Baphomet

In my opinion it is. then again. When I play games like counterstrike or BF2 in which it seems more like playing a lottery as far as the shooting aspect goes, then yeah. It really affects my enjoyment of the game. I'll admit it. With OFP's aiming system, when I play against my friends who are typically mainstream FPS gamers. I am the apex predator, and I like that. In my opinion, it's how it should be. Call me a snob, but it's kind of beneath me to be put on an even keel with people who predominantly play those other types of games. OFP forces you to think before you act, because the guy on the end of that gun can actually hit you if he know's what he's doing. Strafing your way or trying to escape by some law of averages isn't going to save you. I like playing a game that complements my style of play. I really don't want that to change. Except for perhaps improve the strategic/weapon realism aspect.

I hope to still see the frequency of small "plugin" addons for ArmA as there was in OFP, simply because mods tend to restrict your overall choice as to what you want and what you don't. More than anything I like having control over my gameplay experience.

Yes it would, simply because either it would be convoluted beyond any logic (insert any expanding ring system game here). If that's not the case then it's essentially a simplified system in which in my opinion, aiming and shooting becomes far easier than it should be. Look at a lot of first person shooters which use that system, and notice how you can aim any gun, no matter how big, as if it had no weight whatsoever? The precision of which you handle the gun is entirely based on your control of the mouse, it simulates not the weight of the gun nor the human error of handling and operation of said firearm. Basically like halflife, or quake or unreal or ANY of those games. And to be honest I think that would drastically change how the game is played. OFP did to at least some capacity add those effects, and to remove them would in my opinion eliminate a strategic component to the game. Simply put. I don't want this game to become a counterstrike, R6, BF2 clone, nor do I want it to be a twitch festival circle-strafe fag-dance like unreal or tribes, et al. Furthermore, I think it would be a terrible disservice to players to allow these two potential control methods to interact with the standard vection based aiming system in a multiplayer environment. I would like to think that most individuals in the OFP community would be perceptive enough to appreciate this fact. As it's readily apparent that games that feature either system belong to franchises that are much more lucrative than a niche product such as OFP. I simply see features as this being implemented solely to reach an all new lowest common denominator. But, BIS could surprise me. But I'm a cynical fucker when it comes to the industry in general.

The difference between 3d and 2d ironsights in pretty much EVERY game ever made except Dreamworks' Trespasser is purely aesthetic. Simply put, if you didn't play Trespasser, basically it allowed you to freely manipulate things, and basically allow you to line up the iron sights on a gun to your own specification. When this is pre-done for you, the impact of 3d versus 2d from a gameplay standpoint is negligible. It's for looks. Nothing more. I really don't know where people see the realism enhancement from a feature like this without being able to manipulate the firearm itself. +1 to metal heart for the Trespasser reference. And yeah if you didn't actually play the game, you couldn't possibly understand to the full effect being able to line up ironsights had. And +1 for the DBTS reference, I've been playing that game off and on since 1998 and I STILL play it. I'm actually really good at actually swordfighting with it now. I always thought people who complained about it being too complicated were big pussies.

I don't. But what else can they do aside from that except maybe go the Vietcong 2 route. Which was... equally frustrating. It was too robotic and felt like the gun was taped to my head. The movements of recoil moved the entire screen which felt very unnatural and really exaggerated. A simply fixed view aiming system sounds far too basic to be implemented into OFP. That's basically what quake had. Since the defacto-standard aiming/ballistic system for most pseudo realistic shooters that have fixed view aiming is the expanding ring system, then I would likely assume that it's a possibility.

No it's the end of me enjoying OFP. For me, I find it's more intuitive, and gives the closest analog in a game to real life aiming of a rifle. I've tried to enjoy games that employ other aiming systems (there are really only two) and one is too basic, and the other is frustrating to no end because it doesn't realistically model anything. It's just designed to be obscure enough that you have to learn how to use it without applying any type of intuitive logic. The first thing I noticed right off the bat about OFP that separated it from any other game I played is that the aiming system was in fact halfway decent. And if they do opt for an expanding ring system in any capacity, yeah I'm just not buying the game period. You have to understand by now that we've seen the horror that is cross platform development. When you broaden your focus, the overall quality suffers. There really is no middle ground. I don't want to play a game that isn't as refined as it could be because they took consideration to implement features for tards. Every game that's been made cross platform has been dumbed down. When you design for to totally different control and thusly ballistic systems, it's the same thing. It's an irrevocable law. People who actually enjoy that system have a little extra something on the 21st chromosome if you know what I mean. Just to clarify, I never stated OFP had that system, and as he described it. OFP actually went the more REALISTIC route simulating human error by incorporating both the wavering hand and the dispersion of the rifle. These two individual components are the most influencial factors in determining a weapon's overall accuracy. Wind, condition of weapon, a myriad of others could be considered as well, but those two are the two essentials. From a design standpoint, it's those two factors that should be modeled accurately. I really shouldn't have to go into explaining why the expanding ring system is inferior, but in essence it's an attempt to combine both a firearm's innate performance limits AND human error into one morass of game design stupidity. The result defies common logic and conceivably has bullets flying from diametrically opposite ends of the "expanded ring" in succession which by most accounts would be unlikely if not totally impossible. When you factor in that the overall diameter of these circles encompasses weapon accuracy plus human error, you start to see problems. Problems that frustrate me into not enjoying the game anymore. What they should have done is incorporated weight and physics along with limited IK to even FURTHER increase the realism of recoil (recoil isn't always simply up/down). And to think I went through that entire long winded diatribe and Goeth just summed up everything I wanted to say in one small concise paragraph. In the end, if the rest of us have to accept that BIS is incorporating this stupid feature, then they should go the extra mile and make sure there's a server option that FORCES players joining to use the system of the admin's choosing.

I don't like the sounds of this, to me this sounds like the editing community taking a step BACK, not forward. All I see out of this is I won't be able to tweak addons so they perform in concurrence with my own CPP mods. Effectively rendering them useless to me. Forget about stealing addons or using them to cheat, I just want to be able to make a custom config and use addons so they complement it. Don't get me started on community standardization, everything I've done personally seems better than what I've seen come out of the community so far in regard to config value customization. FDF came close, but in the end, letting the end user customize his experience really defines much of the value and appeal this franchise has for me. For example, stock BIS weapon accuracy were just way too high and the steadiness variable for stock OFP was way too low, and for the most part the community just sort of ran with it. To be honest, playing the game like that got BORING. It wasn't realistic and it made the game far too easy. I could reliably snipe guys from the hip at 500 meters, which was just... no. Being able to make my own tweaks to the game AND addons I used so they conformed to those modifications improved my experience immeasurably. It'd just be a terrible shame if that ability was somehow not present in the next game(s).

Where did you get those moneys from!?

That last post made absolutely no sense, especially considering the fact that the end user community for OFP has overwhelmingly moved in favor of developing, IMHO addons with ridiculously high detail. This completely contradicts your statement. Unless you're referring to the INCLUSION of graphic features, that newer graphics boards support. But aside from that, stating that it's impossible for the end user community to create ridiculously high-poly, high detail models and textures is patently absurd. Whereas, BIS being a game developer with a likely better than modest budget and connections within it's industry, to procure and or develop sounds that would be difficult for your average user replicate in quality. However, the OFP community has pleasantly surprised myself as many others with the quality of some sound modifications. And yes, while shiny new visuals can entrance you for the first hour or two you play the game, it's sound more than visuals that will do more to make or break the atmosphere of a battle and your surroundings. Don't believe me? Try making a sound pack of really bland crappy sounds and running some of the highest poly addons OFP has to offer, and then try your favorite soundpack and see, or rather hear, the difference. You can have less than great graphics and great sound and have a decently immersive environment, you cannot have great visuals and shitty bland mundane sounds and achieve the same thing. It comes off as sterile and boring.

Can anyone give a review/synopsis? It looks interesting.

I've personally only ever had a .22 fly near by me, and it made a kind of "Thhhp" sound. I don't think I want to ever hear anything like that again.

Um... That's supposed to simulate the sound of a two way radio ending transmission... Yeah, there are radios out there that are buffered with that sound. And from that video, the sounds were very artificial sounding, not very realistic. Then again, I just really want a game that does a lot of sound modulation, ie (better) doppler, modulation based on distance, relative position, and landscape (closed in spaces, narrow streets). I've heard more than my fair share of gunfire in an outdoor setting since I go out shooting fairly regularly with a 1911a1, an ar180b, and a vz858, I've also had a fair amount of experience with higher caliber rifles like weatherby .460, and last saturday there was an incident just up the street from involving a pistol at 2am, so... yeah. It just doesn't sound the same in AA, just a bit too sterile, not enough... something. Now to be honest, it all depends, when I heard that pistol go off, because it was shot in an area walled in by houses, you could more or less tell without even looking where the shot was fired from and what direction it was going, and because of how the sound was obscured and bounced off the houses, it made a "KACHOO-FFF, KACHOO-FFF" sound, not a crack or a bang or a pop. Incidentally firing the Vz indoors sounds a lot different when fired outdoors, Especially in the narrow long range type lanes we have at our local indoor range, it makes less of a crack sound and more of a resonant "BA-BOOOOOOOOMMMM" sound. The vz fired off in the distance on a cold day outside doesn't even sound like the sound you hear up close, it's more of a "Tuk, tuk tuk tuk" type sound.

Yeah it'd be so much more hilarious if it wasn't a joke.

That was wicked, and I mean in a good way. Showing someone who has no previous knowledge of this pompous douchecannon and letting them have at it, researching them on google. And this is the overall impression you get, from a relatively objective source. This guy was also a huge advocate of throwing drug addicts into general population prison, just for being drug addicts. Personally I find a lot of these types of people to be ridiculously hypocritical and self righteous. It's disgusting. It'd serve him a good lesson if he received some of the compassion from his legal system as he proscribes it for "fellow" drug addicts.

I just hope BIS doesn't royally screw over their customers by using something like steam or starforce. Both are evil, and I will not touch a program that requires either of them.

It's a horrible unoptimized sack of shit. If you're looking for the same kind of experience oblivion offers but don't have the PC to run oblivion, morrowind is a -very- poor substitute. You'd be better off playing a classic like Daggerfall.

It does seem very impressive. The article I read featured on OFP.info mentioned being able to move around inside of vehicles, which will be beyond awesome if it's implemented. Everything about it seems to indicate that BI studio is adopting an uncommon position of actually listening to it's customers, as well as persuing their own ambitions to create unique and entertaining products, as opposed to simply churning out the same mediocre thing year after year to ensure a certain level of profit. The clear difference between giants like EA and a company like BIS is the fact that this company is making a profit on the basis of producing a quality product. This as opposed to inundating the market with so much banal garbage and working their development houses like a concentration camps in order to gaurantee some kind of return on the binary drivel they truck off to stores every few months. So cheers for trying to break the mold BIS, it seems like company is paying attention to the direction the community has gone and is running with it. Here's hoping your next two titles bring even more notoriety and success than the first. Speaking of which, I'll enjoy seeing sellout pc gaming rags in the US eat their criticisms about this franchise after they're aware of how far it has come from it's earlier days. I'm talking about you especially PC GAMER.

Holy crap. It just keeps getting better and better. Â So much co-op. So little time.

Do all the trees and buildings have proper LODs? I recall a while back that someone said they didn't. Was this true? If so, has anything changed since?

I really need to figure out how to do this without screwing it up and causing omnious sounding errors. Is there a signficant performance hit as far as odol vs mlod? And I noticed when looking through the models in O2 that many of them seem to be segments? Do you use hiddenselections or something to sort of "lego" the various parts together? Either way. I've discovered that I can make my own custom clothing combinations with the texture path utility and it's beyond awesome. When I get some motivation to I'm going to try and apply some of Newiy's OFPFOR accessories "ball cap, mask, etc" to some of them. DMA is quickly becoming one of my favorite mod teams. All around they make a wide range of excellent things to improve OFP. I'm not releasing any of those of course, but... it just goes to show what a little creativity with O2 and some mlod models can yield. I really like the second guy, he kind of reminds me of one of those security contractors I saw in this documentary about afghanistan.

It's also interesting how none of the games released on an xbox system that SHOULD have mouse + kb support, still don't fucking have it.

Ok thanks guys. Yeah I'll look into it. I was just concerned because jellalhabat island has a lot of inconvenient/inhospitable areas for ai to spawn, or have waypoints, etc. I notice there are two triggers that correspond to the overall size of those two green markers. I'm still curious as to what the smaller one does. Then there are those other three really small square ones... I have no idea what those do. The only problem with jellalhabat island is that portion towards the bottom, it means covering some of the southern shore would mean that some of the green marker would be covering a large body of water as well.. Do you know if scripts are smart enough to tell if water is present and to not spawn things there? 1000th post... Â Edit, so I'm not placing zone_x markers too close to water, do you know if the diameter of markers is measured in meters? That way I could just temporarily create a marker measured 1km x 1km to get a good estimate of where I should place them.

Nonono... These aren't the markers that are arranged off in the bottom corner. It's the other markers, bah. I'll post a screenie tomorrow, I'm dead tired and I'd be shite at explaining right now. It's just the green overlay marker type-thing, and the smaller orangey-red and yellow elliptical markers sporadically placed about. I'm not sure what they do. Wow... 999th post. One more until the big 1k... Â Ok. I lied. I'll post a link to the screenie: http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y15/yourebuyingeggs/mapmarkers.jpg So basically it seems that they're not present in the editor, so they're created dynamically. How are they created? what does the large green marker represent? The smaller one? Whatabout the yellow/red ones? Are they arbitrarily placed?

Please tell me those mirrored aviator shades in the screenshots are for download somewhere. I haven't found them in anything I've downloaded so far.. EDIT. Damn. They're unit specific. Oh well.

I don't want system requirements to go up because of some garbage running in the background that isn't directly relevant to OFP. I don't play on public internet servers and I don't want that added load on my pc.