DEAD_RABBIT

I haven't checked the scripts (so I don't know whether I am talking trivial stuff), but maybe it's more CPU efficient, if you create the objects at a slower rate? When you ask ArmA to generate many objects, it sucks a lot of performance, because ArmA has to allocate memory for them all at the same time. It's way more efficient to already have a set of blood objects generated, somewhere hidden, and then use them when necessary. Example, you have 100 soldiers on your map. Generate only for 20 soldiers blood objects. Assumed is that not all soldiers will die at the same time. When the soldiers are fighting, for each soldier that dies, you assign the blood objects to that soldier, then regenerate new blood objects with a time interval, till it's back to 20. I assume the blood objects are setPos'd using several initializers, all the way till they hit the ground. That's another CPU eating process. Perhaps it's possible to let the physics engine of ArmA handle that process, by using setVelocity. The engine itself should be more optimized at doing such calculations.

Not completely familiar with that type of coding, but isn't it possible to run on all the linked computers a script, that contains an if-statement to see whether the computer is a client and not a server or a server and not a client, and then execute the commands associated with the if-statement local to the computers on which the if-statement returned "true"?

It could work in MP without any significant lag, if you could localize a unit's coordinates. In other words, instead of sharing the units x,y,z coordinates (not direction) with all the clients, you could give every vehicle an attribute that lists all the units that are 'Active Cargo' and do rest client-side. The list contains the unit and its position in the vehicle. So the position of a unit can be calculated locally instead of the server having to share the coordinates to all the clients, as long as each client knows the 'Active Cargo' lists of each vehicle on the map, which shouldn't be as sharing intensive as doing the other way.

A superb addition to ArmA. But does the AI use it as well? The whole "slowly aligning the gun by only moving along one axle" in OFP (I don't know about ArmA, can't play it) is one of the most annoying realism killers I have ever experienced.

Painful indeed. Hence I will be waiting for the demo to come out. I am very doubtful my system will be able to handle ArmA decently enough. Hence, I hope BIS will release a lot of performance patches to fix the issues. I recall OFP having bugs (I played from version 1.00), several very obvious ones and several not so obvious, but absolutely not as many or as serious as ArmA, from what I have heard. I guess that's the disadvantage when you're not dealing with a major publisher who does handle strict quality value.

Shadak, could you make a video with lots and lots of units fighting each other. I am curious at to how many units you can stuff in effectively, without reasonable detectable lag.

IMHO, this mode sounds a lot cooler than CTI's gameplay. In CTI, the game degrades at the end to something awful. Last minute kamikaze attacks with the last resources possible. Everybody is simply pissed off, mentally fatigued and doesn't want to retake towns because it takes too long to get it done right and you need cash to get it done. Also, CTI is very Arcade at times and it's impossible to organize any big operations. BIS's CTI sounds a lot more promising in terms of gameplay.

*Applauds* That video = priceless. It reminds me of the humorous moments I had in OFP, where I simply fell out of my chair laughing. Yes, bugs in games are annoying, but OFP's bugs were part of the entertainment.

What the hell is it with those caps with ArmA logos on them? I want a non-plastic-looking helmet with an ArmA logo, PLUS mounted headphone speakers and Microphone! Or, a Ghillie suit! Look at this dude. The only way to play ArmA in style.

Yes. I saw it in a video. Although I didn't see the magazine being held in the hand, it was removed from the gun.

Yep Yep, I still remember it. I was the CO in Ryan's Weapons Platoon mission. Some other dude was my artillery officer. We landed on the beach and started moving inland. The markers system fucked up so I was busy finding out where everyone was so I shouted that everyone who needed arty should talk to my arty officer. I send a squad out to capture a hill. They captured the hill and reported it back to me. 1 min later I watched in horror how they got completely nuked by a battery of arty, no survivors. The problem was that everyone was shouting through each other. I asked a squad where they were and they responded in sidechat with "on hill XXX". My arty officer thought they needed arty support and well, you know what happened. Awwhh goddamn, I remember that. I was the squad leader that said "at FM1", answering a question you were shouting through TS. But your Arty officer indeed misunderstood it. Cost me my squad and myself Was the Arty officer on TS? If not, that could have explained the fucked up situation

Whoever does the radio sounds needs to find other voice actors, who are more motivated. Since when has BIS lost the quality of getting the voices right? In OFP the radio and 'say' sounds were pretty good, getting the atmosphere just right. In OFP:Elite they replaced all the radio and say sounds, with Aussies or Brits trying to talk American. It's horrible and instantly unappealing. And in that video, when I heard the dude yelling "Go go go." I felt like running away rather than staying, finding cover and shooting back. And I agree with all the points Jinef made. The machine gun is apparently a very feathery weapon. In any case, just hope BIS will leave lots of room for the addon community to maneuver in, such as in sound, scripting, eventhandlers, AI, weapon ballistics and animations.

I bought Elite several weeks ago and played it for some time. At first, the controls were indeed very very awkward. I basically kept searching for the button I wanted to use, but forgot that some buttons have doubled functions. But eventually I got used to them and they're quite good for a console shooter. I love commanding in Elite. The AI is so much more usable. They actually do stuff I oftentimes couldn't get AI doing in OFP, without getting killed. But I suppose the limited viewdistance had some help in that (e.g. enemy tanks not able to shoot M113s because they're not in the view distance which is limited to something like 400-500 meters). The only thing I dislike about Elite is the First Person mode, where for some reason the gun is 'hidden' away in your right side screen. For example, the M21, only the front of the barrel comes into view. I suppose it's some cheap fix to make Elite run better by making the FOV smaller.

Look what I found in my pocket: Can't wait for Armed Assault to hit the stores! Congratulations BIS! All the effort and good work will pay off, literally!

I think we're trying too hard to convince BF2 players to drop BF2 (because we think it's so crap (a non-biased statement, because I have the game myself) and therefore, we pity these sore gamers on their playing-choice) and pick up ArmA. Hence we have a BF2 players thread for people who want to step over to ArmA, although they have absolutely no clue what to expect. And all we're doing is saying like "ArmA is super realistic and etc..." while we should simply toss them a download link of the OFP demo and tell them that ArmA will be that, times 100 plus a 1000. I also think that there are a lot of retarded OFP players. They oftentimes only play the game to kill shit and feel like they're in the military, as if they're really a Delta or a Ranger. I don't play OFP for that. If you want military incest, play America's Army. And the level of frustration you get from playing a game depends completely on the crowd you're playing it with. Since the OFP.INFO game server is loaded with the BAS addons, the players that come there are oftentimes, really really annoying, imho. COOPeration is not their primary, but their tertiary. The primary being, give me a sniper rifle and the secondary being, start the goddamn game. OFP has its share of 'assholes' as well. The reason however, why OFP's community is more 'adult/serious' is obviously reflected in how many diverse ways you can play OFP. BF2 is just one mode, killing in arcade style. OFP is like a spectrum of different kinds of play-styles. To explain, BF2's arcade style doesn't make it complex, and because of that, the novelty of trying to play the game in a different, perhaps more serious way, is almost impossible because you're being drawn back into old arcade play patterns, due to how the reward/punishment system works for arcade games. If you don't play arcade, you don't get rewarded. Only with mods that change that system, is it possible to alter the reward/punishment system. OFP is so much more diverse, you have more freedom and more options. That's what makes OFP more complex and it gives you the spectral choice between the borders of 'me-Rambo-me-Like-Killing' and 'the-most-tactical-correct-solution'. Adding mods to the mix, hardly changes that spectral choosing, but it adds more importance to some choices in the spectrum and diminishes others. In BF2, you play only for two choices. A) Fun (although that's very questionable, since the game is a bug-heaven) and B) Stat-whoring (which always works with online arcade games, because it adds the feeling of achievement). But with OFP, there is a spectrum of choice and it gives the player a huge range of play styles. More adult, more arcade or whatever you like, as you grow up. I recall that I played OFP a lot more Rambo back when I first bought the game, because I liked the tensity of the situations so goddamn much (as in, you could survive them, but you had to struggle with yourself to get it done). Nowadays, I prefer more tactical oriented COOP matches and huge battles, where the CO's decision, can make my life more difficult or easier to preserve. But to conclude, I do think the OFP community is a hell lot more serious/adult than the BF2 community, but communities do tend to follow, like somewhere said before in this thread, the effect of tribalism, no matter what community you're in.

I am in one of the screwed-till-February zones. That's all that matters right now.

The answers in that interview sound naively honest. I hate that. They simply want to lick the reputation of ArmA with slimey talk, as to appeal to us and also to make ArmA sound better than we still have to see how. When it's not a straight answer, it's detouring from the point of the question.

I think ArmA will severly beat the crap out of most systems (considering all the processing work that has to be done). The screens having seen mixed qualities, I keep wondering what prevents the previewers from getting their settings 'just' right, to make the game look stunning. Even when the game does look stunning up close, you never see the viewdistance set at really high values. It seems we'll have to play with our viewdistances toned down quite a bit, untill the next gen stuff starts to catch up with ArmA's extravagant needs, for those who want to play ArmA with extravagant settings.

I have a question about patching. I assume that ArmA won't be bug-free (hell, who am I kidding), so I was wondering how the bug-testing of the patches will be done. What I understand of it, is that patches need to be bug-tested by publishers, right? But with ArmA, there are many publishers. Will that delay the releases of patches between multi-language continents or is BIS doing the bug-testing themselves?

At the very least we know how ugly ArmA can look like at the very low settings for those low-end machines

Beach party with ArmA.... sounds damn awesome! I'll try to be there if there is going to be one

The water dynamics are insanely mad! You can actually see the big wave lines breaking off when they hit a part of the shore line and you see lines distorting in curvatures as the wave enters lower waters! *applauds for BIS*

The major thing that stings me is that developers spend development time to get advertisements into the game. That in return costs money to develop software to put inside a game, that is already damn buggy. Example in question, BattleField 2142. Isn't it so that to develop next-gen software, you need resources to acquire for that software. But what if part of that is spent on trivial things, like.... advertisements? Admit-ably, it wouldn't take up that much resources, however, when it comes to a Multiplayer game that requires every bit of bandwidth to get a smooth running game, but in the background some stupid program is downloading textures or video's to be shown in the next round and then you get kicked out of a game, because..... you had a connection error for example and you blame it on the game and hence start hating it (like myself and many others). That's really good marketing. And if development costs are so high for next-gen software, then spend money in developing more efficient. BIS for example does everything in-house and continues developing on their existing technologies and produces games to basically test their effectiveness and efficiency in the development process of a game. For example; take OFP: Elite, on which many parts of the ArmA technology are based and the Xbox not being a major powerhouse, it's a good way to see how well your technology processed into a game, does work on very low-end machinery. Even though OFP: Elite is basically OFP going Xbox, it does contain a completely rewritten technology base and changes/adds to the feel of playing OFP.

The major thing that stings me is that developers spend development time to get advertisements into the game. That in return costs money to develop software to put inside a game, that is already damn buggy. Example in question, BattleField 2142. Isn't it so that to develop next-gen software, you need resources to acquire for that software. But what if part of that is spent on trivial things, like.... advertisements? Admit-ably, it wouldn't take up that much resources, however, when it comes to a Multiplayer game that requires every bit of bandwidth to get a smooth running game, but in the background some stupid program is downloading textures or video's to be shown in the next round and then you get kicked out of a game, because..... you had a connection error for example and you blame it on the game and hence start hating it (like myself and many others). That's really good marketing. And if development costs are so high for next-gen software, then spend money in developing more efficient. BIS for example does everything in-house and continues developing on their existing technologies and produces games to basically test their effectiveness and efficiency in the development process of a game. For example; take OFP: Elite, on which many parts of the ArmA technology are based and the Xbox not being a major powerhouse, it's a good way to see how well your technology processed into a game, does work on very low-end machinery. Even though OFP: Elite is basically OFP going Xbox, it does contain a completely rewritten technology base and changes/adds to the feel of playing OFP.

I remember reading that the advertisement company gave some figure of 70% of gamers wouldn't mind advertising in games, because it would make it more realistic. But as evidently seen in the previous post, it only makes it that much worse. Also, what can assure us that we won't get pop ups or something? Like when you're just aiming with your sniper rifle and then a pop up appears... that really stimulates the sales of your games.... BF2 already has this, but not ingame. It's when you boot up the game and then a pop up appears saying "BUY THIS AND THAT EXPANSION PACK NOW" or "GET PATCH 1.39258023482930 FOR THE LATEST BUG FIXS AND ADDS" which I already downloaded and installed so, I expected to see that damn pop up disappear. Even the pop ups in BF2 are bugged. I really got annoyed by it too many times. I seriously hope Publishers don't start thinking in terms of TV Channel programmers, who argue that they don't have enough viewers and because of that they need to put on more adds, but that reduces the amount of viewers even further, but does bring in more money. So in the end, mass-gaming as it is today could be become entirely sterilized from any public that has the capacity to think for themselves. I would hate to see the OFP/ArmA franchises going into that dead-end.