Baphomet

Sorry if you toke my response as insult. Your legitimate statement will make sense if you resort the United States priorities in the in that specific region. Perhaps you have trouble reading. I simply stated that you resorted to nonsensical profanity, there's a difference between that and personal attacks, as a response to my original counter point to your statement. Priorities being what? Oh yeah, that's right. OIL. You don't think the whole thing is just some altruistic deed spearheaded by some pro israel lobby do you? Granted the U.S government does some pretty wacky things, but that government is profit driven. When your economy is perpetually in debt, you must find new ways to sustain it, and cheaply. Israel is their foot in the door to the middle east so to speak. Of course because israel is involved you're going to get a lot of ideological nonsense perpetrated by a few hangers-on and lobbyists of some type, but either way it's all riding on the back of the initiative to either pacify or forcibly expand into the middle east to open up the oil market. You can talk mindless trash all you want, it's certainly not helping your argument however. I was sort of expecting at least some kind of reasonable response to it, but if that's all you can muster, it just lends credibility to my perspective. I think what they're wary of is the U.S meddling in Iranian politics, and since there are groups in the U.S that have absolutely nothing better to do than to promote that sort of thing, I would imagine their concerns are well founded. Saying Iranians as a whole don't give a shit is about their well being or that of their country is as sensible as saying Kennedy didn't give a shit when he threatened a nuclear exchange with Russia over that whole Cuba thing... It's just their well being by their standards encompasses not having the U.S or israel interfering with them. However I think there is a disparity between those who harbor a legitimate concern for some sort of meddling on behalf of the U.S or israel, and those who start spewing moronic religious vitriol about wiping Israel off the face of the planet. The U.S has similar wackjobs, only they have very little credibility or power, unless you're in possession three copies of the 21st chromosome. Anne Coulter anyone? All the moronic religious vitriol aside, I think most Iranians dread the concept of having the U.S interfere with their country. To the point that they'd use a nuclear exchange as a point of deterrent. The problem is you get a lot of those overzealous ones in political office, like their president, who likes to indulge in a lot of dangerously provocative smack talk. Or worse promoting their own interference in local middle eastern affairs. The big problem is, it's the latter group that will give the U.S or Israel a half-assed excuse to actually interfere, thus pissing off the majority of moderate iranians who don't share those views.

The entire site for me is slow and I have no idea why. Not only is it slow, it seems impossible to download any addons either. I'd have posted it in their forum, but again, I have such a hard time getting from page to page, I figured I'd just ask here.

Nope, I wasn't. Thanks for the heads up though.

... because a system like steam, doesn't benefit anyone but the company. However, the only exception to this which has been mentioned, is a DISTRIBUTION ONLY via steam. AFAIK Red Orchestra does not require steam for anything other than simply delivering the game to your pc. It does not require you to run that sack of shit program whilst running the game. I wouldn't mind this so much if, IF I could still buy it in a store. As many people here have mentioned, we want something physical to show for our purchase, we want a cd/dvd, etc.

That's absurd. If there wasn't oil to be had in the region, they wouldn't have established a foothold in it to begin with. Stability in the region starts with your allies, and stability means laying the framework for opening up the oil market to the U.S, it's very simple logic when you cut the horseshit out. (I still don't know how China would sit with the U.S "liberating" Iran if it ever came to that, I think things might get interesting) Your simple logic looks like whoreshit from my view of the situation! Â Well that's nice, seeing as that you can't seem to provide a legitimate counter point to my statement, I would guess your only recourse is to respond to my legitimate observations with nonsensical profanity. That in itself does make sense though, seeing as that my point really does make more sense than your original claim.

Is anyone going to make/release missions using the DAC as a basic framework?

That's absurd. If there wasn't oil to be had in the region, they wouldn't have established a foothold in it to begin with. Stability in the region starts with your allies, and stability means laying the framework for opening up the oil market to the U.S, it's very simple logic when you cut the horseshit out. (I still don't know how China would sit with the U.S "liberating" Iran if it ever came to that, I think things might get interesting) There are plenty of other places in the world that are stricken with war and poverty that need help much much more than israel. If the U.S was making such a philanthropic gesture, they should start with those areas. Clearly they aren't.

FUCKING NO! I hate steam. There's a reason why I will never buy a valve product again, and that's steam. Having your programs forcibly updated (thus breaking them) unless you wish to commit large amounts of HD space to backing up your game (all completely pointless). And the sheer audacity of a company to tell me that I have to run a piece of shit spyware program that has NOTHING to do with the game, IMO stealing valuable memory and cpu time otherwise dedicated to my game, is insulting and selfish. Every time I'd experience a brief stutter in the game I'd wonder if it would have happened if I had some garbage, tit-useless front end program hogging up system resources with stupid animated ads and the like. It's completely unnecessary. You have to understand that steam has in effect made it EASIER to acquire their content without paying. It also is shafting the paying customer whom the company should be protecting, but they're not they're greedy. When I buy a product. I expect it to serve ME, the end user who bought it. The EULA for HL2 clearly states that after 30 days they can cancel your account (thus disabling functionality of a game) at will. YOU AGREE TO THIS!? I personally will never touch a BIS product ever again if they opt for a system like this, and take the easy way out instead of EARNING my business. I'd encourage everyone I got to buy OFP to do the same thing... Steam serves only one entity, and that's Valve. Anyone who perceives any benefit from it as an end user is a chump, and or a retard. Their system was nothing short of exploitative of a successful franchise knowing most people would grudgingly "put up" with it. Steam->Money for the GameStudio itself? For a company that's getting so much return on an investment valve sure is sticking it to the end user... Steam->Instant patching I'll take downloaded patches at the expense of not having my games borked when I get cut off, or I lose a feature I previously liked, or the game itself gets screwed up worse because the new patch created new bugs. I can't remember how many times I waited on OFP patches because I wanted to make sure they didn't make things WORSE. If I don't have that freedom of choice, I WON'T support that company. Period. Steam->No illegal copies Lies. Steam->Less bugs Again... lies. Or fanboy idealism... take your pick. Lies. Propaganda. Less bugs my ass! SO many people I know have been put off by steam because of it's frequent forced patching, getting cut off by the server and having their game borked so they can't play it when they want. If I BUY something. I want to USE it whenever I want. I also want to run ANY version of that program I want. I know there's a so-called option to turn off automatic updates, but why is it always on when you restart steam? Because you really don't have a choice. True... Like I said. Steam has actually made it easier for people to pirate their content. What's embarassing about this, is that paying customers are PAYING for the same inconveniences that the pirates are... where is Valve protecting the customer? I like being able to modify and play OFP mods/addons/etc to suit the way I play. Everything I use for OFP is subject to tweaking to my standards. If I were to lose that because people wanted to generate some community wide concensus (read: shitty comprimises on how the game is played). I might as well just buy BF2 and be done with it. OFP to me embodies freedom, freedom from retarded bullshit like steam, and freedom from someone imposing their will on how a game should look, sound, play, etc. Without that, it's not half the game it could be.

Ok. Here's what I'm getting sick and tired of in missions I make and play. The tanks, specifically tanks and their use of coaxial guns, and their uncanny ability to pick out a single soldier from 500+ meters away and instantly zap him with it's coax gun... Now I suppose the guns on the tanks may be reasonably accurate, but I just can't see a tank being able to pick out a single soldier at such ranges. It's really annoying. I'm just wondering if there's a decent way to make an addon where the visual/hearing acuity of tanks lower they can't pick out smaller more insignificant targets as easily.

I really hope BIS never gets railroaded into an outfit like EA or UBI... It'll be the death of it.

I'm attempting to set up a remote internet OFP game with another player. I am behind a router, however I believe I have all the appropriate ports opened. This person has claimed to not be able to see the games I host however I can see games they're hosting. This seems to be a common problem no matter what game we play or what arrangements I make save for one game. Is there anything on their end that could be complicating this? Or worse yet, something on mine beyond my control? Such as an ISP firewall?

Check flurl.com filecabi.net putfile.com even google video has it. Any one of those with a marginal search will yield this video. It's everywhere. You can't really appreciate the context of this incident unless you actually see/hear what I'm referring to. I won't post any direct links since I don't want to be banned, but since those are essentially link repositories and general media storage sites. I think any moderately inquisitive person can find it. I also noticed in the video, yes. At least one of the soldiers was wearing a face visor and shield similar to what Bal linked to. Upon further inspection, words can't even describe it. These grown men are strong enough to hold these kids down with one hand save for one that struggled to avoid injury, and yet you see at least two of them at a time kicking them in the chest against a wall and beating them with truncheons and throwing them into things. One of the kids gets "cherry-picked" essentially kicked in the groin from behind by a soldier as he is laying face down, pinned by another soldier. Much to the perverse elation of the commentator. And I may add the commentator wasn't "added" this was some yahoo in the background mocking these kids pleading and screaming "please". He claims they were shooting at the soldiers. Which really. I have my doubts about. There are sounds that might be shots but there's no telling where from, and it's clear that these soldiers would not run up and grab these kids had they any firearms adolescent or not, a gun is a gun, and there would have been a hail of gunfire from the soldiers had there been a firearm visible on any one of those in the open. This more and more looks like some frustrated service-weary soldiers taking out their anger. The best guess I can offer is that the two bangs you hear could have been from some opportunistic individual taking shots at soldiers in riot gear chasing down a pack of rock tossing kids. It makes sense that someone may even orchestrate something like that to bait soldiers into the line of fire. However that still leaves these kids, lacking common sense (as often most adolescents do), in the wrong place at the wrong time. The commentator sounds demonic, I'm not religious at all, but honestly that's the best word to describe it it's beyond malicious. I really feel bad not only for these poor little buggers. However for the rest of the british soldiers that will be unjustly associated with... that obviously unbalanced individual, and the actions of those overzealous soldiers. It's a true disservice to what the coalition forces are trying to accomplish over there, which is partly to not get killed, and maintain a semblance of order on top of tracking down the REAL perpetrators of violent acts be they insurgent or not. An excerpt from a BBC news article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4708866.stm I would still like to know more information on the entire incident and what those two or so bangs off in the distance exactly were.

One of them appears to be knocked unconscious... Laying face-down with a substantial pool of blood larger than his head beneath him. I'd say that's a bit much. I've seen schoolyard fights on various media sites that looked more tame than what I saw on that video. Regardless of whether or not some of them may have taken that opportunity to sneak a molotov or some kind of crude explosive device in amongst the stone throwing, it still reflects very poorly on the soldiers for picking out the ones that were tossing the stones and beating them to set an example. Clearly those who would throw something that harmful as an explosive device would do so again, regardless of a beating, I would likely say they'd be pushed to further acts of aggression that aren't as obvious, and substantially more deadly. I believe there's a difference between a stone throwing teen, and someone who's trying to actively cause serious bodily harm. Not that rocks can't. However it's more an act of defiance in most cases. It's really doing more harm for coalition forces to react this way instead of catching those who were actually tossing improvised explosives and charging them with attempted murder. And to be honest, the commentator on the film completely destroys any legitimacy an argument can have in their defence. You'd have to hear it. It's disgusting. He expresses an enthusiasm at their beating that I can only describe as perverse and hateful. It unfortunately makes the lot of them look like a bunch of bloodthirsty convicts by association. Not only are you instilling fear in people thinking those are who are occupying those uniforms, but also hatred as well. Even for those who would otherwise not be so quick to judge. Essentially inviting more lethal and frequent acts of aggression from the civilian population.

As far as I'm concerned it seems there are a lot of factors both environmental and personal that contributed to what we've seen or heard of, as the case may be. It's definitely not their finest hour as soldiers. Obviously in a country like that, tensions are running high what with the nature of spontaneous unpredictable attacks. That's going to wear on anyone psychologically. I can see them wanting to teach those kids a lesson. However I think it was done in an entirely wrong way. It would have been enough to detain them and scare them straight without violent methods. It's easy for someone to de-humanize someone when they're wearing a protective uniform looking very similar in a group. It's entirely another when you see that person face to face giving you shit and relating to them on a more personal level. These kids didn't look older than 17, laying blows to a kid who is screaming and is thrashing about trying to escape harm is a very poor excuse, given the fact that it was a very one sided exchange. Those kids weren't ever any serious threat. As it stands, their experience and those witnessing it will simply reinforce hostility within those opposing the occupation, and your more rational average iraqi citizens who are just weary from this extented conflict. Basically making further enemies of the general population that could have been avoided. However I do personally believe that these soldiers do not represent all coalition soldiers in Iraq. Generally I'd imagine most display a lot more professionalism and presence of mind to not do something that reckless.

When it comes right down to it, no matter how much realism we may strive for in war combat oriented games, this is the one thing nobody wishes to replicate. At the same time though, it just goes to show that a community created with games of this theme as it's focal point, can be a real positive thing, bringing people together. Life is odd that way. It's especially difficult losing someone part of your community, especially if one had come to know them as a friend as some in this community had. But to Sgt. Stevens and the others who went with him. Tragic as it was, they met it on their feet with courage, doing what they volunteered to do. So I wish them all to rest in peace, and my condolences to their loved ones. He's earned a spot in our memories, in the community, and by those who knew him well. R.I.P

Awesome pictures, keep us posted on life in Iraq. A comment about that one photo. That desert camo on the ROK soldiers is very ouch. Â Standing next to you they seem to be streaking neon by comparison. At least they seem to be decently protected though.

That's complete bullshit. I've hated idiotic reasoning like that in games. They've deprived me of realistic weapon performance for I don't know how many years.

A game with good graphics and very tinny generic sounds isn't going to appeal much except perhaps to the demographic of individuals who are entertained by shiny objects. A game with average graphics and superior, realistic high quality sounds is going to seem more engaging, more ambient and create a better illusion of actually being there than the former will. This is half of why FDF was such an awesome game. The sounds. They made the game so much more immersive than any other mod out there. Everything was in your face, the roar of gunfire, the ear shattering boom of heavy artillery. I've noticed personally that there's a difference between the way FDF's guns sounded (for the most part) and how a lot of sounds for guns and explosions sound in games. Most games have gun effects that sound exactly the way they do when they're recorded on tape or video. That is to say they don't replicate that sharp "crack" and resonant "thud" which seems to be lost in most recordings of firearms. AKs really suffer from this. Since they don't sound nearly the way they do in most recordings or video as they do when you're actually firing one. You more or less hear a "pop" and the slide moving back, and I assure you it's a bit more than that. The real world? No. Those people are (edited for content) console jockeys. Of course these dime a dozen staff writers for magazines are going to evaluate games on the most basic criteria because they're forced to review 'x' amount of games every month. Furthermore, most gaming rags are marketed to the aforementioned "entertained by shiny objects" demographic, and so are most of the games they review. So really. There's no validity in that statement. What should have been said is "it's an unfortunate reality the that the bulk of most consumers who purchase games are the unsophisticated mouth-breathing console-gaming variety". Yes. They do command the greatest share of the market, however OFP was never meant to take advantage of that market, which is why I always wondered why they put the effort into making an Xbox version of the game when clearly it would be under appreciated. OFP and it's forthcoming sequels are niche products, the sales of OFP have proven however that niche products can also be very successful. You're dealing with an entirely different caliber of gamer when you're talking about OFP. Something the average console playing consumer couldn't really appreciate.

Yes well we all know many games with pseudo realistic weapons and overly simplified weapons/weapon handling are garbage. Which is why I refuse to play such games. I am however a little tired of scoring hits at ridiculously long ranges in OFP. There's got to be some kind of balance... I mean enhanced realism, because in essence I've always believed that improved realism does in a way preserve a sense of balance.

I own a Vz. 858 tactical. I can produce five inch groups at 50 meters. And I'm a mediocre shot. It's not impossible to shoot someone in the head at 90 meters with a gun like that. You just need to rely more on the law of averages. I hate retards who seem to think that anything that fires 7.62x39 should have bullets flying out of the barrel at a 45 degree angle. Technically it's not the problem with the accuracy of the gun in OFP more how weapon handling is simulated. What should NOT be done is any kind of cheap workaround system in which they lump the proficiency (or lack thereof) of weapon handling together with the inherent accuracy of the firearm itself. Do a better job simulating the handling of a firearm itself and create variables applied to various archetypes (conscript, regular, special forces, etc) that help the user or AI compensate for aiming instability or recoil handling. I really want to see dynamic weapon handling in OFP2, inverse kinematics, etc. In the vein of Trespasser only more user friendly and more accurate. This is the future of cutting-edge simulation. I'm personally losing interest in games that are concerned with maintaining the status quo. The closer to the actual simulation of how a gun is handled and how it performs is what I want. I want to apply my knowledge as a shooter to the game. I don't want to have to devise arbitary unrealistic strategies to aim and score hits with weapons that have no basis in reality. Like... well... pretty much any game similar to counterstrike. Not perfectly, and that's what needs to be changed. Nobody handles a rifle with the level of robotic precision that the guys in OFP do. And I think that should be somewhat goverened by skill level, thus code should be in place to assist in real time in controlling (albeit with varying degrees of proficiency) recoil and aim precision. In other words. A conscript or playing as a character with conscript designation would have considerably worse aim recovery skills than a character with considerably higher skill. If you get what I mean. Furthermore I'm not talking about predictably pre-defined states. I'm talking about dynamic realtime weapon handling physics. Weight, inertia, presence of a stock or not, etc. The whole nine yards.

I found the demo to be rather blah.. First off, I never liked the first vietcong. Secondly. My first experience with the game was a rather nasty one. I hate FPS games that essentially force you to totally readjust your perception and logic so you can understand it's mechanics. OFP did a pretty good job of avoiding that by incliding a vection based aiming system. You know, where the gun is essentially the point of origin for the bullet in game. Not some arbitrary vector drawn from the center or off center of your FOV with some useless weapon model thrown in to make it "look" like you're actually firing a gun. So basically. I played on a server with no crosshair. So, someone. Please. Tell me the logic behind that? The weapon model means nothing in terms of where the bullet is going to go. So what are you doing? Learning essentially by rote where this mystery point-of-origin for the bullet is. What's the point of that? It's retarded. In my opinion, the more I can apply my own real-world reasoning and logic to a game, the more I'll like it. Especially if it involves firearms. I'm rather offended when they imply I have to learn their own little ballistics/aiming system when I've already had a fair amount of experience aiming and shooting a gun myself. A view of a pistol that looks essentially like it's five feet from your cheek, pointed halfway across nose makes me wonder what kind of research these guys did when making the game in the first place. So needless to say I spent a few frustrating moments in a multiplayer game, trying to figure out how to aim, with no aid whatsoever clearly to give those who have adjusted to the unrealistic ballistics some kind of advantage, then decided that the zoomed in FOV and the weird blurring effects and lack of features I tend to enjoy in a military FPS completely sapped me of any will to play.

From a professional developer's standpoint. That's a good way to release a limited version of a product so that a consumer can get an idea of how the game plays from firsthand experience, so that they will in turn consider more seriously, buying the game. How in the screeching hell does this apply to this mission they've released? What do they gain personally by not letting you play the blasted thing as much as you want? It amounts to aggravation in having to restart the mission when in fact the desired effect of forcing someone to stop playing. It's not like they can charge money for the mission. What gives? I always looked upon this project with interest and I appreciate what you guys are doing... But come on. You guys -aren't- a professional outfit. Drop the facade.

Is this just to increase the intensity of the experience this time limit? Or is it some ploy to appear like you're a professional outfit and that your demo is in fact a demo and not in reality just a single mission? I don't get it.

No. I blast it because it in all likely events is the stripped down OS that I'd like... on the PC! It's just that it does me -no- good being on a pile of shit console. And when I mean microsoft will see to it because of the shitbox. It's because they'll simply market the hell out of that and shoot for the lowest common denominator, which of course is going to afford/prefer/etc a console. It's a more broad demographic than marketing and designing a product to a considerably smaller group of people. Such as myself. Haha. As far as the whole .Net thing goes. It seems to me the last time I downloaded .Net. Certain things I would run would take longer to load. Such as internet explorer. Even just general navigation through the GUI seemed to occasionally suffer from brief pauses when loading certain windows for some reason. I never had that problem when I didn't have .net installed. That shit bothers me. And I'm not sure exactly what it is that stays resident when you install .net on your computer, I am under the impression there's other shit associated with it that you simply can't kill using the task manager to eliminate it totally when you don't want to use it.

So, it's not really a tactical FPS... it is however a really really fun RPG involving mounted combat made by the independent developer taleworlds entertainment It's currently in beta stage, and you can download and play the fully functional game until level six. I plan on buying it online, since it only costs around 15 dollars CDN. It's kind of funny to me that independent developers seem to make the most innovative and entertaining games. I haven't had this much fun playing a game in a long time.