Why Arma 2 Engine?

[nimmerzz 17]

Hi guys,

 

Just getting into the mod here. ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!! Nothing like running into another real player and having your heart start racing. That is scarier than the zeds!!

 

My question is about the standalone which I have not bought just yet. Why did they go with the Arma2 engine and not 3? While 2 still looks great I am just curious as to why.

 

Also, will crossfire ever be enabled for the SA? I have 2 7850's that I really dont want to have to switch out yet. Although I have my eye on a 290x. Thank for your time. And take it easy on me out there! Im so vulnerable and fragile!! 

[DayzForumer 284]

Welcome to the forums.

I don't think the standalone uses the Arma 2 engine, I think it uses the Arma 3 engine, as far as I know.

                                                                                                    (take on helicopters?)

Edited February 9, 2014 by DayzForumer

[Sweendawg 37]

Welcome to the forums.

I don't think the standalone uses the Arma 2 engine, I think it uses the Arma 3 engine, as far as I know.

It uses arma 2 's engine (modified of course). I hear it has some code from arma 3 and take on helicopters.

[kaix12 34]

I thought it was the take on helicopters engine, thats why it still looks better than arma 2 but not as good as arma 3

[SwarfwgaHead 45]

Yeah Im pretty sure it uses version of RV that Take on Helicopters uses, so it's slightly more polished than the A2 one, but not quite on par with A3. Why they decided not to go with the A3 engine, it could be possible that it was much easier to move from the A2 engine to the current SA one, rather than trying to port everything over to the A3 engine. It would have meant increasing development time quite a bit. Even use of the A2 maps took a while to implement in A3, and it's still not perfect in some cases. That's just my guess though.

[kingrex 85]

The Arma 3 engine was also still being worked on when the devs started working on the standalone, from my knowledge. 

[ImageCtrl 719]

It has his own engine. Improved TOH engine.

[DarkOrion11 5]

Standalone uses special version of Real Virtuality which includes Real Virtuality 4 codes (ArmA III engine).

[dallas 5195]

It's kind of irrelevant to take about ArmA 2, ArmA 3, ArmA 2.5 or Take of Helicopter engine version. I think Rocket used the term ArmA 2.5 or building upon Take on Helicopter in August 2012. A lot has happened to the engine since then, it would probably be more accurate to call it the DayZ version now.

[herrjon 478]

Dallas is exactly right, sure they've used parts of different engines and whatnot, but the final product is its own thing.

 

Way back they were looking at just taking the Arma II engine, changing a few things, and spitting out a standalone, but they realized that wasn't going to work for what they wanted to do, so they took all the BI products, tore them apart, and put together an engine that was going to work.  Than and changed the client-server architecture to optimize the game and increase the difficulty of scripters.

 

There probably aren't as many Arma III resources because when they were doing the bare bones developing, Arma III was still being developed itself.  To throw it in now may throw the whole engine off.

[-MadTommy 367]

AFAIK there is little point talking about Arma1/2/3 & Take on Helis as if they are different engines.  Its all one engine under constant development. As Dean is now part of BI he has access to all the code, and therefore uses the sections that work for Dayz.  I bet there are sections of code from all versions of Arma in the present standalone.

Edited February 10, 2014 by MadTommy

[deepfried 95]

Take on helicopters is a fork of the arma 2 engine, SA is based on the Take on Helicopters fork.  Arma 3 is another fork, but it wasn't mature enough when devlopment of dayz SA started, so really they only has the choice of using the base arma 2 engine or the Take on Helicopters fork, i'm guessing they went with the ToH fork as it has better cloud and weather effects, and is more effecient for some things as it has a lot of unneeded code from the base engine cut out.