ArmA2 1.03 Impressions - ALL Impressions/Videos/Screenies Here

[Overwhelming 10]

Thanks for the spoiler, MrBiggles. :|

[laggy 0]

Try a defrag on drive arma2 is at, I noticed my games drive went from 0% fragmentation to 62% fragmentation after installing the patch, after a defrag runs sooo much better :)

Did it and it helped a little bit, thanks!

However this patch has changed something with the engine drastically. The first time I start a mission in Chernorus the game lags so much I can't move for 10 seconds while textures are loading and I see awful square block looking trees and buildings all around me. While this is going on I can't even turn my character.

When the texture/model loading is "done" the game works OK, but still worse than 1.01. Is this a planned change of the engine or may it be a corrupted file in the patch download?

Dell XPS 420

Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850, 3.0 GHz

3.00 GB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX (182.50 drivers)

German download version updated to 1.01 and then 1.02.

[toby23 10]

laggy,

i had this problem too.

i found out it was because i was trying to play a SAVED GAME i created before i patched the game to 1.02.

try starting the level new and it should be ok....

toby

[mrcash2009 0]

Yes its true and in the readme of the patch it does state:

- It is not recommended to use any savegames created in versions 1.00 or 1.01.

Not suggesting this fixes all issues here, but just confirming it thats all. It will at least eliminate any issues via this problem first so you can diagnose where else it might be.

[laggy 0]

Thanks both,

Yes I finally realized this had something to do with this issue as well. Didn't think the savegame problem would include user edited missions played/tested in the editor.

I was trying to play my "LAG test" mission in Chernogorsk including many troops and civilian modules and it performed horribly. This mission was edited in 1.01. Newly designed missions seem to work better, but I'm not sure that this is the only truth yet.

In general the texture loading is worse. Sometimes when you turn away from certain objects and then look back the object is white (as in no texture) and it takes forever for the texture to load again. This happens at least with the large hotel, city hall and statues/monuments in Chernogorsk.

In 1.02 Chernogorsk seems to be impossible to populate with the ALICE module as well, but I'm not sure about this.

More testing has to be done.

Edited June 21, 2009 by laggy

[KKB 0]

That was a great vid! I have a question: do air raid sirens sound when strike aircraft are inbound as well?

Thanks

If you want to, sure. The air raid siren sound is built in the game, just a matter of activating it when something happens.

[Hipota ^BOB^ 10]

Well, having been keeping an eye on the forums for a while now, its irritated me that so many people are complaining or nitpicking the smallest possible points, or comparing a freshly released tactical shooter, to a real time strategy arcade game. Or people who haven't even PLAYED the game moaning about this that and the other.

How many other Games developers and designers are going to have the CEO on the forums answering questions? Or releasing patches at 01:16 AM?

Quit Bitching, get yourself a team, a server and have some fun!

BI have done a damned good job, and I'm saying Thank You to them all!

[Richieb0y 0]

yea thx you bis for a great Coop game last night

[warrior9 10]

Holy crap you guys worked this late on a friday night to get the patch out???

For every one who may have bad comments about how BIS do things, name me one other games company that would do this and then have senior members of staff post on the forums?

Damn good work that.

Cornered Rat Software :) Despite being a tiny team of only 20 or so and the developers of one of the biggest, most complex MMOs on the market in the form of World War 2 Online: Battleground Europe, they (including the boss) still find the time to be always in the game's forums (talking about everything from politics to hot chicks :) as well as how to improve the game) and playing the game...they are not just the developers, they are also an important part of the community.

Anyway, back on topic, loving Arma2 even though I'm having a slight problem completing the tutorials. I can't seem to get any ammunition to complete the section, I forget what it's called but it's the part in the basic training section where you have to eliminate the good guys playing the part of bad guys in the village. Is this a bug or am I doing somethng wrong?

Edited June 21, 2009 by warrior9

[byku 13]

Bloody amazing... guys good work... now i need to bloody buy it in bloody Poland... which is impossible at the moment, couse it will be in the shops in mid-July :mad:.

[von_paulus 0]

Well, having been keeping an eye on the forums for a while now, its irritated me that so many people are complaining or nitpicking the smallest possible points, or comparing a freshly released tactical shooter, to a real time strategy arcade game. Or people who haven't even PLAYED the game moaning about this that and the other.

How many other Games developers and designers are going to have the CEO on the forums answering questions? Or releasing patches at 01:16 AM?

Quit Bitching, get yourself a team, a server and have some fun!

BI have done a damned good job, and I'm saying Thank You to them all!

Quoted for truth and Welcome Bob.

[DFA_Graywo1f 0]

Bloody amazing... guys good work... now i need to bloody buy it in bloody Poland... which is impossible at the moment, couse it will be in the shops in mid-July :mad:.

you cant just download it from an online store?

[byku 13]

you cant just download it from an online store?

I don't have a credic card, and my parents have stupid policy of not trusting online transactions :p.

[manzilla 1]

Quoted for truth and Welcome Bob.

Damn right. BIS is one helluva a company and they've put out a pretty damn good game from what I've seen over the past few weeks. It will be great to see what people come up with down the road. A2's got a lot of possibilities.

An update to my impression of v1.02:

Well I defraged my HD and that made the stuttering while moving problem go away. I'm back to max settings again! It seems there is quite a bit of a performance boost too. The game runs even smoother now and it was really smooth in v1.01. Thanks for giving the Modules their own slot in the Editor.

[mchide 0]

That new crosses in Air vehicles HUDs. I think that mistake was made implementing them. Original from v1.00 and v1.01 were much nicer. Plus its anoying because crosses are there eaven if you select vet. or pro. mode.

My rig Intel DG33FB,Intel E6550 DualCore, 8800 GTS 640MB, 2GB 800mhz RAM. Game was running much better before 1.02 patch. I just can not put together proper settings for graphic card since 1.02 patch. Or its ugly or its low on FPS.

[funkee 0]

Bloody amazing... guys good work... now i need to bloody buy it in bloody Poland... which is impossible at the moment... :mad:.

well I have the same problem, hope we will get version 1.02 already.

[Fansadox 0]

moving this...

Edited June 22, 2009 by Fansadox

[soul_assassin 1723]

The only thing I have a beef with is the running/sprinting animation. I dont know how true to life they are and Im not arguing that they are or not just think they look abit akward. Just have a look here:

at around 3:30

Edit:

also even though it plays on my quad core and gtx260 on highest settings with no problems I do notice a tremendouse gfx card overheating.

Edited June 21, 2009 by Soul_Assassin

[Litos 10]

I think the sprinting animations were as great as seen in the first trailer for ArmA 2. And I think they're as real as you could get... Maybe in slow motion it looks a little weird there, but for example the last scene in that video looks good when they sprint, etc.

[Cifu1978 10]

this is so annoying, i have the game in my hands, and only half a dam pc because the delivery people screwed up , damit.

has anyone played 1.02 yet, is coop campaign good to go? I need to tell work when im going back, they think im ill ! I need to time it right

No, the Co-op Campaign are broken, we get black screen before the briefing scene on the ship. :(

This is the best part of the game, but it's unplayable... :rolleyes:

[Relemar 10]

I waited patiently for ArmA 2 to arrive, and all it does is LAG. My specifications surpass the Reccomend specifications and I get about 25FPS, and it still lags.

Please bring out a performance patch, and re-do the campaign (I nearly fell to sleep playing it)

Cheers, or make seperate campaigns 1 infantry, 1 flying and 1 helicopter and 1 tank or something.

However, great game love it. Just the campaign was slightly boring ;) Good job though, just get it patched :)

[Richey79 10]

Specs:

Mid-range quad core

HD 4870

8 Gigs

Vista Ultimate 64 bit

I'm trying to eliminate a horrid stuttering lag that seems to have developed since one of the patches (I got the original German edit. several weeks ago). Just tried disabling my Realtek HD audio driver in control panel - the stutter has completely gone. Textures still load in a counter-intuitive way ( example: buildings 2000 metres away load instantly, whereas my LMG has a white head for several seconds).

Not really a fix, though, as playing Arma2 without sound is pretty impossible! Looks like a driver clash.

I'll post if I make any progress. Incidently, Arma 1 doesn't have any such issues with my audio driver.

Cheers.

Edit: I went into contol panel and disabled two ATI sound drivers that Catalyst had installed. Reenabled the Realtek - stutters still gone. I'm using Catalyst AI set at 3/5 'balanced'. It strikes me that Arma 2 requires you to tweak your settings perfectly - more so than most other games. Having the settings marginally too low is just as bad for stability as too high.

I know this might be better in a technical thread, but several people in this thread have said they're perfectly happy with the game and are just very frustrated with this stutter. Also, it seems that patch 1.02 unbalanced the settings I had spent ages tweaking.

Personally, I don't really care about graphics in BIS games, but the interface has to be completely seamless to ensure total immersion. Also, any lag at all means you're likely to die! I just remember my experience with ArmA1 - I completely gave up on it in frustration, only to come back a year and a half later to be very happy with the engine. I want to play A2 now.

I've now got rid of the stutter, but with a lower draw distance than I'd like. I have no faith - at the moment - that upgrading my system will help this. I'd like to know how much of my system the engine is really using.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just thought I'd update this, as I saw someone referring to my earlier comment on another forum.

After all this, I did a clean install of Windows 7, and everything ran really smoothly for a while, and then started stuttering again. I don't claim to have any perfect fixes, but I've now got it running silky smooth again. It doesn't look great when the image is still, but most of the time I'm scanning and moving, so that doesn't matter to me. I've now got it running fast enough that I finally like the blur effect (not so much the HDR).

-Key tinker #1 = I'd messed with my .cfg file so much that everything had become confused. I wiped it and let ArmA2 create a new one.

-#2 = For ATI cards, crossfire works 'out of the box' for me under a 64 bit system without -winxp tweak.

-#3 = For ATI cards (at least mid-range ones), I'd recommend not only turning CCC AI off, but tweaking further in 'all settings'. Make sure you force VSynch off. Set Mipmapping to the second to lowest setting (the lowest causes glitches with 2d textures in the game). It helped me to force low on-card AA.

After fiddling like this, I finally found that lowering graphical settings using the in-game menus worked and made real FPS gains (previously, I'd lower settings and it would play worse). I found that lowering shadows and object detail actually made little difference to how good the game looked (I suppose because characters are now made up of lots of polygons).

After this, I found I got great FPS at all times, without stutter, and could control settings in game by simply changing the view distance (you don't need more than 2000 in Electrozavodsk IMHO, but in the countryside you can get up to 4000 after this tinkering, without a great quad-core).

Apart from this, lots of people are saying that XP x64 is the best system to play the game on. Some claim up to a 40% increase in performance for high-end CPUs. I'm happy now, though, and done messing about.

It's well worth persevering to get a good frame-rate: - you suddenly realize that the game's difficulty level is set just right, and not ridiculously hard. You actually have a second to react before that bullet 'perforates your head-gear'.

Happy tinkering!

Edited June 24, 2009 by Richey79
Tinkered more.

[CW001 10]

As an experiment, I pumped everything up to full settings(except for terrain detail, which doesn't have high and v. high settings), fillrate 100%, res. 1280x960 and fired up the first mission from the OFP single missions conversion(Battlefields) And, surprisingly, my system handled the scene very well with a good frame rate. Even though there's dozens of soldiers and tanks wandering about.

Specs:

AMD AthlonX2 6000+ @ 3ghZ

Nvidia GeForce 9800gt, slightly overclocked using ntune

2GB of ram

And here was me thinking I'd only be able to run it on low :D

[Maizel 10]

Three cheers fo your trusty rig!

[Skodz 10]

Interesting