Cannon Fodder

Maybe they're placeholders for the fully destructible units we were promised? I should imagine that getting a moderately playable game in the first instance, to test the fully dynamic nature of the conflict (supposedly) would be first priority. I hope. EDIT - Actually, I shouldn't say promised. 'Looking forward to' is perhaps more accurate. Still, this is all based on information officially released via previews and interviews so any false hopes should have an equal distribution of blame should they prove unrealised.

I think you'll find this thread filling up quite rapidly once the first glut of mods emerge from the release of the tools.

I honestly cannot see how this thread could ever possibly result in anything other than being locked at some point, particularly with the suggestion that BIS might be 'desperate' in the title.

Haha, word on the street. Love it. ArmA2 certainly looks quite enticing - different atmosphere, perhaps a proper story this time, seems like there's greater emphasis on towns from the screens I've seen. Maybe they're trying to recapture the spirit of OFP with the post soviet country? Who knows. It's another thing that's long, long away in the pipeline to look forward to... I don't expect the look of the game to change THAT dramatically, given the changes that ArmA went through. I think ArmA might stand to be a 'proof of concept' for the engine, whereas ArmA2 is the more fully rounded 'game' we were all waiting for. With the release of the tools today, things are looking quite good in terms of ArmA modification. Hopefully we'll get lots of extravagant moddery to tide us over in the long wait for the sequel.

It's a tough one to call - if it was always simply a matter of who has the odds in their favour, where would the feeling of accomplishment lie? I think ArmA, like OFP before it, always throws the balance in the enemy's favour in order to introduce the element of having to try EXTRA hard, to come up with that particularly brilliant strategy, to succeed. In theory. In practice, both games' AI are tremendously randomised and even the most simple of encounters can go either way. It largely revolves around the minimisation of risk and while the games adhere to a certain degree of realistic military doctrine, a lot of it is more to do with having an understanding of how 'the game' works and how to exploit every advantage available to you. In OFP, you actually felt as though your lack of force multipliers was due to your isolation as NATO didn't wish to get overtly involved - that many of your attacks against seemingly insurmountable odds were a symptom of being under equipped and under staffed. Similarly, Resistance had the same feeling in that the excuse for your frequently daring raids was the lack of equipment and striking targets of opportunity characteristic of guerilla warfare. ArmA, by contrast, shouldn't have any of these constraints. The opening few missions where you are getting pounded without support are somewhat believable, but as soon as the Marines arrive and yet you still don't have access to air support or even much armour... It's crazy. Take 'Armoured Fist' (shamefully included as both a single mission and a campaign mission without difference) - 3 tanks take on 2 heavily defended bases, and attack a multitude of enemy armour without air or infantry support. You have access to repair trucks but it feels like a cheap solution to a designed-in problem. It's possible but only because of the fact that you can 'cheat' with your support units and keep yourself and the rest of the column 'topped up'. What happened to attacking in force and numbers and SIMPLY keeping yourself and the team arrive? As though that wasn't a challenge enough! Or the mission where you support the troops at Tardag with your Cobra, and end up taking on 12+ enemy armour on your lonesome (ALL of whome are capable of shooting you down) when your other Cobra (who would probably just get shot down anyway) escorts two empty Blackhawks back to base! It's insane. Where's the logic in that? You end up just taking your time, popping out from radar cover, letting a hellfire off, popping back behind cover and repeating, all the while your comrades on the ground get slaughtered. Any attempt to aggressively attack and you get shot down, and because the choppers appear to be made out of foil, one shot to your tail rotor will send you down in a smoking heap, so you have to keep a distance... What about that bit at the start of the last mission with the missle firing BRDM? You disembark from the Stryker, start moving up, it gets blown up, half the squad dies in the explosion... So you try again, move up with the AT soldiers into the village, using it as cover, all the while the rest of the squad (and Stryker) stays back, you take out the BRDM and advance but the Stryker gets knocked out by the enemy MG nests! Where is the support? Where's the ability to advance and attack without having to skulk around like frightened school kids? You're supposed to have nearly the entire island under control by that point and STILL you get a huge amount of trouble from a couple of MG nests and a BRDM. Give me strength! Where's the excuse this time? THEN the RACs attack in perhaps the most poorly explained twist of all time. The death camps? The possibility of being used by the Kingdom? The question of who the US should supoprt? Misplaced trust etc? All noble ideas and very relavent to present issues but the reason for the RACs attack is just so poorly laid out you're left scratching your head. They blame you for the genocide? That they perhaps didn't want you discovering the POWs in the North? Who knows! It's never elaborated upon and just ignored in the greater scheme of things. An ally's attack of your unit is a BIG thing - here it just seemed like a distraction. PLUS it all feels so distressingly small time. A lot of the engagements in OFP felt like they were part of something larger. By the time I advanced into Corazol as part of Counterattack, it was just myself and the squad - no other support units. Just one squad to clear (one of) the biggest town in Sahrani, teeming with enemy. Utterly ridiculous. Where was the tense, street to street fighting that these maps are surely designed for? Where was the relieving of pinned down support units on street corners and the crack of sniper fire? Such a missed opportunity! Go and download the Perpetua campaign and see how it SHOULD be done.

This campaign is absolutely EXCELLENT. This is how the original campaign that shipped with the game SHOULD have been. Bardosy, you have achieved something spectacular with this and I take my hat off to you - all your hard work has paid off in a fantastic experience. I urge anyone on the fence to download this campaign and at least try it! Bardosy, you have a great appreciation for scene setting and atmosphere. The voice acting was largely good and the dialogue, although grammatically crippled, was always appropriate and succeeded in making me laugh more than once. There's a sort of a feeling of FUBAR about the whole situation and the humour that's displayed seems appropriate within that context. The operations you go on remind me very much of the special forces action of the SAS in the second world war - very much in keeping with the atmosphere of a small nation under attack and the only advantage they have is this small, highly trained group of mountain soldiers. The way you gave the unit an identity (and even an anthem!) was a stroke of genius. I felt genuinely compelled to save my men, and really became one of the RACs. In terms of the briefings, the situation reports etc, you could not have done a better job. The task was always clearly signposted and straightforward, and there was additional detail available to those who wanted to find out more (such as the situation on the frontline), but separated from the mission plan itself so that people didn't have to wade through text to find out what they had to do. Great work. The missions themselves were largely brilliant as well, and very well constructed. I do have a few complaints (as well as praises), however, and as such I warn anyone who hasn't played the campaign to stop reading here because there are spoilers. ----SPOILERS---- In the second mission, Ghosts, where you assault the convoy, combined with multiple AT soldiers and the arty command, you can make light work of the enemy with zero casualties. So far a great mission. The assault on Ixel is relatively manageable, too. What I particularly disliked, however, was the assault on the smaller village, the enemy HQ. The enemy placement is just FIENDISH. There's no way, through even the most strategic placement of your men, that you could even possibly hope to get your AI anywhere NEAR that hornet's nest without taking heavy casualties. You reduce the player to the 'one man army' feeling by making him take out lots of very tightly dug in enemy placements without force multipliers to allow him to overcome them (like arty support) or armour. This section is simply far too hard to complete as a unit and requires too much of a solo effort and it feels like a waste of the team. That said, once I had taken out some of the more dangerous defences, the team was able to advance and we mopped up comfortably, but having the player have to do most of the work to even get into a position where an assault is viable really slows the pace down and feels frustrating. The defence of Masbete was incredibly fraught and brilliantly executed. I took the majority of the enemy out while hiding under a 4x4 parked inside the barn, while my team (who positioned themselves very intelligently) hid behind the barn itself and the ruined building behind it, laying down lots of cover fire. Very, very tense and when the arty arrives there is a huge feeling of release! The second defence, of the village, is particularly difficult in the sense that unless you move your men over to the ridge overlooking the village, you have less than a couple of seconds to get off a shot. This SHOULD work in your favour oweing to how ArmA always favours the defender, but even so they are not always THAT reliable and as such you can lose your men from grenades etc... It's a difficult one to get right. You really made me think hard about where I placed my men and the best strategy and the opportunity to do that was very much appreicated. Carpriccio, for me, was something of a wasted opportunity. For starters, I think it would be HUGELY atmospheric to have the player start the mission on the boat, approaching the shoreline. I was really looking forward to the prospect of arriving, and to start on the beach was a little bit of a let down. Plus, you make the mission INCREDIBLY difficult by having each and EVERY watch tower manned with an enemy soldier, as well as patrols (WITH nightvision!) and static soldiers dotted around. I don't like the static soldiers so much as with patrols you can watch their movements and plan how to get past without alerting them - with the static guards, combined with those in the watchtower - you had no opporunity of getting around them without killing them. Similarly, I found there was no way of getting inside the main compound without killing, at the very least, one person. I myself had to kill upwards of 10 people just to get close enough, and that was playing on recruit, prone all the way, and keeping to the bushes. Very, very hard. Perhaps it would be worth placing more men INSIDE the base as opposed to around it, so the player has more of an opportunity to just sneak up using pure stealth? Dead End is perhaps the best user made campaign mission I have ever played. It feels very much like the 'Ambush' mission from the OFP demo in that things go FUBAR and you have to pull out quickly. When the enemy arrived, I pulled my men back to the extraction as fast as possible and my last man had a BMP snapping at his heels all the way. So tense and getting inside the chopper was a godsend. One problem though - the chopper turns its engine off when it lands to pickup. I would prefer it to have kept its engine running, if at all possible - would make it more tense. The mountain mission was, again, brilliant and the use of the arty to soften up positions was very much appreciated (and what I really would have liked on Ghosts). One thing, though. It was impossible to destroy one of the arty guns (with a satchel) without killing one of the other squad's members (the one closest to the base's opening). Perhaps it is worth having a look at where the friendly squads place themselves? The final mission had something of an expected twist but was, again, excellent. Bardosy, I really must applaud your choice of locations and the conditions within which missions are attempted. Starting at the top of the hill, looking down at the village with the enemy moving around and the fires burning was a great touch. As I ran through the trees with the squad, the approach to the objective was particularly fun and really set up the notion that this was an stealthy op. Brilliant! I also like your suggestion for formation etc. in the notes. A nice touch for perhaps more inexperienced players. ----SPOILERS END---- So, what can I say? This campaign was brilliant and I can only congratulate you on it's production. I have a few minor complaints but apart from that it was an absolute joy to play though and I can't wait to see what you come up with next!

ArmA creates so many little microcosms, so many tiny moments of gaming bliss that you can quite easily forget when trying to define the game in terms of something greater. For all the annoying bugs, immersion breaking nonsense and graphical difficulty (getting the game running smoothly and to an acceptable visual standard on the rig stated in my sig was a momentous task) there is a memorable event to equal it. From getting picked up on deserted beach by a team mate in his LB after holding on to a 'lucky gun' in Evolution (that had racked up 30+ kills) rather than respawning, to silently running through the night towards Pita as the RACs commandos in the Perpetua campaign, to dropping in low down a valley in my Cobra to stay out of a Shilka's radar range, to emerging over the horizon to relieve dug in troops getting overwhelmed... There are so many excellent moments. Getting dropped on a roof via LB insertion, landing vertically in a Harrier, the first time I had a proper running battle in the woods... The time myself and 3 (AI) RACs commandos took out 30+ enemy AI by firing and moving, setting up an ambush, retreating, then setting up again, taking cover behind (and underneath) our 4WD, it catching fire, frantic mag changes by the light from the flames... Going hull-down in an Abrams while pounding an enemy encampment, headshotting a running SLA with a Barret at 1000m, hearing both miniguns buzzing while piloting a Blackhawk, lying on a PBX skirting the waves under a full moon... Slotting incoming forces with a .50cal on a Hummer at 40mph, covering a corner for the squad with my MP5 - dropping 4 SLA as they rounded it potentially catching a squadmate unawares as he reloaded... Hearing rounds ping off the bonnet as the truck pulls in to evacuate a base... There are so many moments that I only remember when taking the time to do so. It's easy to think of ArmA in terms of what it leaves out - that its fidelity as a 'simulation' of modern warfare is so high, it makes all the more obvious what is missing - but what it does provide is 100% solid gold. There is simply no other game that comes close to the atmosphere, the variety, and the possibility. ArmA is a worthy successor to OFP, and that is itself a fantastic feat.

What I really like about Sin's movies is that they don't require any form of explicit narration for the viewer to understand what's going on. My vote goes with Black Hawk Down, but his whole library is absolutely excellent. The moment when the T72 bursts through the wall on the SLA vs. RACs one is a highlight.

At 0430, a Royal Commando scans the silent streets of Corazol, spotting patrolling SLA ahead...

I too had similar doubts until recently - I've come in at 1.08 and as far as I am concerned, the game is perfectly playable and I have been enjoying myself very much in the multiplayer side of things, while dabbling in the campaign and single missions. In terms of bugs etc., it could mostly likely do with further polishing. Mods are still relatively thin on the ground (until the much vaunted tools are released) but there's enough out there to warrant a purchase. If I were you, this seems like an ideal time to come in on ArmA. It is in infinitely better shape than it was in it's original releases and still has much to come from both BIS and the fanbase. It's a great game, the improvements over OFP might not be huge but they're important enough to make it feel different, and the graphics can be jaw dropppingly gorgeous. It gets my recommendation.

Have to admit, this is excellent.

Only a fool would uninstall this game just before the first major release and equivalent patching. As the progress with the demo demonstrates, ArmA is improving all the time.

I patched my demo up to the latest version and it is now running much, much smoother than it was prior to that, and I haven't even removed the grass. Great work BIS, thank you.

Must admit, after seeing the wealth of previews and movies taken from expos of the game at conventions, where the machines were less than sparkling, I expected to be able to run the game at least at normal at a steady 30fps. I'm lucky if I can manage that! Still, it IS a brand new game and no other game on the market can match the amount that it is rendering in such detail - so no hard feelings about it on that front. I'll upgrade to play this game more smoothly, no doubt. Games of this scale and dynamicism don't come along every day, or even every year. It has half the shelf life of OFP, then upgrading seems a wise investment.

I find the demo to have been an unrelenting hassle to have gotten working to anywhere near the level I consider 'nominal' and 'acceptable to play with'. For a start, my DX9 wasn't up to date, which was my fault, but I have DX9c and didn't expect to have to use the VERY LATEST version when I thought I met the requirements. I just used my brain and went and got it when I got the .dll error but still to someone unsure of themselves it might be an obstacle. I get into the game and it's a stuttery experience and my performance is a bit crap, to be honest. Less than 30fps at 1024x768 with most things set to normal... Not great. But this is a brand new game and obviously my hardware is getting on a bit now. Most other recently released games I don't have a problem with, though, and can run maxed out. Only exception would be GRAW but I digress... Anybody notice that if you have the shading detail set to anything other than 'normal' (and this includes both low options) the game takes an age to load? Defrags both before and after made very little difference. The only thing that DID make a big difference was using the 'maxmem' command line parameter. It made a small but crucial difference - it now loads faster and there is next to no stutter (apart from about a half second at the start of the mission). The game seems tighter and more enjoyable. The game is amazing, though. Everything feels more visceral, like you're more closely connected to the combat experience. It's fantastic and the sensation of coming under fire cannot be matched. Urban combat is heart pounding now and the added AI routines (caught a couple of my squad leapfrogging in the trees) really impresses. I'm running at 1280x960 with (what I think is) 2xQ and 16x AF, with everything set to normal apart from the post pro which is high and the blood which is high (V sync is off and I've optimised my setup as best I can). Things seem to run 'acceptably' if not fantastic. About 25-30fps outside the town, around 20 within. I can live with that, though, as I get much more 'feeling' from this game than any other, if that makes any sense.

It's not the first time it's happened! I was there when it happened, the sort of thing that makes you rub your eyes in disbelief.

Another questionable Czech review on barely capable hardware. Don't we have enough of these?

I think it's a little optimistic to expect that the same camera control script would work in ArmA. They've probably modified the name of it. In any case, many thanks for the video Shadak. In it, you can see the 'peripheral vision' blips in action (the small sem-transparent green semi-circles around the edge of the screen informing you of a close by friendly unit) - almost imperceptable but very useful (they were in OFP:Elite). It's interesting to see how large scale units operate, as it is more difficult to work out who is covering who. With the smaller units it's more easy to define, but here it seems that if one person is covering an area and his buddy moves up, then another soldier who needs to move up in that same area will use the cover soldier instead of another buddy. Interesting. What strikes me most is how much the area of combat looks like a part of a town I used to live in. It's going to eerie doing battle in old haunts.

Well, the LGB is supposed to be a guided munition, as mentioned above. If you were to use it in a team game, it would be a good idea, owing to the destructive capacity of your armament, to ensure that you have your target laser painted and then to drop the munitions when in range of that target. OFP (and now ArmA) feature the ability for a footsoldier to target a unit/structure with a laser designator and because of that, you can 'guide' bombs dropped from your aircraft onto the target with minimum effort. All you need to do is 'target' (as easy as pressing a numbered menu or clicking your 'next target' button on your keyboard/joystick) the laser marker and fly at an appropriate height and speed over your target, and drop the munitions at an appropriate distance away. The bombs will be guided to their target - no need to worry about TKs if you know where they're going to land. Of course, the most important factor when minimising friendly casualties is probably communication. Of course, a guided bomb is not going to stop a careless soldier wandering into the blast radius, which is why it is paramount that when you are going to level an area, you need everyone to know about it. If someone's painting your target it should be a good indicator anyway, but get on your side channel and make sure everyone knows about your impending run and is clear. OFP is not like BF2. You can't just do a bombing run and drop your munitions and expect everyone to either run or hide when they hear the sound of your engine. Dropping unguided bombs in OFP is notoriously hard and I'm not expecting this to be an different in ArmA. There WILL be friendly casualties if you are careless, and if you're playing on a server without respawns, you'd probably not make many friends doing so.

I think you can expect to see lots of mid 70s scores for this game from the mainstream press. Enthusiasts will rate the game much, much higher. While OFP scored very highly throughout most of the gaming press, it was only offset by the understanding that it was revolutionary for the time. ArmA? Less so. ArmA still represents the same level of ambition and scope that characterised OFP, but in an only slightly increased capacity. While some sections of the press score games with regards to their originality and innovation, most unfortunately do not. Most reviews point to the fact that this game does not represent that much of a departure from OFP - that is, admittedly, a problem for the developers HOWEVER this should still be measured against what the developers have achieved. There is STILL no other game on the market that has come close to what OFP has achieved, and ArmA continues to achieve. No other game in the tactical shooter genre approaches the same attention to detail and sheer versatility of gameplay that ArmA possesses. I tend to see ArmA and OFP as games on a completely separate scale of accomplishment. There's the theoretical 100% for games of a 'different' nature (like Half Life 2), and the 100% reserved for the genuinely innovative and expansive.

If I recall correctly, the videos were made by Mr.Murray, German OFP editing legend.

Jarf, you have a very similar setup to mine (see sig). I hope ArmA will run acceptably with a great degree of eye candy on my system. Hitman Blood Money ran excellently on my system at 1600x1200x32 with 4xAA and 16xAF (High Quality mode), although I don't expect we'll be in anywhere near the same league of demand. My system's managed to cope admirably with the latest releases (it chewed up Oblivion, including with LOD and texture mods, and gave GRAW a run for its money) so I'm hoping to do well with ArmA. Suffice to say, OFP runs like a greased racing snake, so fingers crossed. EDIT: I am expecting, like OFP, for the CPU to be the biggest determining factor. What surprises me most about this community is the hardware people use. It's somewhat similar to the GR community - there are people still plodding along with 2003's hardware. The strange thing is that people are worrying whether or not they'll get good frame rates on hardware considerably out of date, when you wouldn't normally expect any other recently released game to do so. The best indicator of how ArmA will run is to look at the level of demand most modern releases place on your system. ArmA uses many of the rendering techniques (although on a much larger scale) now commonplace in present day development. The most important thing to remember is that ArmA is a modern game with modern requirements. You can be rest assured that the developers will have looked at what they believe to be the current climate of demand and based the updates to their engine on that. That said, BIS have always been careful to include no upper limit on their engine's capability (c.f. view distance and terrain detail in OFP), so it's more a case of where to set the minimum rather than arbitrarily limiting the system's capability. ArmA looks satisfyingly scalable, although to be honest if you're running anything less than a 3GHz (or equivalent) CPU and less than 1GB of RAM, you're going to suffer. A decent graphics card will apparently only get you so far.

Probably a custom face (for use in multiplayer and so forth).

Apparently will be added in a patch, though.

Gart's settings are here, and on the previous page: http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/9631/arma2006111320373292kopyl9.jpg