VTE 2 ArmA?

[granQ]

Me and ktotte, both experienced credits stealers would like to know about any updates of VTE for ArmA.

Will it happen, any goals, plans what soever.

I could say we are eager to help out with the coding and adding features whatever.

[Snake Man]

Will it happen?
Yes.

Goals?
In the theme of VTE/WGL that all things are build correctly, configs are in order, p3ds have proper LODs, binarize errors have been tried to minimize and the usual release quality thingy that we do things "right".

Plans?
Well mostly I'm been terribly busy, Falcon 4 theaters, my campaign and now as you well know the WRP madness that exploded, since the Smiley_Nick/Deanosbeano's island I've been buried to WRP stuff all day all night. So I have been busy not dive into NAM stuff yet, but I'm having some discussions with someone who can provide weapons tweaked for ArmA. Then there is of course the question of the tools, porting VTE v0.3 (upcoming v0.4 I might add) stuff over to ArmA or having to do some/all of it from scratch.

At this moment the most important info I would say would be that because of the tool situation reality and the difference in ArmA engine/editing, VTE for ArmA will start small; it wont be the big sucker covering for everything for everybody. Further than that, I dont know what the plans are for initial stuff.

Hey, how about you helping me to port over the UH-1 Huey ingame so we can start to fly around?

[ebud]

I personally don't want any of the old stuff I worked on ported over. It is really really old, not done that well, at least not good enough for ARMA.

As for VTE Islands, I think just porting things over is definately a bad idea. The base WRP files maybe as well as some objects such as fences and whatnot, but almost no vehicles, units, weapons, etc are really good enough to port over. So my position is it's a good idea to possibly port things over to see how they work, but I would never want to release anything. Everything would pretty much need to be redone. Start small, release small self contained working packs, such as VTE_weapons1, VTE_Units1, etc.

There is no need to do 200 units right off the bat, or 10 islands, etc.

I'll be doing SEAL and VC addons along with maybe an island and a few weapons, but thats all I'll be doing on the Nam end for ARMA. Maybe a bit more to help with a few things with VTE, but I don't think I'll have the time right away to be part of any major VTE effort. I have a couple of personal projects as well the the Bushfires mod to work on.

If you really feel you must port over VTE stuff I've had a hand in such as the helos then I guess you can, but they really need redone by a good modeler. Those were done so long ago and are very inefficient for the engine.

[Snake Man]

I hear you Ebud. But also as you understand my position that I dont know nothing about ArmA editing because as I (as well alot of other people) do not have the tools and understand how the modeling goes, are you really telling me that not a single one (1) object can be ported?

If its to be start from scratch, then fine, I guess its SIMPLE decision to do if nothing else... is it easy to work on everything from ground up, ie fire up the upcoming O2 and start from empty slate... no, not easy for sure.

Personally (as I do not have the understanding and tools), I find the "YOU MUST DO EVERYTHING FROM SCRATCH!!1" attitude quite hardcore (and I'm not meaning you here, in BIS forums the known elitists modders), I mean if we must do everything from scratch, why was it then that BIS ported over so many building/vegetation objects as you can see ingame but even better on my OFP to ArmA objects topic comparison list? Oh and what CWR is doing now, porting over old islands to be used with the original BIS campaign?

Anyways, I'm not trying to arque as you know I respect your knowledge, experience and opinion, but you do have to admit I have some good points/questions here

[ebud]

I'm not trying to be a downer. The difference between a building and a helo is huge. The buildings they ported over were from resistance which were pretty well done. Look at the Jeep Cj7 that came with resistance vs something from OFP. The difference in the quality and production technique is like night and day.

Also, the tools have nothing to do with anything. For example I'll use the German mod BWM or whatever it was/is. The quality of those vehicles was amazing as well as the professional techniques used to make them. Those will port over quite nicely. They use very few textures with all of the parts UV mapped into them rather than 50 small texture slapped all over the model... like the Nam era helos. Each texture "should" have all the various texture files such as a normal map, diffuse map, specular map, etc. They don't HAVE to but why not take advantage of the new engine? Look at the RHS helo. It looks pretty good but is very taxing on the engine for various reasons that I have no clue about.

If you want to convert them, thats fine. I just think some things are better off not being ported over. I won't be porting anything over other than a few weapons for personal use like the ICP weapons pack, but most addons are better left in OFP. It's a new engine with new possibilities, why not try to take advantage of it.

Like I said, down the road I most likely will do some Seals and related addons, but not much else only due to time issues and my waning enthusiasm for modding, and thats only if BIS release example unit models. If I have to make my own I'll stop modding altogether

I don't want to try and talk you out of doing anything, I'm just saying that just from making reskins and seeing how much work it takes to get an addon up and running well as far as modeling and texturing etc I really really think the time it will suck is more than I'm willing to give to this game. I'd rather just play at this point.

[granQ]

for me i want to work like this:

a) get all config ingame in arma (this also needs work)
b) rip out everything from the normal models until they work.
c) get new models in but use the current selections, mem points and others.
d) release.

Thats how we worked with the swedish addons, i prepared a config and used the m2a2 but saved it as \sfp_strf90\sfp_strf90.p3d and the modeller could then replace stuff as he went along and I could keep working with the code, adding special effects and so on.

I personally are with ebud here on the "release only new stuff from scratch and rather few stuff then ofp imports".

I hate the hueys and esp the RHS helo (i did the importation and it sucks because of all textures and shit..). So i am waiting for eric's Mi24 that is made "correctly" and hoping we will see hueys like that.

[granQ]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 2765101175

Finaly got both guns working, now we "just" need a new model. I will keep working with the configs.

Was hoping could repeat the SEB Nam 2 release to start with and then add more as time goes.

But make a "wgl" mod, great config and the basic stuff.. then see if we can get our hands on more rare stuff like some of the tanks and so on.