ArmA Progress Updates

[Stendac 0]

It is a well documented account about the actions of a US Marine Recon battalion as a spearhead for US invasion of Iraq.  I don't want to give too much away, but the Marines spend half their time in Iraq blitzing through sporadic resistance in towns and small villages while firing from inside their vehicles (with deadly results).  One description involves a young Marine hitting two running Iraqis (unfortunately they turned out to be civilians) with his M249 from more than 200 meters away while bouncing down a rough road in a Humvee that is moving at 40 miles per hour.  

Shooting from the moving vehicles is difficult, but certainly doable (especially when you consider the alternative); and the elite forces rely on it just as much as anyone else.

Peace,

DreDay

Haha, Dreday.

You beat me to it.  Generation Kill was a great read wasn't it?

Quote[/b] ]And if they're marines it's a guarantee.

[bravo 6 0]

Quote[/b] ]Shooting from the moving vehicles is difficult, but certainly doable

It is already very hard to get good shots with mounted mg´s while speeding on bad roads, believe me. A spray and pray approach does only cause civillian victims and that´s a thing you don´t really want to have when already half-trapped in an ambush.

I guess hardly none of that special forces teams really tunred back to see who their civillian/opponent kill ratio was, don´t you think ?

yes its already kinda hard to aim if your in a mounted on a mg while speeding on the roads, especially when you in vet mode, i believe it would be also hard to give the right simulation.

If this feature was in, the simulation should be something very good/awsome and not just nice.

[robert(uk) 0]

Yeah, I think that people need to distinguish between moving in vehicles and being able to fire from them. As far as I can tell, no one is asking for the former here.

As has already been said, if firing form moving vehicles is not done, then why do things like the BMP series and even the American LAV 25 have firing ports for the troops in the back?

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

Yeah, I think that people need to distinguish between moving in vehicles and being able to fire from them. As far as I can tell, no one is asking for the former here.

As has already been said, if firing form moving vehicles is not done, then why do things like the BMP series and even the American LAV 25 have firing ports for the troops in the back?

static defending.

[robert(uk) 0]

Yeah, I think that people need to distinguish between moving in vehicles and being able to fire from them.  As far as I can tell, no one is asking for the former here.

As has already been said, if firing form moving vehicles is not done, then why do things like the BMP series and even the American LAV 25 have firing ports for the troops in the back?

static defending.

But you are still 'shooting from in the vehicle' aren't you...

[Heatseeker 0]

If a kid shot 2 running people at 200 meters with a M249 from the inside of a hmmwv moving at 40 mph it was luck (or most likely total bs imo).

OPFR = good.

Joint Operations = bad.

BF2 = bad.

I expect Arma to be a mature game with mature gameplay, my observations were made considering the effort and time it would take to implement the feature and if the feature would actually improve gameplay or not...

[dreday 1]

If a kid shot 2 running people at 200 meters with a M249 from the inside of a hmmwv moving at 40 mph it was luck (or most likely total bs imo).

OPFR = good.

Joint Operations = bad.

BF2 = bad.

I expect Arma to be a mature game with mature gameplay, my observations were made considering the effort and time it would take to implement the feature and if the feature would actually improve gameplay or not...

It probably was a little bit of luck mixed with a good bit of excellent marksmanship skills.  Overall, Marines were very successful at engaging the targets from moving vehicles... much more so, in fact, than their static/entrenched opponents!  Unfortunately this tactic has worked for the insurgents as well.  I remember hearing an account describing how a whole US Infantry squad was mowed down by the RPK fire from the passing vehicle.

Look, firing from vehicles is real and I don’t see why you think that the inclusion of this feature would lead to “immature†play.  BF2 had a lot of faults, but I don’t think that this is one of them.

I also don't see why it is such a difficult feature to implement.  The vehicles are already fairly bumpy in OFP to the point that firing fixed MGs is already very difficult (as others have stated).  Firing individual weapons would work much the same way except that they would be even less stable.

Anyways, it is obvious that this feature is not going to be in ArmA; so maybe we should move this to the Game 2 discussion?

BTW, whoever has said that the firing ports on the BMP are for static defense has absolutely no clue about the AFV design and usage.

Peace,

DreDay

[lwlooz 0]

In all honesty I think people need to stop this bickering about this "Moving around on/in moving vehicles" and "Shooting from inside vehicles" stuff. Thing is,it is the 28th of September and the game comes out when? Exactly.

And those two things,especially the "moving in vehicles" part, you don't just code in one week, say great and move on.

Given reports I got from GDC version(very much unfinished from what I heard,missing features) I think what people around here should go like is: "BIS.. I WANT YOU TO FIX ALL THE REMAINING BUGS PLEASE! Get the stuff already in there properly working!"

For one we haven't seen any of the brand new shiny Super AI yet. I take it that they are working on that one.Thus I rather have them continue tweaking and improving the AI than trying to implement features which I think couldn't be implemented properly in time anyways.

That said,I still would love to get the imo "missing" script commands and Height-Numbers on contour lines on the map

Oh and I hope that one imo "stupid" explosion effect that is used for every explosion isn't hardcoded,since that would be the first thing I would like to change

[dreday 1]

For one we haven't seen any of the brand new shiny Super AI yet. I take it that they are working on that one.Thus I rather have them continue tweaking and improving the AI than trying to implement features which I think couldn't be implemented properly in time anyways.

I totally agree!

Peace,

DreDay

[sanctuary 19]

In all honesty I think people need to stop this bickering about this "Moving around on/in moving vehicles" and "Shooting from inside vehicles" stuff. Thing is,it is the 28th of September and the game comes out when? Exactly.

And those two things,especially the "moving in vehicles" part, you don't just code in one week, say great and move on.

Even if certainly none expect the BIS crew to code and bugfree test in a month every possible suggestions, continuing making suggestions could be interesting for possible futur patches/upgrades/expensions, don't you think ?

After all it was not possible to use handguns in OFP , such possiblity was added by the expansion Resistance.

[lwlooz 0]

Certainly,yet this whole debate as already stated moves on from one feature to another. It is the same mentality that makes/made people scream for "BAS Seals" and if they would get them,make some pictures,look at it on desert island and scream for.. uhm.. "RHS T80's" 5 Minutes afterwards. As already said,if BIS was to come around and say that "Moving in Vehicles" and "Firing from inside vehicles" was implemented,it wouldnt take one day until Bravo6 would open a thread demaning the ability to dig foxholes claiming it was the most important thing in the world to do and it would go on from there until it gets to a stage that certain people actually believe BIS wants to get "digging foxholes" into ArmA still.

[ziiip 1]

Here's the translation of the Pc Dome preview by me. Note that my english isn't perfect, but I think you can -hopefully - understand everything.

Armed Assault

Though it doesn’t have such a huge fan base in our country(Hungary), like in the other countries of Europe or in America, the spectacular success of Operation Flashpoint is unarguable. A game, which even 6 years after its publishing lives and blooms still, and additionally the – incidentally incredible Bohemia Interactive – doesn’t really support the game. Who remembers those games which was published along with the OFP? Additionally, the game created a genre. True, it is classifiable as tactical shooter, however the czeh developers were the first one to create a game in which the player could get in all vehicles, and could go anywhere he/she wanted on a 25 cubic kilometers island.

As I mentioned, they didn’t have to take care of supporting, because the engine was so „openâ€, that fans have been expanding OFP up to nowadays. Thus the Bohemia guys had time to deal with their simulator(VBS). Which is good for us, players, because they learned a lot from military stuff, and were able to implement them in their following game, Armed Assault. Why is this it’s name, and not Operation Flashpoint 2? Well, it has techinal and political reasons.

Armed Assault is nor tecnically a sequel, since it’s a game using OFP’s revamped engine, and not a totally new engine. Though this doesn’t mean that the develpoers took a small step, but instead they don’t want to call something a sequel, which in ther opinion isn’t one. The other reason is political: the name „Operation Flashpoint†is the Codemasters property, and since they got across each other, the name couldn’t stay.

When we were at GC, at the IDEA Games’s stand – where Armed Assault was presented – they gave us a press DVD, which contained the Armed Assault’s press version. We tried this at home, and this preview shows the result of the testing. First of all, I tell you that I’m a big fan of OFP, so I’m a little biased regarding Armed Assault. Although I will emphasise the cons, it is important to say, that I played an early preview version. Which means they are still developing the game at full throttle, and I hope that they will fix a lot of the things which caused me bad experience. They will surely not fix everything, as some of the bugs were in OFP already, and if they didn’t fix those first, it can mean that they are the engine’s speciality.

For example the AI’s road-holding is one of these. We could already experience in OFP, that when the graphical engine was strained (because it had to draw too many detailed object) then the AI-driven vehicles were zig-zagging on the road, and could be Y-turing for long seconds in crossings. The Armed Assault inherited this thing. Here I would note that the test PC isn’t a fresh one, but nor it is a weak one: P4 2.4 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, GeForce 6600 GT. And on this PC, the graphics could never - not even with lower settings – be drawn normally. This means that the game was either jerky or the object weren’t drawn on normal quality. You can see on the pictures, that the models are rough and the textures are slubbered. If I waited a little there – my HD was working non-stop – then more detailed models and textures were drawn.

I think they will fix this. And in fact, this is the worst I can tell about ArmA. Because incidentally, the game is pretty nice. The soldiers have such high quality models, which we expect form any new games. The land is pretty detailed too, and nowadays the grass is also a basic expectation. And to those, who criticise the graphics despite that, I say that I’ve seen nicer games too, but we have very small, limited area in those, which isn’t a grat deal to make good-looking. But in ArmA we have a whole island. We can go where we want, we can complete tasks as we want. The price for this great freedom is that the graphics is a little weaker than in some top games, which we will forget a year later, but we will play ArmA even six years later.

I was able to try some missions and the campaign. The missions aren’t really different from OFP’s. The weapon selecting became different, and the signs on the map progressed. A nice new feature can be discovered in the campaign. We are able to select a secondary mission before the major mission. The secondary mission has effects on the major mission, and if it’s done, the enemy might have less tanks, or we might get artillery support, etc. We can skip these tasks if we want, but there won’t be any bonuses then. An extra curiosity for these tasks is that we can only select one task before each mission, but it has alternatives. So it’s up to us to decide whether if we want to receive more troops, or we want to delay the enemy reinforcements.

I can’t tell you many innovations about AI, since it’s performing well in OFP as well, except when it went too close to it’s enemies. Now it feels that the closeness isn’t a problem for the AI. Although it’s hard to judge since the graphics strained the test PC so much that basically everyone acted a little dumber. Despite that, it was good to see that urban fight greatly progressed. The AI-driven mates were decently moving and they shot down foes pretty cleverly.

It shows up on the engine, that it has been used for military purpuses before. And this is good for us, players.

For other games, it’s a habit to mention the weapons, units and vehicles that can be found in the game. There’s not much point in that here, since all OFP addons/mods will be possible to import, and the number of these is almost infinite. Let’s add this: this is only a promise yet, because I wasn’t able to import any addons into this preview version yet(translator’s note: addons must be converted with some tool first). It can be seen immediately that there has been a jump in the time too: from 1985 we reached nowadays. This shows on the uniforms and weapons too. The soldier’s anims modernized too, now we feel the Black Hawk Down type movies closer to ourselves than the WW2 movies.

As a veteran mission editor, I looked at the mission editor of course, which maximum changed in its look. But inside, everything remains the same, which isn’t a problem, since everything could be archieved with it. There’s a document on the web, which contains almost double more scripts than the number of scripts in OFP (already existing + new scripts). We should be happy for that, because in OFP there were some things that were really difficult to archieve. This shows us in advance, that we won’t be bored even years after the publishing, because more game modes, weapons, missions and campaigns will be waiting for us, while the czeh guys work on the real sequel.

To sum up, Armed Assault is everything what the prime OFP fans have been waiting for a long time. If we pimp our PC a little, then we won’t be disappointed. We receive a well expandable, long-term activity providing, real military simulator, tactical FPS, which has more detailed graphics, and it’s waiting for us with modern feeling instead of cold war. It’s a worthy challenger at every aspects for all of it’s opponents, which were born following OFP. And I bet that we will be still playing Armed Assault when no one will remember it’s opponent’s name.

Edit: Link to original preview: Pc Dome - ArmA preview

[Average Joe 0]

And Pimp our pc's we shall

[bravo 6 0]

And Pimp our pc's we shall

yup indeed, and thanks ZiiiP for the translation.

[dmakatra 1]

Certainly,yet this whole debate as already stated moves on from one feature to another. It is the same mentality that makes/made people scream for "BAS Seals" and if they would get them,make some pictures,look at it on desert island and scream for.. uhm.. "RHS T80's" 5 Minutes afterwards. As already said,if BIS was to come around and say that "Moving in Vehicles" and "Firing from inside vehicles" was implemented,it wouldnt take one day until Bravo6 would open a thread demaning the ability to dig foxholes claiming it was the most important thing in the world to do and it would go on from there until it gets to a stage that certain people actually believe BIS wants to get "digging foxholes" into ArmA still.

Best post today!

[rµm 0]

agreed.. nice post

PC pimping in progress:

AMD 64 x2 4200+

M2N-E mobo

Asus 7950 gx2 512mb

2gb Patriot(800)6400 ddr2

[luemmel 20]

agreed.. nice post

PC pimping in progress:

AMD 64 x2 4200+

M2N-E mobo

Asus 7950 gx2 512mb

2gb Patriot(800)6400 ddr2

He he, my ArmA PC has arrived today....

Core 2 6700

Geforce 7950GX2

P5N32-SLI

2 GB 800 MHZ

(I bought this PC only for ArmA because I want max. of graphic details (aa, 5km view distance). hope it will be possible...

[bravo 6 0]

He he, my ArmA PC has arrived today....

Core 2 6700

Geforce 7950GX2

P5N32-SLI

2 GB 800 MHZ

(I bought this PC only for ArmA because I want max. of graphic details (aa, 5km view distance). hope it will be possible...

How can you buy a pc for a game that its not even released?

Not even a demo

what a waste

imagine: in 3 or 4 months all hardware will be cheaper and then ARMA might appear for us mortals

[Colossus 2]

I'm still saving. The DDR2 RAM is too expensive at the moment. But I'm definitely going for a Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU, way better the the Athlon x2 5000+.

Plus that Microsoft is launching Vista in a few months, which means next gen. graphic cards (Nvidia is releasing there 8000-serie already this year). But then again, the DirectX 10 cards might not work well with the current games on the marked.

So until things settles I will keep my current comp. And buy my new comp when I feel it's "safe" enough to buy one.

I'm sure my current comp can handle a few extra months of living, right?

[goodguyswearblack9 0]

Anybody know if I'll be able to play comfortably on lower settings with this computer?

Pentium 4 2.4 GHz

1GB RAM

ATI Radeon X1300

Roadrunner internet

[TeRp 1]

What about taking a look at the minimum system requirements posted in the Wiki?

That would have answered your question.

[Lepardi 0]

Anybody know if I'll be able to play comfortably on lower settings with this computer?

Pentium 4 2.4 GHz

1GB RAM

ATI Radeon X1300

Roadrunner internet

Maybe, but your gfx card and processor is a little weak (GFX not only a a little) for ArmA. I suggest you would upgrade to a GF6600 GT, and buy some cooling to your processor to overclock it a bit. Then you should be fine i think. It's only a ~150€ upgrade, but helps you much.

[Raptor 10]

luemmel you are crazy

Core 2 6700

Geforce 7950GX2? (Quatro?)

How many pay you this system? 1 Million or 2?

[FCOPZ-illuminator 0]

luemmel you are crazy    

Core 2 6700

Geforce 7950GX2? (Quatro?)

How many pay you this system? 1 Million or 2?

Round about 450 € for the Geforce 7950GX2 + round about 470 € for the CPU (E6700). Now, you know it.

I'am little bit cheaper with a E6600 and a GeForce 7900GT Extreme.

However, i think a great new Intel Core 2 Duo is the best CPU for a great ArmA feeling  

Gratz to Lümmel (the grazy guy) *gg*

[goodguyswearblack9 0]

I've read the minimum specs a few times; however, I wanted to ask based on some reviews I've read about computers similar to mine lagging a bit.