Was this game coded by amateuers?

[Guest Hetzer]

I bought this game a few weeks ago, and on my high spec box it runs like a turkey. Now I like to do my research thoroughly before I pan a game and make sure it's not my hardware that's at fault, so I've been reading these forums assiduously and trying the various hints and tips. I've reached the conclusion that the code is pretty much a sack of digital spanners.

The biggest point seems to be the AI hits the CPU really hard and that accounts for the dreadful FPS, even with high end graphics cards. So I made a mission in the editor with only myself and one enemy rifleman on the map (eg, next to zero AI) and it still ran like a turkey. On very modest detail settings I should add.

So what's the next excuse for this abortion of a game? Sure, it looks beautiful, but it plays awfully. And the AI that's supposed to be accounting for so much of the slow down, it's either thick as two short planks or it can see through trees and bushes in the dead of night at long distance and knock you out with the first burst. While you're crawling through vegetation. That, quite frankly, renders the game unplayable. Or at least it does for anyone who expects more than a weak console experience.

I've searched for any word from the developers that they intend to fix both the performance issues and the laughable AI but I find nothing. Plenty of word about an expansion pack though, so it seems the priority is predictable enough; more money for old rope.

May I be so bold as to enquire why people are still buying games from this company? I rather foolishly assumed that the continued following indicated they must have sorted out their act after the previous debacles (Arma One and Operation Flashpoint). As it stands I feel I've been cheated of my money for this clunker. The intention is sound enough, a game superior in format to the tired old console dreck like CoD etc, but if it doesn't work, in terms of either performance (FPS) or playability (game-trashing AI) I can't see why they bothered to be honest.

Any meaningful input would be appreciated (that precludes the usual trash-talking from the resident fan boys, if that's ok), I would genuinely welcome any word that the developers are finally going to fix this series and put all of it's ten year old issues to bed.

[yanquis 10]

how does it run like a turkey? does it actually look and feel bad, or is fraps reporting a lower frame rate than you expect and youre complaining about it? not casting aspersions but its important to know since weve had a lt of threads like this (in fact they prolly lock this one)

[Drew 10]

CZ 550 for shooting Turkeys :D turn ur settings down to normal/vet and make sure supper AI isnt on, may help your AI issues.

[TimRiceSE 10]

System specs? and what is your FPS that you are unhappy with? Are you experiencing "stuttering" in game, texture poppinig, LOD model popping, etc?

r.e. AI, maybe try one of the various AI adjusting addons, SLX for instance, the AI does behave distinctly different in my experience with this addon.

Patches and fixes to ArmA2 are still going on and are unaffected by the development of OA. Engine fixes done for OA are to be patched into ArmA2 as and when theyre ready. Oh, and there are certain divisions in a game studio, i.e. the graphics department, who have very little role in bugfixing an engine, are free to work on other projects, expansions etc.....

Your post is very demeaning and downright rude in parts, not very appropriate if you really do want to get help... If this thread gets closed, then its probably because of the way you expressed yourself.

As to why I bought the game, it works fine for me and my group of friends who play regularily together, and we enjoy it. And plan to for several years to come. I'd happily pay quadruple the price.

Edited October 18, 2009 by TimRiceSE

[gT.SWAT-guy 0]

get a dual core processor...

[Guest Hetzer]

I have every thing on normal pretty much, that or disabled, running at 1600 x 1200 (native res on my 24 incher is 1920 x 1200). I've tried lower settings and higher settings and combinations, it never makes much difference to the fps. And that was explained by various people here as being the game is CPU bound with all the AI. Well my test mission disproved that claim.

My hardware is good, I have a Q6600 at 3.6 gig and a GTX 285 graphics card. I tried de-clocking the CPU, no difference. I get an average frame rate of around 25. It can go as high as nearly 50 very occasionally, sometimes as low as the upper teens, but generally it's a non smooth 25 ish. My character sticks to walls a lot and just doesn't move very well. It's like the entire game is straining all the time. And from all I've read I can see this is a very common problem for other people with high spec boxes.

I can see no other explanation other than that the code is simply crap.

[maturin 12]

Sometimes it hates your computer. I can run a 200 infantry battle in Chernogorsk (normal settings) with a dual core 2.53Ghz laptop.

So it runs like a Turkey unless it really doesn't.

[Guest Hetzer]

System specs? and what is your FPS that you are unhappy with? Are you experiencing "stuttering" in game, texture poppinig, LOD model popping, etc?

r.e. AI, maybe try one of the various AI adjusting addons, SLX for instance, the AI does behave distinctly different in my experience with this addon.

Patches and fixes to ArmA2 are still going on and are unaffected by the development of OA. Engine fixes done for OA are to be patched into ArmA2 as and when theyre ready. Oh, and there are certain divisions in a game studio, i.e. the graphics department, who have very little role in bugfixing an engine, are free to work on other projects, expansions etc.....

Your post is very demeaning and downright rude in parts, not very appropriate if you really do want to get help... If this thread gets closed, then its probably because of the way you expressed yourself.

As to why I bought the game, it works fine for me and my group of friends who play regularily together, and we enjoy it. And plan to for several years to come. I'd happily pay quadruple the price.

Oh they said all that "we'll fix it with patches" since day one with Op Flash, ten years ago. And here we still are, hearing the same tosh. Not suprising really, considering it's the same engine with new bits bolted on, despite their claims to it being a "new engine". They'd call that marketing, I'd call it a flat out disingenuous.

Sorry if I sound irate, but Paradox have only recently pulled the same con with HoI3. I'm just tired of being taken for a fool (and losing hard earned money) by these dishonest types of games companies.

[Defunkt 431]

Why didn't you trial the demo first?

[TimRiceSE 10]

hey, windows 7 is just a continuation of windows 95. and so on.

But yes, they do actually fix things with patches. The difference in performance alone between 1.04 and 1.01 is quite markable, not to mention the amount of bugfixes.

You should try http://dev-heaven.net/wiki/proper-projects/Vegetation_Tweak_Visuals this, specifically this addon: http://proper.arma-creations.com/download/Vegetation_Low_Visuals_R_PROPER.7z should give you a reasonable FPS boost by tweaking the vegetation somewhat, with minimum loss of quality.

I personally find the "terrain detail" slider to be the one that kills fps most, outside of antialiasing. I keep it at normal. Generally what we want to do is not just increase our top fps, but make the lowest fps as high as possible, to give a smooth experience, for me theres problems when theres lots of IO on the HDD.

if you do encounter "stuttering", is that what you mean by "straining all the time" i.e. spikes of low, really low fps.. consider that the game has a HELL of a lot of HDD read activity a lot of the time.. what do you have for a HDD in your system?

Edited October 18, 2009 by TimRiceSE

[Steakslim 1]

I have every thing on normal pretty much, that or disabled, running at 1600 x 1200 (native res on my 24 incher is 1920 x 1200). I've tried lower settings and higher settings and combinations, it never makes much difference to the fps. And that was explained by various people here as being the game is CPU bound with all the AI. Well my test mission disproved that claim.

My hardware is good, I have a Q6600 at 3.6 gig and a GTX 285 graphics card. I tried de-clocking the CPU, no difference. I get an average frame rate of around 25. It can go as high as nearly 50 very occasionally, sometimes as low as the upper teens, but generally it's a non smooth 25 ish. My character sticks to walls a lot and just doesn't move very well. It's like the entire game is straining all the time. And from all I've read I can see this is a very common problem for other people with high spec boxes.

I can see no other explanation other than that the code is simply crap.

Well mine isn't too different, a Q6600 at 3.2ghz and a 9800gtx. I run at 1440x900 (my native is 1650x1080) most of the time. Depending on how CPU heavy the mission is, I can either go with Textures, Memory, Terrain, Objects and Shadows at normal and get decent framerates (so long as I stay out of Chernogorsk) or I kill the object quality and terrain on missions more straining. I won't be surprised if you are being bottlenecked by that Q6600 somehow even while OC'd. Plus theres the known texture loading issue being discussed in detail currently in this very forum section regarding harddrives, but that involves stuttering in the framerate and not just a low fps in general.

Also I had switched out from Vista to Win7,and gained a performance increase from that, and it still maintains that increase. This was after me being unable to get a max fps break in MP above 32fps. I switched to Windows 7 (i imagine XP would have the same effect) and under the same server and mission at full, noticed appropriate fps highs and lows according to settings and content on the screen. It seems by several people that this game just does not like Vista, or Vista does not like it. I know some will say they can run it fine in Vista, and good for them, but it wasn't so for my case.

Edited October 18, 2009 by Steakslim

[Master gamawa 0]

My hardware is good, I have a Q6600 at 3.6 gig and a GTX 285 graphics card. I tried de-clocking the CPU, no difference. I get an average frame rate of around 25. It can go as high as nearly 50 very occasionally, sometimes as low as the upper teens, but generally it's a non smooth 25 ish. My character sticks to walls a lot and just doesn't move very well. It's like the entire game is straining all the time. And from all I've read I can see this is a very common problem for other people with high spec boxes.

I can see no other explanation other than that the code is simply crap.

I have a similar system (WinXP, Intelcore 2 DUO E8600 @33.3 GHz, NVIDIA GTX285 and 4 gigs of RAM) run on 1600 resolution, with AA and PP to low or disabled and everything else to high. It runs pretty well. 30-55 fps with a view distance of 3000-6000 depending on mission). I play missions usually with around 100-200 AI on the map and never had any problems. The other computers on my LAN play it well enough too.

As a previous dude said... The game hates your pc. It has happened to me too. My previous pc was up to specs but I couldn't play Armed Assault at all. I had to wait 6 months before I played it. I bought a new pc just for that.

[-DirTyDeeDs--Ziggy- 0]

Was this game coded by amateuers?

No

[Windexglow 10]

-Ziggy-;1467123']No

The developers replies make it seem so.

[kozzy420 21]

The game runs great for me, nice try troll but the game was not coded by amateuers (lol).

This is a great game with a few issues, but overall its my favorite out of the 22 games ive played this year.

I know it doesnt run great for everyone, but there are people like myself who can run the game well and enjoy it tons.

BI are awesome and have done a great job with this game, its extremely ambitious so of course there are a few issues.

But since the latest patches, its worked even better, I honestly was surprised at how good this game is and how well it runs, after reading people whine like you are here.

Just because your pc hates the games doesnt mean its the games fault, its your PC.

Ive been able to run hundreds of games on my pc I built 2 years ago and only one would not run well out of hundreds. Sometimes a game just doesnt work well on certain pcs, my computer didnt run The Witcher well, but it can run ARMA2, Crysis, Crysis warhead and Empire Total War very well.

BI has been making games for ages and they are awesome.

Try running the game on XP imo, its runnign great for me.

---------- Post added at 09:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:54 PM ----------

I'm just tired of being taken for a fool (and losing hard earned money) by these dishonest types of games companies.

BI is not dishonest, this whole thread is just a sick joke. You are not even looking for help or anything, your just bashing. There is nothign dishonest about BI in anyway, they are one of the best videogame groups out there. Out of 10 of my friends, 9 of them can run ARMA2 well and they love it, one of them has issues. Its hardly the companies fault at all.

How is BI dishonest? Try a demo before you buy a game if your worried about a game not running well on your pc. BI does a better job then alot of companys do imo.

I didnt expect this game to be very good, but its been nothing but great times, performance wise and fun wise.

I understand some people have issues with this game, but most of them are smart enough not to call BI dishonest or amateurs just because there PC cant run the game well, while others can. Do some cleaning on your pc or upgrades is my only advice.

Edited October 19, 2009 by kozzy420

[W0lle 1052]

The developers replies make it seem so.

The developers just ignore the obvious trolls. I bet none of them even bothered to read that thread.

And since the posts from Hetzer contains nothing than developer bashing I declare this discussion for closed.

Besides that we have a sticky thread in the troubleshooting forum for (low) performance issues.

And Hetzer, banned for creating a new account after the old one (Langnasen) was banned. :rolleyes:

Edited October 19, 2009 by W0lle