Annihilation Valley

Annihilation is not an easy film. Not consumable enough for general audience, but much larger than indie movies. The characters are complicated, but hard to relate to. Approach realistic, but overly simplified. Too fantastic for a sci-fi, too scientific to be a fantasy.

The film struggles to fit into well understood boxes, perhaps one of the reasons why it flopped so much that its European cinema release got cancelled. Yet, despite all of this, I found it to be an excellent film. Or rather, exactly because of this.

Annihilation masterfully exploits the uncanny valley. The term is used when something that’s not a human expresses certain human features, for example appearance or movement, but goes too far in pursuit of realism and ends up no longer stylized, yet not fully life-like. Unpleasant. Uncomfortable. Uncanny.

[Warning: The rest of the article contains spoilers for Annihilation.]

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Mission Editing Competition 2004

Make Arma Not War is not the first editing competition Bohemia Interactive ever organized. About a decade ago, when Operation Flashpoint was still alive and kicking, the modding community got their first chance to prove their skills in what was known as the Mission Editing Competition 2004 (MEC 2004). The rewards included t-shirts, signed copies of the game and the main prize – VBS1 with all addons, worth hundreds of dollars.

Winners were selected both by public vote and by professional jury, but authors were kept anonymous to prevent any bias. The ten best scenarios were published after the competition was over, but trying to find them now, a decade later, is almost impossible. I recently discovered them on my drive, so with official web gone and addon links dead, I decided to release them for everyone else to play.

DOWNLOAD MEC 2004 FINALISTS

The archive contains all missions including required addons:

The winner, Hawk In Nets by Munch Studios, was a truly outstanding title. Inspired by the Metal Gear Solid series, it turned a military simulation game into tactical espionage operation. Its impact went beyond the competition, inspiring countless other modders in their efforts – including me.

The author of Hawk In Nets went on to become a Bohemia Interactive designer shortly afterwards. Although he meanwhile left to finish his studies, another finalist, Ježuro, was also hired and still designs scenarios to this date.

Video Game Terrains

 

Altis, Arma 3’s main island, is huge. With a ground surface area of 270 km2, and vast water and underwater locations, its total area clocks-in at almost 1000 km2 of highly detailed environments capable of supporting land, air & sea combat.

It’s so large that most people have trouble understanding such scale in a video game. The surface area value is not really descriptive, and even comparing it to our previous maps (e.g., 1.5x larger than Chernarus) really explains nothing if you never played our games before.

But you probably played other games. Who doesn’t know about the mountains of Skyrim, or the prairies of Red Dead Redemption? So I did a little investigation and prepared some images, one comparing all Bohemia Interactive terrains, and the other pitting Altis against the terrains featured in other famous games. While the former is using exact sizes based on our internal data, the dimensions in the latter are approximated based on what I was able to find in the respective games and on the internet.

I hope it will help you to understand the scale of worlds not only in Arma 3, but in other games as well.

Update 2013-09-11

I updated the game worlds comparison image after numerous requests for Just Cause 2’s Panau island. The recently leaked map of GTA V’s Los Santos, and the older, but still impressive Skira island from Dragon Rising are also included.

All of the mentioned worlds are from 1st / 3rd person games featuring on-foot exploration. There are bigger maps – such as the ones in FuelBurnout Paradise, or even our own Take On Helicopters – but they usually sacrifice their level of detail and area of accessibility to serve gameplay purposes.

And then there’s Daggerfall. Nobody can compete with Daggerfall.

Private Military Creators

Arma 2: Private Military Company (PMC) was a quite controversial DLC. Compared to previous British Armed Forces (BAF), it lacked traditional new national army which would cover everything from new weapons, infantry, vehicles, helicopters or static guns. Instead, it heavily focused on playable content dominated by two player coop campaign, while addons consisted mostly of “generic” para-military contractors and armed variants of civilian vehicles. Not much, you’d say, given the fact the prices of both DLCs were the same. That’s why I’d like to uncover some details about decisions which ultimately proved to be benefitial in the long run.

This article was originally supposed to be published on the official Bohemia Interactive blog, but Take On Helicopters stole the show before I was able to finish it and priorities then lied elsewhere.

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