Arma feedback thread - based on 1.14

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Try windowed mode. Only bug of this sort I have ever had was crashing to desktop with the old famous error. I haven't had that bug with any of the latest patches. Several clan members have problems switching back and forth from ArmA in full screen mode, but in Windowed this never seem to happen.

Btw, I'm using windowed since I really can't run the game in full screen highest native resolution.

Anyhow, the reason I checked into this thread again: It was mentioned a while back that future patches could use help from the community. Where can I find this info, and where can I upload files and fixes for checking?

[nuxil 2]

i have graphical issues i never had before.

i tried settings on low|med and high without any changes..

textures flikkers sometimes. also the sea is totaly white,, until i am at sea border. dont know why this happens.

i'll try updating my driver.

everything else seams to work fine..

Updating the driver help a bit.. sea is no longer white

[TankCommander 3]

This may have already been brought up, but as I was looking at images of RL armour like BMPs and T72s, I couldn't help noticing Arma has these out of proportion. Further looking into it, the BMP is 2.45m tall and within Arma you can stand next to one and match it in height. So unless all men in the Arma universe are basketball players, I'd say a lot of the objects in terms of scale are pretty inaccurate and fail to give the impression of 'size'. I think OFP managed to give me more of a shudder when enemy armour was around but in Arma this isn't so much the case.

[Saphirefenix 0]

Only peve I have is the AI... they always leave something to be desired. Not combat wise though, with the mods (true range, supression etc.) they make for pretty realistic combat.

But path finding sucks, they get stuck in streets, in open areas between two buildings, or inside walled sections if they only have a single door opening (like houses, small "gardens") sometimes they just stop following the leader and stand around useless.

They cant take cover in a city at all... although they do crouch and go prone appropriately especially out in the open, but when your in a city, watch out, its better to just leave AI out of it entirely... and I'm talking warfare here, as its the only part of the game that relies HEAVILY on AI, and by that I mean 400 AI running around all at once.

Missions work great AI wise, of course they still have path finding problems.

And as usual it lacks the realism I crave team wise. As most multi player games (Every game ever created, minus of course a few select servers with clans etc.) people are a bunch of rambos.

I have never seen a good game where players use actual squad formations, and flanking tactics. Huck a grenade and have your Auto rifleman crouch lean around a wall, corner etc., and a rifleman standing up behind the AR lean around the wall or whatever and lay suppressive fire while the rest of the squad moves to the other side of the street or to the destination point... then covering the other 2 as they come over.

I know somewhere there are people who are looking for a sim like that... but getting together and having a game of 12 vs 12 all with team speak (or another team chat client, ArmA would use the built in VOP) communicating and working towards an OBJECTIVE, NOT just eliminating more enemy players (EXACTLY what Americas Army boils down to)

AI could not get that realistic, while watching possible directions for threats so they don't get flanked as well... andddd *continues list* ...

If AI would at least support each other that would be good, so if one is being supressed or is getting shot really close to one AI, not ALL, would go and either shoot the enemy if they see them, or at least keep their head down so the other AI can get back into cover. threat identifiers would be great, so when a sniper is shooting they actually pick the more important target, the squad leader for example, or the medic. Or (this is really close to human and will never be expected) if there is armor around and the AI "thinks" the players might be there to take out the armor (they have 3 squad mates with AT rockets) they will aim for the rocket soldiers. And around the other side, if a sniper starts shooting and they know the direction they will take cover for that direction, no more lying prone against a wall AWAY from the sniper, so he gets an even better angle on you. Instead they go towards cover facing the snipers position so they cant shoot over it.

Flanking support would be nice too..

Or I could try finding a good server and some clans dedicated to REALLY TACTICAL play....

And of course my PC sucks.

Nvidia 6800 GT

350mhz clock

1000mhz memory

1024mb ram

5 year old dual core pentium 4 2.8ghz processors

I can play good on low everything, and with... 4 vs 4 SP warfare without any lag (except at some points, such as flying over a city, loading that will cause about 5 minute lag)

But thats my side of the problem partly because of mods, I could run a default 16 vs 16 game with the same results before... but the AI were stupid as... *insert any cuss word you can think of here*... and there wasn't enough vehicle variety.

Overall, I love the game... it is single best idea for a game EVER. But the AI (and my computer lol) need some SERIOUS work....

And by that I mean, this game has pushed, and set new limits for ever aspect except the AI. It's about the same as any other AI ever created.

They are nice in warfare to back you up, as its a small army you can use and abuse and they don't go off and do their own thing like players, but... in the end, they end up getting lost in the open, and wandering off doing there own thing.

Ex. I once had an AI randomly, while we were walking to the next town through the open desert yell where are you and start sprinting off back to the HQ... I shook my head told him to move to where I was, when he got back I told him to fall back into formation, and he just ran off again.

But warfare, is THE BEST THING ANYONE HAS EVER CREATED. and ArmA itself is the best innovation in .. any game, ever (except graphics, but I'm a game play focused guy anyway, so what if it looks good, I want it to WORK and be FUN)

Sorry for the uber long post.

[wipman 1]

Hi, seems that the BIS binocs don't have a Shadow LOD.

The Thing:

Let's C ya

[chris330 0]

Hi, just managed to get a copy of ArmA and played it for the first time just now. I got low frame rates but I'd expect that running it on Vista as I didn't have the say in which OS got put on this machine.

Visually it's great even on the lowest settings it looks fine to me.

I'm sorry to have to say it though, but it is one of the jerkiest, vague/distanced feeling and unfulfilling games I can ever remember playing.

I've had a look at the new scripting commands though and the scope there is I think very encouraging. Looks like you have the tools to do pretty much whatever you like, and for me I think a complete re-make is possible with these tools and combined with a nice visual platform one pretty much has everything to hand.

Even though there are some very nice improvements like the souped up Cobra model and mission structure I'm still quite surprised by how unpleasant the game felt to play even when patched to 1.14. It feels alot more unnatural and unpleasant than Operation Flashpoint ever did. Quite a step backwards in many respects it feels.

*Edit* I noticed even the M1A1 has no internal model either and I presume it's a default vehicle. Feels like Bohemia had to release this much sooner than I think they would have wanted to. It has quite a rushed feel to it. I still believe at the moment that the scripting engine in ArmA has a huge amount of potential. It would be much better if every game developer threw open their doors like this.

[Chaos 0]

Empty MGs (here on M1 tank) have still ammo!?

[chris330 0]

I can live with stuff like that, but core issues such as jerky animations and vague gameplay really aren't good. It's all there to be fixed though by enthusiastic community members.

[chris330 0]

Having another go I noticed that even on minimum settings the game feels horribly jerky with regard to frame rates. This is quite spectacular given that OFP looked almost as good and ran beautifully on a machine bought over 7 years ago and I'm running ArmA on a machine bought new in the last 2 months.

Is this just due to an unoptimised engine or poor performance caused by Microsoft's latest OS horror story (Vista)?

[kklownboy 43]

I can have jerkyness with fraps on or logging stuff in the background, like Everest. And you can have the jerky with frames in the low 20s.

[Commando84 0]

hey i saw a news article about mr murray editing guide and that it was also going to work with arma 1.15, is there a change list for 1.15 patch anywhere?

[kavoven 4]

Right, I never thought that I would post in this thread, but now its time for that

I bought ArmA when 1.08 was released. And it sucked. I waited patch after patch but there was absolutly nothing that kept me for more than 15 minuts. This actually continued uptil 1.14. Biggest problem: I just didn't hit ANYTHING. Enemy run left, I tried to follow him, whush, crosshair much too far left. I decreased the graphics more and more, but it didn't change a bit.

Then came the key-moment. I was looking for a knew DVD in my local electronics store, when I saw some graphic card benchmarks. Just out of curiosity I looked at it and found my one at the very bottom of the damn list. (GF 8600 GT)

They had some quite nice cards for about 130 Euros and I thought a week about buying one, since I didn't think I really needed a new card. (I don't own one of these uber games like Crysis or CoD 4)

Well, finally I bought a GF 9800 GT for 130 Euros. Again, just out of curiosity I started ArmA and... well, it ran fluently. I put the settings from low to high to test the card and still everything was great. I set the view distance to 10 km (yep, I really did) and the evil side in me said "Haha, eat this, stupid machine".

But it didn't. I still enjoyed 35 fps.

And ArmA was fun! The AI became much better (I really don't know why) and most important at all: I hit things. And now I got some good old OFP feeling again

[Shadow NX 1]

True, i upgraded the system ( cpu, gpu, ram ) last days and ArmA now runs very smooth ( very low chances of texture loading and lod popping ) and the grass doesnt affect my framerate when aiming anymore which leads to a lot more first shot kills.

Seems its a bit like with OFP, system requirements back then were also pretty high ( not on the box but the real specs to enjoy it right ) and only after a few years and PC upgrades i could fully enjoy OFP.

Lets hope ArmA2 doesnt repeat this as i blowed my budget for next 2 years upgrades already

[wipman 1]

Hi, i get this kind of graphic errors, textures flickering and going

from very low to high (the standard setting):

I also get very commonly this kind of graphic error that appears as

a white screen and screws up the text messages and the radio

commands, just after turn white or sometimes black... the entire

screen:

The Map With That Bug.

If you hit: ALT+TAB... and then go back to ArmA, it seems to get

fixed, but then is when the previous bug appears and everything

looks as in Very Low or worst; i closed the ArmA by the normal

procedure and then after like 10 to 15secs in the desktop...

the entire screen turned black, the HD light turned On a few

times on the computer... and then nothing... 3 damn minutes of

waiting for if my computer could recover itself from this crap but

"we haden't luck". I had to do a manual reset before punch again

the keyboard. Any idea?. Let's C ya

[HotShot 0]

For the second bug, I used to get this in OFP. Firstly I gave the back of my comuter more space so it could pump the hot air out, that seemed to help, but still persisted (on a less regular basis). So then I got a new GFX card and that did fix it. The GFX card I had been used was an integrated Intel one, but I got a Nvidia one which seemed to have a small fan within it and that helped. So it may be your computer overheating.

[wipman 1]

Hi, my GFX Card is an Nvidia 8800GTS and it's fan/turbine is bigger

than the power suply one and seems much more effective, but...

the other day when i was cleaning all the fans, the MB etc.. i...

loosen 2 (addon) difusors of the MB, that fallen over the GFX card,

"that blink blink" inside the computer made my computer stop, so

i opened it up again, throw the diffusors to the trashcan, closed the

PC and turned it On again; it worked without problems, with the

the COD4, the GTA SA (over moded), and the Mass Effect

during hours hours, the only one that seems to have problems of

any kind (performance, graphic bugs & the other bugs) it's the

ArmA; "somehow". So i'll not blame my graphic card for this bug...

i'll blame "other factors", but im just a player... not a games engineer,

so what will i know about it?.

I just hope that BIS fixes this "thing" in the ArmA and that make

it impossible to appear in the ArmA2. Let's C ya

[sparks50 0]

We are many who have these freeze problems in Arma with G8xxx cards.

Try running it in window mode as a temp fix. When I do this I get a 100% stable game, but the performance is of course much lower.

[desertjedi 3]

Quote[/b] ]the other day when i was cleaning all the fans, the MB etc.. i...loosen 2 (addon) difusors of the MB, that fallen over the GFX card, "that blink blink" inside the computer made my computer stop, so i opened it up again, throw the diffusors to the trashcan, closed the PC and turned it On again; it worked without problems

What's a diffusor? I'm not sure what you're really saying - did you short out your mainboard electrically? When you say cleaning your mainboard, are you simply using compressed air I hope?

Quote[/b] ]We are many who have these freeze problems in Arma with G8xxx cards.We are many who have these freeze problems in Arma with G8xxx cards.

Do you mean the non-G92 versions? When I had my 8800GTS 512, ArmA ran fantastically.

Quote[/b] ]lod popping

Is that when objects appear and disappear over and over in the distance as you view them through binocs? I get that a lot in cities. I tried changing View Distance but it had no effect.

Quote[/b] ]I put the settings from low to high to test the card and still everything was great. I set the view distance to 10 km (yep, I really did) and the evil side in me said "Haha, eat this, stupid machine". But it didn't. I still enjoyed 35 fps.

Don't get too carried away with the eye candy. I would shoot for an absolute minimum frame rate of 30 under most circumstances if you can. As pretty as ArmA is, fluid motion and shooting accurately is more important. I never thought about how frame rate could effect shooting at moving targets but yeah, that sounds..."painful".

[CarlGustaffa 4]

During our weekly clan session last night, I had severe polygon problems on the Javelin. The guy using it would look light a walking christmas tree of extremely sized polygons. If I went more than 25m away, the problem stopped. If he put it on ground, it would remain stationary. If he stowed it in a vehicle, problem went away.

Most likely some sort of memory problem, as I didn't reboot my machine after using some memory hungry software prior to the session.

[iLL 0]

I'll just stick this in here.

A10 thrust only had 3 values for the majority of us. We would like a 0-100% thrust controll, with no airbreak on 0% thrust. that could be done with the backward key. Thanks and I'm looking forward too seeing this feature in new patch.

[Vultar 0]

Day by day getting more angry with 1.14 FOV.

I wonder why BIS made such a FOV? It has only negatives.

1. Weapon is almost unspottable.

2. The field of view is VERY narrow.

3. Scopes are no more needed.

I hope( ! ) BIS will bring us back a FOV from ArmA 1.08 because it was simply the best.

[edit]

I also suggest my own option of FOV.

ManClass initFov = 0.95;

and in perspective:

class Rifle : RifleCore {

opticsZoomMin = 0.42;

opticsZoomMax = 0.95;

opticsZoomInit = 0.75;

It gives FOV from 1.08 but theres no such a big zoom in perspective. There's only little zoom. Max zoom is half as high as 1.14 one...

That gives you better feeling as recoil isn't wierd anymore as in max zoom 1.14 and also scopes are useful again.

[ShrubMiK 0]

Having another go I noticed that even on minimum settings the game feels horribly jerky with regard to frame rates. This is quite spectacular given that OFP looked almost as good and ran beautifully on a machine bought over 7 years ago and I'm running ArmA on a machine bought new in the last 2 months.

Is this just due to an unoptimised engine or poor performance caused by Microsoft's latest OS horror story (Vista)?

Nothing to do with Vista per se.

What are your hardware specs?

I'm sure you don't really believe the only determining factor in how powerful a PC is precisely when it was bought

Or you might go look in the other thread somewhere (troubleshooting forum?) that discusess hardware requirements, and what frame rates people are getting with various systems.

[KorpeN 0]

In the next patch you have to include:

1.08 FOV

1.08 soldier's smoothy movement

1.08 ballistics and recoils

About the perfomance in 1.14.I had better FPS in 1.08.I have AMD X2 4800,8800GTS 320MB,2GB ram.

[Balschoiw 0]

Don´t want to sound demanding or impatient but it´s been a while since there has been movement in the BIS Arma-Patch compartement.

I don´t know if it´s just me but the last patch has left me somewhere "in between". It´s no final for me and the changes are not really satisfying. At least that´s what I think. To be honest I hardly start Arma anymore as I just don´t think that the quality and status of the Arma project has brought it to a satisfying and reliable product. For me it´s still unfinished be it in the AI compartement, pathfinding, performance level and real issues within the control section and hardware handling. These things are not on a high quality level as we were used from BIS.

I´m not intending to rant about those things over and over again but a finsihed Arma I will be the only reason for me to buy Arma 2. I don´t believe in miracles and if Arma 1 does not get "finished" I will transport this memory over to Arma 2.

At least that´s what my 2 cents are on that issue.

[Shadow NX 1]

If 1.14 is still not accepteable performance, bugfixing and content adding wise then i guess not even a 2.14 would really meet the expectations.

ArmA came a long way and if you install it fresh and play a bit and then try 1.14 the difference should be pretty extreme.

The fact you only start it from time to time tells me it miust be good if you still use it after the long time its been out.

Most other games last a weekend for me without much replay value.

Arma will never be OFP, not with 1.15 or whatever the patch number will be not with any other patch.

Think ArmA2 will be great but will also not be a OFP but thats ok for me.