Capitan_eXtreme

In my opinion, the 505 SE whould be: *The disk in a thin steel case, with ArmA emblazoned in one corner and on the spine, and the dancing banana big on the front (so I can be remindd of the joy of getting it every time I take the disk out) *Manual, duh...preferably hardback. *An officer's map-book thing (not sure what they are called) containing a schematic map of the island (like the flashpoint ones). *The full-colour map of Sahrani as we have seen before. *A small booklet on the specs. of weapons and vehicles. *A tourist brochure with history of and general info about Sahrani. And all contained in a minimi pouch.

My two cents... OFP is a great game. Certainly one of the best shooters out there, and ranking high in overall gaming-uberness. I first played the demo back in 2001, waited two years to get it, and finally bought the GOTY edition about 18 months ago. But I don't play it much anymore - thats why I'm looking forward to ArmA so much But, BF2, that most controversial (at least on these forums) of games, is also very high on my list. I play it regularly, and I love it. It has something that OFP can't have - true "hero moments." The quasi-realistic gameplay makes it brialliant. The fact that you can, as a sniper shoot a guy dead from your bunker, run out, plant a claymore, take out another guy with your rifle at point blank, quickly check the map and slide down a small slope emptying half a mag of your pistol into an American soldier on the run, emptying the other half into a guy coming over the dune towards you and then get shot by the next guy before you can reload your rifle, only to have the corpse of the guy unlucky enough to hit your claymore fall down next to you - and all in the space of 10 seconds - makes it one of my favourite games. What I'm trying to get out here, is that you can like both chocolate and vanilla ice-cream. When you get fed up with lag in BF2, you can crank up OFP and proceed to get fed up with bad collision detection and the clasic deadpan "OH NO...2 IS DOWN," before returning to the endless server crashes, and so on. Enjoy bothgames for what they are - labours of love by talented developers, that are both extremely fun to play.

That's a very good point.

1. Have you ever used a weapon in your life? I'll admit I have no assault rifle experience, but I use bolt and lever-actions regularly. It is hard enough to hit anything when firing from the hip without either very careful aiming or many, many years of experience, let alone when you're firing from the hip and moving. 2. Believe me, I've tried running like them do in OFP - it is nigh on impossible to sprint while holding a rifle like that. Holding it accross the chest (ArmA) allows arm movement, which is essential for sprinting. You have more chance of falling over, especiall on rough ground. 3. I think most modern armies abandoned charging enemy positions over open ground with infantry after critically evaluating that tactic's sucess in the Great War (success = 0). 4. Why the f*** would you try to fire while charging? The enmey is going to be entrenched, and shooting back from a stable position. The moment you fire one round from the hip at an extremely unstable sprint, 50 assault rifles are going to be trained on you, not to mention heavy machineguns, field artillery, tanks, AFVs and snipers. Death is always an option. The idea with these new animations is that this is how you would look while moving from cover to cover - not running out in the open chaging an enemy position. If you know the enemy is in the area you use combined arms tacticts to gain the advantage, and move slowly with your gun ready to fire from the shoulder - if you have adequete covering fire, speed doesn't matter in most situations, and that is how I hope ArmA works.

As Placebo said earlier, if you want info on specific areas, email Jiri at IDEA games marketing/sales. http://www.idea-games.com/index_main.php?id=contact

I just recieved a reply from IDEA concerning ArmA's status in Australia (being from the Gold Coast, I'm very concered). I´m glad to confirm we already have a publisher for Australia - unfortunetely I cannot confirm more details at the moment, but there will be an announcement very soon. That was from IDEA Games marketing. So there you go.

Damn straigt! The Australian amry should never have switched from SLRs to Steyers! Regardless, as a old, hardline Communist country I wonder that the N.Sarahnis waste money buying AK74s when AK47s are so much better and cheaper.

Or maybe you're colourblind Just kidding. But I certainly get a white/grey moon where I am, but whenever I've been in Europe or costal USA yellow/orange moons are the go.

Marines Chopper As far as I can tell the USMC will be somehow integrated into the rest of the NATO force.

This is true (couldnt check in RL as i cant see the moon right now but i believe you&wikipedia), but if we see it grey in RL because of whatever reason, we would also see it grey in the game right? Unless we get flashlight and some object to shine on and hold next to the moon we see it grey, we probably dont get those objects so i guess its easier to have a grey moon? (IMO it would be a waste of time to simulate the moons color ) I agree, but if the time allows then having the moon change color slightly would make for a very realistic effect. Although how much it would change is debatable, as the yellow or red moon is produced by pollution in the atmosphere and I would doubt Sarahni would have the industry to produce such an effect.

I am afraid you got it wrong. Cones provide the colored vision - rods provide luminance only. Rods have much wider dynamic range - they are able to respond to much lower luminance level, but being only one type of them, they provide no color information, meaning during the night you cannot tell what color the object is - if it red, green or blue, which can be best described as black and white only vision. The night being blue is only a movie convention, it has no real-world meaning. While it is true rods are more sensitive to blue than cones are, this does not mean what you see in dark is blue - it means when you have a blue and red object which appear about the same luminace in the daytime, the red object looks much darker during the night then the red one. We will still improve the night vision model, especially for the bright areas, which definitely should show the color information, as the lights from them is strong enough to be sensed by cones. I stand corrected. My source (a book written by renound Australian science writer Dr Karl Kruszelnicki) may have been incorrect or I may have misinterpereted it. But thanks anyway!

In reality, night-vision for humans IS NOT in balck and white. Allow me to explain... As most people know you have two sets of cells on your retina - cones and rods. Cone cells are sesetive to bright light levels, and can see in colour. Rods (of which there are many more than cones) work best in low light. This why your eyes have to adjust to the darkness - it takes on average 45 min for the rods to fully replace the cones as primary light-gathering cells when darkness falls. Now rods cannot see in full colour. They are most sesetive to BLUE light. That is why, especially on a bright night, everything has a blue tinge to it. Its like looking through a blue filter. Therefore, nights in AA whouldn't be B&W, but blue-tinged. As a postscript, I hope BIS integrates the time it takes for retinal cells to adjust into their HDR effects, along with the exposure differences.

did it ever happened to you that when you get up too fast, you feel dizzy for awhile? that's the result of your brain getting less oxygen for one second. imagine what no oxygen for ten seconds would do. not really an improvement of your concentration and ability to extrapolate where to intercept the target. add to that the fact your hearing and eyesight go down first when you need oxygen and you will see that this is more of a con then a pro... Thats actually just a quirk with specific people; a slightly lower bood pressure than usual causes dizzyness when you get up quickly. I know it happens to me. But back on topic, I certainly think that holding your breath for shooting is a great system. Definately useful for snipers and other marksmen, but ordinary infantry wouldn't do it much. Only in a situation where the enemy doesn't know you're there and the first shot is the one that counts.

While many modern assault rifles are being made these days with inbuilt scopes, most rifles, at least, have scope-mounts, and many other weapons can be fitted with them. Scopes can then be attached/detached at will from the gun. And even "sniper rifles" (god I hate that phrase) have iron sights of some sort. They can still be used just like any other rife without the scope.

I'm hoping shotguns. Lots of shotguns. As its confirmed that the M24 will be in the game, this would mean that BIS has perfected between-shot reloading animations. Which makes pump-shotguns a real possibility (not saying that they weren't already in OFP, just that they'd be easier). Although theyed be pretty much useless past 100m (unless your using a rifled slug) they would be great for urban combat - and face it, who hasn't thought, after seeing the new walking-gun-holding-diagonally animations hasn't envisioned holding a remington 870 in game? It'd just look cool.