ArmA is the game that changed my life

[sakura_chan 9]

OFP came out when I was 19, and I had done a lot of modding on a few other games at that point. I played the demo a lot, though I don't remember finishing the mission. I was mostly doing star wars/star trek/babylon5 stuff at the time so once I bought the full version I made the republic gunship from Attack of the Clones. I've had a few other user names here over the years, so I've been enjoying and sometimes loathing this series daily for the last 12 years. I still haven't finished any campaigns :)

[Phantom Six 25]

Phantom Six, you say your school is known for LoL. Do you perhaps go to RMU? http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/06/20/league-of-legends-scholarship/

No, I go to UCI

http://competitive.na.leagueoflegends.com/college/university-california-irvine

Nevertheless, I personally am not a fan of MOBA (I have played DOTA 2 before but against bots <once against players, but I got put on the good team>, not a fan of LoL).

[h - 169]

If it wasn't for OFP I would most likely be dead.

Another growing addiction changed into OFP addiction which changed my life because it chased away the bad influence around me as I rather play OFP than do anything else.

It was the demo that got me hooked: Hide? - Fight? - Surrender? - Your call

God damn that gives chills even today :p

After that it was just massive horrendous impatience waiting the game to come out.

The bad thing was that I had absolutely no money to buy it so I convinced a friend of mine from whom I got the demo (was on some PC mag's disc) to buy the game although he hated the demo.

Eventually when the game came out he bought it and did play and even enjoy it a bit but was too busy to play so thankfully he loaned the game to me and I played it religously although my PC was so old and crappy it should not even have ran the game (FPS was mainly about 10) but even if it ran like shit I absolutely loved it.

Discovered Lystypooh's site (that soon became OFPEC) and this place but didn't register anywhere for over a year or so. The only internet access I had was at a library, the PC's there had no CD-R capabilities, only floppies (so imagine the amount of floppies I had to carry for downloading patches etc. :p ).

Read that Red Hammer was coming out so I started trying to save money so I could buy my own game and Red Hammer, and not keep loaning the game all the time from my friend.

It was only after the Gold Edition came out that I had enough money saved so I bought that from a bookstore that for some reason always had a selection of newest PC games. Still have that on my shelve.

After that there has not been many days in a year that I have not fired up one of the Arma games (SP, I don't do MP).

Until now as I recently suffered a hand injury preventing me from doing pretty much anything. I'm hopefull though that some day I'm able to play these games again.

[R0adki11 3949]

I certainly wouldn't know where i would be without picking up the OFP demo, back in 2000...14 years ago..! Well to put it into perspective im 30 now and been playing BIS games since i was 16 years old :o.

Anyway without OFP i certainly wouldn't have chosen to do a computer based course at college, which lead on to a Degree and ultimately a Masters. I now work in I.T Support for a North West University. And the reason i did the computer based course was because of the scripting and config editing i found in OFP.

Also have to say by playing OFP, Arma1, Arma2 and Arma3 i have made some great friends over the years and involved in quite a few community groups. Im proud to have helped run the European Flashpoint League, European Combat League, and i continue to help and run the FUSION Arma Squad.

I also have contributed to this community with my Nogovan Armed Forces mod for OFP and Arma2, and am continuing to support the community where i can and do with Project ASTFOR and my role as a Moderator.

Cheers RK

Edited July 17, 2014 by R0adki11

[zooloo75 834]

I certainly wouldn't know where i would be without picking up the OFP demo, back in 2000...14 years ago..! Well to put it into perspective im 30 now and been playing BIS games since i was 16 years old :o.

Anyway without OFP i certainly wouldn't have chosen to do a computer based course at college, which lead on to a Degree and ultimately a Masters. I now work in I.T Support for a North West University. And the reason i did the computer based course was because of the scripting and config editing i found in OFP.

Also have to say by playing OFP, Arma1, Arma2 and Arma3 i have made some great friends over the years and involved in quite a few community groups. Im proud to have helped run the European Flashpoint League, European Combat League, and i continue to help and run the FUSION Arma Squad.

I also have contributed to this community with my Nogovan Armed Forces mod for OFP and Arma2, and am continuing to support the community where i can do with Project ASTFOR and my role as a Moderator.

Cheers RK

cout << "Nice";

You guys have great stories. Glad to see that I'm not the only one that has been influenced by the series.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk

[tortuosit 486]

Oh, interesting topic.

Computers changed my life. Computers and Algorithms were always my interest. And excessive use of computers and absence from life, after all, played a major role in me stopping studying Computer Science at university after many years. So in the first degree my mistake.

If you live in Germany then you still have good chances to get a job in IT business! Replacing toner cartridges and doing everything others don't want to do or where you don't earn credits... being ass fucked by anybody who maybe only has a fraction of your IT knowledge. Nowadays IT in Germany loves to hire people with "broken careers". You don't invest money or anything else in them (further education etc.), but they know a lot. OH YEAH! You can do retarded IT support jobs. I do. It's ridiculous. Years ago I had to write and analyze Haskell code, now I help people who cannot click away the monitors on screen menu with their mouse. :D

Golden times are over IMO. I came to late. Right time, right place is what its all about.

In my company there are "experts", 50 yrs old people, no interest in computers, no clue about anything, but e.g. know a script language for special machines (which has like 3 commands) which they don't need any more. Spend their time with talks now and send me around. And receive EUR 5000...

But still I have to be satisfied with my 2.5k EUR (before tax, that is. 1500 after tax and social stuff). Others meanwhile earn less.

Edited July 23, 2014 by tortuosit

[zooloo75 834]

Oh, interesting topic.

Computers changed my life. Computers and Algorithms were always my interest. And excessive use of computers and absence from life, after all, played a major role in me stopping studying Computer Science at university after many years. So in the first degree my mistake.

If you live in Germany then you still have good chances to get a job in IT business! Replacing toner cartridges and doing everything others don't want to do or where you don't earn credits... being ass fucked by anybody who maybe only has a fraction of your IT knowledge. Nowadays IT in Germany loves to hire people with "broken careers". You don't invest money or anything else in them (further education etc.), but they know a lot. OH YEAH! You can do retarded IT support jobs. I do. It's ridiculous. Years ago I had to write and analyze Haskell code, now I help people who cannot click away the monitors on screen menu with their mouse. :D

Golden times are over IMO. I came to late. Right time, right place is what its all about.

In my company there are "experts", 50 yrs old people, no interest in computers, no clue about anything, but e.g. know a script language for special machines (which has like 3 commands) which they don't need any more. Spend their time with talks now and send me around. And receive EUR 5000...

But still I have to be satisfied with my 2.5k EUR (before tax, that is. 1500 after tax and social stuff). Others meanwhile earn less.

Sorry to hear that; it's also about who you know too.

If I were you, I'd take whatever programming experience I have and try to make something very useful that will appeal to lots of people. That's one of the beauties of programming; you are only limited by what you know and there is always an opportunity to "make it big".

[tortuosit 486]

It works in a way, if you don't see your job as part of your life. This is especially true for all the many jobs, where they don't hire you directly, but in a... cri^wcreative way; which is somewhat supported by the german state. This way they got rid of every social aspect unions have fought for. Also its dynamite: you have at least 2 classes of employees working together...

There is something not outspoken here in Germany, but always in presence: If you are not at least Einstein, you have kind of no education and no right, to demand money. Look at the many poverty Refugees who go to switzerland ;)

On the positive side, in the company where I worked, people come and go; I have always been there. Survivalist, ha.

Now for my money I do hardware (sucks, but visiting people can be fun) and at the same time solve varieties problems others are not able to (Outlook Smime problems, automation of Linux servers, etc.), and listen to the peoples complaints at helpdesk.

They say we have no IT experts in Germany. This applies for me, because I have not finished the education. The company I work in (a well known big one) searches for a system analyst. Must have bacherlor/master in IT science and a lot of experience. He will be hired indirectly and depending on which 3rd party ("Zeitarbeit") will hire him, he will gain 13 to 17 EUR/h. ROOOOTFL! 18 EUR/h was the minimum salary they discussed in switzerland.

But what I also see is, that there are so many people on earth having really, really, really hard, stupid, crappy jobs. If I see it this way I guess, I'm still in the upper 10%.

[Rydygier 1317]

Tried OFP demo, but not convinced me. Years later tried Arma 1 - same. More years passed, and tried Arma 2 - similar at start. And then my video card died. I got only some crappy antique as replacement, so the only game, I had and could run on this card (very low settings) was Arma 2. And I had no real job, so plenty of time. And there was some irritating gaps in the provided by A2 features like no AI artillery handling. Those three factors together made me a scripter in short time. It's kind of phenomenon, as I had no earlier (nor later) real IT inclinations. From the early childhood (6-7) however I was fascinated by two things: computer games (of course I could only dream about access to the computer, what I did constantly), not only as entertainment, but as fascinating logical mechanisms, and, a bit later, strategic wargames. That may explain a bit. Has it changed my life? Well, for sure thanks to Arma turned out, I'm good in something more than only writing. Some new opportunities came with that aswell, but nothing groundbreaking so far.

But still I have to be satisfied with my 2.5k EUR (before tax, that is. 1500 after tax and social stuff).

Question of perspective, I guess. 1500 EUR? A half of that makes you in Poland quite well situated financially. Only compared to the others of course. But compare with the prices to get complete picture. :) Not mentioning, having any regular job is kind of luxury here. And then ask some guy from Africa for his perspective about living in Poland...

Edited July 24, 2014 by Rydygier

[tortuosit 486]

Question of perspective, I guess. 1500 EUR? A half of that makes you in Poland quite well situated financially. Only compared to the others of course. But compare with the prices to get complete picture. :) Not mentioning, having any regular job is kind of luxury here. And then ask some guy from Africa for his perspective about living in Poland...

That amount of money in Germany means, you are rather on the low end of society. You can rent a flat in rather bad suburbs (EUR 500 would be super cheap), your bank account will hopefully be at zero by the end of the month, you can afford leasing chinese cars :) and can not afford craftsmen... If you go with cat or dog to their doctors: You will usually pay 100 EUR+ very quickly... Life is expensive.

[Degman 73]

.. I was 7 years old when I have played OFP for the first time. It was a demo version which I was playing for months non-stoply, using different tactics to complete a mission, not knowing that it actually cannot be completed, lol. From walking all over the island (on areas that are not restricted) to stealing soviet tanks from Dourdan. I remember it all. :D OFP is also the reason why I know english, modding (codes, scripts, modeling, Photoshop), why I learned much about military, why I learned much about history and why I countinue to do so. OFP was a damn virus! No cure! :)

[extracrispi 64]

ArmA definitely is one of the best games out there.

[chrisb 196]

I've been playing a few other games recently, different genre altogether. But when you come back to this series, Arma2 in particular, for me. It does really stand out, just how great this series is.

Nothing quite like it out there, I can't help but keep coming back.

I do spend all my time in the Editor though, so that maybe different to others, not sure.

Anyway, this series is unique, in the best possible way. That of course is partly down to the community surrounding the series, here and elsewhere :)