Arma feedback thread - based on 1.09

[messiahua 0]

VOIP still not working properly unfortunately.

Few bugs still left. At least it is not crashing server/clients.

Sometimes someone can't here someone else or "stuck looping sounds" of the last said word.

[ryankaplan 1]

just had a 5 hour session on a public server, which appeared to have the level of teamwork definitively increased due to VOIP. It seems to work for the most part, but there were still a few important bugs to crush:

-The Direct chat was too quiet. At the moment, it is like you are having a private conversation with the guy next to you. It should be more geared toward a system of "squad leader shouting to his fireteams". And as we dont want to shout in our rooms at 12 oclock at night, some compensation for this would be nice. :P An extra slider in the sound options would be really nice, so i can play with VoIP without hearing the ai constantly nagg.

-Some people seemed unable to speak thorugh VoIP, even though they were transmitting perfectly fine on Teamspeak. Their voice over VoN was just static. Some of the people experiencing these solved their problem by disabling 'hardware acceleration' i believe, but for some the problem was persistent no matter what they did.

-At random points in game, some people wouldnt be 'audible'. Their transmission wasnt coming thorugh, even though their name was showing. They confirmed this later on teamspeak, that they were speaking and we couldnt hear them. Not sure what caused it at all.

-Some people seemed to be breaking up in VoIP, even though they were perfectly understandable on Teamspeak.

Other than that, it was mostly fine for me, although i cant say i like the new recoils on most weapons. Some weapons even 'recoil down', of which i have never of. I like the sharpness of the recoils, but on some weapons, it seemed to easy to follow up successive shots very fast, very accurately.

The Locality bug of Players not being able to disembark their AI units, which are in another players vehicle still persists. It was there in a ofp 1.00, and is still in Arma 1.09. This is a real show stopper, and constantly costs are large chunks of time in alot of missions. I would really, really like this to be fixed, so we can have some mechanised company fights going on without the constant 'i cant disembark my ai' banter going on.

Lastly, the string functions are much appreciated. I'm not sure what they are for, but every scripter ever seems to be quite excited about it, so it can't be too shabby.

Thank you,

Ryan

[leckig 0]

thanks for the patch, I now see what was the fog bug about

I very much like the RPG turn fix, I am yet to test if all vehicles still crawl like a turtle when going uphil, maybe this has been fixed as well?

Too bad that the CTD is still here, my game still crashes with the "cannot create memory surface" whatever bug, I will test with the maxmem parameter, maybe that will help this time/

[th3flyboy 0]

the ladder bug still needs to be fixed, and the m107 seems to not work anymore, then again, i guess 10 shots dead on an ai including 3 headshots isn't enough to kill with a 50cal.

[Beagle 684]

It's a shame that there are still very old bugs from 1.08 in there.

Like: commanding units from the BMP-2 commander position does not work...to give any command you have to switch to driver, gunner, back seat or to external commanders view...why that...?

The SPR still has no external muzzle flash...but you can see it in the Optics.

All vehicle mounted grenade launchers still have that bloody puffs und that enourmous recoil that shake the whole vehicle.

Not good.

[CanadianTerror 0]

8800GTS and i have lod bugs worse than before.

[-Puma- 2]

now with the AI pinpointing by ear has been reduced a new problem has come up. what i observed when driving a stryker near 5 enemy AI is that they dont notice u if no1´s watching straight to u. It has become obvious that AI in ARMA "acknowledges" u buy either looking straight to u or hearing u. now that they dont hear u u can sneak up on them with stryker(?)

so pinpointing by ear should be a littlebit more effective than in 1.08 and some random pinpoint routine should be added to make the AI more dangerous (eg. simulatin an corner of an eye, or a feeling in ur stomach that enemy is near by)

on the plus side, the game looks and feels much better now. recoil feels much better, but its too easy to shoot now.

BTW. a couple of new weapon mods wouldnt hurt, like m4 SOPMOD + acog + supressor etc. (with full auto)

edit: i play without maxmem and havent seen a LOD bug yet.

[vilas 475]

in my case - i had no time to test all concerning AI

but:

game yes, works much faster, much better, bigger FPS, no so heavy movement, but i had 3 times CTD :/

after adding -maxmem=256 it is not so fast working as without it

so do i still in final 1.09 can only use 256 MB of memory ?

[Unatomber 0]

I would also have one request concerning the VoN-feature. The source for the VoN-voices should be configurable separately from game sound effects though Windows control panel - Sound and Audio devices - Voice -tab.

Currently it is impossible to configure VON-playback and recording to my wireless headset which appears as a separate audio device.

[PuFu 4599]

After i read the 1.09 VoIP thread by dslyecx i thought that this just might work, even tho every server has TS now. BUT it doesn't. It bugs off after a while. For the new players is not a problem, but for the ones that were on the server facing numerous connecting and disconnecting users, it doesn't work no more. It's strange and i couldn't find a solution to it. And this is not sound card related problem.

Still some problems there:

1. The command menu and command option in the BMP-2 commander position does not work.

2. The repeating time of the Dragunov equals that of a bolt action rifle in 1.09b, not that of a semi automatic rifle as it should.

3. No grass rendered on united sahrani

4. SPR has no muzzle flash.

5. No tracers in SAW.

6. Not fixed: MP "Head bug" altho seems to happen more rarely.

7. Not Fixed: MP: Player driving motorcycle could die suddenly with no apparent reason

8. Strange reduced recoils for MGs and 50cal snipers while standing and proned - way to easy to shoot those weapons now.

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

Something that worries me about this beta, is that many servers are now running the beta, and many are not.

Some servers are running Queens Gambit some are not.

Some servers are running Queens Gambit AND the beta 1.09, some are not.

This is also the case with many of the players out there, meaning that the player base, already fragmented by QG, has been further fragmented by the beta patch, and are now split 4 ways - it was hard enough to get enough serious players to have a decent game before the patch due to the QG division, now it is even harder! I pray that the full patch will not be too far away - if it takes too long then we're gonna lose players even faster than before.

Also on fragmentation, perhaps some way can be found to allow non-QG guys to get hold of 'dummy' addons that they cannot pilot/drive, or even allow them access to the addons without the campaign through the full patch later?  It's obvious that they ain't gonna buy QG and this fragmentation needs to be addressed for all online player's sake.

Also, many clients that do have QG do NOT appear to understand how to use the beta and QG together, i.e. to modify their shortcut to use:

-mod=DBE1;beta

This needs to be addressed somehow - is there likely a central place that they would go (other than these forums) so that they can be shown easily? Could all fansites please post some 'howto for dummies' instructions front page explaining how to use the patch for QG?

p.s. since installing the beta on QG I dont seem to be able to run vanilla 1.08 any more - QG works, QG+beta works, but memory error every time on vanilla 1.08 - anyone else getting this?

[dslyecxi 23]

After i read the 1.09 VoIP thread by dslyecx i thought that this just might work, even tho every server has TS now. BUT it doesn't. It bugs off after a while. For the new players is not a problem, but for the ones that were on the server facing numerous connecting and disconnecting users, it doesn't work no more. It's strange and i couldn't find a solution to it. And this is not sound card related problem.

Some of the VOIP issues are hard to repro. We've been looking for reliable ways to repro some things (ie: static chat, broken-up chat, not being able to hear specific people) for a bit and haven't figured it out yet. Bear in mind too that this is a public beta for a reason - the sheer number of people involved can find issues that smaller groups cannot, due to the number of man-hours available. If you find repro for any of the VOIP issues, post them - they'll be addressed.

As far as how reliable it is, we've been using it to good effect with 40-60 people. There are issues (as noted), but so long as you have TS as your fall-back for anyone who is suffering from the issues, it still adds a lot to the experience. The current status is best described as buggy, which is a good deal better than the "utterly unusable" state that it was in previously.

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

Had a thought (oh no!) about the VoN issues...

Noticed that some speakers were breaking up a bit when transmitting, eventually losing the transmission completely.

Also noticed that their 'breaking up' appeared to be volume-related - a small silence then noticeable 'crackle' noise preceding each next word or phrase, as if the transmission would not occur unless the input volume level from the microphone was sufficiently high..that crackle reminds me of the spike you get when you switch on a mic, or perhaps it's indicative of a cacheing issue in the input stream?

Lowering the 'recording/valid data to transmit' threshold may help solve some problems if this IS the case, and perhaps there is a (self-level-adjusting?) bug in that threshold code someplace that eventually makes the thing refuse to hear the input level achievable on the hardware?

Dunno, was just a thought.

edit:

p.s. When you release push to talk, the sound is cut-off about half second earlier than when you actually released the key, often meaning that the last syllable you speak is not transmitted.

Some delay is needed before transmission stops, and this additional delay could also help with the 'silence' between words issue?

[evilfury 0]

Do i have to install 1.5 patch or 1.8 patch to run 1.9 beta?

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

read the readme file m8...

you need to be installed up to 1.08 before applying the beta patch.

p.s. make sure you have removed any older beta folder and shortcut before trying to install the new one!

the readme also explains the QG stuff...

[Dudester 0]

Is VON really that important considering all the other bugs. I mean, most people use team speak. Not many players use Von in this game, or any other game for that matter.

[andersson 285]

Yes, its important. Most people use TS because that works, and its a good complement to VON.

VON is wanted!

[Noraf 0]

Is VON really that important considering all the other bugs. I mean, most people use team speak. Not many players use Von in this game, or any other game for that matter.

short answer is yes

the reason ( in my oppinion ) is that it offers things teamspeak does not. it also is integrated in the game, meaning it's 1 ( 2 if you use teamspeak overlay, 3 if you also use teamspeak noice ) prosesses less to have running in the background ( not a problem on my rig ), witch could clobber the system more, making arma less playable for the lower end systems.

and, you do not have to jump around to differetnt teamspeak servers depending on witch server you're playing arma on.

merry christmas to you all

[ANTH 0]

Still not fixed

Link

[Kristian 47]

Try deleting the beta directory in your arma root directory.

Thanks, that solved the problem!

[Trapper 0]

Releasing a beta patch and the CWR demo around Christmas shows a lot of goodwill that I've already started missing from BIS over the year.

I've only played SP mission Battlefields right now. And it was the first time it didn't frustrate me anymore. First of all I survived over ten minutes with ease, while scoring many kills (2-3mins before 1.09). The enemy AI has lost it's robotic like perfectness. Also the north has become playable in terms of fps and the height of the grass.

One bad thing was that all of the attacking SLA soldiers died before the objective was completed. So either the mission was never balanced or BLUEFOR/OPFOR equipment isn't anymore, hard to tell.

There's one graphics problem with the foliage, that really bugs me out. I didn't find any particular topic about it, but I guess it was already there before 1.09. Though it would be nice if it could be fixed with 1.09.

Here's a 1MB video which shows tress changing their shape heavily, every time I'm zooming in/out. Even reducing graphic options completely doesn't remove this strange behavior of the trees.

video

Windows XP

E6300

1GB RAM

Geforce 7600 GT PCIe 256MB (ForceWare 169.21)

@ 1024x768; AF very high; AA Low; TerrainD high; ObjectD high; TextureD normal; Shader very high; Postprc low

15-22 FPS

Merry Christmas!

[dm 9]

Here's a 1MB video which shows tress changing their shape heavily, every time I'm zooming in/out. Even reducing graphic options completely doesn't remove this strange behavior of the trees.

Its a feature not a bug

What you're seeing is the trees and bushes switching LoD, but rather than just having them pop between LoDs, there is a smooth transition.

There is no way to prevent this, other than removing all LoDs (and thus either crippling performance or making the foliage look crap).

[xxbbcc 6]

I agree, that tree morphing is horrible, it should really be fixed.

[DaSquade 0]

Pro(s): Finally 8800 fogbug fixed

Cons: New grass population or lack of.

Still getting CTD when alt-tabbing

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">cannot create system memory surface DXT1, 2048x2048 (size 2797568 B)

Error code 8007000e

Lod issues witch weren't in previous patch.

The alt-tab bug. Had hoped that one was fixed by now. I don't play other games, but never run into problems in the past with other games. Pretty good system here (8800GTX - 2Gb ram). Sucks big time when you get CTD after a 3h coop .

Any fix on that? I'm not using any commands like maxmem etc...

Anyway, overall pretty good patch and it made me play arma again. Hope the FINAL patch will be a bit better (lods-grass-etc).

[arma.isgreat.org 0]

I'm quessing this is where placebo wants this posted.

Though arma came out with a reasonable attempt at a sequal to OFP, BI still managed to drop the ball on arma. The codemasters OFP2 engine takes advantage of superior infastructure, and with any luck, maybe they will better include their mod community in the post deployment development(what about all that user created content?). BI forsake thousands of hours of user created content without significant improvement to the game.

What about more tools? You had an uphill battle leaving codemasters anyway.

I think BI managed to lose a lot of it's advantage by not utilizing it's VBS structure in ARMA and by not fully including the communty in creating Armed assault. But kudos on the codeing site, and some of the new coding options.

Poor netcode still plauges the engine. And the campaigns still scream - civilian planned operation-Thank god it's only a game. Though to be fair, the scenarios all use inneffective non military schemes of manouvere for both sides.

(BTW, planning ops usually consist of no less than 3 courses of action plans for any possible scenario and flexibility of action within the commanders intent.)

This is strange considering this is potentially the best all round sim available. Capable of combined arms engagements up to coy level. Too bad arma scenarios dont even resemble military planning. Ofp resistance still had the best campaign so far, but I'm quessing codemasters had something to do with that.

Ofp2 will blow arma 2 out of the water hands down unless BI gets their heads unstuck. Remember BI, the uniform and the kit don't make a soldier, it's the days months and years of shit and abuse that does that. All armies that win use teamwork, leaders and just as importantly, troops. I think the OFP community is still bigger than Arma's. There is something missing in arma, and ofp2 may just have it.

Im sure BI could try using a placebo to fix it.