Bunks

Thanks Cel, I was planning on giving it a try now with some of the supposed fixes. I was wondering if Rg & dyslexic's old mod for that still was necessary or even worked? ---------- Post added at 09:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:51 PM ---------- I find this post humorous coming from someone telling me what a sim should be. I was probably scripting missions before you ever heard of a sim. And FYI, I walked away from the game because the community behaved like a petulant child when someone pointed out the obvious. I see some things never change.

Wow, three years ago this game had sluggish UI problems, and I come back to give AO a try and find out the same old nonsense is still going on. Get over yourselves guys, the game was cluncky, is clunky, and will always be clunky in CQB until its fixed. Rg made a mod to tweek it, but people like myself walked away before giving it a try because of the same old "go play COD" crowd. BIS lost my money and many more like me for that same behavior over the last few years, yet once again the mods still defend it.

What's that...crickets I hear? BIS and especially you admins who let the fanbois roam free attacking everyone seeking some hope or help with all the BS this game had. When people were telling you how bad this game was, all they wanted was some confirmation that it would be addressed, and all they got was called names and attacked while admins did nothing but support those attacks. Just came back one last time to see if anything was done but of course not, silly me. BIS...kiss my ass! you killed a great thing.

Blaming ArmA exclusively for the "loss" of community memebers is a very naieve point of view. The "community" was in decline long before ArmA was released, which is the natural way of things. To expect EVERYBODY who bought OFP to buy ArmA is a logical fallacy. Sorry Bravo but the decline in the community didnt mean us old OFP vets werent waiting in the wings cause we were. But when Arma was released, it was those very same vets that walked away from the game en masse. Do you need to have all the threads by me and many others telling the fanbois that the game "as is" will kill the community. Cause it did. My entire group fractured and walked away because of this game, RG bless his heart is the only one who is sticking with it. All old OFP players btw. Codemasters IMO cant do any more harm than what BIS has already done.

Really, just a graphic change? I must have missed that review and got the wrong cover on my 3 games which say something totally different. Not to mention the tons of interviews BIS did claiming so many new features. No wonder why I felt so cheated. Well, far as im concerned, which ever game comes first gets my money. If they come out the same time, Ill try Codemasters first, since BIS has already screwed me over once with this piece of trash. Got to be fair and give Codemasters a chance to do the same. Im an "equal opportunity to be screwed over customer" gamer by nature.

Bring on the second version, anyone's! At this point BI or Codemasters...I don't care. Arma is such a POS that any new news at least brings a sliver of hope.

Let me add to some previous things that I just found shocking with the release of this game. In OFP smoke never effected the AI and it was frustrating. The map click delay was also another whacky thing that was fixed with a basic script by a mission maker. Now AI is a difficult task to get right, but lets be real here. Modders fixed the smoke issue back in OFP, yet BIS released this game with the same damn problem. (already complained about the AI in vegitation) But now after making (and scrapping) 7 MP missions in a row where AI behavior borders on the absurd, Im going back into retirement from this game till the modders, or very unlikely, BIS fix some really silly things with the AI and editor. Here's a clue BIS, go back and beg the old WGL, FDF,BAS and other modders to fix your game for you then resell the game. Or just release the tools now. But the more Im playing this game, the more it gets on my nerves. So its time to take a vacation from it till something changes. ++just fyi BIS, the reason this game bugs me (sorry the pun) is not the bugs. After many weeks of tweaks on my end (faster computer, custom keybinds, trakIR) the UI is just so non intuitive and sloppy it makes playing it a chore. Fix your keybinds, fix the AI, and get rid of the goofy animation cycles. Out!~

This is the very true statement. Do not follow logic with Arma it doesn't apply. We tested this game with various cards on the same computer and found that each card had its own unique settings (sweet spots) based on resolutions and on detail. +just to add, we also tested these on an AMD board and an Intel board and found these (sweet spots) were different on each setup. Which is why I never bothered posting the findings of our tests to avoid adding more to the confusion.

Im totally on the same page here with you espectro. Which IS why I saw this as a bait and switch (which would be illegal) When Arma (without an expansion) has all the features they said it would have in pre release, then all is well. If they need finacial and community support, then releasing the tools before or maybe even with the expansion would be a sign of good faith. But it would be very silly of BIS (business wise) to release tools before an expansion for obvious reasons. Which is why my knee-jerk reaction to this news was skeptical. So here's my pledge, I bought not one but three copies of Arma and gave one to someone who wasnt going to play the game and now does. If what is said is true and tools are released before or with this expansion, I promise to not buy only 1 but 3 copies of this expansion just to give to others who wouldnt. How's that for support by a bitchy whiner? You want to be loyal to BIS, great. But do so where it counts cause brown noses don't keep BIS in business.

Tests were done on Win XP home and Win XP Professional. Vista was too early in develepment at that time and the game was V1.04 or 1.05 if memory serves. XP pro ran some test faster than home. Arma Vidz- I guess you just didnt read my post. Like I said, I agree that the system is screwy, the testing showed that. Why did the 7950 get better frame rates at one higher resolution than most lower ones??? Questions like that came up all thru the testing. For example, my old x850xt ran the game better at 1440 resolution with shader details on low than any other setting or resolution. We knew this stuff going in. The reason why I am even bothering telling you this is because if you just accpet your belief that it takes a super rig to play this game, then you will never find the solution. Like I told you before, its not just the chipset, its the bells and whistles that your board has that only increases the chance of issues. Arma did better with simpler and older systems overall. Till they optimize these things, that just remains to be a fact. Like KDog35, he seems to want to believe it takes a $2000 rig to play the game. Well, who am I to change his beliefs but it just isnt true. There are still people with great systems having problems just like he is. So spending cash wont fix the problem for sure. Im just correcting what he said for its lack of validity, not defending the game. Thats in the best interest of the consumer, not BIS. Kdog- you want to bring your  PC to FLorida, I will be glad to help you. Other than that, the game depends on too many systems to identify from here. Do what I did with my older rig. Which was find the weakest part, replace or modify those parts, then test the results. I eneded up getting that rig from an average 21 FPS to up to 32 FPS in the same test by removing a sound car, adding a new HD, OC the CPU 8%, and by finding the best combonation of settings the card seemed to like. Which ended up being 1440 resolution. Why? who the hell knows. We know the game is not optimized, but it may not be for that $2000 rig you think will fix the problem either.

Delaying the process of completion is usually the consequence of not staying on task. That's logical in my world. But if you dont see the logic, oh well , we agree to disagree. as for not supporting modders: Is Sdoc another account of yours?

BIS did support the community, but one can say that the modding community supported BIS as well. Its not hard to say without them OFP would have died off a long time ago. So does that mean this is now a one way street? Some of us do not like the game as is and purchased the game solely on the promises of modders making it better. Resistance did do wonders for OFP, but it also cost more money to do so. No one complained and went along for the ride, but we didnt have an already established modding community then like we do now. So to do things the same way means BIS is putting that group on the backburner. Many of us are still here because we trust BIS, but trust is a two way venture. Your loyality to BIS is noted, but your lack of concern for the modders is noticed as well. So who is really bitching here is just a matter of who's intrest you have.

Did I say there would be no patch in the meantime? No Did I say the tools wont be released before this?No Am I assuming anything? NO DId I say they werent supporting the game? No I didnt What I did say is good faith. As in keeping one's promise. When the game has everything they original promised and in good working order, then have at it. But to put people on new projects when the game is still way under its promises, then something doesnt smell right in Denmark. So if they patch this up to say 1.14 or 1.21 or whatever version to fix the numerous bugs it should have never had in the first place, is that not the time to think about newer versions. But if this is already in the works then where are the tools? Do they now get put back another 6 months for this? Do I have to buy another version of the game just to have the things they promised in the original version? Just like Resitance, if I wanted my OFP game to get patched above 1.46 then I had to buy a new game to do so. If the product is delayed or unfinished before this is released, then no matter how you cut it, that's called bait and switch. And like Mad dog said, alot of work is going into this. Is it not plausible that the man hours for this would not effect the outcome of what I already paid for? And is it not reasonable that the tools would have to be delayed in order to make an expansion more marketable by having no competition? Now who's doing assuming? But the main theme is called good faith. The modders and paying community have proven theirs, but this (if it is true) is not a good step toward reciprocation.

Since we are talking about what is disapointing with the game this does stay on topic I guess. But to answer the 1st part of this. You would think those cards should run the game fine, but not if the GPU was 3rd in the chain on performance. As for the super-perfomance part, here's where I went the other way when building for Arma. I went with the simplest setup possible but with good and fast parts but not the always the top end. Here's why: We tested 6 cards in the same computer and found at the same settings the 7800gt and the 7900gs did just as good as the 8800gts and the X1900xt. When a few settings were increased then the numbers favored the 8800 and the 7900gs. The 7950 had issues at different resolutions and details but thats another story but the cards were having little impact on overall perfomance outcomes. So we went to memory and HD setups. Here we saw other variations in raw perfomance. Even OS changes made differences for some reason. SO yes the game is screwy. The game is very fickle, how well your bandwidth is between your NB and SB is just as much a factor as your processor speed and GPU. All of these are links in a chain. One is off or not performing as it should, and the whole thing falls apart like a house of cards. My advice, dont look for the newest and fastest because the game wasnt designed with those things in mind. Ie SLI, dual core, Raid HD...ect. These will work with many other games, but for some reason are only more things that can screw up the whole systems perfomance if everything isnt working perfect. I went with a simple Mobo (650iUltra) and a solid chip (e6420), tight timing memory which I underclocked (gskill 4435-1T) and a basic (7900gs) with a raptor HD for my Arma game alone. Very cheap setup...I could have easily spent more. But the people I trusted told me what will and wont work so I took their advice, and they were right. I now play better than some super rigs with this low end system. So simple answer, you bet, this game is screwed up in the optimization area. But it is getting better (for some at least). on a side note- on one of the Overclocking forums I suggested that instead of running stress test software like Orthos to prove stability rates for CPU bragging rights, they use Arma instead because this game will find instability in a system faster than any of those stress testing programs.

The AGP or PCI-e is not a perfomance based one (although it is clear the PCI-e does have benefits in Bandwidth which is more of a factor in Arma than anyone seems to think) but the fact that older technology is now more expensive and shorter lived. My other PC has an x850 AGP and ran fine once I OC the processor and added a new HD to it. Prior to that, OC the video card did nothing for performance because it wasnt the weakest link in the system. Arma is CPU and Bandwidth intensive with GPU being more of a factor of adding detail and viewdistance WITHOUT LOSING FRAME RATES. Bandwidth (meaning memory, NB,SB, and HD interface) is a serious limiting factor in gameplay. AGP systems are already limited in this area, so if your system plays well its because everything is probably well balanced and you get the most out of it. Adding a high end AGP card may well be like putting an 8 cylinder engine in a golf cart. Ive done testing with multiple cards in the same system and even payed to have it tested by a tech site. So this isnt my opinion but one provided by hard data and my own cold cash.

Well sorry for your limits Vilas, but he did say $$$$ so he was using US currency as an example. I can, if I wanted to, build a rig that would play Arma just fine for under $500 US. Its not about getting the best parts, it just takes doing your homework before buying/building a system. Arma has many faults. However, performance is not based on how much you spend but on how well you balance your system and what you put on it. In a few months the Penryn/Wolfdale chips will be out and all the talk of poor performance will be old news when current tech becomes cheap. So hang in there.

Its AGP and it wont help you much. Arma is a funny game in how it performs. It will only run as good as is lowest part in the chain (so to speak). If you stick a better card in a crappy Mobo with slow memory and HD, all you will get is a few extra bumps in details and resolution but still at around the same frame rates you get now. Buying an AGP card now is like buying a snowball in the winter, your paying top dollar for something that is worthless. Sorry, but they are overpriced right now, and you could put that money away and save up till you can get a decent Pci-e system for only two or three hundred bucks more than the card itself in just a few months. For example, I just saw 2gigs of Corsair ram for $64, and a 1950pro(pcie) for $116, and a Sata3 HD for $50. All of this would cost less than that card alone. Get yourself a low end Mobo with a 650 or 965 chipset and the new e2160 C2D for less than $90 each and all you will need is a decent PSU. So for basically another $200 more than an overpriced AGP card, you would see a much greater impact in your gaming experience and you wont be at a dead end in 6 months with those parts like you are now. Sorry to be so brutal, but I have a hard time not yelling STOP when I see someone heading for a cliff.

Yep, he sure did hit it. It is getting tiresome, really. ditto! release the tools and we will be glad to support BIS with more copies purchased thru more people playing it. For crying out loud, I ended up with a crap load of OFP and resitance CD's. I didnt mind supporting them because they were doing something unique, but this is just nonsense releasing an expansion before the game itself is even working as good as OFP does with mods. You want support, try asking the community straight up and show good faith by releasing the tools and then beg for cash from us afterwards. You may be surprised. Heck, I would throw $50 bucks at BIS on a promise to fix the obvious stuff with continuing patches, but to do it this way makes me feel BIS is trying to pull a bait and switch on us.

Dude, its not the game its your system. Something is not working as it should. I have similar specs and run at 1600 x 1200 res and medium setting at 2500-3500 view distance and rarely go below 60 frames. And btw, I spent less than $700 on this rig a few weeks ago. 650iUltra Mobo    $94 e6420 Proc       $180 7900gs         $139 2gig Gskill 800 ram $99 600w PSU       $94 artic cooler      $34 Sata HD        $53 Total: Arma Goodness: Priceless! As for Arma, well rather than list everything that has already been mentioned. My biggest issues are still: 1)Animations (slugish responses maks long duration play very taxing on the senses) Unlike OFP where 12 hours straight would leave you wanting more, Arma after 3 hours makes me feel like I need a vacation from gaming. 2)Keybinds-worse key setup in a game ever seen . So many keys are redundant and not needed or could be combined into one function while others need to be more specific. ie. The lock or zoom key...omg what were you thinking??? 3)Lack of intense SUSTAINED firefights Mostly cause AI just drop and kill you with one shot when instead of ducking for cover like most AI in FPS games out today. VC2, farcry, even much older games had the illusion of an intelligent AI at times. OR at least make a dispersion effect like WGL had going. I dont understand how a company in 2007 cant best a group of modders that were made over 3 years ago. 4)AI in wooded areas and grass If this isnt corrected then to me the game has very little future when we get bored of fighting in desert terrain over and over again. I dont even bother playing or writing missions in dense vegitation areas unless its in aircraft or vehicles. Its pretty unrealistic (and sad) when your team chooses rather to cross an open field with no cover, just to avoid a wooded area due to the tactical disadvantage humans have against AI in them.

more ram did little difference but a second HD (raptor)with only Arma on it and pagefile to the other drive ,with the OS, kept things a bit smoother in game. Ive got a 7900gs with a C2D @2.9ghz and run the game at 1600 X 1200 resolution all settings low/normal. The amazing part is I can run the game at 3000-5000 viewdistance and still keep frames above 60 in Evolution. I think the HD has helped with map loading so VD doesnt hit me at all.

This was great, I just happened to be recording FPS counts to tweak my system this morning and then I saw the patch. So I still had all my data from my 1.06 version. After I patched I went back in and did the same tests and found a major increase in missions not as script intensive. Overall, I had recorded an avg frame rate of 53.7 in a test setup for 60 seconds in 1.06 with a little test mission I have made, the same test resulted in a final tally of 59.6 after the patch! One other note, I actually had moments where my frame rate hit 122. Before that I never broke 86 on this test Ive been using for over a month now. WOW BIS...great Job!

40 puma!? wow and I thought 18 was bad EndersLoop- I dont want to send you on a witch hunt, but I did have game pauses in the past. I did find my logitech mouse was causing it in the editor but the ones in game were sound driver issues. and I too had the sound card you have. If you can, try uninstalling the drivers and then redoing them (and dont forget to put openAL back in the mix) but if it were me, id pull the sound card and try on board sound just to remove all doubt. But to me it sounds like you are not loading texture and audio data up whenever new objects, sounds or d data need to load up. Your system pauses momentarily to load these from your hard drive into RAM (often needing to remove some other information to fit it into RAM, and this info is written back into your pagefile) So try sound first, pagefile fix (can be found in the tip,tweaks, and tricks thread) next, then maybe run a test on your memory if all else fails. You can use memtest86 if all other fixes find no help. Sorry to be so vague but its hard to tell what could be happening.

Puma, the difference between the two cards will be insignificant. The best choice for you is based on what Mobo chipset you have and what details you like in game. For example, I hate how post processing and shading look in the game so I will set it to low no matter what rig I have. Secondly, I went with a Nvidia 7900gs because the chipset on my Mobo is nvidia 650i which seems to get better perfomance using Nvidia cards. Do your homework, look for what it is you like settings wise and then decide. But I have tested and have others tested this game with various cards on the same rig and found GPU has little outcome on FPS but does effect how you want the settings without losing FPS. BTW, I avg 50-70fps on 1600 resolution with a 7900gs OC (evga) but its not the card that does the hard work.

The rumors about this game perfomance wise has been unreal. Ive been doing test after test with different machines and GPU's with alternating hard drive setups. I even bought the game and sent it to a web site PC tech guru to test it for me before I built a rig to play the game. After all the testing and info was in, this is what I discovered. The priority in machines is not CPU,GPU, then HD like most people claim. The real priority is CPU, MoBo Bandwidth(NB SB Mem), then finally the GPU and HD readwrite (especially for fast traveling or new position changes). CPU becomes critical especially under script intesive missions and GPU becomes more of a factor in larger made missions. The video cards have a base frame rate, some a bit higher than others but not by all that much. The amount of FPS spikes from low to high is also based on the GPU's speed and memory amount but the game stability is not really that GPU intensive. Once the CPU and Bandwidth of the main components have established the baseline, the vidoe cards effect from this point on is not about increasing FPS, but about how much more detail and resolution can be added without losing frame rate to the situation. The difference between an 8800 and a 7800 was not FPS but detail and Viewdistance WITHOUT frame loss. Ive tested this extensively and I even put my money where my mouth was on the matter. Now I am in gaming heaven, I can play the game at (depending on mission type) 1600 resolution with low detail levels or at 1280 res with nice details. I can play Evolution at 45-65 frames constant with only a few moments of drop to the 30's at up to 2000 VD. I made sure I had tight memory timings(gskill 800 mem 4-4-3-5 (1t), a decent video card (Evga7900gsOC), a Mobo that had good simple components with a fast chipset (evga 650Ultra), and two(yes 2) Hard drives, one clean one for the game(and only for the game) and another for virtual memory to be used. (OS on 160gb Sata 3 and Arma on a 74gb Raptor) amd last but not least was XP professional (must have to set affinity use so Arma can be isolated to one core alone) with a slightly overclocked (very important to get higher FSB and cpu speed without making mem unstable)6420 @ 2.6ghz. My cost (except for the raptor and xp pro) for this arma rig? $770 US So the game can be played without breaking the bank, there are better setups out there and even worse that play as good or better than mine. But dont bet on the wrong dog here, look for system function and balance before spending cash on high end stuff that wont help much.

The whole group trigger is backwards from OFP so new ppl will get confused on the dead group thing without using code. Right now if you select whole group and not present, it triggers when 1 member of the group dies. If you use the "any member" not present, it wont trigger till they all are dead. Someone got their wires crossed on that one