be sure that it will make it into America's Army at some point.
- 3D-Ironsights for all weapons
- Remington 870 Shotgun, MP5SD6 & CZ-61 "Scorpion"[Dev]Kermit wrote:
We added some stuff for the MP5 awhile ago, as a test, but then decided against adding them - kind of like what happened with the shotgun. That's not to say we're never going to add the MP5 or the shotgun, just that we're not working on it now, so don't expect it in the next few releases.

- Door Breacher - explosive charge to open doors
- BDM - shoulder-fired bunker demolition muniton (no official statement)
- PDM mine (Pursuit Deterrent Ammunition)
- XM25 - XM25 Air Burst Assault Weapon (AAFA - Future Application)
- Javelin - man-portable, shoulder-fired, anti-vehicle weapon (AAFA - Future Application)
- TALON Robot - all-terrain, all-weather, radio-controlled robot to destroy explosive devices (AAFA - Future Application)


Vehicles:
- Stryker Interim Armored Vehicle, HMMWV (Humvee)
- Apache Helicopter
- ? Jeep & M2/M3 Bradley IFV/AFV ? (found in the texture files)
- UH-60, FMTV and HMMT trucks
Jerry Heneghan wrote:
We are also adding FMTV and HMMT trucks. Our government applications will also soon have UH-60 helicopters for troop transport.
Tribnet.com wrote:
Chambers and Heneghan said their team is looking far down the road, beyond Special Forces, even beyond Stryker, to the next version of the game. They talk about many kinds of vehicles that could be included and smile slyly as they allude to aircraft.



Other:
- Nade loadout changes are being discussed to find the best sollution to keep AA realistic:SitRep wrote:
A final note on grenade allocation on certain maps (yes, we do read your feedback in the forum!) We've gotten a lot of feedback from the Community regarding your concerns of "nade spamming" and the impact this has on gameplay. We concur. While the grenade loadout changes in AA:SF (Downrange) are consistent with this feedback, it should only be considered as an temporary fix. In the interim, we are devising solutions that will render impotent the issue with "nade spamming". More to follow...


- Single player componenet:phillip Bossant wrote:
We are seriously interested in making a single player and cooperative mode part of the America�s Army game. We have always felt that this would be a very natural and desirable addition to the game. They would certainly lend themselves well to communicating Army Values and provide players with a greater variation of game play objectives and styles. First we would have to implement a decent AI system of course but we are exploring this and would like to see these playing modes in future iterations of the game. The Overmatch release will feature our first advances in this area.


- Stryker:[Dev]nXain wrote:
The fully functional Stryker will not make its debut until sometime in the future (most likely after release 2.3.) //NOTE: old post - shift it to 2.4//


- In-Game Voice Communications - VOIP (Voice Over IP):[Dev]Kermit wrote:
It is something we would like to add in the upcoming release. However, we haven't yet looked really in-depth into how the UT2004 VOIP stuff works. Assuming that getting it working is not more difficult than we estimated it to be, we will have it done for the next major release.
[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
VOIP is something we defintely want to see in America's Army soon. And yes, it will contain all the standard voice chat features (such as: muting players, 'dead' channels and 'alive' channels, etc.).
[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
We hope to have this ready by v2.3. It will bring teamwork and in-game communication to a whole new level. The VOIP implementation will feature all the standard features you would expect, such as muting players, separate channels, no ghosting possibilities, etc.
[Dev]DJ-MonkeyBoy wrote:
In the near future adding voice over IP will greatly enhance teamwork, but we still hope to add more. We are considering other incentives as well.


- Game Engine & Physics :[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
We are currently finishing up the laborious code merge to the UT2004 game engine (UE2.5 or UnrealEngine2.5). This new code base to America's Army will be debuted in v2.3 and will inherently bring with it game optimizations, bug fixes, new features, etc. For example, in our preliminary testing, in some cases we are seeing almost double the frame rates on some maps. During this code merge we are revisiting several of the games core components, i.e. the game's UI (user interface) is being totally rewritten. The minimum system specs for AA v2.3 will not increase and in fact the game will most likely run better on most systems than before. A little background on Epic Games Unreal Technology: We started the game using the UE2 (UnrealEngine2) which was unfinished at the time of the game's original development for AA v1.0. We then performed a code merge into the UT2003 code (which was an enhanced UE2) for AA v1.6. We are now integrating the game engine with the UT2004 code base (UE2.5) for AA v2.3. However, when we start development on the UE3 game engine, we will not 'merge' the code from this engine. We will have to start from scratch to build a new (and very improved) America's Army game.
If and when we build an America's Army game on the UE3 (UnrealEngine3) game engine - it will be a totally new game from scratch. That game engine is going to be far advanced of what we are currently using that you could not simply 'port' the game over to that engine. Yes, this will include all new textures, models, maps, etc.
[Dev]Kermit wrote:
As of SF Downrange, the Karma physics engine has been integrated in the game and is being used for ragdoll physics. In future versions, we may be using the Karma physics engine for other things, such as for realistic physics to background objects, and maybe even for adding drivable vehicles to America's Army.
However, the company behind the Karma engine is no longer in business, so Epic has partnered with NovodeX AG to provide the physics engine for the next generation of the Unreal Engine (UE3). This will not affect America's Army as long as we are working on the current Unreal Engine (UE2.5). As soon as we begin development on a version of America's Army that uses UE3, naturally we will begin to use the NovodeX physics engine.
[Dev]Cyan wrote:
Karma Physics was introduced and released in the Downrange patch and has been a success from the feedback I have seen from the community. It does not seem to affect frame rate or slow down the rendering of the game at any time and we have gotten a lot of praise for the quality of the effects of Karma in America's Army. There are currently no plans to add Karma Physics to every object in the game, however, it is possible that we may implement Karma with some selected objects other than bodies.


- Dynamic Weather:[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
Expect to see this feature debut in v2.3 (another benefit of UT2004 code base)
[Dev]Psychopod wrote:
The UT2k4 engine merge gives us Xemitters which will allow cool weather effects. We're working on implementing them now in certain maps.
[Dev]technoloG wrote:
That is a great question (re: dynamic weather). However, it would be sowe work to make it change each time you play.


- Improving 'Personal Jacket':[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
As developers we definitely want to explore integrating more 'RPG elements' into a First-Person Action game. The U.S. Army experience provides a great template for us to use in accomplishing this. The 'Honor System' was the beginning of this and we want to expand on that system. Eventually, we would like your game experience as a specific MOS in-game to closely mirror your experiences, skills, and responsibilities to your team as they are in the real Army. Due to the complex infrastructure that needs to be in place in the game code to support these features, most of these game features will most likely show up in our future 'next gen' versions of America's Army.
[Dev]technoloG wrote:
The immediate answer is no; however, we would like to implement this feature in the future. Many of these new features have been in design at some point. It's just a matter of priorities: we have make decisions on what to focus our efforts on for each release. While we cannot please everyone with every release, we do our best to balance out new features with tweaks and updates.


- Random Spawn + A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
Random spawn points, random objectives, and even roaming AI civilians are all features on our wish list too. America's Army is not going anywhere, so I'm hopeful that these features will make it into the game at some point in the future.
 

Medivac

Doggin' at a spot near you
- SF theme:[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
We are still currently developing with the SF theme (it hasn't even been a year since we started on SF). So you can expect v2.2 and v2.3 to continue and possible complete the America's Army: Special Forces theme. However, we are not opposed to creating more Ranger, Infantry, and Airborne maps in the future. In fact, we love those older missions too, and those units are equally important in the Army as well. We would also like to do another SF-Exclusive map in the future too.


- Bipod on edges:[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
Never say never....
Resting bipods on objects while standing or crouched is a feature we would love to see in the game too. It's not on the plate for v2.2, but that certainly doesn't mean it will never be in AA.


- Modding AA:[Dev]AceKilla wrote:
We have been discussing releasing the map editor for some time now. However, no final decisions have been made yet. We would like to release it eventually, but it must be handled with sensitivity to many issues. We need to make sure there are security features in place to help protect the U.S. Army from being 'officially' represented by user made content. We have some ideas on how this could be accomplished, but they need to be fully flushed out. If we did release the map editor, it might be released concurrently with a community map making contest - where maybe the winner's maps are made 'official'?
Phillip Bossant wrote:
This is something under consideration at the present and we all feel that this would be a positive development. There are many details to work out before such a thing could take place but we are exploring this possibility.


- Footprints:[Dev]Kermit wrote:
Actually, I think footprints would be pretty cool ;-)
We actually at one point started working on some code to add footprints, but it never got completely finished.
To be honest, footprints really wouldn't be that hard, and most systems really wouldn't suffer much performance penalty if we did add them...but there are a lot of cool little things that are like that, we can't do them all :p


- Jungle Map:[Dev]Psychopod wrote:
Due to the technological constraints of the unreal engine, a jungle map is the absolute hardest style of map we could try to make. Trees & foliage require us to use alpha mapped textures for the leaves and branches. Whenever you can see through an alpha mapped object to another alpha mapped object, you get overdraw, which is effectively re-rendering that texture and everything past it.
A jungle has lots of trees & foliage. It would create too much overdraw and the framerate would be totally unacceptable. For an example of how trees can slow down FPS, just play some SF Arctic. We really pushed our limits on that map with tree count, and the number of trees in there dont compare to what we would do with a jungle setting. Arctic's framerate would be significantly higher without trees.
Bottom line: Trees & foliage are too much fo a resource hog for us to make a jungle map at this point in time.
Maybe in the future. The Devs would definitely enjoy making one
 
few interesting things there!

As developers we definitely want to explore integrating more 'RPG elements' into a First-Person Action game. The U.S. Army experience provides a great template for us to use in accomplishing this. The 'Honor System' was the beginning of this and we want to expand on that system. Eventually, we would like your game experience as a specific MOS in-game to closely mirror your experiences, skills, and responsibilities to your team as they are in the real Army. Due to the complex infrastructure that needs to be in place in the game code to support these features, most of these game features will most likely show up in our future 'next gen' versions of America's Army.
is the most interesting bit to me personally - be nice to develop characters beyond Honor...
This scares me though:
In-Game Voice Communications
brief experience of UT2004 voice thingie was of squeeky voiced elves screaming "STFU u noooob" at each other.

Modding Option if limited to people being able to amke their own maps'd be a good thing i think - though I'd be warey of people exploiting it eg a mod of pipeline with a secret exit onto the roof maybe...
 
Yeah, nothing more cringe-inducing than being spanked by someone who wasn't alive when you started playing games. :D


"Oh yeah? Well Santa Claus doesn't exist!"
 
Student H. Christ said:
Yeah, nothing more cringe-inducing than being spanked by someone who wasn't alive when you started playing games. :D

makes mental note never ever to play with Rorsh, Emmon, Artanix... etc etc again. * FYI when you were a foetus I was happily getting up early before school and playing games on mi Dragon 32 (later upgraded to Dragon 64 :badger: )
 
Corwin said:
Dragon 32? you posh ****

not really - was a very crap computer when all was said and done - I made do with it and enjoyed a some of the games but i'd have killed for a speccy or c64 like what all my little chums had - but mi dad HADto listen to a bloke from work rather than me. lament. lament.
The Dragon was mainly limited by its 3 choices of colour settings: black/white OR green/red/blue/yellow OR ( and this was the most revolting colour set you've ever seen...) cyan/magenta/puce/white. Also - I can never forgive them for coming up with the iconic hero Cuthbert:
 

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