rusty75

:dancehead:!!!!CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!:dancehead: And Now....... :coop: :681: great job Bis!! Lots of respect!!!

hm it seems it only works if you copy-paste the link in your url box. basically i see some kind of weapons platform on tracks with 4 rockets on a turret; and a -huge- howitzer of some sort. Here's all the pics: Moscow Parade

Taken from photos of the 9 May military parade today Moscow... What kind of toys are these? Some nice pic of a jet flyby, too (SU-27?). (hoping the hotlinks will work) http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/foto/f26739b6_9504.jpg http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/foto/f26739b6_9516.jpg http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/foto/f26739b6_9507.jpg <edit: you need to copy paste the url in your browser.>

Thanks to W0lle for reopening this post and changing the title. Please treat this post merely as a translation of the May preview AND a 'sum up' of some of the open issues as found by Christian Schneider and his team. If required I can add some scans of the magazine. As for these open issues the ones that worry me most is how the AI at times still behaves as it did in OFP. But who knows it may be not so bad, it was a preview. Feel free to comment but pls no bashing. For a thread about AI I should point to: AI THREAD. That's where we can all write down our anticipations about the Turing test scores. thanks.

I was happy enough to discover that review in that magazine and just translated it the best I can because I thought the community might want to see it. Took me 2 hours already. Won't do that again. Along the way I read all the reviewers' experiences about the AI and I grew more... well yes, disappointed. ("Intelligence?" was really a paragraph header). Now there are some rude reactions but maybe I was too extreme myself. I have edited the text a bit now. I did wait for this game since 2003 or so; so reading that AI walks straight into open fire, gets stuck behind fences, that did trigger some typing from me.

I would argue that on a quad core CPU you CAN improve pathfinding over that what can be done with a 400mhz pc from 2001. For some gamers the ultimate is the unscripted AI in OFP/ARMA and knowning all the AI weaknesses that still exist, if BI announce 'NexGen AI' then this creates expectations, I would argue. BI themselves have often announced that a major difference of this 'nextgen' game was going to be the fact that you cannot make out human from AI players. Well if the first Preview (<edit!> )then deals with that assumption then this is disappointing. All I need, personally, is Malden with middle-aged graphics and AI that can scare the crap out of me. I do not believe such a game exists and it would be nice if Arma2 is going to be there and take up that market.

that poll took 2 mins, feel free not to vote... I'm just so disappointed over how the review is bashing the AI.

Hi all, I have just picked up a copy of the german magazine 'Gamestart XL', May edition. The people from Gamestar got to play an extensive part of the Arma2 campaign! Also, a release date of May 29th is mentioned. I am not sure how 'breaking' this news is; but I thought some of you might be interested to see a translated version ofthe magazine so that is what I did, in this post. But maybe I am telling old news, forgive me if I didnt find that out in this unstructured jungle of a forum. But, first off let me explain the word 'disappointment' in the title <EDIT: This was a moved message from a separate post that had the word 'disappointment' in it> because this IS a personal interpretation and I do not intend to sound pretentious or anything. Especially not against a title that has had so much effort and time in the making. But I used to be a huge fan of OFP and have anticipated it's sequel for years. When preparing for ARMA it got clear that this game inherited some of the weaknesses of the (absolutely great) OFP title. Mainly, AI pathfinding and related. It's only in the words of BI themselves, where they were saying that 'Game2'was going to have AI that was so intelligent you cannot distinguish it from human players. This raises a high bar and since Arma didnt quite get there I put my hopes on Arma2. The review translated here just indicates strongly that AI is showing the same issues still. for me this was a disappointment which led me to translate this article and post this message. The remaining part of this text is the translation. In the middle there is some spoiler about what happens in the campaign, it is probably a central thing in the campaign so skip it if you dont want to see it :) And apologies if I made incorrect translations, I'm Dutch not German nor English :) ==============Review - May 2009 gamestar XL === The vehicles don't operate. Well that's a good beginning. After all, everything was going to be different this time around, and better - just like the fans of OFP had already wished for -before- the release of ARMA. However the beta of the official sequel, Arma2, crashes, as soon as we so much as touch an airplane, boat or tank. One week later the error has been fixed. A command key had been mapped incorrectly - just a grain of sand in the big machine. However of these grains there are still many, and it is only a few more weeks until the planned release date. Until then, all of these issues should have been removed from the, by itself, very convincing clockwork. Between Arma 2 and it's predecessor Arma lies a world of differences, in many aspects. However nothing has changed in the basic game's principles. <... some basic explanation about the differences to shooters like COD> the enemy most often appears only as a tiny heap of pixels at the horizon - that's all you will get to see of them. Campaign Arma2 returns to the initial setup of OFP. A big point of criticism for ARMA was that you were constantly playing with a different character, thus there was no 'identification' with the soldiers as you went through the campaign. Arma 2 returns to OFP's approach and gives you a strong ability to identify yourself with the game's characters in the shape of team razor, who will comment on things that happen and who will often save your life - and vice versa. ================SPOILER============= If one of them dies, the mission is over. Later in the campaign you will be able to switch between characters freely, from snipers to 'specialists in the rough jobs' (?).Initially still very upbeat, tone and mood of your fellow soldiers will change in the course of the campaign, affected by events that take place. For example, SPOILER: <the discovery of a mass grave that we really totally accidentally stumbled upon during an earlier campaign is clearly occupying the soldiers for a long time>END OF SPOILER Also the way in which you behave to the civilians is changes how they react to you. SPOILER: <for example, we were pointed to the existence of the mass grave because we helped a doctor and his wife by instead of ordering a bomb dropping on a target enemy installation, going in and blowing it up, after having personally saved the lives of the two.> END OF SPOILER Already without these events , the atmosphere is 'grabbing you by the throat', (dark atmosphere) which is done in a successful way. It is pressing and engaging at the same time ('packend sowie drueckend'). You can save the game as often as you want (but depending on level of difficulty). Later the missions will be over many kilometres and split up in smaller parts. The campaign is done very well. It is very dynamic and cohesive. You sometimes can choose what to do first, and sometimes other teams will then have solved one of your tasks already. <...> <some story about a dropping to kill some people> Helicopter lands, grass is pressed against the ground. <in front of their eyes, the building explodes, compromising this mission> ====================END OF SPOILERS ====================== Intelligence??? In the path towards the release of Arma 2, BI have consistently bragged about the intelligence of the soldiers, which should make it difficult/impossible to distinguish between human players / AI <this last line I added myself - it is a bold statement from them from around 2004!!>. Soldiers would navigate even better through the landscape, which would allow for more teamwork. And indeed, AI colleagues try to avoid open fields and occasionally take cover behind walls. But that is about it. Group movements, suppressive fire, saving wounded, all these intentions fail more often than that they lead to any form of succes. The AI is suffering from many foul-ups ('Aussetzern') and still cannot negotiate a simple corner at many times, without stopping and having to reorientate themselves. Too often the actions of the AI seem random and are not understandable, and the atmosphere is suffering from this. But not only that, because more than any other title, in Arma2 we are on our own in a big world, and we're depending on the computer. Even apart from the situations where our AI colleagues regularly walk straight into enemy fire, and we can only play the role of field medics, later in the game you will have to command special troops, and even full infantry units, tanks and helicopter groups. Especially in those scenarios, the AI is not able to deal with the tasks that the scenario commands from them. Frustration and helplessness are the consequence. Troop command The command system has been overhauled completely, and now is context-dependent. If the razors take place in a vehicle, we just need to press the spacebar, point to a jeep and confirm the order with the mousewheel. Although this system works well with a small team, the control over larger groups quickly becomes too compromising ('fummelig'). As a workaround we had to switch to the classical real-time steering through the tactical map. However here, any visual feedback is missing. The commander-in-the-field idea cannot convince us (yet). On the positive side, controlling a vehicle, one of the 'sorrow-childs' of the series, has been improved and works quite well. Especially choppers and airplanes can be controlled very well and easily, after some practice. Realism is far too be found, (naturally). Realism in simulation is mostly limited to weapons ballistics, sound, and functioning. In other words, tanks still get stuck behind tiny trees, walls are however easily thrown down and break apart in huge blocks. The atmospheric impression of the game is disturbed by these details all too often. Graphics Also the graphical display is full of contrasts. On the one hand, the visual detail in the gaming world reaches very high to photorealistic levels at times, thanks to dense vegetation and very good lighting effects. Also does Bohemia make excellent use of the 'unsharpness filters'. However the game hardly has any dynamic light sources at night, and transitions between animation sequences seem very static all too often. To add to the issues, the vegetation is switched off after several hundred meters of distance. The result is that we will hardly be able to find enemies that are hiding nearby, but those that are farther away are very easily visible, standing on empty textures. In other words you do not need the help ofthe identifcation tool (which 'draws boxes' on spotted enemies in range of you or a team member) for enemies at larger distances. Minimum Specs But this is all assuming your hardware will cope with the requirements to begin with. Dual-Core is an absolute minimum. A large monitor is a prerequisite. Despite of our fast PC, we thankfully made use of the 'schummelunterstutzung' because the comments of our AI colleagues were utterly useless for the most part, and the sound system, although better than it's predecessor, still suffered from extreme mixing problems at times. <spurbare erschutterungen samt bildschirmwackeln laesst Arma2 im Gegensatz zu OFP2 vermissen, was die Wahrnehmun weiter erschwert.>(<i guess, ofp2 does a better job at constant framerates). Conclusion How well Bohemia will be able to deal with all these balancing issues for the solo campaign and multiplayer, (there will be a coop mode in the campaign as well); we will find out in the test that (hopefully) is appearing in the 8/2009 issue of this magazine. We are going to see either a masterpiece or a medium-to-heavy catastrophe. In between those two extremes, hardly anything seems possible; since such a complex title will only function if all gaming elements fit together. Well this is by far NOT the case at present, although in theory, Bohemia is packing everything into this title that should bring it to the legendary status of Operation Flashpoint. However, The time is ticking. Final verdict: VERY GOOD. so... if they were not able to fix these AI issues in the 8 odd years since OFP, then they are certainly not going to do it in the 20 days that are still left until May, 29. Which, I fear, will give us a better looking, more complex, version of the same. Ai that is not so Intelligent. If I were to have any, tiny, voice in this, I would say: drop the 29 May release date!, and give it 4 more months... We have waited now for so many years, so maybewe can wait a little longer for this to be fixed: - AI should be able to cope with whatever the campaign demands from it - AI that knows how to drive a truck through a village, also when in a column. - AI should not walk into enemy fire and AI -should- be able to use suppressive fire. - Sound should really be a coherent thing.. so you can use it for orientation. - Please no 'tank gets stuck behind tiny tree', and 'wall crumbles into 3 pieces' stuff.. - these controls for commanding bigger groups.. contextual interface seems troubled here! - transitions between animation sequences seem too static. - vegetation switch-off makes nme units far away easily visible - Please make this AI do it's job.. - AI, AI, AI,AI..... - AI !! I hope this was for some of you interesting, and sorry if I put my own worries into this document a bit too often or something. I'm just worried. Within reason I know you can only ask so much of an unscripted environment but in my view 'next gen' would mean a true advance in AI :pray: Rusty

let's keep the ammo bug in, just for old time's sake