Hosting the campaign - multiplay

[yannara 0]

Hello! I hope this thread will gather experience of playing campaign missions.

When Arma 2 came 2008, we were all very exited to play the campaign together, but it was impossible. I remember latest troubles were with Manhattan mission, it didn't end. Most stupid solution of BI was, that if one player dies - mission fails. As well, 2 years ago reverting to autosave didn't work, only host player was resumed.

Now I ask you guys, is there any improvements of this with new patches (1.57 version). Should we bother to start original campaign all over again?

[Hanzu 10]

Hello! I hope this thread will gather experience of playing campaign missions.

When Arma 2 came 2008, we were all very exited to play the campaign together, but it was impossible. I remember latest troubles were with Manhattan mission, it didn't end. Most stupid solution of BI was, that if one player dies - mission fails. As well, 2 years ago reverting to autosave didn't work, only host player was resumed.

Now I ask you guys, is there any improvements of this with new patches (1.57 version). Should we bother to start original campaign all over again?

Me and my gamebuddies just completed Harvest Red and Operation Arrowhead campaigns.

Harvest Red was completed with patches between 1.54.72888-1.57.77819.

Operation Arrowhead was completed with patches between 1.57.77819-1.58.78413.

Harvest Red campaign still has "cooperative only"-bugs that will not appear if you play alone, but not so many as 2 years ago. I have reported most that still exist to CIT, but BIS has not reported to fix any of them. In missions First To Fight, Manhattan, Bitter Chill, Delaying The Bear and Badlands, I had to tell my friends to disconnect before I completed the last objective otherwise mission will not end or will end, but not unlock next mission. Reverting autosaves works much better now, but mission still fails if Razor Team member dies, but I do not see that as a problem since savegame and loadgame work well enough now.

Operation Arrowhead campaign surpised me with beeing much more bug free in cooperative, but it was not so much fun as Harvest Red because every team member has different start location and often different objectives too. The thing I hated most in this campaign was player respawn, which killed immersion for me. I used a workaround to avoid it and loaded last save everytime one of us died. So it is all about taste, I liked Harvest Red all must survive style better.

In my page you can see end screenshots of all those missions and patch number what was used when it was completed. You can also check my one and only cooperative walkthrough for Harvest Red (which is not fully complete but will provide help for toughest parts anyway - and I still update it every now and then).

Remember to also vote for all the bugs in my signature, so you should have better campaign experience if they fix those bugs.

[yannara 0]

It seems that for Arma 2 is released patch 1.09 just a few days ago. But for OA is still 1.57 offered which is released and of last year. Will there be new patch for OA soon?

If I want to host Arma2 campaign, should I run Arma2 or OA which has all campaigns as well.

Thanks for the great answer Hanzu!

[Hanzu 10]

You need to have your Arma2 and OA installed as Combined Operations, if you have installed both as stand-alone. Basically it means you just need to instal OA to same folder A2 was installed.

1.59 final patch for Combined Operations and Operation Arrowhead is so close I would absolutely not start campaign on A2 only side.

1.59 release candinate (second one) is out already.

There are many reasons why I would choose to play Harvest Red on Combined Operations side. One of them is that if you run into bugs, you might be lucky to get it fixed fast and use it already with beta-patch and since those beta-patches are for Combined Operations and Operation Arrowhead only, you might want to forget playing on Arma2 original side.

Dwarden the developer agrees playing original Arma2 content on CO side is a good idea. See this post.

I personally do not trust that all fixes and improvements that are done for CO and OA are always automatically added to A2 patches. So playing CO and not touching A2 is my choice.

Even if you decide to start campaign in CO side right now. Remember you can still patch to 1.59 final between missions. It will not erase your progress - only old savegames stop working.

[yannara 0]

Okay, so I should re-install my game so that both games would be in same directory, and then patch the whole thing to 1.59? Did I get this right?

I'm playing also FDFmod, will there be any difficulties if Arma2 and OA are combined?

Thanks again :)

[Hanzu 10]

There may be some quides somewhere here in forums how to merge those installs, but I think it might be safer and maybe even faster to just reinstall.

FDF Mod is now for both Arma2 + Arma2: Operation Arrowhead and Arma2: Combined Operations as clearly stated in that picture on their page. :)

Don't forget to turn off any mods when playing official campaigns for better compatibility and in designed difficulty balance.

Edited March 28, 2011 by Hanzu

[yannara 0]

I've also noticed than reverting to manual save also now works in multiplay, which is great! Only thing is, than when mission really fails, all saves are lost, if you not cancel mission in a middle. Is that true?

[Hanzu 10]

I've also noticed than reverting to manual save also now works in multiplay, which is great! Only thing is, than when mission really fails, all saves are lost, if you not cancel mission in a middle. Is that true?

Not true, but there are exceptions like Operation Arrowhead campaign mission 05: Open Season which will delete all saves even if you die in to start location and then moves to next mission.

To prevent this from happening you can ALT+TAB every now and then and backup your savegame folder.

Actually there is no way to cancel mission in the middle since every time you exit mission it will create so called suspend-savegame which will override other savetypes in multiplayer even if they are newer. See my signature for details. Suspend savegame is created also if you kill Arma2 in taskmanager. This is part of some emergency save function the developer has thought is handy, but I think it sucks.