ARMA II Community Update

[Placebo 28]

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=83700

Howdy folks,

We just wanted to give you a brief update as to what's going on with ArmA II and what we're working on, our immediate plans and such:

• Patch 1.04 for ArmA II is currently in progress, we carefully read the feedback on the forums as much as possible, sometimes of course it can get a little heated and unclear so we also use the Community Issue Tracker, these are the two main points for collecting feedback from the community.
  A couple of prioritised areas we're hoping to address for 1.04 are "mouse lag" (this is something we've not been able to reproduce locally but we believe there are a couple of things we can do to help the situation for those users who do seem to suffer from it), the second area we're prioritising is improving performance, especially in urban areas, of course there will be other things addressed in 1.04 but it's too early to go into details about those just yet.
  
• We're finalising the complete editing tools suite for release, more info can be found at http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/BI_Tools_2
  
• Dedicated Linux server, we know this is something the community of course is eagerly waiting for, we continue progress on this but cannot at this point give any time-scale for the release, unfortunately it's not quite as simple as some might think to release a Linux version of our dedicated server but rest assured we're making progress.
  
• We're working on a new plan for the best way to be able to establish more regular patches release, as well as to grant access to interim versions, to those community members willing to help us with testing various aspects of planned changes in the core engine.
  

So hopefully a few things for you all to look forward to there, you guys have already taken great steps to ensure that ArmA II has a solid fanbase and community and hopefully some of the things we've outlined above will ensure that this continues for a long time to come.

Please continue with your feedback, suggestions and bug reports, we try to read as much as we can and when possible will give comments back, but just because we're not talking doesn't mean we're not listening!

[kremator 1064]

Excellent news Placebo. Thanks for keeping us informed!

We REALLY do appreciate it. Perhaps releasing a patch once a fortnight would be perfect.

[Alex72 1]

Sounds superb.

Good luck to BIS to get things into the shape they strive for. :)

Alex

[sbsmac 0]

Excellent initiative. I really hope this is evidence of a new policy of regular, deliberate and planned communication from the BIS team. I know everyone there must be working like dogs but as has been frequently noted in these forums, communication will buy you a lot of goodwill whilst bugs are being fixed.

[jw custom 56]

So what will 1.05 be addressing :D

[Placebo 28]

So what will 1.05 be addressing :D

Automated forum kick bans ;)

[jw custom 56]

Automated forum kick bans ;)

Haha nice one :p

[cjsoques 0]

I am very impressed with this initiative set forward and it really shows us that you've noticed our main concern:

"Sure, the game isn't perfect, but as long as we know you are working on it and what you are working on and when you plan to release things..that's awesome"

This is a nice small first step and it'll be interesting to see how well you guys continue to commit to communicating with the community regularly on progress. We all want this game to be very successful or we wouldn't be "whining" about our legitimate concerns. So that can enjoy ARMA2 how it was envisioned, not how it was originally executed :)

Thanks BIS, I hope you keep this going.

[DaSquade 0]

Automated forum kick bans

And what will be your job then? Back to cleaning the toilets, serving coffee and dusting of the cookies left-overs on the desks? :p

Nah, good to see BIS plan to release public beta's again. I know some won't like it, but if each beta gets his official final counter path i don't see the problem. Keep it up.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Cool. I suspect this is an example of BIS responding to the recent demands of more regular updates... but hey I'm not complaining. ;)

We're working on a new plan for the best way to be able to establish more regular patches release, as well as to grant access to interim versions, to those community members willing to help us with testing various aspects of planned changes in the core engine.

How about making use of Steam's beta participation thingy?

[lucifer(ados) 10]

This are good news... Its allways good to see that BIS is hearing the comunity, But...

Why dont you bis released the game 2 or 3 months later with a good beta testing, and not so many bugs??

The other problem of this game is performance... nothing new to say about it... since arma Bis games had a bad performance always, for me arma 1 with pach 1.16 was a lot better... But it came 2 years after its release. When I got a better pc more powerfull.

So I suggest you that push on a realy good patch that increase the performance realy much more. Think that ofp 2: DR is comming and it would be another option to play tacticals shooters. If you make big mistakes and the other game is a good option you will lose many players.

First time i played arma 2 it had errors in the missions you released with it, not small errors, NO, great bugs and errors in basic scripting that made them unplayable. And those errors It taked to me 5 minutes in see it. So what were you thinking???

This past years you where the only option, but now you have to keep working a lot more to stay in the wave.

I wish you find the way to fix all these performance issues and bugs. I´ve been playing arma/ arma 2 some years getting fun with all the good thigs you offered us (open world, realism, editor, good MP coops).

But is time for regeneration or maybe dying.

Regards, keep working and give us the real game arma 2 could be!!!!

PD: I´m not blaming BIS, I only recommend them to work even harder, because now there are other options in this gaming genre.

[connos 10]

Awesome news. Thanks Placebo. I am new to Arma but I am really enjoying Arma2 from the day off release.

I like hearing news and updates of what is going on. Back to Arma 2.

[abs 2]

Will the new tools export to 3ds max format?

I only ask since the wiki says that it will overwrite the Arma1 tools.

Abs

[dale0404 5]

:yay::yay:

Thats all that needs saying!

[BeerHunter 0]

The other problem of this game is performance... nothing new to say about it... since arma Bis games had a bad performance always, for me arma 1 with pach 1.16 was a lot better... But it came 2 years after its release. When I got a better pc more powerfull.

How can they fix performance when there isn't a consistent performance issue?

Some are reporting poor performance with high end systems while others are saying it works just fine and they're happy with medium or low end systems?

About the only thing that I can find , after reading the complaints about performance, is that the majority reporting poor performance are using Intel Dual/Quad CPU's so maybe it's more of an Intel problem than BIS's...but then again , maybe more systems are powered by Intel than AMD.. :confused:

But my aged lil old AMD 2x CPU just chugs along...:o

[interox 10]

Well done BIS for responding in this way. A little communication goes a long way.

[eJay 1]

Good to read info like this. Keep finger crossed for next patch which (hope) bring more good than bad :)

[Placebo 28]

Why dont you bis released the game 2 or 3 months later with a good beta testing, and not so many bugs??

Because we don't release the game, or decide when the game's released, we simply develop it to the deadlines and status decided by the publisher (well publishers in our case of course).

[galzohar 31]

It would be pretty awesome if the beta patches would be something you can "choose", that is, once installed I should be able to choose if to run the beta patch version or the unpatched version, so that I can connect to either beta or normal servers at will without reinstalling the game... Of course would also be nice if they worked on steam properly.

[cjsoques 0]

It would be pretty awesome if the beta patches would be something you can "choose", that is, once installed I should be able to choose if to run the beta patch version or the unpatched version, so that I can connect to either beta or normal servers at will without reinstalling the game... Of course would also be nice if they worked on steam properly.

I mean that's how it was in ARMA1 I don't see why it would be different this time

[wiper 0]

Thanks for the info Placebo, much appreciated !

As for the community support count me in please, as one of the willing ones :)

[calo_mir 10]

:yay::yay:

Thats all that needs saying!

A full four-banana rating.

[MJK-Ranger 0]

Hi :)

Excellent news Placebo;)

Cheers :ok::cheers:

[ck-claw 1]

It would be pretty awesome if the beta patches would be something you can "choose", that is, once installed I should be able to choose if to run the beta patch version or the unpatched version, so that I can connect to either beta or normal servers at will without reinstalling the game... Of course would also be nice if they worked on steam properly.

You could in arma-the beta was just a mod folder.

Edited August 13, 2009 by ck-claw
Missed a page lol

[Obecalp 10]

I am pretty speechless. Moaning minutes ago in another thread about poor communication and now this EXTENSIVE statement :eek:

If this would happen in weekly or 2-weekly cycles and really with MEAT it would be a drastic change.

we carefully read the feedback on the forums as much as possible, sometimes of course it can get a little heated and unclear so we also use the Community Issue Tracker, these are the two main points for collecting feedback from the community.

Please continue with your feedback, suggestions and bug reports, we try to read as much as we can and when possible will give comments back, but just because we're not talking doesn't mean we're not listening!

I know that BIS devs are keen to use the community tracker in a way that it would be visible for us. But if BIS would make clear that "accepting" a TT does not mean any warranty that it is officially accepted and that it will be solved there would be no danger.

And if despite that still some would complain you could ignore it like so many other things BIS is ignoring.

But the good side would be that people instantly see that BIS is working without "controlling" .

Maybe a group account "BIS_DEVS" where you assign the TTs to would do the job. And BIS devs could send questions anonymous but straight to the creator of a certain TT without being disturbed by the noise you have if you do similar in the forum here.