Dogtags

I love the atmosphere, the ongoing combat, sounds, time of day etc. However one thing that bothered me a little was that MY APC's and choppers destroyed almost everything before I got there. I personally think maybe you should tone it down a little with the ambience, remove a friendly AI mass destruction unit of some kind or reduce it's ability or give the enemy some AA or something. The base and general were wiped out 100% by friendly AI, do you intend for that possibility?

ok just did about my 6th mission all told so far. I do like it very much, I think the balance is good. I lost 5 men this time due to enemy ambushing me not once but twice! Anyway issue I found is very minor and not urgent. After extraction chopper landed and I boarded everyone including me I was then able to dismount everyone and the chopper went of without us, still got success message :-) I know you probably wont code for idiocy but it is a valid storyline bug :-) Once men board can you lock or remove all menu commands? or even easier as soon as last man is in player or AI, automatically take off (assumes engine was never stopped) and go to cut scene, no hassles and a nice clean ending.

Yeah I installed win 7 64 bit on a fresh drive because I was sick of all the issues I had on my old XP installation. What a difference, works like a charm, not one single crash no matter how hard I try. This si the boxed version not a downloaded version, don't trust those things. If anyone with XP or Vista is reading this I can't recommend Win 7 enough and I only have 2gb ram.

You are not kidding! I am in the middle right now, always SP mode. I can tell you it is much harder. I was surrounded before I knew it, cannot just go straight in now, you have to work your way in slowly, draw out the patrols and pick them off otherswise like my first encounter with v1.21 you will be trying to fight your way out of a mass encirclement. I thought I'd gain the upper hand by heading up to Devil's castle and sus the enemy out as the target was not far from there. I get to the top and saw a patrol, start to snipe them but then I was pinned down by an APC supporting the patrol. In the end I was defending the castle! Got the APC and most of the patrol. Finally got out of there only to be surrounded in a forest with no cover but trees, got out of that will the loss of two men. I am now in the town with a few enemy dotted around me, lost 4 men up until now, had to stop for a break, was sweating too much :D Very challenging now, love it. When I get through I'll list any bugs I found. OK what's with the suitcase? I used tactical view after clearing the main village and 300 metres away I saw the suitcase show up. So I head to the last barn aeound and 79M ahead in tactical I spot the suitcase, enter building lose two men and kill the general, no suitcase. So I tacticla view all over the place, even back where I originally spotted it from and no suitcase! I love playing but I am frustrated and trying to get that suitcase. OK nevermind, for some reason tactical view stopped showing location but I did find it not far from general, just was hard to see. OK finished. Mission completed flawlessly, well from a scenario/scripting point of view but I lost a total of 7 men in the end. Good Job! now if we can work something out with that suitcase so it isn't such a chore.

Hmmmm...... Finding that case is a real pain I agree. Is there another object or can you make the case spawn on a table top? Anyway another major script error I think. I cleared the area or almost anyway and could not find the case so I thought WTH just use the radio anyway which I did choosing an empty channel 1 and I got a response with all the script text saying how good to hear me back on the air and then he told me the chopper was on the way! while waiting I died but I'll go see if the chopper actually comes or if the text displayed was just that, text.

I know this also isn't the done thing but I SMAW'd the extraction chopper 3 times and it was still in pristine condition, is it set to indestructable? And similar to RM_Jingle if I park my truck full of my team mates and I alone get out and walk away enemy go up and down past the truck and never engage, very weird, maybe ARMA2 bug don't know.

Yeah I forgot to mention this. This actually happened to me pre 1.19 mission, went up to case and no matter what angle/position looking at the case I could not interract. Eventually after 5 mins running around the case I went a few metres from the case and was able to interract, bit odd that.

I had issues "seeing" the silver briefcase but the way I found it was I stood away from the town/village, only about 50 metres and pressed the "." on numpad which you use to have a strategic overview/control. In this view move the circle on screen around the town, it names all objects as you move it around, even through walls etc. I ended up seeing "Suitcase" I think it was and so I stayed targeted on that and moved towards it. I found it laying on the ground in tall grass inside a ruined building, damn it was well hidden :-)

I did have issues at end of mission as I mentioned before where we all get in the chopper and sit there for ages, nothing happens. I had to shoot the pilot and fly off myself :D I installed 1.19 and loaded the save and still the same thing, I then assumed I had to restart so I am now on a new mission and will let you know if I get extracted successfully this evening. Other thing which bugs me a little. When you call for extraction and get rejected because there are enemy around you are told they are updating your map, I assume the big red circles are the update? If they know enemy are around they must have a better idea where they are because I spent ages driving around within the circle village to village and found nothing, then drove across country and nothing. Can we have large circles at start of mission and then tighter or different coloured circles later after your call for extraction is rejected? these smaller ones can be within the larger one, just immitates the intelligence they are eluding to. Also don't forget the radio jamming scenario, is a nice extension to the brief case one, random radio tower placed somewhere near where you radioed, within 2km or something. Can even be a tent camp with temporary setup, full squad of AI (8 men, plus roving patrol of 6 or so within 800m or so of camp?) with a couple of dogs would be enough challenge this late in the mission and really prove your metal.

You are one of the lucky ones, just spend 10 seconds looking at the threads in the troubleshooting forum.

I am an ARMA fan however I am beginning to get the feeling BIS released ARMA2 to get cash to support development of their new sci fi game. Have not heard a thing from senior developers and 1.03 patch was minor at best making me believe that either all senior devs are on leave for an extended period just after a release of a gam (weird) or are working on this other project. I do feel like ARMA2 is being neglected especially when it comes to the major graphical glitches as can be seen in the sticky threads in troubleshooting for video cards with 500 posts. Anyway I will continue to play ARMA2 but only because after many hours of messing around with my system and finally a new HDD with a win7 install, I got ARMA2 to work. Many others have not been so lucky. I think you will find that this game will NEVER have the fan base that those other shooters get simply because it is too damn frustrating to get working, both ARMA and ARMA2. The game should work well on release, stable, no tweaking etc. Many of the 3d shooter players out there will not have the patience that die hard ARMA supporters have. I believe that BIS have to look forward and not back and for ARMA3 which should be in discussion stage at least should be a whole new engine from the ground up using modern methods of graphical and AI development from the core. Yes they can take 5 yrs to do it, in the meantime we the community will continue along as we did from 2001 until now. I am happy to wait 5 yrs for ARMA3 with a new engine, that would be exciting.

OK Got to a clear zone and called for extraction. Chopper came and landed right next to a road, not on the road but, and this is important, one of the rotor blades was over the road. I loaded all my men into the chopper and myself and sat there wondering how to tell the pilot I am rady let's go because he turned off the engine. So I fiddle with things, look at the map, try radio again etc and as I am doing this I hear the sound outside of an engine. I thought ENEMY! but I looked an a civilian truck was driving down the road, ahh I thought I am ok now what about this extraction...as I watch the truck go under the rotor blade about 3 metres at least from the chopper body, I saw the rotor blade move ever so slightly as the truck went uinder it, next thing BOOM! whole chopper blew up, that was frustrating yet funny, bit of a bug there. Anyway how do I make the chopper get me out of there?

I sympathise with you. I had ALL of what you are saying and maybe more. I spent weeks/hours trying to fix it. I thought my system was stable except when I ran ARMA2. I was so fed up and sick but as a last resport I bought a 1TB HDD (I needed more space anyway) and installed Win7 RC. Ever since I did that ARMA2 has never once crashed, I have no graphical problems and I am enjoying ARAM2 the way I should have enjoyed it from the start. Now why this fixed things I have no idea, corrupt DLL's or some software I had installed who knows. After 1 week of this not a single crash and it plays very smooth for me with most things on high, no joke. ---------- Post added at 01:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:17 AM ---------- Oh I see you installed windows 7, was that a fresh install? Other thing I did or didn't do on purpose when I installed win 7 was not to install the ASUS mobo drivers, I just let Win 7 do its own thing. One thing I wont be doing in future is buying ASUS mobo's just based on my experiences.

I will give it a go tonight. This has loads of potential. How easy is it to make a pile of possible scenarios instead of the suitcase? You could replace the suitcase with rescue the prisoner, take out the big boss guy holed up in a house and many others. These could be randomly generated with randomly generated secondary targets as well. Extraction can be randomly determined as well so your mission may include extraction or it may not. If it does include extraction there maybe random events at times which do not allow it like radio jamming (side mission?) take out the radio jamming tower. Maybe you can also request supplies (Random again). I can see potential for a hell of a lot of dynamic mission creation. "Life is like a box of chocolates" or in this case Cipher is like a box of chocolates! Good stuff!

I like it. Played for over an hour so far. AI are very challenging but not impossible and they are in logicla locations. Good mission to follow. When I called for extraction I was told that I would either have to clear the AA or go to a clear area. I went outside of the red circles, a long way out and when I called for extraction I was told the same thing so I am now heading back into the red circled areas looking for AA. I think either you should be able to call for extraction outside the hot zones or just make the story that you HAVE to destroy all AA because they are costing too many lives or something along that line.

Yep I get this problem since 1.03 exactly. It is not defrag or anything else. I have a brand new 1TB HDD with a fresh install of Win 7 and it does it. Never noticed this in 1.02. BIS senior team seem to be on holidays or something, 1.03 was a junior dev team patch only.

1.02 Summary of things to note in 1.02 for me. (After fresh reboot) I got Receiving... black screen on and off in single player Had flashing textures on buildings all the time Had bad performance looking in certain directions, FPS drop by 70% Had CTD's sometimes, specifically with Device Freed error I did manage to have the odd 30 minute game I could not play MP because of the Receiving... problem Summary of things to note with 1.03 for me. (After fresh reboot) Texture loading for buildings takes much longer stuttering and low FPS is more common now even in small villages Flashing white triangles small and large mainly on ground happens after a couple of minutes play, accompanied by very low FPS, 5 FPS CTD's more prevelant, happen after a few mins now all the time Cannot get a SP game happening unless I am in the forest ONLY Shadows flash, appear/dissapear unnaturally and all over the place I am lost for words, new drivers installed, new patch and I have to give up. Had high hopes graphical glitches would be addressed in 1.03 seeing that many were complaining but all that was fixed in general was mission bugs, flares etc I mean WTF! Car analagy again - Your cars engine is screwed but all you do is change the friggin blinker bulb and expect the engine to work better, WTF! As a last resort I am going to get a brand new HDD, install Windows 7 fresh, ARMA2 fresh, GPU drivers fresh. If that doesn't work then LOL

All I know for a fact is NOTHING worked at all to get ARMA2 playable on my XP. Whether it was corrupt DLL's or some other software causing the problems I could not identify and fix it no matter what I tried or re-installed. In the end all that worked and worked beautifully for a few days now is installation of windows 7. I have no more CTD's at all ever in SP or MP. I do not get the Receiving... screen anymore, I do not get any texture corruption or slowing down of the game. In fact the game has never looked this good no matter what I throw at it. I can have a view distance of 10000 if I want. This of course chugs to load the view but once loaded it runs fine all of this while I have textures at highest possible! I am flabgasted at the difference. The game still has core issues like house textures loading metres from you at times but this does not detract from gameplay. I can now say this game is a touch of brilliance hiding under a cload of leagacy code, graphical and otherwise.

There is a portion of players that have only minor issues but game is playable generally and then there is the rest of us, read all the posts not just this one. I have been on these forums since I got the game 5+ weeks ago now and along with many others and I mean MANY I have gone through what seems like hell just to get the thing playable. It annoys me that you comment like that without researching first. Also in regards to overheating, fan speeds etc, thanks and no it isn't that. I for one never adjusted a thing on my settings but even if I did I would still wonder why every game I played worked fine except ARMA2. Only games I have ever had major issues with (unplayable) was the ARMA series. Anyway for now I am ok that it works but I have had to turn my PC world upside down to do it, took a lot away from the enjoyment of the game.

Has nothing to do with AA up or down or other settings up or down. This flickering is an issue with the way the engine handles textures and building textures is where it really show through. Basically you can't do anything about it, BIS has to fix it if they want to.

What OS do you have? maybe OS difference, don't ask me why but I am trying to see why you don't have much luck but I can plainly see that AA works for me, interesting but painful. BTW Windows 7 is great, just installed it and ARMA2 and a lot of my main complaints have gone away, game now very playable in SP or MP using 1.02 anyway, 1.03 needs a lobotomy.

Just to summarise my final situation. Installed Windows 7 on a clean HDD and installed/patched ARMA2 to 1.02 and I can now play the game without many of the issues I had previosuly on XP with 1.02. Still see the core ARMA2 problems like slow loading flashing building textures, plastasine looking trees and trees/buildings popping into existance but I can now play, even multiplayer works using binoculars and all, very little lag and very few CTD's, only 1 in a few hours play. I wont go to 1.03, I would rather be able to play single player missions or play with the editor than having all those issues I had before. Based on my experience I can recommend Windows 7, it is also very nice to use, refreshing to see something this good from Microsoft for a change.

UPDATE: Well I spent all afternoon on it. Bought a new 1TB HDD, installed Windows 7 then installed Win 7 Catalyst 9.7 drivers. Then installed ARMA2 before anything else. Updated ARMA2 to 1.02 NOT 1.03 yet. The game is a 300% improvement over when I played it on XP. Frame rate big improvement, most stutter gone, towns and cities no lag, flashing triangles gone. Had one CTD in 2 hrs play now, acceptable. Even tried MP and it was brilliant! HDD still thrashes a lot, BIS MUST work on performance and using of RAM. This confirms if you have a 15%+ fragmented HDD you may get problems loading textures, may even force the Receiving... bug because things are taking so long to load. So what was the problem? who knows, fresh install of an OS can do wonders. Maybe if I did a fresh install of XP it would be just as good who knows. Anyway I think that about confirms it not being hardware issues and Windows 7 rocks! looks very nice, clean, easy to use. Looks like Bill Gates and gang are going to get some of my money when it is officially released.

After reading this thread I wanted to test if AA had no or very little effect. So I load the Editor up turn off AA, get in a chopper, go to the biggest city and about 20metres off the ground with external view I authover right amongst buildings on an angle. At this stage the building and window edges look horrible, wavy wriggly jagged lines moving up and down like snakes crawling all over the buildings. I pause this and change AA to full. Yes frame rate hit BUT ALL of the jaggies, wavy lines and "snakes" have gone totally. The buildings now look smooth as they should. So bottom line is AA does make a difference, very noticeable to.

Again with the attitude, different approach may get you more responses thus more help. Have you searched the forums? I think after months of reading here this is a rare occurance which kind of indicates something weird with your setup, drivers or direct x or something specific to you. Have you tried the -winxp and -maxmem settings? have helped some, worth a try. Now I have seen this isse when playing with the editor, accidentally placed a player in a bush and when I went to play the bush was so bright I was near blinded but it did reajust after about 5-10 seconds. This is the only time I have seen it. I suggest you spend more time on your system specifically looking at software. Uninstall drivers, clean them out in fact and reinstall etc etc. Unless someone miraculously comes up with an answer.