desertjedi

Fabrizio, awesome work! As a matter of fact there's probably nothing that could improve Arma 2 gameplay more than exactly what you're doing! I've actually given up on Arma 2 for now and have gone back to Arma. I found my Arma 2 AI mates to be completely inept at defending themselves and continually get slaughtered when they encounter the enemy. I've found problems with enemy AI as well. My missions usually end with me wishing I had had Fraps running so people would believe me. Ironically, I don't have these problems in Arma. Is is possible to adjust the basic AI skill levels in Arma 2 missions? In Arma, the defaults were 1.0 for West and .5 for East. Are there similar defaults in Arma 2 missions? Unfortunately, unless they've changed it recently, GameCam records in compressed mode which means you can't use incredible utilities like Super@ to control compression. I record (uncompressed) with Fraps and then use Super@ to do the final DivX compression. I usually can compress a 2.5GB Fraps file down to about 15-20MB (depending on quality) with a video width of about 500 pixels. Keep up the good work!

Yeah, but that doesn't explain why it happens to many others (including myself) and why it happens randomly.

Reminds me of a story I heard where one guy took care of an asshole in SWAT 4 by tasering him over and over and over until he disconnected.

If the failure comes at about the same time every time, it sounds like overheating. As noted, I would kill McAfee but then I would also bypass your router by connecting your PC directly to the internet and then play a session and see if the problem repeats. Without taking your router out of the equation, I don't think you can rule it out as the problem.

I'm done with all Aimpoints. I'm going through a bunch of Arma missions and replacing them with M16A4_ACGs or at least providing a weapons box for custom load-out. I got used to the ACOG sight and its excellent range and going back to the Aimpoint or iron sights feels like I'm shooting with a tennis racket. If the mission gives you East weapons, I try to put in AK-74s with scopes (which are nice). Shooting ironsights with an AK-47 at range just isn't any fun.

I have to completely agree with this. Without it, it would mean a lot less to differentiate Arma from combat FPSes. I think it might also transfer importance to how well you control your body as opposed to how well you think tactically....as in...do I have time to reload or run to that boulder knowing that Arma isn't as "fast" as other shooters? It does add character to the game, IMHO.Keep in mind that real soldiers carry their "house" on their back. Quick movement is not that easy. I'd have to say that I really love the "speed" in the Armas and that it really makes playing them a unique experience. But I do think Arma 3 should have diving rolls coming up to perfect firing stance with blind-firing around corners! j/k

I was playing A2 and I and my AI squad had become engaged with enemies. I must have ordered my squad to a certain spot. Previously, they were all prone and the last formation command was "line". I turn to see their progress and I see a whole line of my AI mates prone and squirming on the ground on the way to their new location. I was struck by how stupid it looked. It then occurred to me that not only would a soldier not do that, it would actually put them at greater risk. They were totally in the open and exposed for a time that would have allowed me to answer a Final Jeopardy question. IRL, when a soldier moves to one location to another prone-to-prone, he would get up and sprint to the new location and then go prone again. Staying prone with no cover and taking five minutes to get to your new location by squirming there puts a soldier at too much risk. Sure, there are times when you would stay prone to maintain cover as you moved but this was not one of those times. My suggestion would be to have a prone soldier, when ordered to a new location, to get up and sprint to a new location and then dive prone once again. Not only would that look far less dumb, I think it would be far better soldiering. And another annoyance is when there is no threat whatsoever, if you order a soldier to a location and he happens to be prone, he will crawl to the new location - even if he's perfectly capable of walking. I shouldn't have to constantly order my troops to stand up when its obvious they should do so. How many times have you ordered your troops into the chopper and then wait and wait until you realize that your AI is crawling to the chopper - for no reason.

Thanks for the clarification. I guess I'd then have to say that part of my frustration is having to tell them everything...constantly. A little independent thought could help out a lot here. I was playing Arma 2 and trying to advance quickly to the next objective. Since we had been engaged just before, my AI men were doing the cover-and-move hootchie-mama. Finally, I just ran back to them and watched to see what was going on. I was like WTF? I put them in Safe mode and they finally cut the crap. If the friendly AI cheated just enough to know that there weren't any enemies for miles around, it could make the game flow a lot more smoothly. There's simply way too much hand-holding in both Arma and Arma 2. But then again, maybe I wouldn't mind so much in the command interface wasn't such a PITA.

I did and found the AR sounds srsly boring - regardless of how well all the other sounds were done. Have to agree with you 100%. IMHO, the only sound mod where the ARs have balls is HIFIFX for Arma (the regular one, not the modular one). I think I've tried them all. Word to that, brother. I started to really get into that BC2 video but after about 20 seconds, I realized just how lame the gameplay was. Sounds good to me! I think the take-away from this thread is most people really DON'T care about realism and are actually looking for more immersion from a "balls-out" soundscape. NOTHING adds immersion to a combat game like a great sound mod.

Thanks for the tips, Wiper - oh, I just realized - you're the author! :p

You've just confirmed what I've feared all along. Teamplay will NEVER EVER happen on an Arma public server. All you have to do is read through this thread.

Can someone give me some tips on how to do well in this mission? I've played it over and over and its a total slaughterfest (of my ass). I drive to the AO and always on the way, I encounter a few Opfor. I've found that trying to simply run by them as fast as possible is often not the best course. I order everyone out of the truck and get them prone but my team is like an idiot fire drill. I often get wiped out by much smaller number of Opfor and if armor or a Hind show up, forget it. In Arma, I found my men could really take care of themselves against armor and attack choppers but in Arma 2, it's like I could use Fraps to record "comic relief" movies. Should I try to avoid any contact at all costs for as long as possible? It's getting to the point where I'm about to give up as any enemy encounter turns out to be a clusterfook. Any input appreciated.

ROFL, now there's someone who really knows how to take advantage of a game's strengths! :icon_ohmygod:SP, CTF, CTI, Warfare (only know enough about the last two to know I'd never play them) I don't do any of the above and probably never will but do I mind that they're packaged in the game? Absolutely not.

I appreciate the in-depth analysis of how to improve pub play. But I have to say how ironic it is that I experienced 100%-disciplined-teamwork gameplay in a game that had a fraction of the functionality of Arma and that game was Vietcong. We had guns, bullets and ingame voice and that was it - period. I even played missions where the TL communicated by text chat on the screen. Even with text chat, we were able to clear the entire map of enemies with few or sometimes no casualties...and that was due to the incredible teamwork. VC servers would simply have to put the term "Teamrespawn" in their server name and everyone knew that they were for teamplay...AND...that any "misconduct" would get you immediately kicked or even banned. Teamrespawn meant that basically there was no respawn - only until after the whole team was wiped out. No respawns meant that you only got serious players on the server. My point is that you can play Pickup Stix with teamplay if the server decides that that is how they want to run their server. If it can be done in spades with a game like VietCong, it can be done in any game. I don't think we'll ever be able to have open-to-the-public Arma teamplay servers unless the Admins of a server rule with an iron hand and develop a reputation for it. And ironically, if they do rule with an iron hand and kick dipshits left and right, serious players will flock to their servers. Isn't TacticalGamer a pretty decent example of this?

Sk3pt, regarding your pics...is it just me or does the artwork in general (regardless of the actual image "quality") in this game look like crap? I look at Arma and then I look at this game and feel...WTH?

This all sounds like, indeed, aliens really are involved. Maybe we need a server farm to meet the cpu requirements of this game!

Wow, it took less than an hour for someone to piss on your parade. It's totally awesome to listen to someone who's experienced "in the zone" moments from Arma or Arma 2. I never tire of it and I know there are some amazing stories out there. Steel, you need to get Fraps going so we can see some of this stuff. All I can say is - tonight, I'm heading into the Armory. I have Arma 2 loaded but am still playing and editing a lot of Arma 1 so I never even thought of going into the A2 armory. Thanks for the heads-up.

I just heard this popping sound and now I have what looks to be brain matter oozing from my ears. :D I was jazzed about BIA:HH before it came out but completely blew it off when I heard they "abandoned" co-op. I'm glad I did.

Repeating patterns like checkerboards often point to the RAM on your video card. Are you running it at stock speeds? Is it running hot? How old is your card?

I'm starting to think that that is precisely correct. Right when I switched to using a Very Low Terrain Detail setting coupled with the Proper Low Vegetation mod, I saw a noticeable frame rate improvement in many missions. That is, until I went into a mission called Abel by Ionflux where you and many other US soldiers defend a "base" against many, many attacking Opfor. I don't know how many exactly but the "win" parameter is to survive for a half-hour, so I'm betting there's a truckload out there. In this mission, my previous frame rate was 26fps. After I enabled the "veggie" mods, the frame rate was still precisely 26fps. I'm currently running a Core 2 Duo clocked at 4.18Ghz. This, as they say, is not a good sign. [My video card is an overclocked GTX 260].

Kju, can you tell me what "vegetation" mods should not be used with HeinBloed's?I'm currently using: - Terrain Detail = Very Low - SAP Clutter mod - Proper Low Vegetation Mod I'm thinking that HeinBloed's would be incompatible with the Proper mod? BTW, thanks for your work/time. IMHO, the Proper "playability" mods are the most important ones for Arma 2.

Well the devs blew that chance - the vegetation is a mess in this game. Or should I say, all the vegetation in this game is a mess EXCEPT for the single LOD resolution you see when standing right near something. Some of the leafy trees look like a 3-year old was smearing water colors around. And I think this situation is made worse by the fact that the variety of terrain is much less than it was in Arma 1. Forests, anyone?

Flightster, you're (or were) not alone in that problem. I read the original Arma thread on Team Status Dialog and it ends with the "respawn" problem not resolved. I d/led v1.3 (Arma) of TSD and managed to find v1.1 imbedded in some Arma SimHQ missions. If you follow the install instructions for both, neither of them work correctly - ie, you lose the Team Status action as soon as you die. Luckily, I had a working mission with the SimHQ Coop Pack and I sort of reverse-engineered it to figure out that the key was some third-party script added by some author - which, AFAIK, had nothing to do with re-adding the "action". So, at this time I have v1.1 working fine. I'll probably just stick with v1.1 now that I have the needed code isolated and working. But just FYI, the "respawn" problem was a known problem. I'm now adding the code to a bunch of co-op missions. This script has got to be the most useful script I've ever found for Arma. It can make seemingly impossible missions (say when you're playing alone with AI) winnable - Kudos to Dr_Eyeball!!

I'm sorry I'm not familiar with that alternate universe. That's what your rig can do - not other people's.

Not according to the tests in this thread:http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=78423&page=3 They seem have to have a MAJOR impact on frame rates. I'm sure a lot of it depends on the devs' implementation. Check out that whole thread...it really brings together all the problems with Arma 2's vegetation.