FP : DR - News & Discussion

[Litos 10]

Well, well i see Ofp: DR passing by looking forward to Ofp: DR part2

I don't think that'll be any better...if its still made by codemasters taht is. In fact, if this fails, they might not even continue the series. Or give it back to Bohemia ;D

[Zipper5 74]

I must admit, the game does look quite old. I especially like how the majority of shots in that trailer were low-level shots. They tried to hide the awful draw distance (you can see how bad it is in some shots) by showing such low-level shots, but the grass itself looks like shit. ArmA II looks much better than this for sure.

[thaFunkster 0]

i can not, for the love of god, understand why ppl are competeing as if these are basketball teams....

Yes, I can see your point, it is kind of immature.

Personally I would not be engaging in that kind of mentality except for one thing: I feel that to some extent what Codemasters have done is a bit of a dirty trick.

Sure they have the rights to the name, and that is the contract that BIS agreed to, so it is in part BIS's fault (though whether they had any power to negotiate that clause in the contact I severely doubt, otherwise they would have). But, all the same, by creating a sequel by the same name, CM are in effect taking credit for OFP even though they did not create it, and I think that is both sly and dirty.

Now I am not hoping that OPFDR falls flat on its face, but I am hoping that ArmA2 is a much better experience, sells well, and delivers lots of PR for BIS as well as giving them credit as the creators of the original.

But all the same, the past is the past, its better to move on than be bitter, but what CM has done still irks me a bit.

[Leopardi 0]

It looks pretty good in HD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jP5CVWaCaw&fmt=22

[Zipper5 74]

Being in HD seems to make me see the ugliness of it in higher definition. :confused:

[shinRaiden 0]

Been a while since I trolled here, first to reply to walker's points. Now this be my opinions, but I don't see those as significant issues for a number of reasons.

• No Civilians
  If the environment isn't built up enough for the civilians to have a reason to be there, should they be there at all? Imho no. Use Fallujah rules, psyops told all the civvies to leave, so all that's left is bad guys and a few refugees hiding. But if you want civvies, then don't make it look like token role-play contractors. The number of buildings in OFP that could be construed as livable, although missing any number of essential furnishings, could be numbered on the fingers of one hand. ArmA, + QG, maybe less than that? That's in reference to a pre-populated 'living' environment.
  
• No Flyable Jets
  The point's been made somewhere prior that approaches alone would effectively use up most of the respective product's virtual airspace, and that many lower-end air defense systems would effectively result in the entire airspace being considered denied.
  Secondly, neither product has resolved the issue with absurdly artificial altitude transposing to compensate for the view distance culling, mandatory for the ground plane culling systems. So like with BF2, the effectiveness of manuevers transposed lower in altitude and radius by orders of magnitude without altering the performance of the aircraft is crazy-talk.
  
• Micro Battles
  Unless you're sitting back at the command level, everything becomes mano-a-mano micro-battles. You navigate this block, secure that house, and engage enemy pixels one blob at a time. The choreography of the micro-battles is what creates the campaign arc, by linking together objectives, activities, and outcomes. This is why the CoD-piece franchises suck, because if you zerg-nade the spawn points, you win. No thinking or creativity involved, and no way to pwnzor the story-line.
  
• Micro Multiplayer
  Not exactly 'micro', the numbers advertised are pretty much in line with most other non-MMO's. The only way the MMO's are able to support higher player counts is that they use 'probability', rather than precision. WoW, Eve, etc, you lock onto a target and roll virtual dice with coefficients to calculate damage. ArmA/BF2/DragonRetching/etc use 'precision', where everything is a dynamic entity, which results in an absurdly higher amount of data to transmit, over upload limited cable internet.
  
• No Wildlife.
  If you have time and staff to screw around screwing with animals, the rest of your product had better well be completely flawless, 'cause otherwise, imho, it's rather insulting to imply "well we had time to make a whole new mocap anim tree for pigs, but couldn't be bothered to finish the hand anims code that we started back when we were still partners."
  
• No Editor for the consoles.
  
• Only an external editor in PC.
  Gonna tie these two together. Sure the consoles don't get an editor, that's because it's not possible to put an external editor on a console, and frankly it's rather impractical to try and cram all the needed editor UI on top of what it is you're trying to edit. Crysis-PC uses that same model, and it's superior for a couple reasons.
  First, by decoupling the editor from the engine, it removes the need to write all the editor handlers in the engine. This can help team development by trimming the engine back to engine-specific things.
  Second, there's the UI aspect of usability. With an external editor, it's far easier to monitor or query parameters simultaneously with editing the affected entities.
  Third, it can - depending on implementation model - allow for editor feature development and optionally plugins to be developed and refined asynchronous to the rest of the development process.
  Now as for consoles, even if you have some sort of pre-fab or overlay system to design bits of a scenario at a time and merge later, to make an epic mission using only your thumbs is really a bit too much to do, so the natural outcome will be trending towards micro-battles simply from a mission design practicality standpoint.
  
• Limited urban environment.
  True, but that would be more of the same and nobody's innovated there in a really long tim.
  

==========================================================

Now for the rumor-mongering...

First things we saw from CM was shopped and rendered videos, that were billed as "visual targets", and that was it for a long while. Then we started getting a trickle of in-game stuff and it didn't exactly match ... at all.

What the in-game footage tells me is that they wised up and realized you can't get CoD detail on expansive environments in a timely manner or with cross-platform performance. Given those limitations, I think they've done an excellent job, and while it can always be improved on, they appear to have made the most of their compromises. The pre-renders weren't misleading imho if you know how the games work, but they definitely were setting themselves up for a pile of zerg'ish fanboy disappointment.

What's put them in a bind really is their plan for being cross-platform. If they stuck to one platform, either PC or console, it could sort itself out. If they committed to the PC, they could pull a Crysis and insist everyone upgrade to non-existent hardware specs. If they went with just the console, they could throttle it to make it meet M$ performance specs. Facts of the matter is that you can't really run the same content source to both platforms, unless you seriously hobble the PC.

CM's marketing BS has been superb, it's even caught BIS up in the fray 'forcing' BIS to respond to CM instead of proactively advertising on their own. Whether it is a house of cards or not, remains to be seen when the product hits the shelves. Soldner was a good example of that, had dynamic character modeling and robust building and environment destruction, but the developers pulled the plug on it and it imploded. There's been plenty of similar allegations on these forums that ArmA was likewise rushed to 'stop the bleeding', but in this case it didn't sink the ship, perhaps due to 'Fortress Mnisek'.

If there is grains of truth in the extrapolations of the rumors, like everyone else we'll just have to wait and see if it really does get treated as dead on arrival, or not.

[Commando84 0]

Oh. Well it's not something to complain about, I wasn't wanting it that bad.

By the way, is it going to take 3 people to operate lets say a tank like they said it would in OFP2 (if that hadn't been cut)?

Yeah Arma1 had driver, gunner and commander in a tank, the commander had comander view and could also operate the tank top machinegun :)

As alone player in a tank or a player with a bunch of a.i's in a tank you could jump between the positions in the tank.

totally hats of to shinRaiden!

Explains alot.

Edited May 7, 2009 by Commando84

[[aps]gnat 28]

CM's marketing BS has been superb, it's even caught BIS up in the fray 'forcing' BIS to respond to CM instead of proactively advertising on their own.

And that could well end up having been a very smart move especially if OFP2:DR turns out to be a lemon ......

I highly suspect theres a shyt load of DR customers-to-be who prior were completely oblivious to ArmA2 existance.

[Zipper5 74]

Despite shinRaiden's defending of DR, things such as the "no civilians" part still seem far too stupid to actually be for the reason Codemasters are saying. Codemasters wouldn't come out and say they can't be assed to make civilians, instead they'll release a reason relating to the game's story. Why wouldn't Skira be inhabited? It's a small as hell island, with a fairly large city in it and probably some smaller settlements outside of it, namely farms and whatnot. And to me, this doesn't seem like a conflict that was brewing for a while. Heck, look at the name! A Flashpoint is a sudden erupt of conflict. OFP's storyline was exactly that, which evolved into a proper war as time went on. Calling it "Operation Flashpoint" with the conflict not actually being a Flashpoint is kinda misleading, y'know.

I'm still pissed at Codemasters for spitting in the face of their PC community and making the best trailer so far specifically for the consoles. They have to be going for the console market more than the PC market to pull a stunt like that. And OFP is not for console markets. OFP:E had some success, but it was no where near as large as OFP on the PC.

[Rocco 0]

new trailer released, again its not an ingame trailer and it basically looks like a scripted COD4 game:

http://www.codemasters.de/flashpoint/index.php#/video/

[Zipper5 74]

As far as I can tell that's the same one that was posted yesterday, Rocco. The Xbox 360 trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jP5CVWaCaw&fmt=22

^ that one, posted on the page before.

[Baff1 0]

Despite shinRaiden's defending of DR, things such as the "no civilians" part still seem far too stupid to actually be for the reason Codemasters are saying. Codemasters wouldn't come out and say they can't be assed to make civilians, instead they'll release a reason relating to the game's story. Why wouldn't Skira be inhabited? It's a small as hell island, with a fairly large city in it and probably some smaller settlements outside of it, namely farms and whatnot.

The developers clearly aren't intrested in civilians.

Because it's a war game, not The Sims.

As for those saying how bad it looked in the new trailer, I was pleasantly suprised.

There were a lot more tree's than in the last trailer. The landscape had fleshed out. Tanks looked like tanks etc.

Edited May 7, 2009 by Baff1

[Crystal 0]

Fall 2009

Poor gaphics.

[nodunit 397]

That will hopefully just mean it will just be less demanding on hardware.

[bionic 10]

The developers clearly aren't intrested in civilians.

Because it's a war game, not The Sims.

Well thats one way to argument but i never have seen a war without civilians involved. I call it lazy.

[fumo 0]

Fall 2009

Poor gaphics.

Everyone that have complained the graphic in ArmA2 had to hear "It's just a preview version, wait for the release version to judge."

So the same for OFP: DR. Wait for release before meaning the graphic could be poor!

[Deadfast 43]

They really have shader problems. The edges look so choppy. Is it just me or they didn't develop anti aliasing? If they still didn't, that'll be some hell of a laugh.

edit: this is probably the worst "in-game" screenshot I have ever seen. Either admit that what you see on it is fake, or just admit there's nothing of quality to see on it. Or something that represents the gameplay.

<sarcasm>

Hm, I was thinking about applying to work for Codemasters, do you think my Photoshop skills are up to the standard?

The reference:

My work:

</sarcasm>

Now seriously, I tried to show my complaints on the mock-up photo. These would be: the brown filter, overblooming and especially the film grain...

Also the effect of the helicopters' rotors is silly.

It's like they are trying to have a perfect simulation of watching the game on a crappy TV from the 60's.

BTW, the original photo I used for the mocking is this one. It's from Project Reality with slightly altered bloom and blur for the background.

The bloom looks nice there - but it's a photo, I would never want it in the game.

[Zipper5 74]

The similarities between those two photos, Deadfast, are actually very scary.

[Sennacherib 0]

for me the ofp:dr picture seems to be a photoshoped pictures. the soldiers don't have shadows on the ground, and the problem around the soldiers is not AA, but these soldiers seem to be cut and pasted in a new picture.

in my opinion, this is a fake

[hoot 0]

Maybe it's just a grain postprocessing shader

[4 IN 1 0]

<sarcasm>

Hm, I was thinking about applying to work for Codemasters, do you think my Photoshop skills are up to the standard?

The reference:

My work:

</sarcasm>

Now seriously, I tried to show my complaints on the mock-up photo. These would be: the brown filter, overblooming and especially the film grain...

Also the effect of the helicopters' rotors is silly.

It's like they are trying to have a perfect simulation of watching the game on a crappy TV from the 60's.

BTW, the original photo I used for the mocking is this one. It's from Project Reality with slightly altered bloom and blur for the background.

The bloom looks nice there - but it's a photo, I would never want it in the game.

helicopters' rotors are at the same grade as with OFP:R and ARMA1, so dont bad mouthing CM just yet. On the other hand, we all know its possible for BI to creat it more realisticly, as RKSL shows us.

[max power 21]

Deadfast. You need to crush the histogram more. You haven't lost enough tonal range in the highs and lows for it to be authentic.

[Journeyman 0]

One possible problem with missing content such as civilians and wildlife is the modding community, assuming it will have one! Whereas the current setting of Skira Island and the consequent conflict might be considered as not needing them, what about future community made islands and missions? There goes a big chunk of the games potential longevity.

What was really great about OFP was its usefulness as a sandbox for just about every conceivable scenario!

On the other hand of course without such content the game would be much more ‘focused’ in military only scenarios, so maybe it will have its own niche of the market especially if other things such as CQB are made that much more enjoyable!

It’s all still a little bit premature, we will just have to wait and see!

[Deadfast 43]

helicopters' rotors are at the same grade as with OFP:R and ARMA1, so dont bad mouthing CM just yet. On the other hand, we all know its possible for BI to creat it more realisticly, as RKSL shows us.

Eh, neither in ARMA nor in OFP the blades have that weird laggy effect.

[Litos 10]

Wow, good one deadfast.

I just don't see the point to why they did that. It's clearly obvious they photoshopped it. So we'll play the game like watching a movie on a tv from the 60s, like deadfast said? Eh...