Status Update - 13/3/23

G'day everyone,

Time to bring everything up to date for everyone on the state of things.

Apparently I haven't done a proper one of these in a little while, so... y'know.. let's fix that.

XM29 SABR (OICW)

So I cleaned these entirely at some point in late January.  Been sitting too long, desperately needed to be pushed on. From a technical perspective, it was pretty straightforward to go through - the majority of the gun's textures are polymer, and it's a gun that strictly was a prototype, so there's little in the way of the finish needing to be marred up.  

So, the texturing is done. What is not done, and still to be tackled formally, is the Fire Control System. I can't really talk about a timeline of when that will be done, because I am still very much figuring out if everything I want from it is doable, and if not, where's a good compromise.

L4A3 Bren

So, with progress on the SABR somewhat on a pause again, I switched back to the Bren, and I cannot state how fast we're burning through this. Start of February-  the main in-game mesh had been done.

Mid February- UVMapped and a rough import into Arma was done. 

End of February- High-Poly mesh was complete and Baked. 

All that left is Texturing, config and animation work and .. would you look at that, That's where I'm at.

Starting with some talking about eccentric config work - Ranging. Ranging is a bane in Arma. If you don't just do the vanilla weapon thing of not animating the sights, you get the fun task of manually ranging to your Arma ballistics, which despite everything being on-paper correct to the real thing, are likely to be some percentage of incorrect, Because the simulation is not reality. For me, the task of doing this means putting on some Ska music, hacking the rear sight off the gun and giving the thing a ludicrous zoom, and heading down to the Altis salt flats- using the Advanced Ballistics Range scenario. Shoot targets at known ranges, note recorded offset of shots in group, use the average in the Trigonometry math table I have. Basically what you do with a real gun and/or new ammo. Rebuild, check again, note for adjustment.

One thing I learned, because the Bren ranges out to well beyond practical irons-sighted shooting range and max effective ballistic range, I discovered that the Bren sights range for beyond the range the .308 bullets are simulated. Meaning: if you zero for 1700m onwards, you shouldn't expect any impact on target period (even if you overcame dispersion) - the bullets disappear in flight. This is for performance, ballistics are relatively CPU expensive, and because this is such an edge case(we're talking over 8 seconds flight time here!), I'm not going to change that up. Just.. y'know, know the limits and whatnot, treat the very upper ranges as cosmetic more than functional.

Jumping forward a little, The rear sight was eventually put back on, and today, I lined up the aperture and made everything about that end of the config gucci.

Above: Lowest range

Above: Highest ballistically functional range

Above Highest cosmetic range.

And jumping back again - Texturing- it's happening. I'm working with a 4kx2k main receiver map at the moment, as it's both the most complex piece in the build AND the most visible, so needs to be the most best looking so the rest can follow in trend.

Above: Getting the markings right

It's a big map, it's taken me all week to finish, but it is now finished and looking smart in game, so I've got 3 more to go.

So that's to-the-minute where things are. I'm currently still doing the necessary reference gathering for the Milspec ARs, but in the near future you'll hear something about those cracking on.   If you'd like to see any of the images in larger format (plus some extras) - you can fine an Imgur album of all the images in the post HERE(Imgur.com).  

Oh, I guess I should also note before I go - Arma 3 is 10 as of a few days ago, and I've been modding it for 10 years minus 2 weeks now... and the Patreon has been live for just over 8 of those, also give or take a few weeks. I kind of don't have the wherewithal to put together something big for it, but I did want to stop for a mo and thank you (collectively) for pulling me through 8 years. It's been a long time and there's been a LOT of changes in it, but I'm eternally grateful for the generosity of each and every one of your supports through it. That goes too for all the ones who've done it in the past and no longer do so. Each and every one of you -thankyou.

I could not be where I am without your generosity.

Have a good one, folks, 

Toadie out.