ARMA II Beta Builds Released: Latest version/build: 1.04.6xxxx

[mr_centipede 31]

about the tracer, it is not a bug but an intended feature which I hope will be removed someday. I think there was a ticket made at devheaven

[Beagle 684]

about the tracer, it is not a bug but an intended feature which I hope will be removed someday. I think there was a ticket made at devheaven

It's a nice feature of which I hope it will stay as it is. There is nothing more unrealistic as seeing tracers from small to medium calibers from the recipient side. Edited December 4, 2009 by Beagle

[mr_centipede 31]

It's a nice feature of which I hope it will stay as it is. There is nothing more unrealistic as seeing tracers from small to medium calibers from the recipient side.

Then it should be an option, for those like me who likes to see incoming tracer, and those that dont like it. it could also be enforce on the server side

[Maddmatt 1]

With that logic we would have hundreds of little things that most people don't care about cluttering the difficulty options.

Unless it can be proved to be unrealistic, I say leave it alone. There are more important things to spend development time on.

[das attorney 857]

They should remove the restriction on tracers not being visible as they are incoming. There's plenty of stories from WW2 bomber crew describing tracer fire looping up to them from the ground. That said, I couldn't find any footage on Youtube of incoming tracer fire. Presumably, most people are more preoccupied by avoiding it rather than filming it! :)

I did find a quite interesting article here that describes the effect.

Agreed, I don't think they should offer it as an option though, and it's lower down in the pecking order to be addressed than some other more pressing issues with the game.

[noubernou 77]

Its not that you can't see tracer fire if you are not the one firing it, its that at certain angles you can not see it... That seems realistic enough to me.

Also I am still noticing a speed of sound glitch in the current patch.

When I fire a rifle at another person (this is on two computers right next to each other) far away the first round follows the speed of sound correctly. I hear the bullet wizz and crack then shortly after the crack of the rifle.

The odd thing is if I fire another shot right after, like within one or two seconds I hear the crack of the rifle first on the receiving end and then the whiz crack of the round as it passes by the observer. If I then wait around 5-10 seconds I can do it and the sound obeys the speed of sound laws.

Another issue is that when the rifle is set to burst or on automatic, I hear all the appropriate bullet sounds, but only the first rifle crack sound.

It might not seem like a huge deal, but one of the methods I (would like to) teach in the game regarding forward observation is to judge distance via the speed of sound (roughtly 350 meters per second) when watching for flash and listening for bang.

[Beagle 684]

A.I. driving is still a big desaster in latest beta. Drivers are still zig zaging around, convoys come to a crawl with stops all few minutes.

[noubernou 77]

A.I. driving is still a big desaster in latest beta. Drivers are still zig zaging around, convoys come to a crawl with stops all few minutes.

Yea noticed that is still an issue too, its a shame, its almost more reliable to give a bunch of units the exact same waypoint outside of a group and stagger their departure times by a few seconds... :P

[maddogx 13]

They should remove the restriction on tracers not being visible as they are incoming. There's plenty of stories from WW2 bomber crew describing tracer fire looping up to them from the ground. That said, I couldn't find any footage on Youtube of incoming tracer fire. Presumably, most people are more preoccupied by avoiding it rather than filming it! :)

I did find a quite interesting article here that describes the effect.

Agreed, I don't think they should offer it as an option though, and it's lower down in the pecking order to be addressed than some other more pressing issues with the game.

That article you linked is almost identical to the wikipedia entry on tracer ammunition.

[^Th0mas^ 10]

Yea noticed that is still an issue too, its a shame, its almost more reliable to give a bunch of units the exact same waypoint outside of a group and stagger their departure times by a few seconds... :P

I honestly never think we`ll gonna get rid of this issue.

[Beagle 684]

I honestly never think we`ll gonna get rid of this issue.

Why not, it finaly works good in old Armed Assault.

[NoRailgunner 0]

Now the AI under fire/in combat are getting very close to each other (shoulder-to-shoulder). Its ok in some CQB situations but not everytime the AI is fighting in open terrain.

What about an AI formation feature where the player can customise formations and distances between units?

[thr0tt 12]

Tried to arma.cfg with GPU_ bits to 1 or 0 and makes no difference - the last patches have made the game perform poorly on my dated system. Will wait for next beta, rolling back.

[Bouben 3]

Why not, it finaly works good in old Armed Assault.

And totally without any problems in patched OFP too.

[mr_centipede 31]

I tested the Chernogorsk Benchmark mission, and also noticed my Average FPS dropped from 24 to 20. everything else is constant. the only variable is the beta build. While the stat shows a drop in fps, but while playing, I feel it kinda smooth as before. So I'm not complaining. Maybe my mission was not 'big' enough to notice a drop in performance

[manzilla 1]

I tested the Chernogorsk Benchmark mission, and also noticed my Average FPS dropped from 24 to 20. everything else is constant. the only variable is the beta build. While the stat shows a drop in fps, but while playing, I feel it kinda smooth as before. So I'm not complaining. Maybe my mission was not 'big' enough to notice a drop in performance

Mine dropped a well. The strange thing though is that the game seems to run smoother and better, and with AA turned up as well. I'm not complaining either, it's nice.

[zeep 3]

Still performance drop compared to 60141, making it no fun to play.

I'm keeping up hope for allowing users to set their own VD for trees/objects. That'll allow low-end users to keep the performance at the highest with the most eye candy.

[^Th0mas^ 10]

Why not, it finaly works good in old Armed Assault.

I didnt know. Never played the first ArmA. Didnt like it that much. I know AI driving was bad in good old Flashpoint, and 8 years later its still bad. Thats why I said that.

[Bouben 3]

I didnt know. Never played the first ArmA. Didnt like it that much. I know AI driving was bad in good old Flashpoint, and 8 years later its still bad. Thats why I said that.

I don't agree, because I had no problems with AI driving in final version of OFP. But I don't remember exactly, if it was just because of Resistance or some mods...

[Herbal Influence 10]

I feel so comfortable with AI driving issue.

If I have to drive a greater distance I do sit back in behind, smoking a cigarette, while my AI drives properly through heavy terrain. He doesn't drive as fast as I could, but properly and I need a pause sometimes.

Sure, if you do a setup of quite a lot vehicles it might be too much for any living cpu.

But that's what I like about BIS games: open ends.

[b00n 10]

I want to start by saying thanks for the agile, community inclusive patch development you guys are doing. I know I can speak for a lot of people when I say it's a refreshing change to the usual development cycles we have grown accustomed to. :)

That said I would like to throw my support behind a post from yesterday:

Great work from Suma and the rest of the BI group. Lots of work in improving the AI.

But i wonder... shouldn't you work first on determine what does have more or less priority, and work before into the high priority stuff?

For example, in the last beta patches there has been a lot of work to improve the combat behavior / formations / leader movement. Great. But there are, imo, two much more important issues at hand.

1. AI reports: "i am covering!" "i am covering! go!" "i am covering!" "i am covering!" "i am covering!" "i am covering! go!" "i am covering!". Etc. Sometimes they really got stuck in a loop saying it one and another time.

2. AI spotting abilities. Yeah, i know this was already worked in past patches/betas, with the ai hearing skill tweaked, bugs fixed and now the grass layer, but it is still not enough. It's not only the AI, both allies and enemies, who seems to cheat, it's also yourself! If you have activated the "contact report" in the difficulty options, you own soldier (as if there is an AI controlling the player avatar) will spot and annouce enemy contacts totally invisible for you, even if you stop and begin to scan slowly with the zoomed sight. I have the theory about it, the pixel theory: perhaps the game consider something spotted if can trace a line of sight between the observer and the object, even if it's really only one pixel of the object, perhaps seen between various bushes.

I know this sound very whiny, they patch the AI really often these days and now i complain about the order of the fixes, they could just stop in patches and work only in their next game! We should be thankful!

Still, I dont' know about you people, but when i play the game, i don't think "mmm perhaps the AI could go from cover to cover faster and smarter" or "the ai should respect formation better". I think "OMG i am going to punch my screen to shut up my own teammate" or "where the fuck is the enemy, i can't see shit with all this grass and vegetation, and even if i change my position, they are still seeing me and firing me, total bullshit".

I have the feeling that the artists designed Chernarus (95% covered with vegetation everywhere!) without having considerations about the game design and the AI.

Turin is 100% on the mark here. This needs fixed as a priority.

I understand that the AI is getting a lot of love, and that's great, but it seems to be only in response to the few people who post here pointing out how this formation or that squad mode needs tweaked a bit to be perfect.

Meanwhile there are a large number of people, myself and the people from my gaming community who play ArmA2 included, who almost exclusively play player vs AI co-op missions. Judging by the number and popularity of servers playing such missions I know we're not alone. Many of us simply have no wish to ever command AI and so these changes aren't of much importance.

IMHO of much higher priority should be the issues repeated again by Turin. I don't think I'm exaggerating by saying that these issues, particularly the omniscient AI, are potentially game ruining especially for new players. Arma2 has a reputation for having a steep learning curve, and that's fine (in fact it's part of what makes me like the game so much), but when you can be spotted and killed at night, while lying in knee-high grass, by AI that doesn't have nightvision, well that's the kind of nonsense that I believe simply drives people away.

Again, sorry if this sounds like a whine, and I do think you're doing a great job! I just think that a reassessment of priorities may be in order.

[helo 10]

Concerning the perfromance: I compared the results of the ArmA2 Mark and I experienced a drop from 4200 points in 1.04 to 3790 points in the latest Beta. No problem for my system specs, but for other people with no so powerful systems could mean such a decrease of perfromance a major problem while playing ArmA 2.

AMD X 4 @ 3.4 GHZ, 4 GB RAM, HD 4870 1GB, Win 7 x64, 1680 x1050 resolution,Texture Details and Graphics Memory @ Normal, Antisop. @ low , No AA , Landscape @ low, Object Details @ Very High, No shadows, post process effects @ low

Edited December 4, 2009 by Helo
Settings added

[demonlord89 10]

Seems that many got problems with perf. drop. What ever you did in the previous betas i think you should fix this.

[InFireBaptize 0]

new beta ARMA2_Build_60890

[60886] Improved AI subordinates should now respect formation more when choosing a cover.

[60852] Fixed: After revert, year was restored to 1985.

[60838] New function x intepolate [xFrom,xTo,resultFrom, resultTo] can be used in simple expressions.

[thr0tt 12]

Seems that many got problems with perf. drop. What ever you did in the previous betas i think you should fix this.

We shall see if this new one still suffers the same problem. Issue is if they accept these performance drops then add it to the official patch then we will be stuffed. Some textures in cities have a lod issue with the last 2/3 beta's.

Will check later on this one.