klasodeth

Why? Is it illegal to record the sound of gunfire? The developers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. arranged recording sessions at gun ranges in the USA to get their sound effects. Especially if BIS had its own recording equipment, it would have been relatively inexpensive to fly to the USA and set up a recording session at a range that rents out machineguns. And to pick nits, programmers are too busy working on code to record sounds. Usually, a dedicated sound technician, or someone who can perform a similar duty would be responsible for sound effects.

Besides having the buffered 'easy' flight model Rune suggested, another way avoid the dreaded 'aircraft graveyard' scenrio would be to have a certification process, kind of like what America's Army has--only more involved. In America's Army, snipers have to successfully pass a sniper training mission in order to be able to select the sniper role in multiplayer missions. A server keeps track of player accounts and their qualifications, so that for any given account, someone had to pass that training mission in order for that account to be eligible to select the sniper role. For a similar system in Armed Assault, imagine having a series of single-player missions in which the player is required to perform specific maneuvers or accomplish specific goals with a helicopter. If the player is successful, the results can be logged and the player is then eligible to fly helicopters. As an effort to avoid problems with people getting their flight-sim junkie friends to pass the test for them, periodic recertification could be required. Perhaps statistics could be tracked, such as 'Mean Time Between Crashes', and if a player is spending too much time augering into the ground, the certification can be pulled until the player requalifies. The obvious drawback to this arrangement is that a lot of programming would need to be done to support server-stored player accounts.

There are no russians in the game yet. Looking at the island, it would make more sense if SLA-units were speaking spanish (or that mixture of languages I once read about)... Esperanto?

Why would jumping have to be a real jump? Â The real value of jumping in combat is to get over short obstacles and across narrow depressions such as ditches. Â That kind of jumping doesn't emphasize height. Â Rather, it emphasizes a rapid push forward, while raising the feet enough to clear low obstacles. Â A jump intended for crossing over obstacles would give you a bit of a forward boost(if done while walking) since you need to be moving fast enough to get your weight back over your lead foot at the other side of the obstacle. Â Also, since you're trying to move forward over an obstacle, your jump doesn't cause you to launch in the air. Â Instead, your feet raise up enough to clear the obstacle while your head remains close to its original height. Â Remember, you're not jumping up--you're jumping forward. Â An exaggerated version of this can be seen when watching Olympic hurdlers. Â They do everything they can to get their feet high enough to clear obstacles, but they don't propel their upper body skyward. Â For a more modest example of this make an bostacle on the ground that's about 1 meter wide and about 30 centimeters tall and jump over it. Â Your jump will resemble an exaggerated step, which is all the jump needs to be. Â It gets the feet farther apart and higher up than running, and for gameplay purposes, also sets the timing of the jump so that a player doesn't step into a ditch as opposed to over it. Now, to avoid bunny-hopping exploits the proposed jump has the following natural features: Â The effort needed to recover from a jump at the other end would cause a brief slowdown in speed (needed to recover balance) when compared to a run. Â Repeated jumps will produce something of a stutter effect as the player has to recover from each jump, with the net effect being slower movement compared to simply running. Â Also, since the jump doesn't propel the person upward, jumping will not affect anyone's ability to shoot at a target's upper body. Â Shooting someone in the legs might be somewhat more difficult from certain angles, but this is where location-specific damage could come in handy. Â Imagine that if a bunny-hopping player is shot in the leg (or legs) while in midair, the result of landing on the injured leg will immediately result in the player falling flat onto the ground. Â At that point, the would-be bunny-hopper has suddenly discovered a very compromising tactical position. Â Perhaps any injury taken while in midair could result in a hard landing that at the very least results in anything form a significant stumble all the way up to an unscheduled transition to the prone position. Such a jump would only be useful for its intended purpose of clearing obstacles. Â Attempts to exploit the jump for unrealistic evasion purposes would result in slower forward movement, no significant change in target profile, and increased effect from injuries received while in midair.

The big problem with having a campaign based on the Iraq War? GAME BALANCE. When the US invaded Iraq, Iraq got steamrollered. Saddam was overthrown in a matter of weeks by a force that many considered to be undermanned and moving toward Baghdad too fast. In terms of US casualties, this is the safest war the US has ever fought. To balance a fictionalized version of the invasion, it would be necessary to either A: severely weaken the US forces, or B: dramatically increase the strength of the Iraqi forces. Either way produces a combat scenario so far removed from what actually happened, that it is impossible to call it realistic--even when taking place in a city with a layout identical to the real one. And if the conflict is modeled after the fight against the insurgency, a lot of variety is lost. There will be no battles against enemy tank divisions. There will be no downing of enemy combat helicopters. There will be no fleeing from enemy artillery barrages. There simply won't be much of anything except largely one-sided infantry battles.

You Really think I can come up with all this crap, but can't think of something like this? Already tried it @ day 1... no go. I personally think it is the setting for voice, and as that is english in all versions, it would be logical that it is standing on language=english No offense was intended. Â It's just that since nobody mentioned trying that, I figured I'd mention it. Â I've seen so many people overlook the "obvious"--including myself--that I can't help but point out anything that wasn't explicitly covered. Here's one of many reasons why: At a store where I was doing service work once, the manager complained that his currency verifier device (an ultra-violet light) was not working. So after I verified that the bulb was seated properly, I traced the power and verified that it was plugged in. Still it wasn't working. Just as I was about to grab a replacement light bulb, it occurred to me to try the power switch. Lo and behold, it turned right on. Idiot me assumed that the manager knew how to turn on a light--and as for the manager, he assumed the thing would work without having to turn it on. Hey, look at the bright side; at least I've spared observant readers from attempting to make the same suggestion. Â

Just because the language is already set for English in the config file does not mean that the language is actually set for Engligh. If the developers scrambled the language names for whatever reason, the "English" setting my very well set the language as "Czech". How about changing that setting to various different languages and see what happens? Setting it to "Czech" might show any language except Czech.

I'm in favor of the ability to shoot while sprinting--but not because I think it's a good idea. Rather, I like the idea that someone trying such a stunt will learn the hard way that it is a bad idea. It's kind of like winning a Darwin award. Instead of being told that something is stupid, you try it yourself and find out exactly why it's stupid. If the game gets hard-coded to prevent bad ideas, the next thing you know friendly fire will not be possible because real soldiers know it's a bad idea to shoot their own. Identifying friendlies would simply become a matter of seeing whether or not a target is shootable. Then burst fire might be disabled when aiming beyond a certain range, because every decent soldier knows a three-round (or more) burst is useless at 400 yards. Then hilltops end up as impassible terrain because everybody knows it's a bad idea to silhouette oneself against the sky. Then standing up from the prone position might be disabled when under fire because nobody in their right mind would stand up when getting raked out in the open by machinegun fire. Sure most of the scenarios presented are exaggerations, but in a game where shooting occurs much of the time and players are not prohibited from performing a number of suicidal actions, why baby-proof the player from one particular action? Arbitrarily preventing people from acting stupid isn't realistic. Let them learn the hard way--that's how many of the lessons in life are learned.

Shooting with both eyes open can be a problem when the shooter attempts to sight using the weak eye. For instance, if a right-handed shooter attempts to shoot left-handed, the shooter is forced to use the weak eye and must focus on a sight picture that is opposite from what the shooter is used to. So in cases like that, it helps to close one eye. Also, some people may be right-handed, but left-eye dominant, and that can cause problems when trying to shoot a rifle with both eyes open. Closing one eye can also help tune out distractions, although in a combat situation, ignoring distractions can sometimes be dangerous. There are advantages to shooting with both eyes open. Because of the double-vision effect, the rifle appears to be transparent, which prevents it from obscuring targets downrange. The shooter also has a wider field of view, which should help situational awareness, although tunnel vision can neutralize that advantage. As far as one eye versus two eyes, it is more important to be able to hit the target than it is to conform to one specific method, so do whatever works.

This is actually a 5.25" Floppy But not just any 5.25" floppy--that's a genuine, tried and true 360KB floppy from the golden age of text parser Sierra games! We don't need nobody tryin' to use one of them unreliable, newfangled 1.2MB floppies now, do we?

Good news! Â Armed Assault will come in an additional version for those people who don't have a DVD-ROM, CD-ROM, broadband modem, dial-up modem, USB thumb-drives, or even 3.5" floppy drives!

Actually, for the purposes of color perception, trying to simulate what a human sees in software is a bad idea. No matter how bright or dark it is outside, grass (for those of you who don't let it die! is still going to be green. If it appears to lose its green hue at night, it is because of the way a human perceives color. Now, if BIS adjusts brightness levels for grass at night so that it matches the brighness of our real world example, wouldn't the same human color perception tendency produce the same effect as it does with actual grass?

Actually, if there is no light, there is only black. To see gray it is necessary to have light. And if it is bright enough to recognize several shades of gray, it is bright enough to begin to recognize color to a limited degree.

Nah, actually I wasn't. Or are you just playing along with the irony yourself ? Â ... Nah, I simply didn't detect the sarcasm. My apologies to both you and Ukraineboy for my muddying of the waters. And as it turns out, Ukraineboy is much better at detecting internet sarcasm than I am, so your point still got across. I remember that the vehicle simulation (or lack thereof) was slammed pretty hard by a number of game reviewers, so I just figured that there were probably players who would rather do without than have to deal with the simplistic vehicle combat.

Yeah, and make us skip tank missions, too .. it's an infantry simulation anyways .. Â Oh hey thanks for reading my post. I specifically said give the option to skip stupid Splinter Cell wannabe spec ops missions that are always boring. Also, one or 3 man spec ops teams sneaking by themselves into enemy bases IS NOT REALISTIC, it's not a simulation at all. It's a james bond wannabe crap. Ukraineboy, if you look back through the thread you'll find that anders^on was agreeing with your opinion about the stealth missions AND was suggesting a similar approach for TANK missions.

I'm not sure what's being argued about in this thread. When people are complaining about the implementation of a fixed crosshair, is it supposedly one in which every component of the crosshair is stuck in the center of the screen? The reason I ask is because I was under the impression that in Armed Assault the side brackets of the reticle would remain fixed in the center of the screen, but that the line used to indicate the aimpoint of the weapon would still remain floating. I never liked the fact that in Operation Flashpoint the entire reticle would swim around in an invisible box in the center of the screen if it wasn't moved enough to cause the character to turn.

The "playable" character is for switching soldiers, not the soldier you jump into upon your death. OK, you got me there. Â I don't mind the idea of being able to switch between different characters within a mission, but I don't like the idea of having multiple lives. Â If they're going to do something to make the game more accessible, I'd rather see a more forgiving save system than the whole multiple lives thing. Â Then again, if they do implement the whole multiple lives feature, my perfectionist streak will still prevent me from accepting a dozen casualties just to get the mission done. Â Multiple lives is annoying, but not a deal breaker for me. By the way, Mr Reality, I very much appreciate the fact that you didn't jump straight down my throat when you caught my mistake. Â I never have a problem with being wrong in the face of a rational argument. Â

How do you know that it will be possible to switch characters when the player gets the current character killed off? Â It's completely possible to have character switching, yet still give the player only "one life" during a mission. Like the Rainbow 6 games, Operation Flashpoint allows the player to control a squad of soldiers. Â However, unlike the Rainbow 6 games, Operation Flashpoint does not switch to the next available soldier in the squad when the player gets the current character killed. It is amazing that people gush over Operation Flashpoint because of its unique emphasis on realism, then turn around and accuse BIS of attempting to make a Battlefield 2 clone out of Armed Assault. Â BIS is in the business of making military simulators, and they didn't dumb down Operatron Flashpoint when it went to console. Â If they were going to make a game to appeal to the arcade crowd, they would have done that with Operation Flashpoint: Elite for the XBox. Â But they didn't. Â And even now I don't see them making two totally separate products. Â They obviously can't dumb down Virtual Battlespace 2, since it's intended as a military simulation. Â So why would they go through the extra work to make an arcadey game when it would be so much easier for them to stay true to their simulation roots and borrow from the work that's been done there?

Q3 of 2006 means the third quarter of 2006. Â So the estimate would be anytime from July through September of 2006. Â But don't be surprised 'when' (not 'if' ) the release date gets pushed back yet again. Â There's no publisher for the game yet, so at the moment there is no way for BIS to release the game. Â Not too incredibly long ago the game was slated to be released in the first half of this year, which obviously has not happened yet.

I'm sure they normally wear what regular troops wear, and in some cases that may even be appropriate during a covert mission. But when performing a covert operation that--if bungled--could start a war, it may be a good idea to look like someone else. The idea isn't to look totally different from all established miltary forces. Rather, the idea is to look very similar to some convenient scapegoat. A dead guy in Columbia wearing a generic camoflage pattern worn by troops and guerilla fighters in a dozen countries would look a lot less damning to the US than a dead guy in Columbia wearing ACU. Of course, I guess this is all moot in the case of FFUR, since in Operation Flashpoint the US is already drawn into a shooting war. The US wouldn't really have anything to lose if the enemy identifies a covert operative as a US soldier. But if the resistance forces were doing the bulk of the fighting, and the US didn't want to appear to get directly involved, dressing in the same camoflage as the resistance forces could be beneficial. The resistance forces are already getting shot at, so who cares if they're blamed for one thing they didn't do along with the dozens of things they did do?

I think the idea is that is that when on a blackops mission, the camoflage is indistinguishable from camoflage used by other nationalities. ACU would be too easily recognized as a USA camoflage pattern to allow for "plausible deniability".

I kind of agree. Â It did feel dissjointed when you switched to the other roles. Â But I did like James' missions a lot. What would have worked better would have been four seperate takes on the 1985 campaign, with a new campaign for each bloke. And also; It's a game. Â If you want it to be that real join the Army. Seriously though, what do you want; get shot and die in a mission and the game is no longer playable? Â Resulting in you having a game you can no longer play and youe virtual life on 'Sarah' being over? Â It would be nice for you to be able to fail a mission but still move on the next one. But diying, come on.. Well, the entirety of my previous post was sarcasm, but I do like the idea of a campaign that is not totally dependent on the player successfully completing each and every mission. Â A branching campaign would be nice, or even better yet a dynamically campaign with procedurally generated missions based on the success or failure of the player. Â But I'll gladly settle for a linear campaign, which is what we're probably going to get. To a point I also agree with the idea of separate campaigns for each character, although I would prefer to make separate campaigns for air and tank missions and roll all the ground pounder characters all into one campaign. Â This is where I like the concept of character-switching. Â It would allow the creation of missions that do not require the player to sit around waiting for some other squad to do the fun stuff AND/OR require contrived situations that conveniently make the player the main focus of all the bad guys at all times. Â While in-mission switching may take away from the effect of being in the head of a single soldier, I think it would still be more immersive than getting mad because no matter where I deploy my AI sniper, he still won't shoot that bad guy in the window. As for the "die once and the game stops working" idea... You don't like that?! Â Well then, I guess you wouldn't buy the optional wireless "kill switch". Â The transmitter plugs into any available USB port, and the player wears the receiver, which is embedded in a hat. Â When the player dies, the kill signal is sent from the transmitter to the receiver, which then fires a steel dart into the player's head, killing him. Â It has the benefit of real "life or death" consequences, making for the ultimate in combat simulation. Â It would even carry the distinction of being even more dangerous than active combat duty. Â At least real soldiers have the assurance of living through several weeks of boot camp before getting shot at. Â Bad players could die in the first ten minutes of gameplay! Â

With this kind of detective work over a computer game demo, how about tackling the Kennedy Assassination next?

With how horrible this character switching thing obviously is, how did anyone make it all the way through Operation Flashpoint? That game had character switching too, although not within the same mission. Â I thought it was so totally lame that I would play as Hammer in the Battle of Houdan and move in on the border zone, then play as Gastovski in the Interdiction mission to clear some tanks out of that border zone, and right after that play as Hammer in the Spearhead mission to overrun the border zone. Â I mean who are these people anyway? Â Spec Ops and tank commanders? Â Where's Armstrong? Â It would have been so much better to leave all those extra features out and focus on being a grunt. Â Who wants to be bothered with driving tanks, flying attack helicopters, and running covert ops in a wargame? Â They should have focused on Armstrong and done away with all that needless variety. Â Playing the role of multiple characters in separate missions really ruined the whole game for me. Having in-mission character switching will be just as bad as Operation Flashpoint, only faster since BIS can't be bothered to wait for the mission to end before introducing another character. Rather than experience all aspects of modern warfare, I'd much rather have disjointed missions that skip the parts where my character would be waiting for tanks, choppers, and special forces to do their jobs. Â If I can't have that, I'd at least like to have missions where my character loiters around for two days waiting for the armored divisions, air support, and commandos to do their jobs so I can follow behind the next day and play janitor by mopping up survivors. Â This would preserve continuity and more importantly depict some of the less dramatic parts of warfare. Â It feels way too much like BF2 when I end a mission playing as Armstrong and then five minutes later I'm driving an M60 in the next mission. Â It's like I threw on a different helmet and jumped into the first tank I found in the parking lot. Please BIS, don't destroy Armed Assault the way you did Operation Flashpoint by forcing people to play multiple characters. Â Why bother exploring warfare from multiple angles, when everybody knows that being a peon with a rifle is the only way to fight? It's a shame that BIS is taking the easy way out by making a military simulation for government sales, and also making a completely different, arcadey game for commercial sales, when they could have taken the much more difficult (but also more rewarding) route of making only a military simulation and offer slight variations of it to government and consumer buyers. Â It's also a shame that the problem is so bad that everyone can identify the problem from nothing more than screenshots, video clips, and translated magazine articles. Â There's no need for a demo--much less the final product--to realize that Armed Assault will betray everything BIS has put out so far. P.S. Â In the interests of realism, would you please implement a feature where the game becomes unplayable when the character dies the first time? Â It really destroys the immersion for me when I die, but can start the mission over again. Â This whole resurrection thing doesn't really happen in warfare, and having what amounts to infinite lives is an obvious attempt to appeal to the mainstream gamer. Â Thanks!

I don't know about renaming Armed Assault, but Game 2 should definitely be renamed to Game 3. Don't you have to use your arm to punch someone?