Blake

Thanks, Hellfish. I really appreciate the info you gave.

Hellfish and others, can you answer some questions as you have the game: - How's the editor, what kind of triggers can you make with that, can you set multiple objectives and sudden enemy off-map reinforcements? - Can you draw freely to the briefing map, like expand those markers and arrows as you wish? - Are all maps 20kmx20km and how many maps there are? - Can you jump into any friendly vehicle in middle of the combat? - How do you command other friendly forces? - What is your PC configuration and how does the game run on your machine?

Punkbuster? Hell no. For 3D FPS kids games like CS and DoD fine but NEVER on Armed Assault.

Well, that coup has to be put into context. In 1999 Pakistan and Indian relations were in turmoil after so-called Kargil Conflict in Kashmir and recent nuclear tests by both countries. It seemed the countries were set to be heading for full-scale war and mistrust between Pakistani military and politicians grew over policies, eventually this led to bloodless coup by Mr.Musharraf. While many countries automatically condemned the coup at the time I think it ultimately led to better relations between both countries and easing of tensions.

Dictator, sure, but I don't recall the Shah supporting terrorism or threaten it's neighbours or Israel with destruction. You could say same about Musharraf, the dictator of Pakistan but I don't see people get genuinely upset about him even after his sabre rattling with India. Extremists came to play after the revolution. If the other option is a fundamentalist terror-exporting government, I don't know which is worse. But you are right, I don't know how advanced Shah's nuke program was but it robably still has little to do with the vast post-revolution developement. I don't think people are comfortable with religion mixed with nuclear weapons.

Naturally the mullahs are worried about the greenhouse effect and want to stop using fossile fuels That's why they've kept the project hidden from the world for 18 years so they could give all this delighful environment-saving surprise. Funny they haven't used this card yet, some may actually believe them in the west. Partially true but then again when potential nuclear weapons release was considered impossible due to destruction of both sides the emphasis was put more and more on conventional weapons which were seen potentially only method of achieving some sort of 'reasonable' solution to war. The problem is that when both sides have only few nuclear weapons the temptation to use them despite the losses may be higher than when both sides have massive doomsday arsenal. That would be potentially very inflammable situation as both sides calculate they may gain by using nuclear weapons as first-strike weapon. So no, I don't think Iran has right to have nuclear weapons and I believe anybody who feels Iran's nuclear arsenal is no less threatning than Israel's is being dishonest. While they shouldn't naturally have it either I don't see any arab leaders loosing sleep over it. Religious fanaticism + nationalism + support to terrorism + nuclear weapons = Very, very bad.

People got too social with the Pstohj83 (iTOW) launcher with nasty results after T-80 responded to a failed missile attack.

Hmm, some grease on the lense?

First heard of the game in sometime around summer 2000 and drooled over the screenshots. Played demo and later some notepad-made missions in March 2001. First got my hands on the game in June 2001.

No, actually, the films are nowdays fulfilled with jargon how the military tries to brainwash you to a killer, murderer and mindless fighting machine. Your thinking is obviously based on such movies as 'Tigerland', 'Full Metal Jacket' and 'Thin Red line'. I don't know which army you served but this is rubbish. If grunts can't rely on their NCO's and do as they please that's hardly an army anymore. 'Following orders' on commiting atrocities and war crimes is just an excuse if you are not personally threatened with physical harm or at gunpoint. You are over-emotional about this issue. It only takes you to get shot at and you respond or just anticipate to get shot at. You don't have to go through all this moral dilemma 'geez, how can i pull the trigger...i cannot...i should?' crap thats portrayed in some war movies. You really don't need to back up your fighting with beliefs like many people would think in their armchairs. Troops that are sent to the crisis points in the world are specifically trained and instructed for restraint in face of extreme adversities, i really don't know any army recently who has put effort to encourage trigger-happiness, hatred or aggressiveness against the enemy. In combat the justification for killing comes all by itself. I smell a dilemma here, how come soldiers who follow orders blindly have to justify the morality of war to themselves as you claim? I'd take your views more seriously if it wasn't for your holier-than-thou 'Right on the fucking money' -attitude. And in your case I wouldn't dismiss somebody who obviously has vastly more first-hand experience on these issues with inflammatory remarks.

It will indeed be a tough game, I agree that Finland had much more intensity today than Russian team which's roster is full of talented players. Russia's midfield game was totally broken off by Finns which caused them to lose the puck and broke off the their offensive plans. 5 vs 3 PP which Russia squndered achieving no goals definately broke their morale. It was a surprise that Russia came so unpassionately to third period and managed only two shots against Finnish goal in the entire period and eventually frustrated, relying on dirty tricks which only brough them two 2+2min penalties while losing all hope of any serious attempt to even scores. But in previous USA-game Finland froze up seriously in 2nd and 3rd periods after achieving 2-0 lead positions and match ended narrowly 3-2. Hopefully such lock-ups don't happen against Sweden and they keep the mobility & intensity or Finland might be in trouble. It's hard to compare the teams based on latest games since Czechs especially played such a lackluster game and Russia effectively stopped playing in the third period.

Finland beats Russia 4-0. See you at the finals, Sweden! Â I also impressed that Finnish Curling team beat Britain in semi-finals but was defeated by Canada at gold medal match. Silver is still not so bad when there are about 1,000 curling players in the entire country (Canada has some 1 million). Ahem, I don't know what you've been watching, but Britain lost Bronze match for USA 8-6 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_sports/winter_sports/4744334.stm

I think you've watched too many war movies... BBC put the shrine bombing well into context. But currently the secularity is being crushed by rising fundamentalism, sometimes I wonder if strong dictatorship and nationalism of the past would have been better instead of this uncontainable carnage. Looks like Kurds are distancing themselves more and more from the mess of mid-and southern Iraq.

Btw, that 'Olen Oksentanut' map is nice you should put it in the FDF mission repository...

I personally find neckshot a good solution if somebody disobeys direct orders/warning without explaining and goofs on the server thus spoiling the gaming enjoyment of others. Execution is better than just kicking out if written/radioded/Teamspeak orders don't get any response. Mature players should then be able to take note and behave accordingly.

Looks great, congratulations for your efforts but I'm not going to buy it. I'd stilll like to see free addons though

Naturally, we're going to see more of TK idiots since join-in-progress allows them to just drop in at any moment and kill some teammates. But that trend will probably wear down as the game ages. I wonder how JIP is introduced though, since some custom maps which have audio weigh sometimes over 1mb and JIP would certainly cause lag on the server. Hopefully it's done so that JIP can be enabled/disabled by mission makers when for example long coop map is in progress and additional players popping in will just mess up the mission. But if people experience crashes it is of course very good feature when people can reconnect immediately. Overall JIP is a very welcome feature but more than that I expect improved netcode which would allow something like 64-128 players which would make CTI maps raging campaigns over entire islands/areas similiar to Aces high or WW2 online.

Yeah, It Came From The Desert definately had it all, knife fights with thugs or G-men, 'chicken' on a straight highway, strategy, mystery solving, action, horror, probably one of the most versatile games ever. And the atmosphere created by graphics and music was absolutely magnificent.

Well I don't quite remember what steps you needed to finish it, it's after all over 15 years since I played it But one thing is certain, you had to visit at least couple of islands with the turtle and solve some quests there. Eventually you got a giant swan which you could use to get across impassable mountains to the main villain's castle and after walking across some obscure labyrinth you'd finally get the chance to slay him and get the girl. Not exactly original from todays viewpoint, but it was damn well done and polished game. Btw the evil music you mean is this. I've also got some nostalgic Amiga game music over here. Rocket Ranger, Pirates for example. Lords of the Rising Sun was great strategy game set in the feudal middle-age Japan, I think Shogun:Total War owes very much to it and in my opinion does not surpass the music and unique atmosphere found in the Amiga game. LOTRS is probably the best Cinemaware game on the Amiga, after that comes the excellent It Came From The Desesrt and Rocket Ranger. Never got into King of Chigago or Three Stooges that much. Wings was good but somehow not as flashy or original as other older Cinemaware titles.

Good old A500... Anybody remember Damocles? A 3d game where you had several planets in a star system where you could visit with different vehicles. The ultimate goal was to prevent a comet hitting one of the plants. Never seen such so large areas in 3d in any game and unprecidented freedom of movement. It was especially impressive to just sit and watch a sunset as all planets behaved realistically according to newtons's law and somewhere far away you could see the comet streaking... Starglider 2 was a space/planetary 3d shooter which had graphics ahead of it's time. It was impressive to see vehicles tear into tiny fragments as you blasted them, unheard of in 3d games I think before that. Virus was also flashy with 3d graphics. One 3d game which has a special place is Conqueror, a tank shooter which you could play with two joysticks, one operating the turret and the other driving. Terrain was similiar to Virus with different elevations and terrain types. You could also buy better tanks as the game progressed and  you could have a fleet of 16 overall if I remember correctly. Playable sides were Soviet, USA and Germany each having around 4-5 tank types at their disposal. Carrier Command was truly great and one game by Psygnosis called 'Armour-Geddon' actually resembles it quite a lot. It had better graphics but not as large terrains as in Carrier Command but it made that up with research which you could use to produce better weapons. Never finished it though. One game I didn't notice mentioned here is Fairy Tale Adventure, a truly colossal scale adventure game. You had three brothers which you could use venture in extremely large terrain. When one of the brothers died you'd play the next one and so on until they'd be killed or finish the quest. You had to fight bandits, wizards and others and at the same time take care of eating, sleeping and getting better weapons. Skills also improved during fighting and at the end you became almost invincible to anything. Resembles 'Diablo' in my opinion and Fairy Tale had very good graphics to it's day. I remember the ultimate goal was to rescue some sweetheart from wizard's clutches or something like that. Anyway it took damn long to finish.

This is much more than 'excercising pressure' like in Sweden, now political leadership is actually making demands...Doesn't look too good. Personally I don't even know how 'copypaste-degree Vilen' ever snaked his way up so high in politics.

Local Defence Detachment Kyllikki plays mostly coop but when there are 15+ players then it's often attack & defend type of gameplay. Our private games are often cooperative 'joint operations excercises' in which each squad member is playing at his 'wartime' role, eg. footsoldier, medic, company co. tank crewman etc. We have also played role-playing style coop campaigns in which each squad member uses a fictional full name and soldier's progress is tracked in a database during the campaign. Death is also final after which the player's character is gone and he will have to enlist with a different name and lower military rank. Dead players are left in the 'roll of honor' in the database so people can still check them out. The game map and missions also vary according to mission success and if situation is desparate, the players unit can also withdraw but may find it lacking ammo and being in a position of disadvantage in the next round. We had such campaign last spring (around 10 missions) and had quite a lot of fun and many members which were relatively idle reactivated after the campaign got going. I recommend this type of gameplay to any organized squad, brings so much more to OFP when you don't your squadmates since they have different names on the server so you'll have to 'role-play' a bit. Last fall we played a multi-sim kind of campaign in which Falcon 4:AF, Dangerous Waters and OFP using Maldevic (IRL Greek Levkas) which was found in all sims. All sims affected the ground war in OFP either making ground missions harder or easier. Sink enemy supply convoy so they have less armor or shoot down their attack helos and they will not appear in next mission etc. Problem was that sim section didn't have so many players. So all kinds of game modes are possible OFP if people have time to make them happen.

Funny how you put it. I wouldn't label those who don't have muslim friends as 'generalizers'. I knew one Arab muslim once and he was nice honest working family man enthusiastic at his work and based on his talk a pretty secular fellow.

Rioting, death threats and torching of embassies DOES work. This is a good signal to all those fundamental muslims who want to have it their way. Appeasement may work today to brush things under carpet but pressure might build up and after 20 years or so when something similiar happens results can be much more devastating...

Oh great, today Finnish national broadcasting company (YLE) has just issued an official ban on showing of the Muhammed cartoons in any of it's programs 'though talking about the issue in scetch programs is not directly banned': http://www.hs.fi/ulkomaa....8696046 They've made gross and outrageous jokes about Christian figures almost constantly but now people shoud just shut up when it comes to Islam. I wonder what's at the end of this road. Some EU-wide ban is not that far away I think.