Animations are a big part of the improvements planned for Arma 3. Their development touches upon various aspects of the core gameplay, be it weapon handling, manoeuvring around obstacles or even whole new avenues of gameplay, such as scuba-diving.
The ‘little things’ are important, too. Facial expressions, weapon reload/firing animations – even the odd goat tottering through your line of fire – these elements all come together to create a more engaging, tactile gaming experience.
Since Arma 2, we’ve invested in new hardware, which helps us to improve the quality of our work. Bohemia Interactive now utilises three optical motion capture systems, including high-end Raptor-4 cameras from Motion Analysis Corp.
Over the next few months, we’ll certainly have a lot to cover as we introduce some of these fantastic new features and refinements. Today, though, we’d like to kick things off by way of a quick chat with Arma 3’s resident Animations Tsar, Zdeněk Vespalec, who talks about new weapons animations, multiplayer ragdoll, and more!
“Another feature worth mentioning is ‘alternate poses’, [...] With them, you can adjust to have a high/low or left/right variant to each stance. In terms of gameplay, we’d expect to see improvements in finding effective cover and being able to fire from it.”
And, below, we’ve got a special bonus video! It’s a sneak peek at an upcoming intel update, and a chance to see some of the new lighting and animations at work: