Another AA3 tidbit

Anything to do with the game America's Army and our America's Army servers.
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ADF-BUNGY
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Another AA3 tidbit

Post by ADF-BUNGY »

From the AA forums:

[img]http://americasarmy.com/images/intel/aa3/aa3Logo.jpg[/img]
BoC=Gen.VMP wrote:
More intel
SAN FRANCISCO--The 2009 Game Developers Conference event is underway in sunny, windy, on-the-verge-of-rainy San Francisco, and even though the focus of the event is all the exciting panels and discussions, there are also plenty of new games on display, like America's Army 3, the Unreal engine-powered refresh of the US Army's free-to-play first-person shooter/recruiting tool. We had an opportunity to take a look at the re-envisioned game's new features and dive into an instant-action mission, and although we didn't walk away with a strangely unexplainable desire to go enlist, we do have an easily-explainable desire to talk about some of the new stuff that AA3 will have to play with.
[img width=700 height=438:1280:800]http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/20 ... een002.jpg[/img]
Be all that you can be in this Unreal-powered, free-to-play online refresh of America's Army. But try not to blow yourself up with a grenade.

Like the previous versions of the game, America's Army 3 will put you in the virtual combat boots of a new Army recruit, who must collect badges by completing various training exercises, which will unlock various equipment items (weapons, first aid kits, and so on) for your soldier to use, as well a vocational specialty, known in the services as an MOS (military occupation specialty). Among other things, America's Army 3 will incorporate a lot of feedback from the player community of the last version of America's Army (known as "2.x"), including easier downloading, installation, and interface options. America's Army 3 will be available through Valve Software's Steam service, so it should be easier to get ahold of, and your installation of the game will auto-update when you log in. And now, instead of having to memorize a bunch of different keyboard shortcuts to perform in-game stuff like readying certainl types of equipment, the new version will have an in-game radial menu that you can pull up at any time to jump to shortcut actions. In addition, accounts are being expanded so that you can have more than one soldier per account, so you can separately develop an eagle-eyed marksman and a highly specialized combat medic on the same account, if you wish. Sadly, because America's Army 3 is being presented as basically being a new game powered by new technology, any existing progress you have for any soldier characters from previous versions of the game will not be carried over. Veteran players will have a medal that appears in their account for having been a longtime supporter, but in the new game, all players will start off with a fresh-faced private who just arrived at boot camp. And this time around, the game will be set in wartime against a fictitious foreign power.

The actual game content itself has been refreshed by popular demand to be much richer in terms of player statistics.Your character's list of attributes will be greatly expanded, as will all statistics pertaining to your character's MOS and field performance. You won't just have a marksmanship tally, you'll have a marksmanship tally broken down by weapon and by body part that will show, at a glance, which weapons you're best at, what enemy body parts you tend to score the most hits on, and on what part of your body you tend to take the most fire. You'll also be able to take on a brand-new secondary MOS to further specialize your character, such as combat medic or UAV specialist (which provides extra recon info to your team), and earn some of the game's brand-new achievements--special distinctions you can earn for completing certain requirements. In addition, you can earn multiplayer achievements more than once. Beyond that, you can also further customize your soldier's weapon loadout with attachable modifications (such as various scopes and add-ons for your rifles), as well as the type and number of ammo cartridges and grenades (there will be four types of grenades--incendiary, frag, smoke, and flashbangs) your soldier will carry. America's Army 3 will have an encumbrance system that models how the weight of all your equipment; if you get greedy and hit the field with as many grenades and clips as you can get your hands on, you'll actually move more slowly and expend more endurance (which appears as a depleting white meter at the very bottom of the screen) while sprinting.
[img width=700 height=438:1280:800]http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/20 ... een003.jpg[/img]
The "bridge" layout returns in America's Army 3. Here's a hint: When trying to win on a bridge map, don't be like us. Keep your dumb head down.

Among other things, America's Army will feature enhanced tech that's a generation ahead of the previous version's look and feel. The Unreal-powered game will have more-realistic character models that are actually equipped with the items you carry into battle (if you took four grenades, you'll have four grenade pouches on your character, and if you use one, you'll pull it from its pouch, and it will no longer appear on your character model). The game's audio was recorded with the help of the US Army, which brought the development team to an actual firing range to model the sound of gunfire and explosives as heard from a variety of distances, as well as what they all sound like with a helmet on, as well as modelling the echoes of gunfire and the whine of bullet ricochets. The game is actually using Illuminate Labs' "Beast" lighting engine to add enhanced lighting effects that more-realistically model differing levels of light and shadow indoors and outdoors, as well as a visual realistic transition as you go out from in (or in from out) that models the brief, real-life instant that it takes for your eyes to adjust themselves from the changing light levels as you clamber out of a foxhole into a sunny forest, for instance. It'll also have an enhanced physics system that accurately models weapon ballistics and the impact-dampening effects of bullet penetration (such as through the flimsy wooden walls of a shack), as well as the concussive "overpressure" effect caused by using grenades indoors or at close range. A frag grenade that goes off in an enclosed area will do enhanced damage to any nearby soldiers, but the collateral overpressure damage will be procedurally mitigated by any open windows or doors in the room.

In terms of gameplay, America's Army 3 is planned to launch with three different mission types and five different environments (the "pipeline" and "bridge" environments from the previous versions will be coming back, and be joined by new environments, such as "ranch") for a potential total of 15 different map/mission combinations that will auto-limit themselves in size depending on whether you choose a smaller-scale mission with fewer players, or a larger mission with as many as 26 players in the same match. Even though there will be an "instant action" mode that lets you jump into the game without completing a single training exercise or unlocking a single badge or piece of advanced equipment, the heart and soul of the game will be multiplayer matches with experienced players who have unlocked specialized MOS roles, weapons, and other equipment for themselves.
[img]http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/20 ... een007.jpg[/img]
America's Army 3 will deploy later this year.

Prior to each online match, designated squad leader players will work together with the leader of each four-man fireteam to go over early-mission strategy, including at which spawn point on the map each fireteam will begin and each fireteam's initial move orders. It pays to stay close and stay down in America's Army 3 (we found this out the hard way after we impatiently left cover to try clomping across the bridge in a bridge map level, only to be taken down by a sniper shot moments later). Lone-wolfing it will be a bad idea not only because you'll do better with backup, but also because every soldier in America's Army 3 will possess basic CLS (combat lifesaving) training that will let any soldier revive any fallen comrade from the new "incapacitated" state once per match. Staying behind cover will be important for obvious reasons, and thankfully, you'll still be able to crouch and go prone, both from a standing position as well as from a full-on running using the new "combat slide" ability (which takes you from a sprint to a slide to a full crouch) and the new "combat dive" ability (which takes you from a sprint into a prone position), and while both crouching and lying prone, you'll be able to lean (and while lying prone, you'll be able to roll).

America's Army 3 looks like it'll offer lots of interesting new content for anyone who ever wondered what it would be like to pick up a US Army soldier's gun. It's scheduled to launch later this year.
For more go here---> http://forum.americasarmy.com/viewforum.php?f=89
or here ---> http://www.aacommand.com/article.php?id=43
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Post by ADF-BUNGY »

From the Game Developers Conference 2009:

We Just Played America's Army 3

If there's a better way to kick off the 2009 Game Developers Conference than donning virtual military fatigues and trying out the upcoming America's Army 3, we don't want to know about it.
We got a sneak peak of the upcoming America's Army 3, due out later this year. An upgrade to the Unreal 3 engine, Steam availability and a massive stack of gameplay changes will be on offer.

When America's Army was first announced way back in 2002, there were a lot of skeptical people – and I was one of them. Ignoring the issues of the army using videogames as a recruiting tool, what the hell could the US Army bring to the table in terms of a PC-based first person shooter when so many other companies were going crazy churning them out?

Well, as it turned out, quite a lot. After some slightly rocky initial releases, America's Army quickly settled into not only a solid action title, but actually became better than a lot of big commercial game releases. This could, I suppose, have had something to do with the funding of the US Army behind it, but I've always preferred to think it has been the result of solid planning, good iterative game design, an organised release schedule and clearly defined goals. And after meeting some of the guys behind the upcoming America's Army 3 at GDC and getting a sneak peek at what is on offer, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what has been going on.

[img]http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f75/b ... alley1.jpg[/img]

America's Army 3 is a significant update to the game, boasting a huge array of new features and improvements. One of the major ones is the switch to the flashy new Unreal Engine 3, which offers a whole host of visual improvements. A quick glance at the game running was enough to clearly see how much better it looks than the 2.x series – scenes have much more detail and an impressive new lighting engine creates much more realistic-looking environments.

The evidence of the visual changes is pretty clear from the screenshots, so I won't babble on about that because it's much easier to see – I will say though that the game was running super smoothly at 60fps (vsynced, obviously, but it was busting to go higher), and running around feels rock-solid and responsive. I got to see a couple of levels – basically the re-made versions of Bridge and Pipeline – and they look really impressive and a definite visual step up from 2.x.

Even the massive engine changes though almost pale in comparison to all the other new stuff that is getting crammed in. More in-depth training gives you the ability to unlock new items and skills – such as the new MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) system which will open up a new variety of secondary skills for your character. The first to be rolled out (probably in the second release of the version 3 series) will be a Combat Medic, a fairly typical medic-esque class, allowing you to revive incapacitated soldiers and heal wounded soldiers.

The incapacitation is another new feature of the game – if you're wounded badly, you hit the ground and your screen washes out grey (a la Left 4 Dead, although you can't shoot, but you're free to look around). While you're down you're basically useless, but if there's a medic around they can come up and revive you. Assuming they've can remember the process, of course – the level of detail is such that you might need to perform tasks like cleansing a wound before bandaging it, and not doing that might leave your teammate operating at sub-optimal performance.

[img]http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f75/b ... alley2.jpg[/img]

The weapon system has also gotten a makeover – you can unlock parts as part of your training and then use them to modify your base weapon. So you can pick the M4 rifle and decide to throw various scopes on the modification points (called 'rails'), giving you a custom weapon that suits your preferred combat style. There's also a new loadout selection, allowing you to pick heavy, medium or light loads – so the heavy loadout offers more ammunition at the expense of speed and increased stamina burning.

In keeping with the trends of other games, a new "Achievements" system has been added, differing slightly in that you can hit some of the Achievements multiple times. All these new achievements show up as part of the new character stats system, which has received a massive overhaul, offering detailed performance figures over the lifetime of your character – including kill/death stats with each weapon, a hit map showing where you're shooting the opposition (and in return, where you're getting shot, so you can easily figure out if you're leaving certain body parts exposed more than others), and a lot of other details. The core focus of the scoring system has remained the same – US Army values - so you'll need to stay focused on that to make progress.

Another interesting side-effect of the incapacitation system mentioned above: if you come across an incapacitated enemy, you can actually secure them, which has the same effect as killing them – it knocks them out of the round. This is worth mentioning in the context of Army values, because the natural instinct of most gamers when they see a helpless enemy target would, of course, be to hose them with bullets or knife them or put a grenade in their pocket or whatever. But – this is not in accordance with Army values, and as such is against the Rules of Engagement (ROE), so you're not going to want to do that.

[img]http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f75/b ... -44-22.jpg[/img]

The weapon system has also been enhanced. Part of the revamped ballistics system was demonstrated by turning on bullet tracking, which gives a tracer-like effect on all shots fired, and then shooting through a wall – the bullets careen off wildly in all directions. As if random bullet direction changes weren't scary enough, you now also have to worry about ricochets, demonstrated in a similar fashion – standing in a small room and hosing down a wall revealed a lot of bullets bouncing around back towards you.

Also on the combat front is the new "overpressure" system. Without going into excessive detail, let's just say you don't want to cook off a grenade in a small, enclosed area any more. Because it will hurt. Lots. You should probably try it, preferably while I'm on the other team.

One cool general change to the gameplay is the removal of kill messages. At first this might seem weird – how do you know if you killed someone if you don't see their name scroll up at the top of the screen, right? But remember, the focus here is on realism. If you lob a grenade into a room where you think there's an enemy soldier, you don't know if you got him until you walk in there to see if his insides are decorating the room. So new to America's Army 3 is the death confirmation system – you basically have to enter a room and confirm each target is down (just by tapping the space bar on them as you walk up to them). Another game changer.

As if that wasn't enough, the sound effects for all the weapons have been re-recorded with a view to providing more realism and less "Hollywood". The entire sound system has been reworked to take into account things like occlusion (so if there's a hill or something blocking a shooter, the sound will be quite different). Skilled players will be able to use the new audio cues to help them build a picture of the current combat scenario.

[img]http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f75/b ... ridge4.jpg[/img]

Another very cool audio effect (which will definitely have a gameplay impact) is the addition of noises indicating when bullets are passing nearby (like the crack of the sound barrier as a bullet whizzes pass your head). How they did this was explained, I felt, excessively casually - basically some of the development team actually went out and got shot at by US Army people with actual bullets so they could hear and record the sound of bullets passing by under different circumstances. If that doesn't show the dedication of these guys to making an accurate game, I don't know what does (well, I suppose they could actually volunteer to get shot...).

But wait! There's more. A new Battle Planner allows you to come up with a rough, uh, battle plan at the start of each mission, letting you select spawn points and lay out some initial waypoints. It's not a complete tactical planner – you can only plan for around the first 30 seconds of an engagement, following the simple military maxim: "No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy."

One gameplay change that I fully endorse – no jumping. I have been looking forward to "realistic" tactical shooters ditching this for a long, long time. The jumping system has been replaced with a 'vault/mantle' option – if you walk up to an object that isn't too high you are presented with a prompt letting you know you can hop over it. Rabid fans of jumping might be consoled by some of the new moves you can do, like diving into a prone or kneeling position, which not only looks really cool when you're watching it, but offers some neat tactical advantages as well. You can also lean while prone and execute combat rolls as well.

One final enhancement is to the game setting – rather than fighting anonymous insurgents, a new fictional eastern-European nation has been created that has become the new theatre of war in some struggle for democracy. So of course, I thought about tempting fate and playing the role of obnoxious foreigner and asking why the US felt the need to go in there, but a) I'm a guest in their country and b) there were, like, 10 of these guys in the room with me, one of whom was a their military SME (Subject Matter Expert). He was wearing fatigues and talked quite confidently about scary things like the different weight of various devices made for the express purpose of killing people, so I decided to keep my mouth shut.

So, as you can see, there's an absolute stack of new features. The America's Army team are building on an already-solid gameplay base. The upgrade to the latest iteration of the Unreal engine brings the game up-to-speed with other modern shooters and the huge amount of changes and improvements definitely make this something that many people are going to want to check out, especially as it will be at the right price ($0).

America's Army 3 is due in 2009 and will be released on both the new Army Deploy Client (which I whined about here a while back) and also on Steam – another new surprise. If you're into tacshooters, you'll want to keep an eye out for this one.



And another review here on AusGamers --->http://www.ausgamers.com/games/americas-army-3/

This is looking better all the time....can't wait to get some hands on. [smilie=jump_fire[1].gif]
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Post by ADF-Snake »

I'm with ya Bungy!! MADOZ MADOZ
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Post by ADF-BUNGY »

here is a look at the mission planning/weapon selection screen
the red X next to player name indicates if they are using TS or not.

[img]http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f75/b ... etailh.jpg[/img]
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Post by ADF-CaptCC »

thanks for the look ..m88y

Seems interesting enough...

Looks like its going to be a real different game..some might like more and some less...

especially the roe hunters..hahah Mesiah..look out...hahaha

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Post by ADF-Snake »

So does this mean you get a list of weapons? Or is it same as what we have now?

For example: Certain maps only let you use certain guns for the type of role you've chosen

i.e. Rifleman position in a Pipeline map would just get an M16 and then you're all set, same with the SAW.
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Post by ADF-Squidz »

i think i just made a mess in my pants ...

to put things into perspective, i dont play many fps', the few that i've played over the years have been something special ...

from the sounds of things, they've adopted some of my favorite aspects from my favorite games ...

battle planned - looks identical to Rainbow6 - Rogue Spear (the first one)
climbing prompt - much like fps / adventure games like silent scope (i think that was it)
diving - like gears of war on 360 (i just hope they also have the shoot from cover options too)

definitely interesting ... i think i need a new computer ... need one fast!!

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