The Enhanced Configuration System (ECS)
The Enhanced Configuration System (ECS) is a privately developed addon for Armed Assault by the ECS team.
It was riginally written for Operation Flashpoint in 2005, to increase the Co-operative gameplay, game environment, effects, and AI reactions. The project was completely reworked for Armed Assault in February 2007. Since then, the project has grown and expanded to include many features far beyond it's original inception. The mod was expressly intended for co-op use only and is not geared to PvP missions. It is however fully compatible in both single and multiplayer modes, including the campaign and Queen's Gambit.
To describe it's purpose it is necessary to understand that the goal of ECS was not to modify the original game, but to add features and enhance the experience for that which was (for the most part) missing from the original game. It was also highly optimized, requiring a minimum of resources, and having a neglegible effect on gameplay performance.
To give you an idea what is included in this package, all features of the ECS system are fully dynamic; that is the environment auto-adjusts the conditions, animations and behavior of this addon to suit the current realtime conditions in-game. What follows is a brief overview of the mod's features.
On the client side alone there are a multitude of environment animations, sounds, smoke effects, lights, ground effects, environmental triggers, and many more.
There is a fully dynamic speaker system, capable of reacting to actual combat conditions. The speach is multi-lingual capable, and extensible; it is possible to add more language speech paks to extend the already existing soldier support to include speech sets for other nationals, such as when creating Viet Cong or Arab Insurgent missions by assigning a speech set to a soldier type and hearing the results in-game.
There is a cursory, limited use first-aid system, to heal small wounds, patch a gimp leg or prevent bleading to death.
The parachute system allows you to manually deploy from higher altitudes, including an altimeter to simplify HALO operations, complete with adjusted soldier animations, which places the user prone when landing to avoid getting shot at while retrieveing the weapon.
On the ECS_server side, the ECS engine takes the ArmA combat environment to a new level, both the AI behavior and the weather system are noticibly improved, with a new sophisticated communications engine that allows real-time syncronization of events and actions in multiplayer between ECS_clients and the ECS_server. This means that ECS is capable of communicating the state of events between the game and ECS_clients so that when it rains, it rains for everyone the same, the visibility, the fog and many of the sounds happen simultaneously and at the same intensity for everyone, creating a more realistic virtual simulation for all ECS_client players.
In single player the ECS_Client will act as the local ECS_server and providemuch of the online experience as you would expect as well.
A fully dynamic weather system now mimics a simplified real-world seasonal climate change, based on the date and an assumed tropical lattitude. No scripts are required to perform this function, it is a feature of the mod. That said, when a mission is run with the ECS_Server enabled, ECS takes over skill control and behavior modification of the AI, adjusting thier visual range to compensate for weather and day/night conditions, use of evasion, increasing agresiveness and tactical prowess in full combat, including house to house search, flanking manuevers, suppressive fire on players and more agressive targeting, even if the player is attempting to take cover.
Weather in ECS can take many forms. Much of it can be set by the mission, or left to run automatically per the Engines design. Winter brings large thunderstorms, Spring light rains, Summer mostly dry skies, and Fall mostly fog and wind. Set the mission season and use the weather to your advantage.
Special functions and commands built into the ECS_Server may be easily added into missions with minimal scripting to facilitate waypoint generation, perhaps for creating taxi services like air and sea transport to the battlefield.
Think you're smarter than some game AI? Throw a grenade at a soldier and he will probably run away, fired at they will seek cover, try to run and they will hunt you down - using much of the games own built-in abilities ECS makes quick work of each AI's puppet strings.
Environmental sounds in ECS go so far as to include the winds of the highlands, rubble or rodents in crumbling structures, the sounds of nature in the outdoors like the passing birds or insects you can see, and even flies near refuse cans - not just a sound track, the sounds animate the life thats there. Listen and you may hear sounds from the local bistro, hotel, gas station, including radios playing, a telephone or bell, monks chanting in the church, power transformers and generating stations; its all there.
Look over a large city and you will see the smoke from the chimney of the local processing plant, working fountains complete with the sound of running water and night illumination. Maybe a dust cloud over a sandy beach or some patches of fog across ground in the early morning dawn.
The armory sounds in ECS consist of a completely reworked sound set for all weapons and weapons systems in ArmA, from hand guns and pistols to cannons and vehicle weapons. This also embodies a sophisticated bullet wiz and crack generator, that will have you ducking for cover everytime.
Although we designed it for our own enjoyment, we hope others will have a good time and appreciate it for what it is : a free gift to the community.
It was riginally written for Operation Flashpoint in 2005, to increase the Co-operative gameplay, game environment, effects, and AI reactions. The project was completely reworked for Armed Assault in February 2007. Since then, the project has grown and expanded to include many features far beyond it's original inception. The mod was expressly intended for co-op use only and is not geared to PvP missions. It is however fully compatible in both single and multiplayer modes, including the campaign and Queen's Gambit.
To describe it's purpose it is necessary to understand that the goal of ECS was not to modify the original game, but to add features and enhance the experience for that which was (for the most part) missing from the original game. It was also highly optimized, requiring a minimum of resources, and having a neglegible effect on gameplay performance.
To give you an idea what is included in this package, all features of the ECS system are fully dynamic; that is the environment auto-adjusts the conditions, animations and behavior of this addon to suit the current realtime conditions in-game. What follows is a brief overview of the mod's features.
On the client side alone there are a multitude of environment animations, sounds, smoke effects, lights, ground effects, environmental triggers, and many more.
There is a fully dynamic speaker system, capable of reacting to actual combat conditions. The speach is multi-lingual capable, and extensible; it is possible to add more language speech paks to extend the already existing soldier support to include speech sets for other nationals, such as when creating Viet Cong or Arab Insurgent missions by assigning a speech set to a soldier type and hearing the results in-game.
There is a cursory, limited use first-aid system, to heal small wounds, patch a gimp leg or prevent bleading to death.
The parachute system allows you to manually deploy from higher altitudes, including an altimeter to simplify HALO operations, complete with adjusted soldier animations, which places the user prone when landing to avoid getting shot at while retrieveing the weapon.
On the ECS_server side, the ECS engine takes the ArmA combat environment to a new level, both the AI behavior and the weather system are noticibly improved, with a new sophisticated communications engine that allows real-time syncronization of events and actions in multiplayer between ECS_clients and the ECS_server. This means that ECS is capable of communicating the state of events between the game and ECS_clients so that when it rains, it rains for everyone the same, the visibility, the fog and many of the sounds happen simultaneously and at the same intensity for everyone, creating a more realistic virtual simulation for all ECS_client players.
In single player the ECS_Client will act as the local ECS_server and providemuch of the online experience as you would expect as well.
A fully dynamic weather system now mimics a simplified real-world seasonal climate change, based on the date and an assumed tropical lattitude. No scripts are required to perform this function, it is a feature of the mod. That said, when a mission is run with the ECS_Server enabled, ECS takes over skill control and behavior modification of the AI, adjusting thier visual range to compensate for weather and day/night conditions, use of evasion, increasing agresiveness and tactical prowess in full combat, including house to house search, flanking manuevers, suppressive fire on players and more agressive targeting, even if the player is attempting to take cover.
Weather in ECS can take many forms. Much of it can be set by the mission, or left to run automatically per the Engines design. Winter brings large thunderstorms, Spring light rains, Summer mostly dry skies, and Fall mostly fog and wind. Set the mission season and use the weather to your advantage.
Special functions and commands built into the ECS_Server may be easily added into missions with minimal scripting to facilitate waypoint generation, perhaps for creating taxi services like air and sea transport to the battlefield.
Think you're smarter than some game AI? Throw a grenade at a soldier and he will probably run away, fired at they will seek cover, try to run and they will hunt you down - using much of the games own built-in abilities ECS makes quick work of each AI's puppet strings.
Environmental sounds in ECS go so far as to include the winds of the highlands, rubble or rodents in crumbling structures, the sounds of nature in the outdoors like the passing birds or insects you can see, and even flies near refuse cans - not just a sound track, the sounds animate the life thats there. Listen and you may hear sounds from the local bistro, hotel, gas station, including radios playing, a telephone or bell, monks chanting in the church, power transformers and generating stations; its all there.
Look over a large city and you will see the smoke from the chimney of the local processing plant, working fountains complete with the sound of running water and night illumination. Maybe a dust cloud over a sandy beach or some patches of fog across ground in the early morning dawn.
The armory sounds in ECS consist of a completely reworked sound set for all weapons and weapons systems in ArmA, from hand guns and pistols to cannons and vehicle weapons. This also embodies a sophisticated bullet wiz and crack generator, that will have you ducking for cover everytime.
Although we designed it for our own enjoyment, we hope others will have a good time and appreciate it for what it is : a free gift to the community.