DBR_ONIX

I've apparently been around here for about 4 years, which means I first played OFP probably 5-6 years ago. Like many of you, I played OFP an absurd amount.. I remember playing 9 hours games of "Crime City" with RCIR. Spending entire afternoons (..and evenings) throwing together multiplayer-missions the Ocean Island map with Gandalf the White and DaveP (and mocking his helicopter-flying skills). Happily suffering perpetually-slowing games of games of Capture the Island (The only game where I ever put up with 2 frames-per-second! I spent scarily long with OFP. In-game times measurable in months (That sounds quite scary when written down..) When I bought ArmA, I didn't like it, at all.. The controls were weird (A step back from OFP, especially air-vehicles). The graphics didn't improve that much. Most of the OFP bugs were still there (clipping though solid objects for example). The action/inventory system was far slower than OFP's. The AI was as bad as OFP (They still all went prone the second they heard a sniper, instead of actually..err, moving). Then still managed to shoot the sniper in the left eye on their first shot. The AI still either shot you the second you ran around the corner, or stood and kindly waited for you to shoot them while they slowly-rotated to aim at you.. I prodded around the mission editor (Something I spent literally months in with OFP), and it hard hardly changed in 7 years.. Even the unit-rotation was still twitchy (it's was hard to select the numeric-box in the middle of the circle) And most annoying of all, there was no mod tools released, despite this being several months after the initial release of the game?! That was a complete joke, for a game that pretty much exists because of the mod community.. But that's another rant altogether.. Then it dawned on me. The version of OFP I had been playing for most of the time was version 1.94 and above.. I had gotten used to playing a fairly mature version of the game, with many mods (ECP, VME AI improvements, Y2K mod, FDF etc) which too were in fairly late versions... Going from v1.96 with very professionally made mods, to (effectively) version 1.00 of a new game is never going to be a good experience.. So I decided to put ArmA on a shelve for a while, and return after some patches. It's now been a year since the release, and there's been an expansion pack released. Not far of when I started playing OFP. And here ends my slightly over-elaborate setup for this question: What is the current state of ArmA? Has the AI improved since the initial release? (Do they still all go prone in open ground, despite being under fire? Do they still have either inhuman accuracy, or brain-damage?) Have the heli controls improved? Is the clipping problem improved at all? And, more importantly: What is the current state of the Armed Assault mods? Is there any ECP-like "improvement mods"? Have the mod-tools improved since O2-lite? To summarize: I want to give ArmA the best shot possible. How much have the patches improved playability, and what are the best mods currently around? Thanks! - Ben

Not posted on this forum for.. ages. Infact I'm not quite sure how I ended up back on this thread But, while I'm here.. http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1131/1237201593_baff76f874_o.jpg

Nixer6 : I shouldn't have to spend £2000 on a Current Generation computer every month, games have settings for a very specific reason - To scale the graphics down too work on non-Current Generation systems. At the lowest settings, the game should be playable. I have a machine that matches up (or higher) than the minimum specs. P4 2.8GHz, 1GB RAM, ATI Readon 9500. But the mouse-aim shouldn't be effected by lower-speced machines, there's a few things in the ArmA MP demo (Which I've only played for about 45minutes, admitedlly I've probably played OFP for hundereds of hours, so I may be slightly biased, but..) the controlls in ArmA seem less usable than the OFP ones. For example : The seagull-crosshair, in OFP I could rotate the mouse over a building, and the seagull would rotate to face it, in ArmA, I move the cursour over and it stays centered, but rotates the seagull (So I have no idea how far I just moved the mouse) Another more annoying "problem", in vehicles, the mouse-cursour seems to be gone completely, leaving me guessing how hard I'm turning. It's not "more realistic", if it were real, I would be psyically touching the wheel, and know how far I'd turned it. Games are *not* real, crosshairs, health-bars, respawns are all totally unrealistic (in the game-sense of things), but are very nessiary to make the game playable (Well, not in all cases, but you have to conpensate for the lack of human senses) I suppose it will grow on me with time, are OFP was quite largely changed with patches, and I'm expecting a similar thing with ArmA (Again, my view is biased seeing as how the first version of OFP I played was around 1.46, I'm currently playing with the 1.03 ArmA, so it's slightly less.. mature) And as you say, newer games play better on newer systems (Shockingly), so I imagine the controlls will be more usable on faster machines There are a few seemingly fundamental problems with the game how-ever, far too tired to remeber most of them, but one which is extremely annoying is the little loading screen when I exit the map view, and the little fade out when I switch from first-to-third person view, and to commander view. Other problem I can remeber is the helicopter flight model, which seems to be getting fiddled with, but if it was kept as it is, it'd fairly annoying (Again, I'm probably biased by the ammount of time I've been playing OFP, but then again, a *lot* of the people playing ArmA are ex-OFP'ers) Anyway, enough fatigued-ranting for me, - Ben

Shiney.. Is that Depth-of-Field in-game, or Photoshop'd? - Ben

(Links go to Flickr page, they are the "full" size images) All were taken handheld/slightly rushed (It was cold), but turned out not too badly - Ben

I was messing around with long-exposure photography tonight, got two decent pictures (~25 minute exposure, F10) And my favourite : (Taken at around 2330, ~25 minute exposure at F10.) It's probably quite high up on my favourite-photos-I've-taken list A photo I'd like to try, but can't (Don't have the right lens) is a picture taken directly upwards with a wide-angle/fisheye lens, at night (With a 30ish minute exposure). Will probably look best on the North/South pole, but it's a little impractical to shoot there - Ben

Yes you can.. It requires a custom-made island to place the units on Basicly, you have the island with a big hole where you place the model. Then, you model the house with the basement the same height as the hole you made, and a fake ground plane at that level Hornet done this a while ago on an Area 51 map, which was fecking cool (I played around with it, making things like a "nuclear bunker"). I may still have that map somewhere, if anyone is interested (And if it's okay with Hornet, of course) But, it's possible - Ben

Got a new (Sigma) flash-gun - Ben

To be honest, if it's out in another country first (And I mean by more than a few days, I'm patient enough for wait for time-zone differences ), I'll download it ("illegaly"), if it's avalible, then buy it when it comes out. I'll buy it if I download it or not, so it's not causing huge loss of profits or kittens houses to burn down etc. Don't think I'd buy it download-only, if I pay for something, I'd much prefer to have the phsyical DVD with the shiney box and such. - Ben

I just read the Invasion 1944, when an interview pretty much insults people who have.. taken an interest in a mod, you have to think they might be doing something wrong... Flicking back to the first page, they say (somewhat indirectly, don't remeber it word-for-word) uninformed people are largely to blame for this - Which makes sense, rumours and such are bad.. What is the most asked, most annoying question a mod team can be asked? "When is it going to be released??" There is a lot of talent in the OFP modding community (If you disagree, look around these forums, or any other OFP site, there is a lot of impressive stuff, for such an "old" engine). If someone has a problem with a particular script, or can't get a texture onto a model right, I'm sure there are a lot of people who would be willing and happy to help. [i could go on for a while like thus, but I'll get to the point in a second..] Imagine if someone could just grab a p3d, remove a bug, or add something, reupload it for approval (Although some kind of archival system would render this unnessiary. Think how Wikipedia works, but rather than page moification, it's a new model being updated) I don't know how feasable this would be, but we setup a server somewhere. On this, we have something similar to CVS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrent_Versions_System ) server, possibly web-based. This allows people to check-out a model (Just warns someone who also checks out this model someone might be working on it, and their version may be overwritten if they check it back in) When someone checks out a model, or a script, they work on it, upload it to the server (checking it back in/commiting it) Obviously there would have to be some kind of way to go back to previous versions, should someone replace all the files with rubbish, for example. But hopefully the community would be mature enough for this not to be an issue. So, theres my idea. How will this solve the "problems" I stated at the start of this post? Simple : Obviously, if people can grab the models and work on them, they can help people with problems simply. If people can simply download the entire, if uncomplete mod, they can see how far it's progressed (No, people will NOT complain along the lines of "OMG WTF IT'S NOT WORKING!!11", like a lot of mods seem think, scaring them away from releaing beta versions and such) It'll also give the modders a new reply to "When will it be done" : "Not sure, why not help out and get it done faster!" I don't see why this wouldn't work. Okay it's hardly perfect for a very specific mod where everything must be completely realstic!! etc. But for a "fun" mod, it should work A smaller version of this idea. Someone starts of with a pbo containing a p3d, a config file, a texture, and a mission folder, with the mission.sqm file, a script, and breifing folder. The work on it for a few days, then transfer it to the next person on [a] list, who then works on it for a few days, who then transfers it to the next... etc etc. Each person just improves and adds to the previous person. Think chinese whispers, but with OFP modding. The open-source mod might be a little far fetched, maybe with Armed Assault? But hte chinese-whisper-mod seems extremely possible.. Anyone interested? - Ben

No problem, glad someone found it usefull Got a screenshot of it in game yet? - Ben

That reminds me of an anti-smoking campaign that is on here in the UK (Random, everyday things, like a girl opening a purse to pay for something, and it's full of old cigarettes and other such nice stuff ) Hm, not really done too much photography lately, took photos at a few gigs I was recording, but thats about it. [Recording thingy] [big Brother and the Holding Company, with Kittie(?) singing, at the Bein Inn] [same as above, but their bass player] [simon Kirke (Free 's Drummer), with Larry Oakes (Forgiener), again playing at the Bein Inn] {Flicker page thing, since I don't feel like linking each one : http://www.flickr.com/photos/_dbr/ } Those remind me : I really need an external flash gun thing.. Any recommendations for a cheap flash? Don't need anything fancy, just something I can shove on the top of the camera (Canon 350D), and bounce of the roof, without having to use my hand to difuse the flash and half-blind myself and burn my fingers The built in flash is crap, and to get vaugly reasonable shots in dark-ish areas I have to spend ages mucking around either in the custom white-ballance thing, or Photoshop, and even still it doesn't often turn out right So, flash recommendations? - Ben

Forgive me for not wanting to read 10 pages of forum (Read first, and last page), but can someone clarify something for me : Along with the online distrubtation, will there be a boxed version in stores, or on places like Amazon.com? Also, will it be a Steam-like system, where it's pretty much tied to the account? Hopefully it'll be more like what Direct2Drive seems to be, or maybe closer to what Bittorrent seems to be (I.e simply a method of getting the data, much like buying a CD is just a means of getting your money, and transferring you the data. And less like Steam's method of an all-inclusive content delivery/tracking/monitoring/anti-cheat/subscription application) - Ben

Nice idea.. It's something I think should be done in films more now-adays.. With all the fancy 3d tracking/match-moving stuff, the "old" 2d titles could be made far more interesting.. The only film I remeber having "interesting", 3D opening credit-text was Panic Room (It had the main cast's name "incorprated" into the scene, with relfections and such) Anyway.. Wonder what other uses these can be put too.. "Capture the Word" game-play mod? - Ben

Hmm, I remeber playing the LFS demo years ago.. It's still not out of alpha/beta? - Ben