Arma 3 hails people of every flavor from all over the world. To get to know them a little better, we're hosting a series of mini-interviews with some of our amazing community members. These aim to give you a personal insight into their backgrounds, why they got into Arma, and how they typically experience the game. In this issue, we interview Modder and CDLC dev HorribleGoat.
BIO
Name: Tuomas
Nickname: HorribleGoat
Age: 38
Location: Finland
Occupation: Games
BASELINE
Can you provide us with one random fact about yourself?
I'm a Goldsmith by trade, and I specialize in fancy crowns.
So what is the origin of the name HorribleGoat?
It is the first online gaming name I took on a long time ago. Goats have always been my spirit animal, and being "horrible" made it unique.
What's the first Arma game you played?
Operation Flashpoint. One of my fondest gaming memories is crawling into the airbase to steal a Hind to wreak havoc in the night. Was likely the “Hind Attack” mission.
What is your current Arma 3 playtime?
Only rookie numbers at 7062.9 hours, according to Steam. Most of my time has been in the modding tools that do not count towards that total.
What is your favorite game of all time?
This is a hard question so I’ll cheat:
For story and adventure - The Witcher 3,
For being able to do whatever I want - Arma 3,
For introducing the world to Tiberium - Command & Conquer (original)
For paintable plastics and the grim darkness of the far future - Warhammer 40,000
Outside of video games, what other hobbies do you enjoy?
I play Warhammer 40k, make and paint miniatures and model kits, draw, and read. I like all kinds of things where I get to create something.
Can you show us your PC setup?
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
How and when did you get into Arma?
Operation Flashpoint was the first game in the series I played, and I recall the first taste for it was through some demo CD. It was some time later when I got to play the full version, and the game world just felt so huge. I’ve since played all the Arma games, but Arma 2 is what I think got me properly sucked in as that's when I got into modding. Arma 2 offered such a versatile, creative platform to explore. A few years later, along came Arma 3 and now we are here over a decade since that.
How do you play or engage with Arma 3 nowadays?
I play the occasional game with friends, but mostly my “Arma time” goes into making more things and still exploring if I can push a bit more out of the engine. I have not really released my own mods since the early Alpha version of Lost Dragons at the time of the first MANW competition. The making of stuff is the most enjoyable thing for me, so releases have not really been a priority.
What is your role as a member of different CDLC studios?
My first Creator DLC quest was with S.O.G. Prairie Fire, where I ended up wearing all kinds of hats, from steering the terrain team shaping up some of the unique terrain elements like the Ha Long Bay cliffs, to animating things like vehicle interactions and weapon animations. I also got to make and implement the water buffalo in-game. The list of everything I got to do there is pretty long and it was quite an interesting journey.
With Spearhead 1944, I was tasked with creating the river object system.The Normandy terrain contains a lot of sloping rivers and streams and reshaping the terrain to lower those rivers to the 0 height of water was not really a possibility. It would have really broken the whole terrain dynamic.
I believe there ended up being a total of 4534 river parts. By length, the large rivers were about 10,760 meters, the medium parts totalling to about 38,200 meters, and the small parts to about 23,280 meters. So, quite a long set of rivers to lay down and that project branched out into me making automation tools in Blender to align the part rotation and height after manually laying down the proof of concept stretch. I did the same for the Mortain terrain as well. I also helped with the design of the destructible bocage system, which was a really cool feature to see in Arma.
I have also had my hand in the Western Sahara and Reaction Forces CDLCs, doing some animations for their weapons. I also took on the task of setting up the camel animations and adding some finishing touches to get it up and running in game.
I've got to figure out some work to sell to the other DLCs to get my name on all the credits!
Is there an interesting CDLC behind-the-scenes story you can tell us about?
The S.O.G. Prairie Fire terrain team lost count on how many easter eggs hidden on Cam Lao Nam. We just don't know anymore how many there are!
Do you have any other projects in the works that you could tell us about?
My own personal project called Lost Dragons for Arma 3 has been in development for a long time now, and I work on it with my brother whenever I can. While there has not been a release since the first MANW competition, our eventual goal is to get it out there one day. That eventual release is in a way a secondary goal though, as the primary purpose of the project was to be able to create our own scifi universe (complete with lasers and robots!). This has resulted in a lot of revisions of my own work where I have wanted to improve old designs and have come up with even more ambitious ways to try to push the engines limits. I think the map concept has passed version 20 already. Those things just take time to experiment with. Eventually we might migrate the project over to future titles like Arma 4 as there is a lot of promise of improved features that would help our epic proportion concepts too.
This might be a good spot to also shamelessly plug the SOG PF: Nickel Steel mod that keeps adding content related to the DLC. While my involvement with it is quite little these days, I occasionally lend a helping hand!
What is your favorite piece of Arma 3 user-created content (mod, addon, scenario, game mode, tool) and why?
The sacred trinity of the Blender Arma Toolbox, the Blender to model.cfg Exporter, and the RTM Exporter. They just allow so many more complex things to be made. We have an incredible modding community where all kinds of helpful tools keep popping up, but unfortunately they do not always get the recognition they deserve.
Can you tell us about your most remarkable Arma moment?
This would be the first time I got a custom character to work in game. It felt awesome to succeed in such a complex process, having spent a lot of time studying and tracing how the different parts between config and character models and animations work together. This was the first iteration of my man / tank combination mech for Lost Dragons back in 2014.
Can you share your #1 pro-tip for any Arma 3 player?
G does not open the inventory anymore.
With the popularity of Arma Reforger and the potential of Enfusion Engine and Workbench, what are you looking forward to with the franchise as we move along the road to Arma 4?
Having touched the boundaries of what can be done in the Real Virtuality Engine, it is very exciting to see how far the new engine can be pushed. Looking at Arma Reforger there are certainly improvements on many technical aspects like how terrains are set up, how object collisions work, and how the animation system has more control.
BONUS: Do you have a favorite type of goat?
All goats are equally awesome!
CLOSING
To finish the interview, do you have anything you'd like to share with the Arma community?
It has been a privilege to be part of the modding community for over a decade now and I'd like to thank all the people who taught me things when I was beginning my journey. I’ve done my best to pay your kindness forward!
Also, I want to thank all the comrades in mods who have wandered in the "Swamp of Modding" with me, you are all the unsung heroes of Arma and I hope to see you in the swamp for years to come as it grows larger and larger with new Arma games.
Be excellent to each other!