How did you come to be playing OFP?

[sniper pilot 36]

It was some time in 2001 if i can remember right. I was 12 years old (now 17) and was just starting to love the military. I was at my uncle's apartment testing out his games. He got this game and he said it was "Different". The first thing my 12 year old self did was open the mission editor wizard. I messed arround with "Mission 1" and added vehicles and stuff. It was really uniqe and i really got into it.

I bought it for my self and started to play it at home. Got way skilled at the editor. Then i found Ofp.info "OpFlash CZ" now ofp2.info. My past, present and future homepage. I still remember the site getting banned at my middle school because i was there all the time... One of the things that has sticked with me is the death of Lawrie (Just search his name on ofp2.info) . I dont know why but i remember that clearly. Ive witnessed the rise of BAS and the flawed BAS week (no updated little birds sorta pissed me off, but BAS you have had a major contribution for the success of this game). I got all my friends to play this game except the hardcore FPS fanboys, my saying "Operation Flashpoint.... The only game where an Addon is released every day".

So here i am Sniperpilot, almost 6 years later... And finally i have decided to become more active in the community, which i might add, one of the closest communities and uniqe communities I have had the honor to be a fan of. So how did you get here? It would be nice to know...

edit: i hope this thread is different enough than the one below about how it has effected you, sorry mods if it sorta the same. Delete it if you please...

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Ah, you sound like a younger version of myself.

I too was in the infatuated with military stage (13, now 19). I saw an ad for OFP in a magazine - love at first site, I tell you. The boys in my floor of the boarding house wanted a new game, so I suggested OFP.

I didn't get my own way, they ended up getting a crappy surfing game which they played about once. I went off and bought CWC - never looked back since, until Resistance came out.

[Ares1978 0]

Saw the review in a local gaming magazine in 2001 (at age 22 or 23, 3 years after my military service), ordered the game, been playing ever since and making shitty stuff since people first figured out how to edit configs.

Never been great with the mission editor, never bothered with scripting, I never play single missions, I rarely save my own. My missions are usually simple, one waypoint or two per group (unless it's absolutely necessary for the AI to have more) and they are fights, not novels, that's what campaigns are for.

Been making islands since the day they released wrpedit and models since 2003, I think. Still suck at both. Everything I make, I make first and foremost for myself, so my standards are low.

[sanctuary 19]

before military service : convinced pacifist interested in wargaming

military service in 1994 after having no possibility to delay it anymore, fortunately it was rather short.

after military service : convinced pacifist interested in wargaming

5 years after the military waste of my time : discovery of Delta Force followed soon Delta Force 2 , then Delta Force "Land Warrior" was released and ended my interest in the serie as it had nothing i liked from the previous games.

It was there i moved to Operation Flashpoint , as it was the demo that stayed the longer of any ones on my hardrive due to community released mission and content (already some genius at work, on the demo )

Then, 2006 always there and always convinced pacifist interested in wargaming, but interested in fps simulations too now

[NSX 8]

It was a huge article (8 pages) written from 3 points of view about OFP in russian game magazine Navigator.As I complete my serving in military recon spetsnaz 3 years ago I was very interested in that.As I didn't have Internet connection I had a disk of it later in may of the following year.4 dollars officially localised by russian publisher Buka it contained CWC+Red Hammer.At first-lags.But I played and was huge fan of it.Then-more powerful GeForce 3 Ti200 and I it was amaizing.Than a disks from magazines with addons,Internet and I possibly create one of the largest private collections of addings and addons (35 Gb of nesessary addons right now).

The game was amaizing,but not perfect.Sometimes I was talking only bad words while playing when saw fictious tank crew uniform,western stereotypes about vodka and so on.But it was worth it.

[echo1 0]

I got it for my 12th birthdaay, unfortunatly it didnt wont to work with my IBM and its Pentium2 with 64MB RAM and integrated g-card Next birthday I got Resistance, and a new PC

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Hmmmm... Ah the good ole' days.

I was a big fan of Hidden & Dangerous and Fight For Freedom, but they were getting old. One day in ~Mars 2001 I saw OFP in a magazine preview and thought it looked "cool". So I bought it the day it was released.

I don't regret it

[Creepy_Smell 0]

I used to play a lot of CS but wanted more. I looked into Ghost Recon and OFP. I went with GR that time as OFP was too complicated for me at the time.

So, now I've got GR, Raven Shield, Swat3 and others. Played some Joint Operations for MP too. I wanted a game that sort of combined all the above..a good single player experience that was open ended with both infantry and vehicles.

I remembered OFP and tried the demo and it just clicked for me. I think I had heard about ArmA too but decided I couldnt wait. Grabbed myselft a copy and some mods and am now happily awaiting ArmA by enjoying all the good OFP content that is out there.

[dr_chris 10]

I first played it as soon as the first demo came out, and haven't stopped since :x

Lots of old names I don't see about these days which is a shame, but then again there is a far larger and better modding community these days which more than makes up for it

*huggles UKF*

[Mr_Tea 0]

I played the demo, after that i knew OFP is exactly that game, that i was waiting for so long.

[the_shadow 0]

A friend told me he had bought a nice game...

so i borrowed it and the next day i bought a copy...

back then i had a comp that hardly reached the minimum requirements so i basically ran at >13fps....

and here i am 5 years later and eagerly waiting for ArmA wich will be the first game after OFP:R i have bought :P

[kernriver 4]

Nothing fancy really, a friend told me about the demo, i tried it and was hooked instantly.

The history:

In 1999.(and later on) i was playing Hidden and dangerous and there was a feature i've never seen in a game before. Iron sights. And also it was not like: you have 10 or so weapons on you, and one of them is bound to work on enemy that just spawned. No, you had to be smart and use tactics to outsmart the enemy. To make it short, i liked it alot. Well, the time went by and i kinda forgotten about it, but then i've played this OFP demo. It was everything i liked about H&D, and then some! That was it for me. Well, since 2001. i convince people (known and unknown, i sometimes feel quite embarrased) to play this great game; at the moment the ones on the "shooting range" are my brother and one of my friends. They've played OFP before, but now they have second thoughts. I think they're intimidated by this game

[Ranger Bob 0]

I must have been 12/13 when I decided to buy a "PC gamer" magazine which had the OFP (p)review and demo.

After skimming the magazine, i decided to install ofp and was hooked immediately! I played Ambush for days - it was so exciting.

Anyway, when the game was released i bought it straight away and didn't regret it at all!

[Student Pilot 0]

My story starts before the Gold Edition was released.  I have always loved shooting games, and had most of the Rainbox Six games.  Whenever I'm in a Wal-Mart, though, I always look at the games shelf to find something that may be worth buying.  One day I walked into a Wal-Mart, walked into the games section, and saw a newcomer.  Operation Flashpoint.  Huh, ok, I'll look at it.  What really caught my eye was the ability to drive vehicles.  I went home that day and started browsing the internet trying to find info about the game.  I came across some webpage that described one mission in it.  This page described walking through forests, over open plains, approaching towns, and then explainging that there were several different ways to complete the mission.  There were no walls, no corridors, no unnatural limits.  I fell in love; I knew I needed this game.  I bought the Gold Edition with some birthday money and haven't stopped playing.

OFP is the game I judge all other shooting games by...which explains why I haven't bought a shooting game since resistance.

-Pilot

[Sennacherib 0]

the chance, I chose ofp by looking at the box

[DBR_ONIX 0]

Saw a screenshot in a magazine (UK PC Gamer I think) of a bit open field, with a truck, some guys jumping out of the back, enemy tracers flying at them, skimmed over the text, flicked over without remebering the name (Yes yes, forgive me )

A while later (no idea how long to be honest), was in town with a friend, and saw this game (the GOTY edition), and looked at the screenshots, and suddenely remebered that screenshot, and the words "simple to use mission editor" (I done a lot of mission making in Delta Force 2, which was fairly annoying to do, since the editor wasn't the most logical one ever, though better than the Unreal Ed etc ), and seeing things like it had full islands, instead of levels etc..

Since I was.. hmm, 12 or 13 (Not sure..), I got my friends mother to buy it on my behalf..

Then went home, played the campaign for a bit, got bored of it, tried the mission editor, played it for a while..

Then, I someone ended up talking to someone who was in a squad, and started talking to him about OFP MP (Which I couldn't play at the time due to the joys of 56k), and was impressed by the sounds of things like CTI. And he pointed me int he direction of www.ofp.info and www.ofpec.com

Went down hill from there, still playing the game howevermany years later

- Ben

[blackdog~ 0]

I bought it because of the pretty picture on the front of the box at the computer store.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

A leprechaun gave it to me...

[jtec 0]

Always used to play on consoles (due to the high price of pc's) but then my brother in law bought a pc with delta force. Played that on Lan and decided to buy a PC, had the pc for a few weeks when Ofp demo was launched. Was totally hooked (demo was brilliant) bought the game when it was released, got connected to the net and started my first ever clan "UKA", moved away from the clan side of things and now model and texture addons for project UKF.

[D.murphy man 0]

For me it all began back when the demo was released, when i was about 12. I was just really impressed by the non liniear mission and the fact i wasnt walking down corridoors and being led into things. It was a really refreshing experience from things like quake 2 and halflife. Then i got the game some time around the release and have been hooked ever since.

This was the first comunity, and forum i had ever joined. And to this day its been the only one i really keep active in. I remember back in the day skimming threw the old forums mission editing section and saving all the scripts and codes into a notepad file and then playing around in the editor.

I also remember the first time we was able to make new models, and the first addons being released. Thats when things really started getting exciting, then the first islands started coming! i use to download every one that was released.

Before allthat i also remember the joys of MP back in gamespy (its pretty dead now last time i checked) and being part of a small clan (101th airborn or somthing) and forcing them to try out all of my early versions of Skye Virus which where all horribly buged with corpses floating across the ground at you (didnt relise setdammag 0 didnt work in MP so well) then i released the finalised version of Skye Virus which was pretty popular for a time.

Then later the clan split up, sadly they where a great bunch of guys which i havnt heard from since. We use to have a great time playing Desert Rats CTF. since then i havnt been part of any clan and only play online occasionaly, although iv been playing more often lately due to getting a new router and not loosing connection every 30 mins.

I also remember the incredibly fun mission Cops and Robbers. where we use to role play and set the bank up with satchels and make demands whiles the police planed to storm the buildings sadly i never see that mission on servers any more, its just crime city (which sadly hasnt got the tall enterble sky scraper for the bank) I also remember seeing nogovaville rising and falling in popularity.

My other fond memory was the release of the veitnam mod (i forget the name) where just about every sever was running and having crazy fire fights in dense jungles

Any way, this post has gone on long enough. if youve reched this far to read this line, cheers for ready guys

[ELiTe 0]

I happened to download the demo before OFP was released. I remember it was still back in 1999 or 2000, way before OFP was due to be released.

I remember the demo as being the "mission 5" of the campaign, the one where you get into the jeep and drive around. Anyway I couldn't get the demo to run initially so I thought "Screw It, I won't buy the game" but I noticed that even though I may not have the correct version of DirectX (couldn't remember if it needed DX7 or DX8) installed, it could use Glide, where at the time I was using a Voodoo2 card.

So I switched to Glide, played the demo, and went "Heeeyyy this one's cool, gonna get it when it comes out".

About a year later it was released, and I bought it.

[Thomas Ryan 0]

For me, it was a few years ago. I was going to my mate's house and I saw his brother playing on the computer. The game he was playing intregued me and I asked him "What game is that?" and he said,

"Operation Flashpoint, it's really good! Wanna go?" Of course I said yes. I was fascinated with it right there, right then. And I've been hooked, yes, hooked, on it ever since.

[b@dog 0]

Man I feel old

I would have been about 35 when I first came across the demo in a copy of PC Gamer, having then just finished Hidden and Dangerous in which most missions had a refreshing open feel to them.

I loaded the demo and started playing.  I think, after dying several times, I managed to get evacuated in the helicopter and thought it was an OK game.  About a week later I was bored, so I tried it again.  This time I made it to the helicopter but it was blown out of the sky.  The next time the helicopter was shot down before I could reach it and I had to hide in the hills.  Every time I played was different and I could do what the hell I liked…I was hooked and bought the game as soon as it came out.

I’ve not played the original campaign all the way through for at least four years but there are moments I still remember to this day:

1. Whilst running from the enemy I almost crapped my pants when I was nearly hit by one of my own pilots falling right out of the sky in front of me after his helicopter was blown up.

2. Me and two other passengers being killed in a jeep crash during a single-player mission, because the AI driver was driving way too fast (and too erratically).

3. The last level of the original game.  And by this I mean the “real†last level i.e. get everyone to the pub.  This has to be my favourite level in a computer game ever.  This mission was such an inspired move by the developers.  I almost felt like a real war veteran driving my mates to the pub through landscapes, villages and towns I had last seen as a soldier, pilot or tank commander.

The overall freedom I seemed to have when playing the game, that every play of a mission revealed new surprises and the fact that I can reminisce about it like talking about a good book, a good film or a good holiday is the reason why it will probably remain my favourite computer game ever – until Armed Assault or “Flashpoint 2†that is…

[berghoff 11]

I first seen OFP on the front cover of a local gaming magazine, read the preview and saw that there was an demo out, but back then we had something like a 2,5-3kb/s connection which rarely was used for anything else than viewing webpages so I asked someone else to download it at work. The next day I installed the demo and played it over and over again, I remember it was a dream coming true. Huge Island, freedom, good AI it was all so unreal. From that moment I just was waiting only for OFP to arrive. And somewhere in 2002-03 I finally got a better internet connection and downloaded quite a few addons which nearly ruined my OFP installation. Made some crappy missions aswell which should never be released.

[redface 1]

back in 2001, the only simulator I could play (due to my crappy "onboard Intel Graphics Accelerator") was ... Microsoft Flight Simulator 98

then I started looking for a better helicopter simulator, and saw OFP's Hind promo pic somewhere on the internet

went through numerous failed attempts to run the demo on my old PC, to add a graphical card to my Pentium II etc.

finally bought a new PC in 2002, and Game1 the same day

at first I thought the game itself was ridiculously difficult, so I mainly got sucked in by the editor and OFPEC.com at first ....