ArmA 2

[dm 9]

I don't know many other games with view distance that large anyway, ESPECIALLY not shooters...

[Mtn Goat 0]

I think two reasons why BIS choose to use fictional islands is that because if they were to use a real island, then they might have to make everything else real - like houses, roads, cities, etc. - and when it's fictious, you can basically make it up.

Besides, if it's fictional, it's unpredictable what's what because some of it doesn't exist.

Chris

[Johnnie_Walker 0]

I don't know many other games with view distance that large anyway, ESPECIALLY not shooters...

QFT

On topic:

Waiting for more info... like everyone.

[Cannon Fodder 0]

I'm glad BIS are wise to the fact that it is a very effective trick in making a convincing AI to have them give audible/visual cues to their actions. People often cite the original Half Life's soldiers as one of the major milestones in AI development - in reality, they're not that complicated, very simple by today's standards. The only reason people are convinced by them is the believability of there being a REASON behind their actions, intelligence itself.

Imagine ArmA with shouts, panic, anger... The emotion that's missing from combat. A few mods for OFP (and subsequently ArmA if all goes to plan) introduced this aspect quite effectively... It NEEDS to be built in.

[Kirby 2]

Lol they could at least reskin the models before throwing ArmA1 units in there :P

Image from ArmA2 video

Lazy people

Just kidding about the lazy people...

But it doesn't do mutch to ease the doubts of the unbeleivers.

[Raptor 10]

Btw. BIS made an announcement on the digitex expo

hopefuly we will see something new about ArmAII.

http://www.bistudio.com/index.p....emid=42

[Average Joe 0]

Good Good, theres a decent list there lets hope we get the news too.

[sanctuary 19]

It seems BIS motion capture website got a huge facelift some months ago, i don't remember there was so much to read last time i visited it.

[xnodunitx 0]

Yep, you would be correct, they have definatly given it an update.

Hmm...I wonder looks like Oct 23-25 will be rather interesting for them.

[Raptor 10]

Ok first day.No news

or did someone spotted some news about bis?

[Journeyman 0]

If BIS have any brains it won't be calling this game ArmA2!

ArmA1 was a flop; don't build a sequel to a flop!

Give it a new name now while you can!! Operation Clean Plate would be better!

[nastros 0]

hopefully when they make this game they will put in a large variety of vehicles especially aircraft and boats which were fairly lacking in arma1

[BLSmith2112 0]

I too think ArmA2 should not be "The sequel to a bad game". I love Arma 1.14, but the majority of Arma players left with 1.0. The game has a bad rep now and calling the new game "Arma2" will not do any good.

I'd like to see more fluid movements and animations. I think the gameplay superseeds the graphic enhancement 10 fold.

The radio too is important. I absolutely HATE HATE HATE it when your getting shot at, you give the order to eject out of a chopper, and then you have to wait for the current radio command to finish before he actually says anything. Its even worse, theres a list of orders being shouted off, by the time he's done saying

*Get shot by AA, your falling through the sky*

"-Enemy- -Unknown- -at- 11' -o'clock-, -at- -200- -meters-

-Enemy- -Unknown- -at- 12' -o'clock-, -at- -80- -meters-

*Still falling through the sky*

-Enemy- -Unknown- -at- 4' -o'clock-, -at- -300- -meters-

-Enemy- -Unknown- -at- 11' -o'clock-, -at- -100- -meters-

-Enemy- -Unknown- -at- 11' -o'clock-,   -at- -500- -meters-"

"All Eject"

.003 seconds later, your hits a tree and your AI are dead.

By that time you've fallen hundreds of feet in the air and your probably already dead in a tree somewhere. The orders should be quicker, more fluent, and non-robotic. Have the "voice actors" actually voice act. Tell each actor to simply read off of sheet of coordinates. Since we players hear these orders 1000x fold, I think we aught to have some sort of human saying:

"5 through 12, head over to that bush over there" *fast hand motion* instead of:

"5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12, head to that, bush, at, 9 o'clock"

-Record it in large bits:

--"5 through 12" instead of "5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12"

-Write down directions to the voice actor(s) suggesting the tone of voice so the final product seems more fluent.

-Decrease the latency between sections of voice. The few miliseconds that could be shaved off between words could really help the robotic end of things a little... But I still recommend having someone literally say the orders. Even if it is 1000 recordings per voice actor. PBO's are small, the files are local, and it makes for a better game in the long run. Hell I'm sure you can get a bunch of people to read off those recordings for free. Anything is better than the robotic order system.

What I also would like to see in Arma2:

Animation interjection and fluid motion.

You hit "B" for binocs, "no wait, theres a T80!!" instead of waiting for the animation to finish THEN to have the RPG load, the animation should cut the milisecond you click it.

A map that opens dynamically. You pull it out of your pocket and see it in-game. The map does not show up as bright white in the middle of the night. When do you ever see a spec-op running around with a 10000 watt portable light bulb to see a perfectly flat map?

Probably the biggest/simplest thing I need to see: The time delay between looking at your map. I mean initially you guys had the game LOAD between looking at the map, and switching back to the game. You guys have improved the time dramatically and I applaud you, but Arma2's map should be fluid, constant, in-tune with the world around you. It'd be real neat to see your character kneel down, open a 3d map on the ground and be able to look around in free-view at the same time.

Oh, and stop giving all the good units to VBS2 people. Nearly every vehicle in there needs to be in Arma. We don't need WW2 DC3s.... We need Seahawks, Apaches, C-130's... That DC3 was an insult to my money. The camel's fine, its like the inside joke of OFP, but the line stops there.  

[Guest]

What I would like to see in Arma 2

Arma 1 completely finished

Arma 2 comes out like 2 years from now

Why -

Arma (1) hasnt really been out that long, and finally some great addons and missions are starting to come out, both by Bis and the community

If Arma 2 steps in say in dec of this year, will it squash all the hard work put into addons for the Arma?

And also, simple fact for me, I like Arma (1), I have a *relatively* high end system that runs it good, no severe lag, what happens when the graphics get boosted X 2?

Ive heard that the map for Arma 2 is like twice as small as Arma (1) - personally I like very much the adversity and freedom of Arma's map as it is, most of the map consists of as astounding terrain of a northern type, with a southern island as an option, I dont want to end up getting forced to play in a small single environment type.

I think Arma (1) should be expanded on, I think Bis could afford to release later on even expansions on it that we would have to buy (20 bucks aint that much), its an amazing jump from Ofp, but I think diving into Arma 2 too early is something I personally have no desire to deal with. Arma as it is, is enough for me, and my mission project for that matter, and I have no desire, no inclination, to, again, transport and spend months importing my mission into Arma 2, I did it once, from Ofp to Arma, and it was hard enough.

I think, again, for me it boils down to this :

Further expand arma, continue to further perfect the game and its abilities in free upgrades

BIS begin to look ahead, create expansions (expansions of whatever, missions, upgrades, new vehicles, etc) that can be put on the shelf and sold for reasonable prices, if the quality is there, word will spread.

Dont push Arma2 release too fast on top of Arma, it will considerably destroy what the community has created for Arma, and I think alot of people will just stay with Arma and not bother with it if it happens to fast. Sure, any mission *can* be ported over, but look at Arma (1), how many great missions from Ofp have we seen ported over.. not many, it takes a great amount of effort to port missions over to new maps, even if the coding is relatively the same, and even so, it just doesent happen often except for the real big ones that are uber popular in Mp, which end up either taking forever to port over, or the author ends up giving up on it..

Again, I think proper expansion of Arma (1) can both yield great rewards for BIS (in money ) and keep the community sticking in the right place and making more and more great stuff for the current platform.

Imo, how much more realistic, eye cansyish and Cpu draining does the game have to be, good grief Arma is plenty for me, and the only way I see Arma 2 running on my pc with those screenies is to have a dinky little map that removes the freedom im used to having with these similar type game platforms, and Im fortunate enough to have a really good system plus a really nice graphics card... And again, this is not to mention the destruction of most of the communities work for Arma (1) as well...

I vote for Arma (1) expanded further, and heck ya ill goto Best Buy and spend 30 bucks or more on an expansion pack for it

[stakex 0]

A couple notes to your post Special Ed...

First of all, all ArmA1 mods and addons Im sure will work just fine in ArmA2... so ArmA2 coming out seem, to me at least, to be a good thing for the modders. And while its not exactlly easy to import things from OFP, Im sure the devs have put a little thought into that when it comes to ArmA/ArmA2. They know the games are coming out fairly close together, and Im sure less effort will be requiered to port from ArmA to ArmA2 then from OFP to ArmA. At least.... one would think.

Second, the graphics are pretty damn far from improving x2 from what we have seen. In fact, the graphics look like a more polished ArmA1 then anything else, with some eye candy effects thrown in. But they are far from any major leap forward. Providing your system is dual core (requiered with ArmA2), if it works good for ArmA1, it should work fine for ArmA2.

This big problem with your idea for ArmA1 is that, not a whole lot of people would agree, at least outside this community. Other then hardcore OFP fans, I struggle to find anyone who has played ArmA1 and actually liked it, or gave it a chance to improve beyond its first few months. Initial reaction to a game is huge, and ArmA1 has a reputation of being a bad game because untill later versions it was barely playable... not many who walked away from the game at launch are going to come back to it and risk wasteing another $30-$40 on a game they couldn't stand to play to begin with... especially not with all the high end games coming out the next couple years.

Sure, people who stayed around till the game was actually playable will POSSIBLY buy the expansion... but can BIS really justify shelfing a game they have thats likely months from release, to go off and develop an expansion that has no guarantee to sell?

And then theres the main reason. BIS likely knows they droped the ball on ArmA1 when they got off to a terrible start. This is of course because ArmA1 was released early to bring in money for BIS... it well might have been something absolutly had to do, but still, everyone knows what kinda of reactions the game drew because of its early release. Because of this BIS is not going to throw allot of dev power (and money) at ArmA1 and hope that "word of mouth" helps sell enough copies of their expansions to keep the studio in bussiness when they have another game they can release in about the time it would take to make that expansion, thats almost certain to sell more copies.

I know it sucks to have a game you love get passed over like this... but in fairness, BIS did state that ArmA1 was just a go between long before it was ever released, and that ArmA2 is the real project they have been working on since OFP. And since ArmA never developed into a hit, theres no reason to think they have changed, or will change their minds on that.

[BLSmith2112 0]

Waiting two years for ArmA2 is like asking you to quit your day job and live without income for two years. ArmA1 didn't give a big enough sign-on bonus so BIS could live like fatcats for 6 years and then decide to make a new game

I'd gladly pay BIS $5-10 a month for a "online" component of the game. Continuous updates once a week, auto download feature for maps, addons, etc. New patches rolled out on a weekly/monthly basis.

[dale0404 5]

Waiting two years for ArmA2 is like asking you to quit your day job and live without income for two years. ArmA1 didn't give a big enough sign-on bonus so BIS could live like fatcats for 6 years and then decide to make a new game

I'd gladly pay BIS $5-10 a month for a "online" component of the game. Continuous updates once a week, auto download feature for maps, addons, etc. New patches rolled out on a weekly/monthly basis.

Thats actually not a bad idea there Victor.

Having a persistant world to come back to everytime you go online would be rather cool.

Not got a clue how to work that though or if its even possible.

[Guest]

A couple notes to your post Special Ed...

First of all, all ArmA1 mods and addons Im sure will work just fine in ArmA2... so ArmA2 coming out seem, to me at least, to be a good thing for the modders. And while its not exactlly easy to import things from OFP, Im sure the devs have put a little thought into that when it comes to ArmA/ArmA2. They know the games are coming out fairly close together, and Im sure less effort will be requiered to port from ArmA to ArmA2 then from OFP to ArmA. At least.... one would think.

Second, the graphics are pretty damn far from improving x2 from what we have seen. In fact, the graphics look like a more polished ArmA1 then anything else, with some eye candy effects thrown in. But they are far from any major leap forward. Providing your system is dual core (requiered with ArmA2), if it works good for ArmA1, it should work fine for ArmA2.

This big problem with your idea for ArmA1 is that, not a whole lot of people would agree, at least outside this community. Other then hardcore OFP fans, I struggle to find anyone who has played ArmA1 and actually liked it, or gave it a chance to improve beyond its first few months. Initial reaction to a game is huge, and ArmA1 has a reputation of being a bad game because untill later versions it was barely playable... not many who walked away from the game at launch are going to come back to it and risk wasteing another $30-$40 on a game they couldn't stand to play to begin with... especially not with all the high end games coming out the next couple years.

Sure, people who stayed around till the game was actually playable will POSSIBLY buy the expansion... but can BIS really justify shelfing a game they have thats likely months from release, to go off and develop an expansion that has no guarantee to sell?

And then theres the main reason. BIS likely knows they droped the ball on ArmA1 when they got off to a terrible start. This is of course because ArmA1 was released early to bring in money for BIS... it well might have been something absolutly had to do, but still, everyone knows what kinda of reactions the game drew because of its early release. Because of this BIS is not going to throw allot of dev power (and money) at ArmA1 and hope that "word of mouth" helps sell enough copies of their expansions to keep the studio in bussiness when they have another game they can release in about the time it would take to make that expansion, thats almost certain to sell more copies.

I know it sucks to have a game you love get passed over like this... but in fairness, BIS did state that ArmA1 was just a go between long before it was ever released, and that ArmA2 is the real project they have been working on since OFP. And since ArmA never developed into a hit, theres no reason to think they have changed, or will change their minds on that.

I mostly agree with what you say, except for the first part m8

"First of all, all ArmA1 mods and addons Im sure will work just fine in ArmA2... so ArmA2 coming out seem, to me at least, to be a good thing for the modders. And while its not exactlly easy to import things from OFP, Im sure the devs have put a little thought into that when it comes to ArmA/ArmA2. They know the games are coming out fairly close together, and Im sure less effort will be requiered to port from ArmA to ArmA2 then from OFP to ArmA. At least.... one would think. "

As you mentioned later in your post, Arma 2 is not Arma (1) X2, but it is a polished up version -

Still, I would imagine, unfortunately, that many of the addons made for Arma (1) wont look right in Arma 2 directly ported, they will lack the updated detailed appearance - at least I suspect this

As far as mods, and missions, that use maps, its alot of work to port over, everything changes. Really everything does, and I suppose alot of that depends on how much editor placed objects there are, still its very time consuming, and I still feel that most people wont do it, aside from a few large scale popular Mp missions. I think most of the great missions that come out for Arma wont be seen in Arma 2, regardless of level of difficulty in porting over, I suspect highly, that it just wont happen for most of them.

Ya, I hear you man

The game got a horrid kick off, and I agree that many of the people that are sticking with Arma are ofp devoted fans as well, like me. The others, less devoted players, prolly, like you said, got turned off too many times at the start of Arma, and said forget this -

Oh well

I wish I could say sure, ill port over my mission in Arma 2, but nope, its just not going to happen, im happy with Arma, and the map, and it would be months of hard work redone, that I already did from ofp to Arma (1) - its just not worth doing it again.

I guess everyone weighs out what they feel is worth it in the end for the game they play and possibly mod too

[Inkompetent 0]

Waiting two years for ArmA2 is like asking you to quit your day job and live without income for two years. ArmA1 didn't give a big enough sign-on bonus so BIS could live like fatcats for 6 years and then decide to make a new game

I'd gladly pay BIS $5-10 a month for a "online" component of the game. Continuous updates once a week, auto download feature for maps, addons, etc. New patches rolled out on a weekly/monthly basis.

Thats actually not a bad idea there Victor.

Having a persistant world to come back to everytime you go online would be rather cool.

Not got a clue how to work that though or if its even possible.

I don't think that's a persistant world he talks about at all.

Rather some kind of premium subscription where one would get good access to automatic downloading, continous patching, etc.

And hopefully enough people on this 'premium' subscription would pay for a few devs to work non-stop with fixing bugs - even those that are so small that they at the moment aren't considered economically sound to spend resources on fixing.

@Special Ed

It's a HUGE difference between "mods from ArmA1 being easy to port to ArmA2" and "mods from ArmA1 being optimized for ArmA2 and using all the new fancy stuff it offers"

Since it's basically the same engine in ArmA and ArmA2 I'm 100% sure that very many addons will work out of the box or with very little modification (i.e changing class names to include ArmA2 weapons and vehicles). More or less every single one, in fact.

However I'm sure there are both new stuff for models/textures that can be used, as well as new scripting commands to make things even better

[stakex 0]

Yea your likely right, most people probly won't bother porting over missions and such, which does kinda suck... but Im sure there will be a slew of new missions for ArmA2 in no time.

Im really not sure I agree about the unit detail tho for one small reason... some of the BIS models seem to be the same as in ArmA1, and they look just fine in the game. This is something thats really hard to tell until we actually have the game in front of us, but I personally dosn't believe it will be much of an issue.

What would really help the situation is a solid release date of ArmA2. We originally heard in 2008 sometime, and if thats in fact true I would suspect that most people would start thinking about developing for ArmA2 instead of ArmA1. But right now there seems to be little evidence the game is actually being released this year, and who wants to start developing addons for a game that might in fact be more then a year away? That could just be me, but I think an update on where the game stands in terms of release would be nice in this situation...

But in the end I wouldn't worry to much... Im sure there will still be people doing work for ArmA1 for a while to come.

[froggyluv 2136]

As far as mods, and missions, that use maps, its alot of work to port over, everything changes. Really everything does, and I suppose alot of that depends on how much editor placed objects there are, still its very time consuming, and I still feel that most people wont do it, aside from a few large scale popular Mp missions. I think most of the great missions that come out for Arma wont be seen in Arma 2, regardless of level of difficulty in porting over, I suspect highly, that it just wont happen for most of them.

I think alot will have to do with the final product, mainly the AI. If Arma2 really delivers on it's promise for clever AI, that pathfinds by the inches and are really tough, not thru cheap eagle-sniper vision, but strategically, I think many map-makers etc... will want their artwork experienced the right way.

here's hoping anyway...

[Guest]

Waiting two years for ArmA2 is like asking you to quit your day job and live without income for two years. ArmA1 didn't give a big enough sign-on bonus so BIS could live like fatcats for 6 years and then decide to make a new game

I'd gladly pay BIS $5-10 a month for a "online" component of the game. Continuous updates once a week, auto download feature for maps, addons, etc. New patches rolled out on a weekly/monthly basis.

Thats actually not a bad idea there Victor.

Having a persistant world to come back to everytime you go online would be rather cool.

Not got a clue how to work that though or if its even possible.

I don't think that's a persistant world he talks about at all.

Rather some kind of premium subscription where one would get good access to automatic downloading, continous patching, etc.

And hopefully enough people on this 'premium' subscription would pay for a few devs to work non-stop with fixing bugs - even those that are so small that they at the moment aren't considered economically sound to spend resources on fixing.

@Special Ed

It's a HUGE difference between "mods from ArmA1 being easy to port to ArmA2" and "mods from ArmA1 being optimized for ArmA2 and using all the new fancy stuff it offers"

Since it's basically the same engine in ArmA and ArmA2 I'm 100% sure that very many addons will work out of the box or with very little modification (i.e changing class names to include ArmA2 weapons and vehicles). More or less every single one, in fact.

However I'm sure there are both new stuff for models/textures that can be used, as well as new scripting commands to make things even better

Gotcha

Im not super informed about the addons area, I had 'assumed' (you know what they say about assumptions..) that from the pics there is a reasonable amount of increase in detail quality - I may be wrong.

Ya, my main complaint is because im a mission maker, working on a huge scale mission in Arma, and its impossible to fathom porting over to a new map, and fearful as well of new scripting changes that may require script rework, some of my scripts exceed 100kb -

I really like the map for Arma, in fact its amazing, how many times ive just gone silly from modding, and took a break, grab up a civilian on a clean map, and go hiking for a few hours in the far northern areas, its just unreal how beautiful it is -

This aside from the fact, I have about 3000 various objects placed on the map, many are script reliant, theres just no way without a paycheck I would re-locate all that, Arma2 steps in before my mission is done, well, the left-overs still playing Arma are all that will play my mission when its done

Theres nothing I can do, and I dont want to hinder progress, I just wish things had been dif and Arma stuck around for a good while longer than it seems it will before it gets replaced - ah well

The die hards will still play my mission!

Edit-

You know, the only way many missions, like mine, would be saved and would go into Arma2?

Bis made Sahrani available for Arma2 along with its standard map - although I suspect if there is any significant increase in quality of models, the map would prolly lag bad in a large scale mission for it - of course the 'quality increase' of addons in Arma2 seems a topic of debate, I guess only time will tell - still - if Arma2 brought Sahrani with it, and make porting over as easy as maybe just a few unit name changes, I can at least fathom that, but somehow, I think it will be far worse and not worth it.