baddo

You did ask an excellent question. I did ask similar questions as well "on my turn". I just want to warn you that your discussion with that person is likely not leading anywhere. It is of course your choice if you want to try and see if you can get somewhere with this person on that subject. I don't bother anymore because I noticed this person uses the same discussion strategies over and over again even when overwhelmingly most people in the discussion are clearly not agreeing with him or her. It makes me think this person is not able to see that the discussion style he or she is using is continuously failing - perhaps it would be reasonable to try different strategies (or stop) but this person is beating the same drum over and over again and not convincing anyone over and over again.

Word of advice based on experience: you are wasting your time with that person.

SlipperyJim, I consider us unlucky that the game has been patched so much since its release. I have had to download and install, I think, several gigabytes of patches to get errors in the product fixed and I don't think this is a situation in which a customer should be in. I am thankful to Bohemia Interactive Studio for the patches. But in my opinion the game was released in an unacceptable condition and the amount of patching it has had to receive to become of acceptable quality does not do good to Bohemia Interactive Studio's image. I'm thinking maybe they need to work with a partner who forces them to more strict quality standards before allowing the release of a game. I am yet to try ArmA II (not released here yet and am not going to buy a download version, and I have to buy a new computer to run it) and I really hope the same sort of mess is not repeated with that game. So far reading the forum I have a more positive image of it compared to Arma's start.

It sounds like a firewall is blocking it. Easy to test: disable firewall completely and then try again. If it works then you know where the problem is, in the configuration of your firewall.

Thanks for the patch BIS! So far no problems running it on my computer. People, you have to consider that some of the fixes in this beta patch will very likely go into ArmA2. So you are kind of doing ArmA2 beta testing already when you test this patch. The more it is tested before its actual release, the better.

If you suspect file corruption, you can check the MD5 sums of the files before installation. The page http://www.fdfmod.org/downloads.html tells you the correct MD5 sums for the 1.3 and 1.4 installation packages. When you run a MD5 sum calculating program on the files, the sums should match exactly. If they don't match exactly then the file is not the same and you shouldn't try to install it. Re-download possibly from another server and check the MD5 sum again and repeat until the MD5 sum matches exactly. Here's more info about MD5: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Md5sum Having done that, installed, and still doesn't work, then report here and people will help you more. FDF Mod works very well, it is a high-quality mod and you shouldn't give up easily. If the instructions are confusing then people will help you. There's also the http://forums.fdfmod.org/ if you want to search it for more information and help.

From the BIS developer blog http://www.bistudio.com/developers-blog/arma-2-expectations_en.html it can be understood that they plan to use a combination of common threading models, a) fixed number of threads pre-assigned for certain jobs (coarse-grained) b) pool of threads waiting to do tasks (fine-grained) The pool of threads would be the one which can scale up or down depending on how many processor cores a computer has.

I support this suggestion.

Try turning around in a small confined space in arma, you will bump into everything and cant make the full turn.(Or you have to lower your weapon so you can make a 180 degree turn). I think she means that. I completely agree on your point about controls being to unresponsive on slower computers though. OK, I know about that problem, it just didn't cross my mind when reading nephilim's post. It's an annoyance too. But I think the solution should not be to reduce the size of the collision models or remove them (from the gun for example, so that gun doesn't collide with buildings at all). The solution should be better, like "flexible" hands when the gun collides with a wall, but this is probably quite difficult to implement. Some sort of "inverse kinematics" could be used.

Well my comment about the compensation was mainly targeted at BIS. I think it is in their interest that the project gets completed. Whether you think it is a good idea or not to give compensation for the team members might not be so important. As I think that the project can and should be carried on to ArmA 2 and that's where the biggest benefit can be gained from this project I think. I mean biggest benefit for BIS, not just for the user community.

General Barron, I read about the digi-tv thing going on there from my local newspaper. The Finnish journalist who wrote it (lives in USA) had the opinion that it was not handled so well here in Finland when we had the same thing. Her opinion was that it is better how you are doing it there in the USA. That the government actually gives people such coupons. When I just had to go and pay it all by myself. I could afford it, but still it sucked that I had to pay, just because a new technology was introduced. I didn't really ask for it but I am not against it either. Here, only in cases where it is difficult to get the digi-tv signal to your house, will the government step in and help with the costs. That would be in places where you can't, due to for example the shape of the terrain around your house, get a good-enough signal with normal equipment. They have promised that everyone will get it so if it is not possible by normal equipment then they will come and arrange it for you. In some places where the analog signal worked OK, the digital signal didn't. You get it "fixed" with public money and I think it is fair. The thing why a lot of people think it sucks to have to pay for it is that the change was forced on us. If we wanted to continue watching tv, we had to pay. Actually the alternative, not watching tv at all after the analog signal disappears, is a good option but not many people went for that. I bet you can find millions of people from the USA who did not know about the digi-tv at all and who did not ask for the digi-tv and do not need it, but still they need to pay the cost of the equipment if they want to keep watching tv. I see it so that the government there is willing to compensate at least a little bit for that. The television networks can be considered being part of the "infrastructure" of your country and as such the government can't just ignore it and not care if millions of people are left outside it (against their will). In Finland it is clear that the television networks are considered important infrastructure of the country so the government is not letting private companies do whatever they want with the networks. It is like this in the USA as well as far as I know. And they want to ensure that television networks are a country-wide service also like in Finland the government will help if you live in a geographically challenging place for the tv signal. I don't see much wrong with this approach. It is quite clear from your post that you do not want your government to take care of the television infrastructure of your country. Would you think differently if it was a question of phone networks? Television networks are (normally) one-way communication networks but they can as well be considered as very important part of the communications infrastructure of your country. As such, your government has the right to act if they see a need to ensure that that sub-system of the infrastructure of your country is in danger. I think you have valid arguments but I think you go too extreme with your arguments (not just this but I have read some of your earlier posts as well). The good way to go about it is somewhere in the middle I think. It is not possible to keep everyone happy, that's a fact I think we can agree on that... and one extreme is very unfair to the other extreme, while the other extreme is again very unfair to the others. What to do? Go middle-road and accept to get the relatively small whining from the two extremes. Whining is always going to happen, so there is no point trying to avoid it completely

You need to wait that BIS publishes a new version of the Linux server.

Even BIS admitted [1] they weren't happy with the quality of the graphics in Operation Flashpoint. Definitely there needs to be much better graphics in newer games, considering that they admitted in 2001 that they are not happy with the quality of the graphics in OFP [1] http://www.gamasutra.com/ Operation Flashpoint postmortem article: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011219/spanel_01.htm But I have to say I had an idea a while back that it could be interesting to see what happens when the graphics quality of ArmA is brought down to the level of Operation Flashpoint. I mean convert every texture, material and visual 3D model so that they are low quality at best (I mean about the same as in OFP). What does that do to the overall performance of Armed Assault. It could be interesting to see that. It is not achievable by just setting the graphics settings down, the files would need to be modified.

Maybe you mean animations, nephilim? What have collision models to do with handling of the character being difficult in houses? They are there, they collide, yes, but that's not why it is difficult to handle the character. The culprit for that are the animations I think. Also I think one problem might be that ArmA is single-threaded on the application level and it means if one part of the game is running slow then the whole game is running slow. I mean if you put input (keyboard, joystick etc.) reading into another thread then that should improve the responsiveness of the character control. Now it is clear that on a slower computer for example aiming is quite difficult, and it clearly improves on a faster computer. The same thing that causes the aiming difficulty on slower computers also affects how easy it is to control the character overall in the game. By putting input handling into another thread then it can handle input at an independent rate, say 120 Hz, when the rest of the game is running at different speed, for example logic+physics thread can run at 50/60 Hz and graphics thread can run at whatever speed it is possible to run it. Or input handling could be together with the logic+physics as it is closely related to logic. This is still much better than having it together with the graphics which is very slow. It will be interesting to see how well BIS manages to multi-thread ArmA 2 and how responsive it is regarding user input. I expect a major improvement over ArmA 1 in this regard.

I've no idea what could be wrong. But, I assume your operating system is a 32-bit version ("Home" tells me so). That is OK. But what about the amount of RAM? What if you take one RAM module out? Or two if it refuses to work still. A normal 32-bit system is unable to use the whole 4 GB anyway so actually you bought too much RAM for that operating system. But that's not the point actually. The point is that there might be problems in OFP in how it operates on a system with more RAM than what was usual when OFP was developed. ArmA had problems with larger amount of memory on some systems, as I recall. So it is not far-fetched to say that similar problems can be in OFP as well. And another thing is to try another version of graphics card driver, as they are known to cause problems in general. Newer isn't necessarily better. But this problem of yours sounds like it is not related to the graphics card. But we never know with this unreliable and "sophisticated" thing called PC technology. And did you check this page? http://community.bistudio.com/wiki....hooting There is some talk about checksum errors. For example "I have a computer based on the VIA chipset. Any problems with that?" http://community.bistudio.com/wiki....that.3F

Wouldn't it help to keep your team together and working if BIS offered some 'carrot' for those who complete a significant work on the CWR project? Are they offering carrots? No you don't have to tell me, I am not expecting you to reveal that. It's just a comment to BIS. I'm saying this because I think it would be a real shame if this project dies. BIS should in my opinion even be prepared to pay a little for the volunteers to keep it alive. It would be peanuts for BIS, but even a small compensation might do wonders for the volunteers' motivation.

There are many things which are better in OFP than in ArmA. There are many things which are better in ArmA than in OFP. There is no need to throw a hissy fit if someone says that there is something better in OFP compared to ArmA, and vice-versa. I think it is fine and normal to have this topic.

I guess a lot of people often forget that in a game such as in Armed Assault, it is very easy to move around. Even though I think something really stinks in the animations in Armed Assault, or in something, that makes the movement of the character feel clumsy and is one of the major points making the game feel "not done right" I guess not only for me but for a lot of other people as well. I've not analyzed the problem in depth but I am sure the problem is there: they changed something going from Operation Flashpoint to Armed Assault and the result was that controlling the character became annoying, when in Operation Flashpoint it wasn't that. Playing Operation Flashpoint I never had the feeling that there is something wrong with controlling the character, but with Armed Assault that feeling is constantly there. But then again we need to remember it still is easy and fast to do things in the game. Such as reloading a rifle is a very fast thing to do in Armed Assault, in real life you are most often definitely not able to do it so smoothly and quickly and consistently as in the game. Or entering and getting out of a cabin of a vehicle. I know something about this as I am a military truck driver. Having the assault rifle with me all the time, as instructed by my superiors, was a major pain, as I had to take it with me every time I stepped out of the cabin of the truck, even if I walked outside 2 meters and then went back inside the cabin. It's good training in case war happens and I take part in it, but this point shows very well how in the game it is very very easy to do things like get out of a vehicle while in real life you will get annoyed easily of such things as keeping a rifle with you when stepping out of the car for half a minute. In contrast things like this is very easy in the game and no annoyance with it at all. These things often get forgotten when we critisize the games, and I have done it as well. I honestly believe that if the controlling of the character was more like it was in Operation Flashpoint, then Armed Assault would be more fun. But would it be more "realistic" then? I would say that if we consider the time it takes to do things in real life, no. Doing things in real life is no-where near as easy and fast to do like in Armed Assault. I think the annoying feeling with the character controlling in Armed Assault is a separate issue, it can very well be more realistic than in Operation Flashpoint if we consider the time it takes to do things, but nevertheless they made it so that it is annoying. I will give BIS the benefit of the doubt and say they didn't do it annoying intentionally, it's just a consequence of using certain ways to do things in the code or in the artist side.

I wouldn't expect these sort of changes to be done to this game.

I think there are improvements in the artificial intelligence in Armed Assault when comparing to Operation Flashpoint. For example, when I started to play the Armed Assault Demo, I already felt that the artificial intelligence enemy was flanking me more intelligently and I got surprised more on average than when playing Operation Flashpoint. This is just a feeling and not "measured". But the initial feeling about the artificial intelligence was that it has been improved. So I don't quite get it when people say that it is worse or that there is no difference. Because to me there was a difference right when I started to play the demo. One thing people probably should pay more attention to is the fact that if you play as the leader of a team which consists of you and artificial intelligence soldiers, you really need to command your team-mates pretty much all the time to make your team effective. When you are a member of a team which has an artificial intelligence leader, you must notice that the team leader is saying a lot of commands. Now, when you take the leadership, you are required to do the same if you want the team to be as effective as when under the leadership of the artificial intelligence. If you fail to command your team as much as the artificial intelligence leader does, then don't be surprised if you feel that you have dumb team-mates and that the artificial intelligence in Armed Assault is overall dumb. This is an area in which Bohemia Interactive should do more research and work to improve it. It is easily seen that it is not a small task at all. How to make the artificial intelligence soldiers, when under your command, be smart, but not break your command at the same time? Because real soldiers are often able to make intelligent decisions independently of their team leader, while in games like Operation Flashpoint or Armed Assault this rarely is true. Thus the need for you to "micro manage" the artificial intelligence soldiers who are under your command. In Armed Assault your team which consists of you as the team leader and of artificial intelligence soldiers, can be very effective but it requires a lot of time in a mission to manage them effectively. As an example a situation in which you are approaching enemy positions, possibly a town or a camp. You need to carefully observe the situation, locate the enemy, keep your soldiers from firing their weapons, make sure they are positioned safely, then bring them close-enough to the enemy and position them into good firing positions, assign them targets, wait that they all report "ready to fire", and then you can start firing at the enemy. If you go through all the time and effort to do all that, then your team can be unbeatable against artificial intelligence enemy groups (although I have to say you need open ground for this to work well). The problem with this careful approach is that it is slow, and I guess not many players are willing to spend all that time managing their soldiers. This is an area where improvements can clearly be made, but as I said, how to do it so that your artificial intelligence team-mates who are under your command, appear to be smart but still under your command? It is a difficult task if you think about it, how would you as a game developer do it. Regarding which game is better for me, Operation Flashpoint or Armed Assault, I will not make a final comment on that yet. The initial impression of Operation Flashpoint was more positive. There were not any bugs that I noticed when playing through its official campaigns and missions (I really started playing OFP in Spring 2002 if I recall correctly, so it was a bit patched already by that point). The Cold War Crisis campaign is by far the best campaign I have ever played on these two games. And the textures were all there, nothing was missing as far as I know. In Armed Assault many computers, even much faster computers than the one I have, seem to struggle in keeping the resources, such as textures, ready for use. But I can't make a judgement on this as my computer has not been upgraded to fulfill the requirements set by Bohemia Interactive.

OK Blake, that makes sense. Thank You for the reply.

Thankfully we can continue our lives even if there are no further patches published for ArmA. I wouldn't worry about it I'm happy that ArmA even runs somewhat-OK on my below-minimum-requirements-computer. This might affect my opinion about the patch. In fact I have the opinion that ArmA should not have gotten as much patching as it has. I hope ArmA II is not so raw a product when published. Let's say it could get one or two 100 MB patches, but like my 505 games DVD ArmA needs 3 patches in ZIP files which are together 929 MB? Are you kidding me? Stop it. I mean... that's like one gigabyte of patching, ZIPped. For one game. At least try to halve the amount of patching needed for ArmA II, that would be a major improvement. Going from 929 MB of patches to ~464 MB of patches is a good achievement, let's hope for the best. BIS go for it! Â

Note: I still don't have Queen's Gambit but I think that likely has nothing to do with these errors. My arma.RPT file contains stuff like this after playing with some FDF Mod units in the editor and in Sahrani: It's not the full file, I just copy&pasted what can be relevant. I only started ArmA with the FDF Mod, no other un-official addons were used. I copied the CfgIdentities from the description.ext of the FDF Mod campaign into my own mission's description.ext and used some of those identities in the mission. Running that mission results in the error messages. Are there sound files in wrong folders in the FDF_voice.pbo? For example at.wss is in FDF_voice\aapo\clockfacing and for the other voice persons it is in the same folder. But ArmA tries to read it one step down in the directory tree like the error messages are saying. The beep.wss is directly in FDF_voice but according to the error message ArmA tries to find it from the voice person's subfolder. Now that I am writing this message, I realized I am not sure if there were any sounds file played when those were requested or did the game just not play any file when it couldn't find it according to the arma.RPT. I'm guessing it might have used a default sound but I don't know. I don't know what is up with the "File read error: FDFmod\addons\fdf_men.pbo,3e6" message. Maybe just a temporary system overload caused this. I'll keep an eye on it if it comes again, and I'll check if the file is still original (I did not modify it). There are also quite many "Error: Failed to create surface texture" messages in there but I think those are not FDF Mod related. ArmA version 1.14.5256. Computer is AMD Sempron 2600+ (1.8 GHz) , 2 GB RAM and nvidia 6600 GT with 128 MB VRAM, on 8x AGP. WinXP 32-bit.

You could also go the hard way and unpbo the campaign, then change any QG units in teh mission.sqm´s to vanilla ArmA or User-Addons. For Podaga island a certain "QG Fix" might work like it did for Opteryx Sakakah island, replacing QG .p3d´s with dummy objects, but im not sure if the logmill is included. I was aware that I could hack it to remove the Queen's Gambit requirement, but there is no need to do that. Just to make sure it is clear, my earlier post was not negative about the requirement of Queen's Gambit. I am happy to buy it, I just did not have a reason to buy it until now. I have had a really long break without having even ArmA installed on my computer. I was waiting for the FDF Mod or for a better computer, depends which one arrives first... and I wasn't really in a rush to get FDF Mod (or the computer actually), I could wait for months more and still be happy when it comes.

*claps hands* Yes! But I think it doesn't matter anymore for this game. Surely they aren't going to change it at the point of development they are in now with ArmA2. But I hope they could have the courage in the future to try some other country than the USA in a military game such as ArmA/ArmA2. One option would be to have the USA normally in the game like they are now. And then have another campaign with a completely different setting, which would not have USA at all. They could target the advertizing of the game. In USA the USA campaign would be emphasized. Let's say the other campaign is Germany against something. So in Germany they could advertize the German campaign and leave the USA campaign for much less attention. People would be told it is there but it would not be the main selling point for Germans. And vice versa for the Americans regarding their version. Yes it would be more work to create two about as big campaigns and all artwork needed. But it is something BIS could take into consideration. They have to be aware of the fact that there are a lot of people in the World who are bored of seeing the USA in almost every wargame and always as the good guys.