Arma2 beta builds 1.05.6xxxx

[maturin 12]

What does the sound localization fix refer to, exactly? Muzzle blast sounds are still playing instantly, sometimes, so the speed of sound is still broken.

Also, regarding the FFAR improvement, I can no longer get helicopters of any kind to engage with FFARs *at all.* They no longer appear to recognize them as weapons, and will land or hover their choppers if the gunner is killed and denies them the use of all other weapons. Tested with Mi-8 and Mi-24 against tanks, cars and infantry.

And airplanes' aiming skills with their rockets are still miserable. Given a flawless approach, a frogfoot proved unable to do anything to an armored humvee except pop its front tire. All the rockets fell short by as much as 250 meters.

Anyone else get these results? Truth be told I forgot to disable ACE2, so corroboration would be helpful.

---------- Post added at 06:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:09 PM ----------

[/color]

I wish they would make the AI get in gear off dead bodies when they are out of ammo.

They do, but not on their own initiative. You or an AI commander (which now does happen) has to give a rearm order.

Edited March 23, 2010 by maturin

[KeyCat 131]

strange just finnished operation caldera on chernarus and the body's are going underground just fine...

i used ACE2 Beta

Wierd, lets hope more people test and report back here and maybe the devs can see some patterns, I would guess that testing stock beta (i.e no addons at all) is what they prefer.

They do, but not on their own initiative. You or an AI commander (which now does happen) has to give a rearm order.

Can confirm that AI commanders issues rearm orders when AI is out of ammo and AI also picks ammo from ammo crates nearby. IMO it would better if the AI soldiers was smart enough to do it by themself when low on ammo instead of waiting for orders to do it, also they shouldn't wait until their ammo is zero but start looking for ammo when lets say 80% of their last clip is used.

They may be a bit slow moving to/finding the bodys/crates but if you observe them long enough (use the excellent TroopMon 2 by Charon) they will eventually find their way and picks up new ammo.

/KC

Edited March 24, 2010 by KeyCat

[maturin 12]

It's hard for AI to take any initiative when they try to stay in formation so much. They usually fail, to be sure, but it's practically their primary concern.

[KeyCat 131]

Think I found the explanation to why some have problems with "hide body" and others don't.

If I just start the mission in the editor and kill an enemy then right away run towards him and try to hide the body it fails, his body just jitters on surface.

If I do the same but after I killed him I wait a couple of minutes (x4) before trying to hide him it seems to work and the body sinks into the ground.

/KC

[Yapab 10]

maybe you need to upgrade or tweak your computer better if you think it has a LONG way to go, but yes there's always room for more performance :)

hehe yes a very long way, Quad @ 3.8Ghz, GTX275 SLI, 4GB DDR2 and 23fps in the campaign :) long way imo!

Even in the editor, with maxed out settings I only see 20 to 35 fps max, no AI... no scripts just placing myself in the editor around Cheo.

[jw custom 56]

hehe yes a very long way, Quad @ 3.8Ghz, GTX275 SLI, 4GB DDR2 and 23fps in the campaign :) long way imo!

Even in the editor, with maxed out settings I only see 20 to 35 fps max, no AI... no scripts just placing myself in the editor around Cheo.

My box:

Core i7 920 @ 2.6ghz

GTX 285

8GB DDR3

WinXP 32Bit(so my ram doesn't mean much)

I don't play the campaign but i do make huge battles with the editor which runs perfectly ;)

So nahh it doesn't have a LONG way, but maybe they should look into the scripting in the campaign. You dont get BF/COD fps in ArmA 2, having a huge & detailed world is not for free.

[EricM 0]

yes a very long way, Quad @ 3.8Ghz, GTX275 SLI, 4GB DDR2 and 23fps in the campaign long way imo!

That's what I have in the campaign (generaly more like 28/30) with an almost 3 year old q6600 @2.6Ghz and G8800 GTX... (with most things on high/normal, 100% fillrate and 3000 VD). Not that bad for me. I'm happy with it...

Unless you're running all @ Max and 10kmVD + 200% fillrate and insane resolution, your performances are strange.

[Yapab 10]

100% filrate and 3600 (default) view distance, all others maxed out. Actually reducing the setting yields less than 30% improvement and the game looks horrible at anyting below High.

I dont think my performance is strange as I've tested ARMA2 with various rigs... from Core2Duo @3ghz with WinXP and 8800GTX... to the same machine with GTX275 and then more CPU's and Win7 and now finally this machine. Yes the results varried but all of them were shocking.

I also play ARMA2 with 2 other friends with pretty good machines (E8400 @4ghz, 8800GT SLI, 1066DDR2 / Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz, GTX280 SLI, 4GB DDR1066) and all of us get pretty poor performance.

The game is amazing and we love it, but the engine has a long way to go imo in terms of performance, I think most people arent satisfied with it as has been seen in the forums.

I was hoping for a miracle patch like in ARMA1... remember those 1.06 or 1.08 patches which gave something like 100% perf increase.. then there was 1.14 I think which gave another 60%....

[maturin 12]

So has anyone seen a helicopter use its FFARs recently?

[AnimalMother92 10]

So has anyone seen a helicopter use its FFARs recently?

Already reported by me :)

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/9652

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/9755

It's an ACE + beta problem.

[jpinard 10]

Already reported by me :)

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/9652

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/9755

It's an ACE + beta problem.

Is the issues still present with the version 1.0 of ACE (non beta version of ACE)?

[maturin 12]

Is the issues still present with the version 1.0 of ACE (non beta version of ACE)?

It's present with the most up-to-date ACE.

Thanks, AnimalMother.

[Herbal Influence 10]

100% filrate and 3600 (default) view distance, all others maxed out. Actually reducing the setting yields less than 30% improvement and the game looks horrible at anyting below High.

I dont think my performance is strange as I've tested ARMA2 with various rigs... from Core2Duo @3ghz with WinXP and 8800GTX... to the same machine with GTX275 and then more CPU's and Win7 and now finally this machine. Yes the results varried but all of them were shocking.

I also play ARMA2 with 2 other friends with pretty good machines (E8400 @4ghz, 8800GT SLI, 1066DDR2 / Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz, GTX280 SLI, 4GB DDR1066) and all of us get pretty poor performance.

The game is amazing and we love it, but the engine has a long way to go imo in terms of performance, I think most people arent satisfied with it as has been seen in the forums.

I was hoping for a miracle patch like in ARMA1... remember those 1.06 or 1.08 patches which gave something like 100% perf increase.. then there was 1.14 I think which gave another 60%....

A lot of threads can tell you that it's not bad coding but simply the complexity of the game. And the bottleneck are the in/out-rates of your harddisks.

[nomdeplume 0]

I think the main bottleneck is scripting actually, at least on fast systems. Disk access only really comes into it when flying. More to the point: there's a bunch of components to the game (scripts, AI, graphics, audio, physics, data streaming, etc.) and each one only scales across CPU cores to a limited degree. The overall speed of the game is then determined by which of those things is slowest.

Outside of the campaign I think this is usually graphics or data streaming, but within the campaign the scripting seems to hobble the rest of the engine.

All this is just speculation, of course. YMMV. But I have a reasonable system (i7, GTX 295, solid-state drive) and the campaign runs noticeably worse than other missions.

[tj72 0]

So we should remove all scripting commands then?

[nomdeplume 0]

I think it's more a matter of how they're used. There's pretty complex user-created scenarios that don't seem to give the same performance hit as the campaigns. But I haven't analysed the campaigns to see what they're doing and how they're doing it. So it's just speculation that it's scripting, but it doesn't really seem like the scenarios themselves are all that different to what I might make in the editor, for example.

[tj72 0]

Scripts can be used in many ways in this game so it can be a cause for performance slowdown but not if the scripts are made well. Ive made missions with scripts that run on every unit that have run overnight and would come back to the machine and still running fine. This prooves to me that the scripts in the mission are fine and should be fine to release. I can set variables in the init file to time the scripts as a way of tuning performance of the script like the volume dial on a stereo. I can give the user that dail and a disclaimer that they can turn up the dial but dont blame me if you push it too far and break the mission. As a Arma 1 script maker I understood the responsibility to optimize things. This does not ensure that every script out there is optimal though.

So yes, its in the implementation.

Scripts can be run from various sources and Im not sure all the different ways it can hit performance. Exec,execVM,spawn,call,preprocess blah blah blah. Who really knows how all this stuff really affects performance. Sometimes a script will lock up the mission untill its done running. Other scripts will start to break as resources in the game start being used elsewhere so the script needs a ton of extra loops and checks so that it doesnt become a hanging process. Spend some performance to save more performance. Some scripts run once at the mission start or JIP and others run the whole mission and can do strange things only after a long time and even in specific locations.

I dont know if there is a maximum variable limit or if too many group objects cause a hit. In general though, things seem to run pretty well in a script untill you are running every frame and creating things or generally doing too much at once. Scripts that run every frame and check too much will cause slowdown. A trigger that is too large and checking too much will also cause a slowdown. Too many units and groups all walking around the island or fighting all over the island so the game has too much to check.....

If your Arma2 mission that uses scripts and mods is performing poorly and you are the mission maker you can add and remove elements to see where and when the performance is dying, go to the thread for that given mod or script and provide feedback and it may in fact get fixed. Mission makers should remember that feedback to mod and script makers is great for optimizing! If you like a script or mod then try to test performance and give some feedback to the maker as is current practice. Even reporting good performance and what other mods used or not used can be helpful info. I think alot of users grab stuff and run away never to give that feedback and less optimization happens for that reason.

If I release any Arma2 scripts to the community, I will be commited to optimizing what I make to the best of my ability and everyone who releases content to the community should and likely does feel the same way. After all, they want to play the game with this thing too!

Users like to use scripts with mods and other things as seems to be natural.

The more things used in combination, the more complex the mission is in many ways. The great thing is that missions that combine alot of scripts can greatly enhance the game experience just like new models and sounds do. Its the whole point of the series for many people IMO.

[langgis08 10]

hi all,

after having posted this problem in the ace2-thread before and there finding out that ace2 IS NOT the cause ... here I go again here in the beta-patch-thread:

my problem is that running ArmA2 with beta patch doesn't let me play EW-Campaign (hotfixed) ... but look below:

I've just finished testing all over again (each test on Vista32 and XP32 = same results each) and here are my results in a little matrix:

Running ArmA2 (1.05) with following combinations:

beta|ACE2|EW ok?

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

NO|NO|YES

YES|NO|NO

NO|YES|YES

YES|YES|NO

beta-patch doesn't seem to accept EW - at least on my system.

(Harvest Red, Multiplayer, SingleMissions, Scenarios ... everything OK @all constellations mentioned in the matrix, just EW is my troublemaker).

Is there anyone who has the same problem or does know about it ?

wondering because never heard of this prob form anyone yet

could it be that my installation is corrupt ? should I reinstall or better wait for 1.06 ?

thx 4 your responses ;)

=======

Specs:

AMD Phenom Quadcore @2.4 (no oc)

Radeon 4870 @512 MB (no oc) , latest Driver 10.3

4 GB RAM

OS XP/Vista (Dualboot)

HDs 2 x 500GB Samsung

Edited March 27, 2010 by langgis08

[AnimalMother92 10]

iirc it's because the deleteCollection command was removed in the beta but EW uses that command.

[langgis08 10]

thx animal mother for response ... so it's a known thing and my installation seems to be ok.

but with beta patch = actual release candidate this won't be fixed with 1.06 ?!

[AnimalMother92 10]

They will probably just modify EW before official 1.06 comes out. For now, if you want to play EW, just turn off the beta ;)

[maturin 12]

Does anyone know if the problem with the speed of sound and muzzle blasts has an open devheaven ticket?

[nomdeplume 0]

Does anyone know if the problem with the speed of sound and muzzle blasts has an open devheaven ticket?

Does http://dev-heaven.net/issues/8244 fit the bill?

@BIS : it would be incredibly helpful to have some kind of status update on the issue with AI being stuck in "combat"/"danger" mode whenever they know of enemies, a behaviour introduced in the pre-1.05 betas and someone baked into the official 1.05 patch despite being thoroughly discussed in this thread. I think this is the most relevant ticket at dev-heaven. It's currently all but impossible to break contact with the enemy, and it's also very annoying when the enemy decides to retreat and your guys stay in danger mode until they forget about the enemy (which takes a long, long time).

[tj72 0]

That ticket is almost 2 months old. Its the worst bug I have ever seen in the entire series IMO. We've been stuck with this for 3-4 months now and no beta updates.....

[lt_darkman 0]

It would be useful even to know if BIS considers it a bug, as there have been polls asking for opinions on how to deal with this from BIS but no feedback on their decision or timescale.

I agree it is a gamebreaker. I haven't played Arma2 since it was introduced as it's just too frustrating.

P