ArmA2 1.03 Impressions - ALL Impressions/Videos/Screenies Here

[Zombie_Mod 0]

Here's the problem with what you have stated (for me, a supposed fanboy) all these statements are observable FACT on my system:

-Are there bugs, sure are!

-AI doesn't work all the time- a quite fair statement, but about 90%, it does.

-AI has trouble navigating, and fighting - maybe if you are being really specific about a situation, also fair. However, I've not seen them have issues getting to me in a fight, even over long distances, using cover and suppression. The slow targeting issue is being addressed -another however- is the people that will bitch about them being as good as an aware human and firing too fast:j:. But alas, I'd rather read that complaint.

-AI can't follow you up stairs??!!? On my system this is a flat out lie. Do you know how many times I've made up editor missions to play by myself and was shot in the back from my nook in both the parking ramp like building or the grain elevator? I've become paranoid as hell and scripted triggers onto the mines I've laid just outside the doorway to at least alert me to their presence. From my perspective, this is simply not true. Not being a fanboy, I have not seen this issue at all.

In driving I've seen an AI convoy get locked up in a situation they can't undo, and some wandering on and off the road (not much of that at all anymore though) that could use some tweaking.

On my system, it's far from 'broken'. Certainly some points that blow it, but what unscripted game is perfect out of the box and can handle all the creative situations millions of players will discover? It will get better. You're 37 and should be able to be patient, right? It is done, you bought the game, you don't like it's current state. It is being supported and will get better.

Good luck in your fixes.

Tell me Scrub, what is the use of me lying? What possible reason could I have for saying "this doesn't work"?

Why would I throw myself into a nest of vipers against all these fanboys if I didn't believe in what I was saying?

The game IS broken, but I've paid my £25, "caveat emptor" and all that jazz. I'll remember when Arma3 comes out not to buy it because it will be broken, and I'll wait 6 months for a patch to make the game work; if everyone follows suit, BIS may be bankrupt. Do you see what I'm saying now?

I wanted Arkanoid, but I got pong :D *cough* shit analogy *cough*

The "millions of scripted situations" excuse, that a game like Arma2 is so complex that it is bound to be full of bugs. Yes, and these bugs have been known for years haven't they? OFP - bad driving. Arma - trucks falling off a bridge and bouncing back up... Arma2 - I couldn't trust my team to make a cup of tea without burning themselves!

I will be so bold say the bugs are known to the developers, have been known BEFORE release, and haven't been fixed because of the rush to add new "content"

Just because I'm 37 doesn't mean I am patient, I just won't accept being given substandard product or being fed the "patch later" BS. I can think of plenty of games which are as complex as Arma2 which are playable and had few bugs on initial release - sure they are not all FPS, but I can see their inherent complexity. Edit: this is 2009 - there are automated testing tools and test suites available that remove a lot of the grunt work on doing the bog standard stuff.

Edit 2: on reflection, I've no idea how Arma2's internals are constructed so I'll retract that latter statement, don't want to talk about something I know zilch about!

BTW how do you know "The slow targeting issue is being addressed" ? Are you one of the dev team?

---------- Post added at 08:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:40 PM ----------

BIS has to make some money in order to pay the developers to fix those defects, or else BIS (and ArmA 2) would not exist.

So there we go - you've said it: BIS released the game early because their Fanboys will buy something broken and give BIS enough money to pay the dev's wages.

That, to me, is a complete abuse of trust.

Take the money now, deliver the goods later.

Edited July 10, 2009 by Zombie_Mod

[cartier90 0]

Perhaps Zombie you feel particulary aggrieved as you have in the past created a mod. Dedicated time to it and feel almost a part of the history/culture of the game. This is a logical point of view. You are likely to be more receptive to issues that maybe others dont notice or will forgive more easily as you are a advanced user ?

It seems ironic though, that you have the patience and understand the skill required to mod something, yet cannot realise that what BIS have to 'solve' is a order of magnitude more difficult and larger a problem than what you did.

A lot of people, myself included forgive problems as we havent dedicated as much effort as others, my £25 didnt feel like your £25 spent +your expectations....

Edited July 10, 2009 by cartier90

[Scrub 0]

Zombie, no battle here, I never said you're lying, the word 'lie' as stated, was just that my perspective and relative 'facts' were opposite in that area than yours. You have issues, I, and many others don't. Some with the same rig do, and do not have issues, there's more to these problems than the game is all I'm saying. There's issues with Intel and 2XX gfx cards, and... Whatever.

How do I know about the slow aim of the AI being taken care of? Read the bug tracker, and please accept help without biting, or you'll just make yourself more miserable.

I'm tired of all the fanboy/troll crap going on. I'm going to go play this game for a few days, and advise you all with issues to wipe the install clean, update drivers, confirm issues with components on the manufacturers forums, lose the overclocks, and lastly start swapping parts to isolate the issue. Good luck to all.

Edited July 10, 2009 by Scrub
Was Hungry and pissed off

[Zombie_Mod 0]

Perhaps Zombie you feel particulary aggrieved as you have in the past created a mod. Dedicated time to it and feel almost a part of the history/culture of the game. This is a logical point of view. You are likely to be more receptive to issues that maybe others dont notice or will forgive more easily as you are a advanced user ?

It seems ironic though, that you have the patience and understand the skill required to mod something, yet cannot realise that what BIS have to 'solve' is a order of magnitude more difficult and larger a problem than what you did.

A lot of people, myself included forgive problems as we havent dedicated as much effort as others, my £25 didnt feel like your £25 spent +your expectations....

My mod is in the past Cartier; it's for a game that is long obsolete. My mod wasn't even that good tbh :D ... but, at least then OFP was playable, even if, when I think back, the interface was like WordPerfect for DOS (all function keys and macros lol) - in fact the interface is still 1986 lol

Thanks for understanding my POV (that's not sarcasm btw, I'm not that lousy)

Again, I will say the dev time has been spent on implementing the wrong things. Instead of the "Armory" (and I hate sounding like a broken record btw) why could dev resources not be spent on the major defects which IMHO we all know have been there forever?

Test team time spent playing a chicken vs AI driving properly? Come ON :confused:

All I want is to play the campaign, finish it, and say "yep, that was great", but right now I can't because the AI is attending a special school (oh ffs, thats sure to send me to Hell :D )

Edit: in fact I just did finish the campaign. I got a "warfare" game right at the end and I didn't know how to play it, no instructions, nothing, so had to use ENDMISSION cheat :( - I had to skip previous missions because they didn't work or I got pissed off :j:

Yours about to get wired into budweiserly,

Scott

[DetCord 96]

I suppose Devil, its all dependent on the experience of the individual. I have a mid-high end system and it runs quite well. Only in large battles does fps drop below 30 - Something I find unplayable. Now my initial reaction to your post was 'oh for gods sakes ' another one, but if your having issues on a reasonable system its hard for you to see the game in any other way.

Again, it has to be said, has anyone the expertise to even attempt a similar game ?

Oh I totally agree, mate. But these vast issues are present nonetheless. The fact that our player-base is experiencing such wide ranging and differing performance most defiantly points to the optimization issue. As stated before by others, a patch can only fix so much, and patching a game engine itself is very difficult as there is only so much you can do.

EDIT: A similar game? No. However, as a owner of VBS2 I will say that said sim doesn't have nearly the same issues that ArmA had or that ArmA II has. Point being, without a major publisher and distributor ensuring QC, well I spose you get the point of this one mate.

Edited July 11, 2009 by DetCord

[DLcmdr 0]

Dramatic improvement installing windows 7.

I reccomend.

[An Fiach 10]

The fact that the thing which brings people back to these games again and again is the modability and they haven't even done the tools yet is disturbing when added to the fact that the game is as yet so incomplete. I knew there would be issues, but not to this degree. It feel so strange waiting for a game to be finished when you already own it.

I understand also the role that publishers play in when the game gets released. I remember back in 2001 when they launched World War II Online: Blitzkrieg. They were showing the game off at a games expo like E3 and one of the developers was talking to someone about the game. He was saying it would be another 3 or 4 months before the game was finished when one of the publishers walked up with champagne and said "Congratulations, we've just gone Gold" Needless to say the initial release was a flop and the publisher dropped them like a hot potato. Somehow those devs managed to save themselves and their game and have been going for 8 years with a team of about 6 devs. So publisher pressure could be the cause of the early release, the question is why is this game so bugged compared with the sim that it is built on?

[DetCord 96]

The fact that the thing which brings people back to these games again and again is the modability and they haven't even done the tools yet is disturbing when added to the fact that the game is as yet so incomplete. I knew there would be issues, but not to this degree. It feel so strange waiting for a game to be finished when you already own it.

I understand also the role that publishers play in when the game gets released. I remember back in 2001 when they launched World War II Online: Blitzkrieg. They were showing the game off at a games expo like E3 and one of the developers was talking to someone about the game. He was saying it would be another 3 or 4 months before the game was finished when one of the publishers walked up with champagne and said "Congratulations, we've just gone Gold" Needless to say the initial release was a flop and the publisher dropped them like a hot potato. Somehow those devs managed to save themselves and their game and have been going for 8 years with a team of about 6 devs. So publisher pressure could be the cause of the early release, the question is why is this game so bugged compared with the sim that it is built on?

WWII Online is still a flop, mate. This is due to a myriad of issues. It would be prudent, regardless of the playable state of ArmA II, not to compare the two when regarding the launch of this title. WWII Online is absolutely atrocious regarding many factors. That said, I do agree to an extent. If you'd go back a few pages you'd see that I asked the exact same question.

EDIT:

As a long time OFP player that migrated to ArmA following it's initial release, I am highly disappointed with this latest iteration from one of the smallest but tier one development houses in the world bar none. The game itself is horrendously optimized, far more so than ArmA ever was. Texture streaming is absolutely awful, coupled with the engines inability to properly render LODs' at any given time, not to mention the vast amount of bugs. I almost quit the genre following the release of ArmA because of similar issues, however, I stuck with it because I knew that this excellent community would fix said issues and, for the most part, they did. Sadly, all of the lessons that we thought were learned from ArmA seemed to have been tossed aside, continuing with the same thought process, BIS has created yet another sim that suffers from some of the same elements of the previous title, and it is far worse in many aspects, especially the vast performance problems

But even more important is the low performance: Even on overclcoked highest-end hardware (Core i7; 12 GiByte RAM and a GTX 285 with 2 GiByte VRAM) ArmA 2 becomes a slide show (less than 15 fps) running at 1,280 x 1,024 pixels with very high details. You have to go to low or medium details and have to activate Pixel Doubling (which is ugly) to get playable framerates. Given the performance you shouldn't even think about Anti Aliasing, but the Real Virtuality Engine doesn't support it, as well as any SLI or Crossfire modes, anyway.

This impressive visualization is ruined by the bad LoD and the aggressive Streaming system as well as the post processing effects: The extremely exaggerated Motion Blur can be dealt with, but the Depth of Field which comes into effect in a short distance doesn't just soften the environment but also opponents who are more or less made invisible by that - so lower details are much better from a gameplay related point of view. Biggest drawback: Even on a graphics card with 2 GiByte VRAM ArmA 2 loads high resolution object textures at a very late time. Thus it is possible that a wooden box is made of a washy bitmap and until you get close enough you don't even recognize that the brow something is supposed to be a wooden texture. At closer distances on the other hand the textures are sharp and coherent. The animations are convincing and alarmingly realistic in some situations - especially those of the NPCs, who by the way are quite details except the faces.

ArmA 2 looks great in most parts, but the impressive graphics can't be run on any system at the moment - the performance is a disaster. To get the framerate to an acceptable level you have to lower the visual quality because of what the graphical experience suffers. The clipping bugs and the collision detection are further drawbacks. On the other hand the SSAA feature is unmatched by any other game at the moment.

Edited July 11, 2009 by DetCord

[An Fiach 10]

WWII Online is still a flop, mate. This is due to a myriad of issues. It would be prudent, regardless of the playable state of ArmA II, not to compare the two when regarding the launch of this title. WWII Online is absolutely atrocious regarding many factors. That said, I do agree to an extent. If you'd go back a few pages you'd see that I asked the exact same question.

EDIT:

WWIIOL is a great game and there is no other like it. And you are right, it isnt right to compare a tiny company that has only made one game and with minimal funding and a small/medium sized company that has released several and has defense contracts on the side.

But both are running on engines built a decade ago, both have no competition in a niche market and both with a loyal fanbase that are willing to put up with ridiculous shortcomings in order to experience something that they cannot get anywhere else. No, they have nothing in common.

[reilar 10]

I have noticed a problem with heli auto-hovering mode. When auto-hovering and you try to slide the heli sideways (key a/d) the heli start to oscillating pitch-wise up and down. This is most pronounced when the direction of the heli is W or E and it's not possible to slide the heli. The effect doesn't show at all when the heli direction is N/S and you can then slide the heli sideways with no problem. The effect seems to increase the more the direction differs from N/S and is maximised in direction of W/E.

[cartier90 0]

Heli control is not the games forte'

[tophe 69]

Had some fun in the studio last night...

What to do while waiting for the patch?

Thank you Bohemia...

[Mc Speedfreak 10]

LOL..

seriously though,

awesome work there Tophe. very original and stunning sound... you published anything?

Edited July 11, 2009 by Mc Speedfreak

[MJK-Ranger 0]

Hehe

:459: ,Awesome work :) Great voice too :cc:

Edited July 11, 2009 by MJK-Ranger

[Deadfast 43]

The best complaint ever :D

[Master gamawa 0]

Holy shit that is awesome!!!

[KeyCat 131]

Had some fun in the studio last night...

What to do while waiting for the patch?

Thank you Bohemia...

ROFL :D

BTW, you got serious talent mate...

/KC

[Dallas 9]

Now this is how you troll correctly. 5/5

[walker 0]

Had some fun in the studio last night...

What to do while waiting for the patch?

Thank you Bohemia...

LOL

Loved it! :D

Kind Regards walker

[txalin 2]

ROLF, best complaint ever!!

[sayyourpray 10]

just awesome! the music is splendid, ur voice is just marvelous and on top of that some excellent lyrics... could you point us to other creations of yours?

[tophe 69]

just awesome! the music is splendid, ur voice is just marvelous and on top of that some excellent lyrics... could you point us to other creations of yours?

Thanks man.. And thank you other guys. Just needed to show BIS some love!

Hmm... You could always check out Meadows ever Bleeding, we're on facebook also... But that's a completely different thing than this.. At least I think :P

[cole 0]

Had some fun in the studio last night...

What to do while waiting for the patch?

Thank you Bohemia...

Wha the he-

That's the most original complaint I've seen in my life. Great work! :D

[ProfTournesol 956]

@ Tophe : simply brilliant. Could you post the lyrics somewhere for non native english speakers ?

[-=seany=- 5]

Excellent song, thanks. Made me smile :D