Information from Digitex!

[Johnnie_Walker 0]

Foliage handling looks improved, no slowdowns with so many trees on the screen.

Is the player movement improved?, it looks to me like the movements are faster (more flashpointish). Im sure a lot of ctf players would love to see this improved.

Also I would like to know if the vehicle handling has been changed.

Any more info is welcome.

[Deadfast 43]

looking on this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCQaJh0lnRA

Impressive to see that you improved the destruction.

Nice visual effects ( e.g. the helicabin ) but it is redolent of ArmA.

Just an additional transition to the video:

<ul>

[*]At 0:27 where the guy is pointing at the screen there's a rabbit

[*]The building being destructed is said to be an old model - "demo house". Final building should have been more detailed and AI should use those destroyed buildings for cover.

The forests really look amazing. It's almost unbelievable, how many trees are rendered, w/e any visible performance loss.

[Adamicz 3]

A really love that parallax bump-mapping thing... Ground texture looks more plastics, it brings a lot of life to the flat texture of the ground.

[froggyluv 2130]

Tank shelled buildings look much improved! I hope AI can navigate those wall craters

I heard there was going to be more banter and taunts betwen troops, I hope they use more 'manly' voices like we heard in Tonal Special Forces (still the best) and accents according to creed.

I'd also like to see more explosive death/wound animations like bodies being shot backwards especially at close range.

[Colossus 2]

So far so good, but how much can BI do in one year? That's what concerns me. I know a team has been working on Game 2/ArmA 2 since ...well... Operation Flashpoint. But how much they have achived after ArmA: Armed Assault remains my main question. What didn't we see in ArmA which was already developed?

Exciting..

[Guest Ti0n3r]

The Hind

[MehMan 0]

So far so good, but how much can BI do in one year? That's what concerns me.

Well, judging by public screenshots, if you can compare early ArmA screenshots, to late screenshots, you can see that they can do A LOT!

I'm glad to see some improvements in a relativly short time, it still looks like ArmA, but judging from the vids, it's improved or being improved. I'm getting my hopes up, but one can tell only a bit from vids and there's still at least a year worth of development ahead where a lot can change.

Who knows...

[Jacobss 0]

So far so good, but how much can BI do in one year? That's what concerns me. I know a team has been working on Game 2/ArmA 2 since ...well... Operation Flashpoint. But how much they have achived after ArmA: Armed Assault remains my main question. What didn't we see in ArmA which was already developed?

Exciting..

2 things:

1. Developer (hier we have BIS) show us never the actual gameplay. The Developer have many things at home, which the player can at first see, when the game is released. So, I think BIS have many things which are not showed. We will in the next mounths see, how far this game go.

2. I'm pretty sure the first time when this game "can" be released is November 2008. It's very early, and I don't think that BIS will released this game so early. We now that BIS like "delaying" of their games, so I'm pretty sure this game will come out in 2009 Q2 or Q3.

[smellyjelly 0]

Looks incredible.

- I really like the forest and the meadows. The shorter grass looks wonderful. I love the colors and the shadows resting upon the grass looks really good.

- The sky looks like a major improvement. There's not enough footage to tell, but I hope BIS got rid of the mirrored skybox, flat grey clouds and oversized lightning.

- The graphical improvement looks wonderful. The parallax bump-mapping was an unexpected surprise. To my knowledge no other game supports this so far, except for a Half-Life 2 mod, Oblivion and maybe Crysis. The effect on the helicopter looks a tad overdone, but it's also something I wasn't expecting ArmaII to support. Did anyone notice that in the clip with the car the mirrors may actually be working?

I'm very impressed, although I have some criticism:

- More death animations because the old ones are a bit repetitive. Instead of just falling maybe we can have some were he falls on his hands and knees for a second before falling to the ground. However, distinguished animations like that should be rare because it will appear much more repetitive than just normal falling.

- The destroyed walls of the buildings looks great, although momentarily smoke to help cover up the instant destruction wouldn't hurt. The hitpoints look a bit predictable, being on the windows, too, maybe there should be a bit more variety, like on the corners or roof. Imagine having a building secured from all sides, so instead of fighting your way through you just blow a hole in the roof and jump in.

[NoRailgunner 0]

Yes nice destruction and usefull holes! Like to see such vids in best quality. Hopefully ArmA 2 is compatible to ArmA so addon makers don't get upset/angry.

Question to BIS:

Is it possible travel from Chernorus to Sahrani (and other islands) and vice versa? Could be nice in mission/campaign...

[binkster 0]

Did I see a soldier rearm and move backwards at same time?? or are my eyes playing with me.

[opteryx 1562]

Wow, the FCS is the EXACT same crap as ArmA.... I really hope that's because of this being early footage.

[Spoock 3]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1q5MZ0j-7I

[Adamicz 3]

Wow, the FCS is the EXACT same crap as ArmA.... I really hope that's because of this being early footage.

FCS? May I ask what's that mean? If not Future Combat System

[opteryx 1562]

Wow, the FCS is the EXACT same crap as ArmA.... I really hope that's because of this being early footage.

FCS? May I ask what's that mean? If not Future Combat System

Fire Control System on the AFV's. I would have though BIS would realize by now that we want more than a rudimentary vehicle combat system similar to Battleflop2...

[Mabes 0]

Anyone else notice the different variants of the M-8 in one of those videos?

[Adamicz 3]

Wow, the FCS is the EXACT same crap as ArmA.... I really hope that's because of this being early footage.

FCS? May I ask what's that mean? If not Future Combat System

Fire Control System on the AFV's. I would have though BIS would realize by now that we want more than a rudimentary vehicle combat system similar to Battleflop2...

Well, when the game is still using the old models, I wouldn't expect already implemented any new feature on these vehicles. I don't expect much improvements in that way anyway.

[opteryx 1562]

Well, when the game is still using the old models, I wouldn't expect already implemented any new feature on these vehicles.

I can only hope that we're seeing the same lack of proper simulation is due to placeholders, but damn, I don't feel too good about this.

[MehMan 0]

There's always the suggestion forum...it might be worth a shot.

[opteryx 1562]

There's always the suggestion forum...it might be worth a shot.

Yes, implementation of feature requests are equally plausible as that mansion I've been asking for Santa to give all these years.

[Raptor 10]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1q5MZ0j-7I

Wow nice.

More agile as in ArmA.

Hope that they will more optimize the movement, more fluently.

[stakex 0]

I guess the destruction of houses like that is pretty cool, hell of alot better then ArmA at least.... not as cool as the dynamic destruction system we first heard about tho *sigh*

Anyway, at the very least I hope all the buildings are new. The demo house in that destruction video is a building from Operation Flashpoint. I mean come on, a large portion of ArmA's buildings were re-used Flashpoint and VBS models. Its time to replace the old buildings with new ones, and not just keep re-useing 7 year old models/textures. Other then that its looking pretty good.

[MehMan 0]

There's always the suggestion forum...it might be worth a shot.

Yes, implementation of feature requests are equally plausible as that mansion I've been asking for Santa to give all these years.  

Well, the devs seem to look at the bugtracker and give us some feedback. We at least managed to push some ideas through there.

[Spoock 3]

I uloaded next two videos which filmed Sarge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGvD_K5nIsk - improved fog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVPDgUzPaoM - train station

[Deadfast 43]

I just finished complete translation of the first link.

Enjoy...

This year's Invex has moved game developers from pavilion "D" to smaller "X". Well, today you just have to make a room for Counter-Strike... Fortunately in 10 a.m. there were no crows and our community tour (Saigos, Binariz3, Sarge) could easily sit down at first line of improvised hall in entrance room of pavilion "X". Before Mr. Hovora started to look for extension cable, we spoke to him for a while. Fortunately the waiting for the "piece of cable" wasn't that look and presentation started almost on schedule. The hall was getting full and we were looking forward for next few minutes.

Graphical evolution

First turn was presentation of important graphical changes from former ArmA, that includes full support of DirectX 10 and optimalisation for multi-core CPU's. To run the game, you'll also need a video card supporting Pixel Shader Model 3.0, because of increased requirements for number of graphical instructions. Thanks to Pixel Shader 3.0 there will be implemented new graphical effects, such as Parallax bump-mapping, that creates plastic-like textures. You could expecialy notice this feature, while presentation on island of Porto from datadisc for original game. Whole surface looked pretty stony. You could almost imagine yourself lying in real desert with stones under your knee protectors. Another innovation is usage of Soft Particles, that you can notice especially on smoke and fog effects, that looks now really realistic and doesn't go through terrain and object. Presentation of this effect was in autumn forest and the overall effect looked almost photo-realistic, just as when see water vaporizing from forests and you imagine mushrooms growing up. Scenery just as it should be. Another addition will be something they call in BI "Metal Supershader". This effects takes care of realistic light reflection on metal and glass surfaces. You could see the effect easily on Mi-24 Hind, that was standing on hayfield, with increased time speed. Yet another difference is changed light behavior. Now the light reflects from materials and gives object in vicinity colored touch. Because the demonstration of this effect was on projector it wasn't noticeable that much, but on a monitor of kiosk you could see that objects get somewhat of a "touch of shade", just as colored light from top is somehow diffused by atmosphere. Hopefully this isn't the end of graphic improvements, but it's not too less after all.

Concept revolution

Another changes are more in the concept of the game itself and it may,of course, change during the game development.

It's hard to say, how the final status of the game will look like after the completion, but on the presentation there were confirmed 4 campaigns. One linear, one free (not plot, but the way you choose to complete it), another one should be completely free (most likely something like "pick a side and go") and another planed "campaign mode" should be played cooperatively with up to 3 friends. It's hard to say, how it'll turn out in the end, original ArmA also was supposed to have dynamic campaign. Anyway, ArmA 2 promises strong story and a bit of return to the roots of Flashpoint. Plot and it's script may be already in very advanced stage. Jan Hovora revealed us, that it should be possible to play for 4 characters and 10 additional in case one of the main got killed. If I remember correctly he said something about 30 characters, that are already designated, but because of information quantity, please think about this "info" as a pure speculation. It's for sure, that the whole game will be based on RPG elemnts, as you might have already guessed by the term "dynamic campaign". Even now you could already see notebook, where you could insert note, you could skim through history of conversation or radio communication, but you could also talk to any character in game, however, everything your character has said was a word "Czech". On another tab of your notebook you could see a skill tab, essential part of every RPG. You will be able to improve yourself in aprox. 10 skill areas, like accuracy or recoil control. Collecting different items should be taken as a matter of fact, just as shooting from vehicles. There still disscusions about reloading while moving, though. The fact is, that it already works. Well, I think it'll be hard to select a path between the four factions.

After all of this, there is still a thing to say. There's plan for "importing" the 3D editor from VBS (do not confuse with real-time editor). Probably the most essential change is planed building destruction, that basically already works on one house. So far it's without additional graphical effects, but it works almost perfectly - in houses with modeled interior you'll create a new passageway and on the ones without you'll create something like a room, that you can use for cover. However this is not dynamical destruction, that one would be too HW demanding and unreliable to the overall effect. The used demolition is more like an animation that is triggered after object's hitpoint damage. This system was so far used only on human models and vehicles...

The special addition should be the planed glass destruction, that'll most likely based on the hitpoint system. At the moment, it doesn't work yet.

"Mythical" Chernarus...

As most of you already knows, Chernarus is a fictiona country somewhere in Russia. So far it's filled with mostly known models, but that should change. Almost all of the original models should be replaced by new ones. With high view distance settings you have all those beautiful views to autumn scenery and especially its forests. It's definitely not such a glue-it-together as Sahrani. Also it should be more known to Czechs, even with the writings in Cyrillic is terrain close copy of northern Bohemia around Labe river. Vegetation is on better leven than before, you can see falling leafs in forest. The overall atmosphere is being improved by realistically looking factory complexes. We've actually guessed correctly the "purpose" of complex we've seen at the kiosk... It was a cement mil... Yet another addition to the terrain is railroad, that, however, will not be functional, but lonely deserted wagons will give it the right war feeling.

...and what will fight there

When I take a look on the artificial intelligence, then I have to say, that the author have really done a lot of work there. AI now uses terrain as cover, communicates with each other using hand signals, uses suppressing fire, and most of the time isn't moving without covering each other. So far there is no adequate solution for danger from house. In comparison to ArmA, AI road driving behavior should be improved ant the AI should use the right side of the road (unlike in OFP and ArmA, where they used the middle).

In the end I'll shortly mention animals, in current version you could see everything from ArmA plus rabbits. There should be also sheep or goats planed. Animals should also have advanced behavior system, they should eat, sleep,... So fat you could only see how successfully they can avoid bullets.

In the end

What to say in the end ? Maybe that community modders shouldn't be afraid to keep on creating for ArmA, because addons from ArmA should be fully portable over to ArmA 2, and most likely it's true, because we were allowed to play mission "sweep" from ArmA in the current of ArmA 2. It's really a difference with the new AI. At the moment the filesize of ArmA 2 is aprox. 10 GB and right now there are some speculations about usage of dual-layer or multiple discs. Usage of unified copy protection for all language mutations of game is also planed. There are even some thoughts about Xbox conversion, some things such as enable auto-aim in settings confirms that. We'll see if the authors will manage to complete the game till Christmas of 2008. And esspecially with what quality...