ArmA 2 Demo feedback

[jmc 0]

Like the Demo! No problems EXCEPT...

Building/fences/the land it self starts disappearing within 2-3 minutes.

I see heads with no bodies running around (and shooting me).

I'll see the dust/smoke from a tank but no tank.

Then I have to lower the texture detail which seems to cause it to reload

and then all is fine for a minute or two.

Finally found the answer. After reading a bunch of messages here...

I had the video ram on "default". Changing it to "very high" fixed the problem.

I just hope ArmA-2 has a story like OFP/Resistance etc. If so I'll buy it.

If it is like ArmA-1 .....

[sayyourpray 10]

hi there! i was a huge fan of OFP, skipped the Arma 1 and now im eagerly waiting to immerse myself in the ARma2 world.

however till the final version arrives in my laptop, i wanted to give a go to the demo, but to my surprise, after downloading and unzipping (or unrar-ing for the second time) the demo, the demo setup exe file doesnt run at all - i click the file and nothing happens.

What should I do? Is it something wrong with my laptop or do i need to install something?

My laptop is a Gateway FX, latest model - one of the best gaming laptops at this moment, with a Windows Vista 64 OP.

Any help greatly appreciated. Much thanks in advance.

[mr_centipede 31]

try wait longer, vista is trying to 'validate' or authenticate the file, the popup will came out to allow you to run the exe... i had vista ultimate 64bit and i had that experience too

[sayyourpray 10]

yeah, sometimes the pop-up window to validate the file comes up, sometimes not, but when it comes up and I allow permission for running the exe, nothing happens afterwards... and I was waiting a lot. finally when i go to the task menager, the program is pointed as a "not responding" one...

thanks for the reply!

[maxqubit 1]

Demo is Great!

I'm enjoying it on ... wait for it ... my LOW SPEC PC (p4 2.8 single core, 2GB ram, XP, AGP 7900GS ... the 7900GS being my only 50$ investment to get the old beast running ArmA2) and i am truely enjoying the demo. On my old pc ArmA2 demo runs beyond my expectation (but i keep it small scale)

Playing with the 360 controller, the only really thing missing is INVERT LOOK on the controller!!!! ... oh and 'free look' would be nice too.

[stegman 3]

I got the demo from steam the other day.

Came down fine, runs fine on vista32 too!

Worth noting that I only have a 300 dual core cpu, not the quad recommended! Though i do have an nVidia GTX260 (not top of the range i know).

Granted frame rate is a little low when there is a lot going on, but i have all settings on medium to high! So i could turn ‘em down.

I have experienced no unfair fighting from the AI.

What i have experienced though is the feeling of wild fire! The AI shoot at me, and keep shooting and missing seconds after I relocate! <---this is a good thing!

The atmos is real good!

And i LOVE the 'hop over a wall' ability!

Oh, and the 'command an army not just a team' thing!

Oh yeah! The cows too. I love the cows! And the bunnies!

My only negative feed back would be the head bob. it feels a little too much, but that is just a personal issue.

The game rocks and will soon be bought and placed on my shelf next to Arma&QB, OFPGold & Resistance.

..though i may need that bigger CPU then..:j:

[SWAT_BigBear 0]

Yes, plenty of free apps for taking screenies.

I just tested Asus GamerOSD, and it works better in W7 than it did with Vista (both 64 bit).

It has a FPS counter, video recorder (720x480) max, and a screenshot button. It will also allow microphone recording.

It has a broadcast option that allows others to view your live ingame footage via ip.

It is free to use for 30 days with any video card that will support it.

Ofcourse, it comes with Asus VC, I got my 1st with a 8800GTX.

Drawback: Live viewing requires your internet security to be very low, for those watching the feed.

I've tested it with the demo, and it takes excellent SS, and the video looks great at such a low res.

[jtec 0]

Demo is great and will be buying the demo after a slight upgrade on system. Currently using a athlon 64x dual core 5200, 3 gigs of decent xms ddr2 ram, and a slightly pants 7900gs. Which is running Arma2 better then Arma but could do with a lil boost. My only problem so far with the demo is the head bob. Wanna see that toned down a bit, but other then that its great! Good stuff BIS it really is the true successor to OFP

[cenkcnk 0]

radio voices best ever for me

head blop is great

i wanted to try grad or mlrs but there aren't also mi-24.

vehicle distance zoom can be improved. they are very far from camera .

i liked very much.

sorry for my crappy english

[SWAT_BigBear 0]

Demo is great and will be buying the demo

My only problem so far with the demo is the head bob. Wanna see that toned down a bit,

I will sell you a copy of the demo:D j/k

In your options, there is a slider to control how much head bob is used, all the way to off.;)

[jtec 0]

Duh sorry i meant i will be buying the full game after a slight upgrade. Good news on the slider option too! Makes the game perfect for me :D

[XCess 0]

Is it just me or do the majority of modules not work in the demo?

I was playing around in the editor last night and noticed there's almost no music either... For some reason they're all listed, but they just don't play which I found a little odd... Starting to get a lil' impatient waiting for my full copy to arrive in the post.

Other than the minor annoyances of the demo this seems a hell of a lot better than Arma. Back to the original OFP feel, which I like. I was starting to worry Arma2 would just be a repeat of the last game, but it's exceeded my expectations nicely. I'm happy :)

Edited July 2, 2009 by XCess

[SWAT_BigBear 0]

I agree about the OFP feeling from ArmA II.

Just from the small area we get to see/use in the demo, I can tell there will be many great games played in the full version. The terrain seems so beautiful with tons of eye candy. The woods, fields, ponds, buildings ect ect, has been a much improvement over ArmA I. And I've not yet experienced the animals.......still enjoying the MP mission that comes with the demo.

About the ponds......I see the Dev's went with the community feelings and left the bushes/grass in them, thx, it reminds me of Bass fishing in the shallows.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Music and sound effects obviously an easy thing to cut down on to reduce size. And for me too, the demo is getting quite boring since we can't even save the stuff in the editor. Also, none of the MP stuff is working for me with the editor for some reason. I've waited 14 days now since I ordered, 13 days since it was shipped. My patience is growing extremely thin. Also, you still can't get it in any shoppes around here, and I checked with about 10 PC game stores.

[Big Brother 10]

I did not read this forum much am sry if things been written already but have not that much time to browse here.

I noticed the AI often reacts delayed, drives against trees or wont heal members after some time of play.

Then by ordering the crew of a truck to bail out they all fall dead out and sometimes not.

Then resupply trucks drive into fire fights and gets destroyed by ff.

Its difficult to see enemys in the far, tryed different settings but still hard to see also AI soldiers see you while you cant see then because of the gras.

Most AI soldiers spot enemys somewhere 2000m behind the city so this is confusing.

When building a strongpoint defence it takes about 8 minutes to spawn a soldier who mount it.

[cadmium77 16]

Let me first say that I'm an older guy...55 going on 56 in fact...and I love wargames...or to be more precise, I love war sims...

Back in the day I'd hover over my SPI Firefight games in the early 80's and calculate each exchange between BRDMs and little squads of infantry...with little cardboard symbols..you'd take the whole day to play one scenario and try finding a decent opponent. I'd dream of the day computers would do the job.

The day came and there were glorious games...Shogun Total war, Medieval 2 Total War, Ghost Recon, Battlefield 2, LOMAC. Amazing stuff.

But still the circle wasn't complete...the GREAT GAME was yet to appear. Then a year or two ago we all became aware of ARMA II and OFP 2 and we waited with the greatest anticipation. Could this be it? Could this be THE GREAT GAME?

I won't be unfair...we haven't really seen OFP 2 yet and so we'll hold our judgement. When it's main trailer came out it was so seductive it seemed to eclipse poor old ARMA2 and BI...

But I finally set my 8 core 3gigahertz 8 gig RAM ATI RADEON 4870 X2 up yesterday and got everything tuned up on my new installation of Vista Business 64...and the graphics were a pleasant surprise. A very pleasant surprise. Vast vistas of surpassing beauty. It's tilted me over the edge to decide that this October, for my 56th birthday I'm buying a second ATI RADEON 4870 X2 to run in crossfire and with Windows 7 I'll have Direct X 11 with Open CL...that's right Open CL not Open GL and this will allow me to run my GPUs as multicore arrays...1600 cores each for multithreading...I wonder what kind of frame rates that will give me. And this will allow three 24" screens instead of just one. Three screens with TrackIR...I must have it...the demo convinced me.

But enough of bragging and lusting for new gear on my rig..

The demo...Arma 2...

What is this game? It's so much more than I'd hoped for. It's the Ghost Recon of my dreams...it's so amazing to participate in battle action in this environment...the environment of a true military sim...VBS 2 to be exact...that even if it just were a FPS it would be a triumph. The AI is not perfect...some problems with pathfinding, especially with vehicles but really why quibble. It appears to be if not THE best, one of the best. For the most part it works. And so the battles are rich in complexity and the immersion in this amazingly convincing landscape is immediate and gripping. You ARE there, much more so than other prettier more refined games like Crysis Warhead for example.

And the AI...the AI is damn good. Really good, both by your own men and the enemy...they're wicked flankers, even better than the AI troops in STALKER.

But it doesn't stop at being a FPS. No...it's the command structure. A sliding scale command structure...as a fire team leader, a squad leader, a platoon leader, a company leader...God knows, a battalion leader?

I played with the little non combat scenario of leading a squad and 4 tanks around the island. This is teh coolest thing. I played and played and played with this.

Next I must figure out how to set up the battle maps to create my own scenarios. I skipped ARMA so I'm trying to get up to speed.

Tomorrow ARMA 2 goes on sale here in Canada...

All my doubts are dispelled. I'm getting it the moment it becomes available.

I can't wait.

To all involved in the toil of making this amazing program, thanks. Kudos. This is going to be a mountain of pure fun for a long long time. The mods are going to be superb..

Edited July 6, 2009 by Cadmium77

[Supernova 0]

Your knowledge on computer hardware astounds me simply because you do not know what you are talking about especially with the CrossfireX , DX11 etc... As for my personal opinion of Arma II it's by far the buggiest game to come out this year along with Empire Total War. It's highly unoptimized and it doesn't take advantage of high end hardware. Go ahead and waste your money and see the bad fps and scaling in this game. Also if you are referring to the Core i7 its NOT an 8 CORE processor its a HyperThreaded Quad Core which gives the impression of 8 Logical Cores but it's not an 8 core processor.

Edited July 6, 2009 by Supernova

[Hedo 10]

But I finally set my 8 core 3gigahertz 8 gig RAM ATI RADEON 4870 X2 up yesterday and got everything tuned up on my new installation of Vista Business 64...and the graphics were a pleasant surprise. A very pleasant surprise. Vast vistas of surpassing beauty. It's tilted me over the edge to decide that this October, for my 56th birthday I'm buying a second ATI RADEON 4870 X2 to run in crossfire and with Windows 7 I'll have Direct X 11 with Open CL...that's right Open CL not Open GL and this will allow me to run my GPUs as multicore arrays...1600 cores each for multithreading...I wonder what kind of frame rates that will give me. And this will allow three 24" screens instead of just one. Three screens with TrackIR...I must have it...the demo convinced me.

Well, atleast we know you're rich... :rolleyes:

But yeah, Arma 2 is an amazing game. (especially if you haven't heard of OFP and Arma 1)

[S@rge 10]

Its a great game, so much so that the odd bug dosent bother me. Im running old hardware and am getting the performance i would expect but i can understand it must be frustrating for people with high spec pc's having issues.

[NotASenator 10]

I think the 1600 cores you are talking about are the 800 stream processors in the Radeon 48xx series. That's slightly different, but it's certainly still a decent setup.

I have an Advanced Squad Leader scenario setup on the table next to my computer right now, so tabletop hasn't lost it's charm either.

[shataan 1]

"by far the buggiest game "

Ya know, with all the code in this game, I expected it to arrive buggy. And I will prolly be p`d off more if the updates/fixes don`t arrive in a timely manner. The main bugs I`d like to see worked on 1st would be in the tutorials section. But again considering the sheer amount this game is offering, I can`t be p`d off at it arriving buggy.

I just hope the tutorial area, and the squad A.I. control bugs get worked out 1st.

[cartier90 0]

Yeah go easy nova, were not all au fait with computers....

Tho a 1600 core processor would ROCK ! ;)

[BeerHunter 0]

Glad you're enjoying the game for what it is. Sure it's a little buggy but damn , after almost what..8 years , so is Windows XP and BIS has a better track record than MS for finding and fixing bugs.

[cartier90 0]

I dont know about anyone else but the only type of game I can play is free roaming sandbox ones. Im not a massive gamer but GTA4 has kept me occupied for a while - ARMA was the one element missing. Someone needs to incorporate the 2 along with FSX - someone can do it ! ..oh and add orbiter on as well :) http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/

[Jon K 10]

Cadmium, you and I share the same thoughts. This truley is the pinnacle of ground combat simulation with no rival coming close to what this offers.

Hoping that a modern day air sim may one day have something similar.

And supernova.....wow