ArmA Progress Updates

[Ukraineboy 0]

I was dissapointed to see no canon recoil.

I'm pretty sure modern tanks have gun stabilizers that would prevent cannon recoil. This isnt WWII

[herman01 0]

Most modern tanks still have recoil if not all. The barrels wouldnt last without it. Know your facts.

EDIT: Im just saying I wouldnt want to go into combat with guy who might be pointing a gun at me while hes running. Its just nobody with good military training would run like that unless they were in obstacle course.

[meyamoti 0]

On the abrams recoil,doesnt the largest (first) cylinder on the cannon (backmost) go all the way into the turret and then slide back out? I havent really seen many vids..maybe one and still thats vauge.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Jeez, there will probably be a pimping M1A2 conversion from Inquisitor available with recoils for everything from the commander MG to the cup holder about 3 or so seconds after AA is released. Give it a rest, eh? After that latest video, I'm damned keen on the game, and I'm finding it bloody hard to play OFP without being distracted. Commander MGs... finally.

If you're not happy with stock standard AA, either wait for a mod to solve your problem, or don't buy it. Simple. Patience, clowns!

[meyamoti 0]

Yay Cameron I want to have your babies!

[bravo 6 0]

why can't someone host those MP or SP Demos we seen while ago? They are playable.. just need to feel the taste of it..

[herman01 0]

Right with you on those commander MGs cameron

[Ukraineboy 0]

Most modern tanks still have recoil if not all. The barrels wouldnt last without it. Know your facts.

EDIT: Im just saying I wouldnt want to go into combat with guy who might be pointing a gun at me while hes running. Its just nobody with good military training would run like that unless they were in obstacle course.

Its not so incredibly large though so who cares.

For some reason people have incredibly high standards in realism for this game! Everyone is spoiled with EECP and FFUR and y2k3. Look at default OFP and you'll see that it aint that realistic anyways.

ArmA cant be a full simulation because only our community would buy it. Its business people, you have to expand the market. Our community may be big but its better to trade off SOME realism for gameplay especially with such a huge modding community can fix it anyways.

I'd rather have a less realistic ArmA get more sales (then more money for BIS, and then Game 2) which then would be modded like crazy to realistic standard, then have ArmA an ultra realistic simulator and have lower sales. BIS isnt blind, they know we have a huge modding community that can and will do the realism aspect.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

That's exactly what happened to OFP, so I agree totally. Vanilla AA will blow hard compared to what the maniacal addon-makers out there will (hopefully) come up with.

You name it, it will (hopefully) be made.

[Friedchiken 0]

That's exactly what happened to OFP, so I agree totally. Vanilla AA will blow hard compared to what the maniacal addon-makers out there will (hopefully) come up with.

You name it, it will (hopefully) be made.

I have to admit, some of you will guess that I'll abuse the character switching feature like hell.

And. I. Will. Enjoy. It.

I think I'll just find a nice bush, snipe all the ignorant AI, hope onto a tank, blow away as much armor as I can, and run screaming into town with the infantry.

It will be stupid, but stupid fun.

[450R 1]

I have to admit, some of you will guess that I'll abuse the character switching feature like hell.

And. I. Will. Enjoy. It.

I think I'll just find a nice bush, snipe all the ignorant AI, hope onto a tank, blow away as much armor as I can, and run screaming into town with the infantry.

It will be stupid, but stupid fun.

I spent an hour last night riding around on FDF's KLR250 finding jumps to hit and honking the horn in mid-air. I'm pretty easy to satisfy so I was in tears laughing. OFP is all about having a good time the way YOU want to ... I'm glad Armed Assault will be more of the same.

[kernriver 4]

Character switching will actually give you a chance to play a campaign a few times (depending on how many characters you can switch) and every time it should feel like you've never played it before. First you play it as a grunt, than as a tank gunner and then as a sniper. Atleast that's the way i see it

[CameronMcDonald 146]

That's a good point. This is of course, taking into the account that you have the discipline to stay as a tankie/grunt/pilot for the entirety of the mission, and also that you don't die (because you change characters automatically if you do?).

[hardrock 1]

Character switching will actually give you a chance to play a campaign a few times (depending on how many characters you can switch) and every time it should feel like you've never played it before. First you play it as a grunt, than as a tank gunner and then as a sniper. Atleast that's the way i see it

I too guess that character switching has more positive aspects than I originally thought. Very often, you can't really get friendly AI to do what you want. In this case, you can just take control for a moment to do some important things that AI is not able to do.

Imagine this situation: You have to kill an enemy officer and clear the camp to deactivate some nuke heads (pretty standard mission). Unfortunately, the officer will flee the first moment he notices any assault.

Your own squad is moving in, supported by a sniper somewhere on the hills. Now you would never get that sniper to shoot the officer in the beginning of the mission, except if you script it.

So you can easily switch into the sniper, take out the officer and switch back to lead the assault. The sniper will still give you fire support as it's driven by AI, but the most important thing that would have messed up the mission, is done.

There are a couple of other situations like this one, where AI could simply ruin a mission as it's not able to do everything, apart from the fact that AI is comparatively great, when you think of it not being scripted into a particular mission.

[mr reality 0]

There are a couple of other situations like this one, where AI could simply ruin a mission as it's not able to do everything, apart from the fact that AI is comparatively great, when you think of it not being scripted into a particular mission.

I feel the opposite as i want my AI buddies to be able to handle there own situation without me having to come to there aid all the time. I honestly will not use this aspect of the game-not even for "fun" as it doesn't fit with what i think flashpoint is all about. This option has been implemented to gain some fans from the shootem-ups so they can have a larger selection of vehicles and weapons all in one mission and at the start. What i love about flashpoint is being part of a squad and trying to get your squad safely through a mission with your own tactics and weapons, not having at my disposal a tank so i can jump in and blast everyone to death.

Edit: Does anyone else think this maybe a way around uninteligent AI because it lets you do most of the donkey work instead of the AI?. Just a thought.

[hardrock 1]

I feel the opposite as i want my AI buddies to be able to handle there own situation without me having to come to there aid all the time.

But I'm not talking of aiding the AI. I'm speaking off doing special operations or actions, that an AI just can't do. Remember that you cannot program an AI to be able to handle everything. That's simply not possible, and as was also mentioned in other threads, the AI in OFP is actually very good for it not being scripted. Which other game do you have where the AI does what it does in OFP without being scripted?

Quote[/b] ]Edit: Does anyone else think this maybe a way around uninteligent AI because it lets you do most of the donkey work instead of the AI?. Just a thought.

Nope. I rather guess it's a try to give the player the ability to handle more of the actual mission. He isn't forced to, but he can.

Additionally, I don't think that player switching is any feature meant to make the game easier. Actually, most of the usable soldiers are of different squads with different tasks. So if you have, like in the Armed Assault demo, a tank gunner, a sniper and an assault group leader, only loose one of them and the group is lost. Get killed in the tank or as sniper and you won't have support in the other groups. Get killed as assault team leader, and the objective most probably can't be done, if the rest of the AI troops isn't able to handle it.

So IMO it's not a question of having multiple lifes, but being given the option to handle multiple tasks if needed. Also I think that player switching gives the player actually more freedom in making tactical decisions. Right now in OFP, you are limited in your approaches by the limits of the AI. Of course, the AI will be made better, but no AI ever will be perfect, so that problem will still remain.

[sanctuary 19]

Remember that this character switching will be up to the mission maker.

From what has been said, if the mission maker does not make more than 1 unit "playable" in the editor, the mission player will not be able to switch.

In Multiplayer, the misson maker was already able to give squad respawn, base respawn, instant location respawn or no respawn at all without anyone ranting.

In Armed Assault, BIS made this multiplayer-only feature possible to be used in SP (something impossible in OFP as once a player die, it was misison over, even if you wanted to make an unrealistic mission it was impossible in SP), and added on top of that another one : the possibility of "respawning" without the original character being killed.

So that is allowing for more possiblity of SP mission creation, as it will remain in control of the mission maker.

That could confirm the presence of a working " enableAI " command that mission makers dreamt about in OFP (as it was possible to disableAI for some interesting mission situations , but you could not enable it after).

So don't see the character switching as an arcade/AI workaround/betrayal/etc... , that is actually opening a lot more mission making possibilities than in OFP.

And as it remains totally in the hands of the mission makers, despite all those new limitations broken, you will be able to continue to make realistic squad missions with no respawn, no switching etc.. , all will be up to you as a mission maker.

Having more mission making possibilities is what us mission makers asked, and BIS gave them to us.

Enough to make me happy and buy the game.

[GBee 0]

Edit: Does anyone else think this maybe a way around uninteligent AI because it lets you do most of the donkey work instead of the AI?. Just a thought.

It has been suggested numerous times previously. It doesn't make much sense though, were that to be the case the AI would have to be dumber than in OFP/OFP:E or the new campaign that much more difficult.

It also doesn't fit with what we have seen in the videos. In the recent long gameplay vid the journalist hardly saw any living enemy. The allied AI was doing all the work and was completing the mission without any real player input.

The strength of OFP is the open environment. If you can't advance directly then you can circle around the enemy etc. It's hard to forsee any scenerio that would demand you used the character switching in place of good tactics/strategy.

[Scrub 0]

A very good point.  You hear a lot of action, and the player hustles to catch up to it ALL the time.  Almost like you expect an AI to shout 'Yo, Carbon boy!  You gonna be a part of this?!'

For that, BIS gets this --->

[kernriver 4]

That's a good point. This is of course, taking into the account that you have the discipline to stay as a tankie/grunt/pilot for the entirety of the mission, and also that you don't die (because you change characters automatically if you do?).

I agree, it will take some discipline, especially when/if you die, because then you will have to abort the mission even though you could continue...but i think it'll be worth it, you can get great replay value this way. I'll try it for sure, where will it get me i don't know...

[mr reality 0]

A very good point.  You hear a lot of action, and the player hustles to catch up to it ALL the time.  Almost like you expect an AI to shout 'Yo, Carbon boy!  You gonna be a part of this?!'

Well my assumption on that is either the player wishes to stay alive long enough for us to see goings on in the video so is holding back from the action or he/she has no idea what he's doing or what squad he belongs to. He doesn't seem to know where the rest of his squad is and ends up stumbling into them. I watched the MP video and one guy had the dreaded "click" of the weapon as he took aim-and yes he did die.......my point being-there testing it out rather than playing the game.

[Scrub 0]

While I partly agree, there is still a good portion of 15 minutes where this player is running in a relatively straight line towards the sound of action (if you can count on the stereo location in the vid).  And though there are moments where the unit is standing still and peeking around, you can still see the AI advance rapidly past toward the conflict.  I believe I'll stand by my 'Carbonboy' statement.  

Edit: Oh yeah, the 5 or 6 'clicks' in that vid was pretty lame, I can only hope the player was more busy telling others about Arma's features. I mean jeeze, after the first click, the rest are just a death-nell.

[-Grenadier- 0]

As I said in another thread, I actually think the character-switching could be a good sign for the AI, rather than a bad sign. If the AI takes over for any position not played by the player, the AI should be sophisticated enough to have a chance at completing any of those roles.

In Operation Flashpoint, if you edit BIS missions to have the AI fill the player's role, even at maximum skill level it will almost always fail the mission. Hopefully this has changed.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Yeah, that's true... it'd be a let down if you switched out of the AI and they immediately died from stupidity.

[Marco.A.Aguilar1 0]

I was noticing the patch that is worn by the U.S. Soldiers and I was curious to know if anyone knew what division it belonged to or if it is fictional. It kind of looked like the 34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/34id.htm

Closer looks showed that it wasn't.