ArmA II: Operation Arrowhead discussion thread

[arigram 0]

I just hope there will be goats and sheep, otherwise I am not buying.

[AnimalMother92 10]

My best guess is that it's released as a 1 year anniversary.

My hope is that it's not released before that, or rushed, because I don't want it to be buggy.

My fear is that it gets pushed back to September or something and I'm forced to put myself in cryo-sleep.

[Maio 293]

Some info for us via twitter

http://twitter.com/IDEAGames/status/10614368538

[SASrecon 0]

Question:

looking at the video (graphics) do you guys think the system requirement will stay the same?

Answer:

dont expect mirracles, we are talking about 1-10% better performance. Depends on HW.

Question:

Am I missing something or the unmanned Little Bird, approximately visible at 1' 20'' from the beginning of the video, looks quite weird?

Answer:

YES

Player who occupies the pilot seat can fly it than. Also the UAV can bring some weapons and ammo as "flying ammo/weapon crate" in the hot zone.

Hope that helped :D

[7 0]

I really hope OA will bring about BIG performance optimizations, as right now I can't even run the game smoothly with a 4870X2 and Q6600 @ 3.2 GHz. And what's with the 30 fps limiter in multiplayer? Going from 60 to 50 is somewhat tolerable but going from 30 to 20 makes me sick.

Wishlist:

Native 64-bit support <-- this is very important. No wonder people get faulty LOD-switching when ArmA II only utilizes 2 out of, say, 8 GB of the available RAM.

Revamped sound engine to allow for environmental sound effects, such as different reverbs for different environments. Different sounds for different distances, preferably smoothly crossfaded into eachother. Realistic handling of fully-automatic weapons fire. Being able to use many different sound samples even for just one weapon firing. Tiny pitch-variations during both semi- & fullauto gunfire to make it sound less monotonous.

Examples of games doing audio the right way: Ghost Recon, BF2, BF BC & BF BC2.

Better weapon animations, when it comes to ironsighted view & workings of the weapon mechanisms.

I doubt that even a single item on this wishlist will be realized, as it would require some not unsubstantial modification of the current game engine. But a man is allowed to dream, isn't he?

*Returns to playing BC2 for his daily fix of aural orgasms*

Edited March 17, 2010 by 7

[Takko 10]

I really hope OA will bring about BIG performance optimizations

Performance optimations? Why downgrade a 2010 game for 2008/2009 hardware?

See no point at all.

If the performance remains the same its cool, if not its alright!

[Laqueesha 474]

Native 64-bit support

Nuff said. :D

[raizjames 10]

Some info for us via twitter

http://twitter.com/IDEAGames/status/10614368538

Can someone please explain to us what that means?

"Environment designers started experimenting with the mountain forests.":confused:

[7 0]

Performance optimations? Why downgrade a 2010 game for 2008/2009 hardware?

See no point at all.

If the performance remains the same its cool, if not its alright!

I don't know why you are asking me this, and I'm afraid I don't know why anyone would downgrade a 2010 game for 2008/2009 hardware. Try Yahoo Answers.

[catito14 0]

Performance optimations? Why downgrade a 2010 game for 2008/2009 hardware?

See no point at all.

If the performance remains the same its cool, if not its alright!

OPTIMIZE performance does not mean downgrade graphics or similar.... try to play OFP with ALL in very high, MAX VIEW distance, etc .... and you will see that your 2010 pc can´t run that game as smoothly as ArmA2 or ArmA 1 .... why? because the OPTIMIZATION of the engine/game/or whatever.

[Laqueesha 474]

OPTIMIZE performance does not mean downgrade graphics or similar.... try to play OFP with ALL in very high, MAX VIEW distance, etc .... and you will see that your 2010 pc can´t run that game as smoothly as ArmA2 or ArmA 1 .... why? because the OPTIMIZATION of the engine/game/or whatever.

Pwnt. :D

[whisper 0]

Well, I've yet to see an engine permitting on one hand the scale permitted by ArmA2, and on the other hand all the nifty stuff asked above about sounds and such, as well as latest FPS performance in-line with BC2, MW2 & Co.

Imho, it is mutually exclusive.

Saying BC2 can acheive performance and better sound is not helping, BC2 is stamp sized and a little squad of units on map compared to ArmA2.

Most of the optimization will come with less heavy terrain than Chernarus

[7 0]

Well, I've yet to see an engine permitting on one hand the scale permitted by ArmA2, and on the other hand all the nifty stuff asked above about sounds and such, as well as latest FPS performance in-line with BC2, MW2 & Co.

Imho, it is mutually exclusive.

Saying BC2 can acheive performance and better sound is not helping, BC2 is stamp sized and a little squad of units on map compared to ArmA2.

Most of the optimization will come with less heavy terrain than Chernarus

Please reread the 4th line of that post.

[Flash Thunder 10]

By 2015, 64bit Apps will be a standard.

BIS will find a solution to implement its support into RV.

I dont think anyone would not want its support it offers alot resources that could help this series alot.

The texture on the terrain looks alot better than the Chernarus texture, Hopefully BIS will give us more options for texture quality, I feel alot of the textures in Arma 2 were really blurry even with crazy high fill rates and at close distance.

Lets hope BIS will give us more graphic options to, like Seperate Post process settings, VOIP sliders, Particle effects and other ways to help gain frame rate for lower end users.

[SASrecon 0]

Lets all remember folks; BIS will support this game with patches so if there are fairly big optimisation & performance issues, they're bound to be fixed

[CriminalMinds 10]

@raizjames

I think they mean something like this : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Bibiyal,_Korengal_Valley,_Kunar_Province,_Afghanistan.jpg!

Afghanistan is rich of mountainous landscape with many forests. I think this will be superb! :bounce3:

Edit: Found a nice site for warm you up guys! Chinhooks, mortars, artillery, some lazy soldiers. http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/afghanistans_korengal_valley.html

Edited March 17, 2010 by CriminalMinds

[wolfbite 8]

On a modding note will we be able to have multiple guns on a vehicle that all shoot or will we be stuck with a single gun shooting? Any chance of adding skeleton and animation support for vehicles? ( So we can make mechs etc?). I wonder if opfor will be able to conceal weapons and not stand out in crowds.... Seriously though the Radar/Flares/Flir just make me cry tears of purest joy......

[TimRiceSE 10]

On a modding note will we be able to have multiple guns on a vehicle that all shoot or will we be stuck with a single gun shooting? Any chance of adding skeleton and animation support for vehicles? ( So we can make mechs etc?). I wonder if opfor will be able to conceal weapons and not stand out in crowds.... Seriously though the Radar/Flares/Flir just make me cry tears of purest joy......

you do realise that you can have multiple guns on a vehicle right now, right?

[andersson 285]

On a modding note will we be able to have multiple guns on a vehicle that all shoot or will we be stuck with a single gun shooting? Any chance of adding skeleton and animation support for vehicles? ( So we can make mechs etc?). I wonder if opfor will be able to conceal weapons and not stand out in crowds.... Seriously though the Radar/Flares/Flir just make me cry tears of purest joy......

You can have animated parts on other animated parts already in arma2 if I remember it right?

[mr.g-c 6]

....Realistic handling of fully-automatic weapons fire.

What you mean by that? I would be very surprised if i'm not the only one thinking that there is something in this Area feeling very clumsy, or "limited" or simply "wrong"... :eek:

Every time i saw Videos from live Full-Auto fire, or from games like BF2 with Project Reality, BF BC2, etc. it sounded much much better, smooth, fluid and feels really natural compared to Arma1 and Arma2.

So i tried some time ago (starting in Arma1) to make my own kind of "Sound-mod" with video cut-out FA samples, eventually also porting it to Arma2, but guess what?

Yes, it sounded crap In-game, not real at all, even though the samples were good.

Because somehow the full auto firing even with 50+ FPS feels somehow like "limited" or "clumsy", simply not real... i'm missing the right words to explain that. But it seems you also felt that?

Revamped sound engine to allow for environmental sound effects, such as different reverbs for different environments. Different sounds for different distances, preferably smoothly crossfaded into each other......

Being able to use many different sound samples even for just one weapon firing. Tiny pitch-variations during both semi- & fullauto gunfire to make it sound less monotonous.

Examples of games doing audio the right way: Ghost Recon, BF2, BF BC & BF BC2.......

Yes that would be awesome, but to be honest, Arma2s Soundengine compared to Arma1 was already much much better - especially distant sound effect, bullet whizzes when close and more.

However ultimately these options should have been made modable by the community with configs, so you could for instance define your own distant sound for every sound in configs, or that you can fully mod the soundwhizzes of bullets, etc.

Also, besides what you are suggesting, i'm strongly missing (since Arma1!!!) that there is a artificial "Soundsamples per Second" limitation at around "10" or so removed, because even the crappiest Onboard Soundcards can today play multiple times the amount at once :rolleyes::)

Better weapon animations, when it comes to ironsighted view & workings of the weapon mechanisms.

Ohh yes very true, also the kickback in First Person view was disabled in Arma2 and needs strongly to get enabled again! From Arma1 -> Arma2 it was made a lot more acardish sadly. :(

Watch the comparison Videos here: http://dev-heaven.net/issues/4401

Reload Animations could need even some slight overhaul... it would be even enough if modders could assign different reload-speeds and animations per weapon.

Reference ticket here: http://dev-heaven.net/issues/6891

I would be also very very satisfied if my weapon would remember the firing mode and if we could add Variables to it, etc.

There are countless of strongly need feature-requests in the CIS by the Modders (sort by votes) : http://dev-heaven.net/projects/cis/issues?query_id=4&sort=votes_value%3Adesc%2Cid%3Adesc

[LJF 0]

Gotta agree with MrGC here. Looks like we finally get flares for aircraft so they can be used for things other than aerial target practice for the SAMs. Could we also get an armor penetration system for the armored vehicles ... :D

Edit: Erhg, double post. No idea how I managed that.

[Big-Rooney 5]

you do realise that you can have multiple guns on a vehicle right now, right?

I think what was meant was that can the AI actually use both weapons, the Seahawk is a good example, AI only seem able or willing to use one of the guns to engage a single target instead of using both Miniguns to engage multiple targets.

Flares and Smoke screens look like a good investment of time, will the flares actually work to a realistic standard or will they just be eye candy.

AH-6X looks good too, again, but will it be like the UAV in ArmA2, actually have human/AI characters inside it, Proper remote control would be great not like the way it was in ArmA1 with a pre-determined flight path around the terminal with no ability to fire Hellfires onto specific targets.

The HUD looks good too, a vast improvement over the ArmA2 default one, also will that radar system from ArmA2 remain or will a newer one be introduced?.

[W0lle 1052]

Who needs european forces theyre only good for target practise

+1 infraction for that. This ain't your playground here, if you have nothing constructive to add to a thread, then don't post at all.

[Lhowon 10]

A2OA update - Environment designers started experimenting with the mountain forests. They (the forests) look nice.

Lol, I'm sure the designers look nice too :P

Good to hear there will be forested mountains, perhaps like the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan.

[sparks50 0]

0:15 here

Looks a bit like the terrain type of Korengal, should have been more green though.

Edited March 18, 2010 by sparks50