desertjedi

When I host a server, sometimes my mates will have to download a map. I would assume this only applies to custom maps I've subscribed to in the Steam Workshop. But, if we play the same map later, they have to re-download it. I have some memories of games where, after downloading a map from the host, you've got it forever. I'm guessing that's not happening in Arma 3. Would it help if my mates subscribe to the same custom maps as myself? Can someone clarify this whole area for me?

It sounds to me like you're trying to evaluate Arma 3 based on your experience with other shooters... like Arma 3 might be a good shooter but it's just not polished like other games. If that is your thought, I don't think it's a good approach. Arma 3, as mentioned, is a military simulation so you really can't compare it to any other combat game on the market. It's simply a very different gaming experience. I played Insurgency a lot (before starting Arma 3) and had a blast with it. Now that I'm in "Arma Mode", it's hard to imagine going back to Insurgency without dubbing it a twitch shooter (though a VERY good one). In Insurgency, you can succeed by being a serious "bad ass". In Arma, you succeed because your squad mates provided you with good flank security and communicated well with you. IMHO, in Arma, your primary goal is to perform as an effective squad with your secondary goal being to kill tangoes (or whatever the objective). As stated, Arma is a whole other beast. If I'm preaching to the choir, my bad. But yeah, there are some great mods to bring more "polish" to the game.

I hear you Knight. I've been away from Arma II for a couple of years. The only shooters I've played in that time are games like Vegas 2. When I picked up Arma 2 last weekend, it was like my character was fat, slow and suffering from an alcoholic buzz. The first thing I did was to set "Head Bob" to zero - that's a must. I played a solo domination map against AI at night. I did so bad that I almost starting laughing. But I finally started using tactics and acting like a soldier would in real life and started getting a MUCH better kill/death ratio. The thing about Arma is that it's the only shooter (I think) where an attempt at realism is made by noticeably messing with the control of your reticule and the control of your body. With A2, I was having trouble lining up shots. With Vegas 2, I was like a Spec Ops God! It can be quite aggravating but what would Arma be if you had the instantaneous and perfect gunsight and body control of most other games? Not only would it not be Arma, but it wouldn't be much anything special. My ability to shoot tangoes running laterally to me even at short-medium range was pretty terrible but then again, so would it be in real life - even with some training. In other games, you can pick off any visible AI almost instantly. And that gets boring. But on the other hand, when I ran out of ammo and sat there helpless, I watched a tango drop to his knee, line up his shot on me and slowly and methodically shoot me. And my thought was that he is just as slow as I am to get a good shot off. And that scenario represents real life way more than a game like Vegas 2 - which I can say after playing for years, is a bit cartoonish in comparison. Arma is all about thinking and acting like a real soldier. Yeah, I'd love for some of the character transitions to be faster (there's mods for that) but I understand why things are as they are. Most of us here have found a way to play and enjoy Arma 2 with all the frustrations you've encountered. Hope you stick with it using the forums for help and find what makes Arma different from all the other shooters.

Congratz, Gunter! I hope you get the internet situation resolved soon!

Not sure if it's because the mission came out before the latest patches or what but this mission has a severe problem with "revive". If you are shot and incapacitated, the revive script kicks in but within a few seconds, the game says "All players are unconscious, mission failed" or something like that. The medic will actually come and heal you and while you're being healed, the mission will end. This happens every time I play the mission. If I chose the "no revives" option, the game will actually end about 30 seconds after it starts. I trying playing plain vanilla with Arma 2 and Arma 2 CO. Same results. Something is majorly bugged. This is a major bummer because from the small amount I've played of it, it's the best mission I've tried so far in A2!!! Awesome infantry combat!!!

I had to describe some beefy metal rear speaker stands I own to a friend and the shaft is a very wide tube. So I told him the width of the speaker stand support was pretty much like that of an RPG-7. Nothing else came to mind. It seemed like a strange comment to both of us.

I had the MSI GTX 460 with the awesome Cyclone cooler (great cooling and VERY quiet) and was able to get 900Mhz stable on the GPU. I now have a GTX 570 and found that it overclocks very well too. With tools like MSI Afterburner, GPU overclocking is very easy compared to CPU overclocking. Often its just a matter of bumping up the voltage in very small increments and finding out what's stable/unstable and what leads to too much heat. Keep in mind that overclocking both RAM and video RAM leads to very little increase in performance. And, you can kill both by applying too much voltage. I usually leave my system memory at TOTALLY stock settings and overclock my video RAM a little bit. I run my E8500 at 4.0Ghz. And from what I've heard, the E8400 is usually good for about 3.8Ghz. CPU overclocking can be very complicated and one should do a good amount of research before doing it and pick the brains of guys on forums dedicated to overclocking.

...when you're about to get a new PC at work and you go to clean up the old one's hard drive and you find WAY more Arma files than anything work-related. :D

Yes, let's all get on the same page...v1.18 it is!

Günter, congratulations on this incredible compilation/creation of mods for Arma 2! You are a true fan of the game and understand that Arma 1/2 can be so much more than its "stock" experience. I look forward to checking this out. If anyone can recommend some co-op missions that really showcase the strengths of this mod, please do.

Hebrew Hammer, I saw your other post and would strongly advise you choose that third PC with i5 and the GTX 460. It's a MUCH better investment than those other rigs. Since it's an IBUYPOWER, I'd hope that just about everything on it would be upgradable - I would think there'd be ZERO proprietary parts or strange bioses in it that would prevent upgrades. I just had my hands on a GTX 460, the MSI Cyclone 1GB one. It had the best cooler I've ever seen on a video card but it's performance was not a big enough jump over my GTX 260 so I ended up returning it. I was suprised...I had it completely stable up to 900Mhz on the GPU but it still wasn't worth it for me. I think a GTX 460 would be a fine card for A2/OA. BTW, not sure which GTX 460 you're referring to, but the 1GB is worth getting over the 768MB one.

That's one hefty overclock, Pipe! Are you overclock-savvy or did you just buy it all tweaked out without expecting (or knowing how) to change any of the settings? The first thing you have to do is to put your i5 at stock settings and see if the problem goes away. Even though OA is the only app giving you trouble, your OC may still be the problem. Often, only a few, specific apps give you trouble when OC'ed. For example, I could game forever at 4Ghz on my E8500 but I could not even start any sort of backup application. Note that if you do change your bios settings, you may not remember all the values you need to put it back the way it was. Who knows what tweaks were done. If you find that the problem is gone, you may still be able to OC but maybe not as much as 1Ghz. WOW - there's a blast from the past! Looking at the "details" of the device under Device Manager, I think, will show you the IRQ being used. EDIT - Wow, I just looked at your BSOD...that looks like some heavy duty s#%* that line about a clock interrupt not being received. Bets are now being taken on it being your overclock.

But you know you should never pay attention to that, right? With a 6800, you'd be lucky to play Solitaire on High Details.

Sounds like your video card is overheating - but still a guess. My second guess would be a weak power supply but it sounds more like a heat problem. So, I'm in agreement with Gunter.

As ShadowY said, sometimes certain DVD readers will not work with certain game disks. The trick is simply to find one that does. When you said the game installs on another PC just fine, that's the first thing that comes to my mind.

I have never looked at GPU utilization nor have I ever even cared about it. Don't get hung up on that. Believe it or not, with a more powerful cpu, you would actually get a higher frame rate than you do. The Arma series is VERY cpu dependent. That's part of what makes the Armas so good - lots of AI calculations.

Well I wouldn't say they're one and the same. The camera has a lot more usable controls. The seagull, IIRC, simply has a few flying controls. With the camera, you have extensive control over the zoom (in/out), can easily and quickly change height, and can accelerate all your movements with the Shift key (IIRC). You can even attach the camera to a unit. It will stay "focused" on that unit but it will not move with that unit. Flying the seagull is like flying while drunk - kinda hard to control.

Maybe we should say the AI often acts more intelligently than many "noob" players. :D I know what you mean and yeah it's true, but it will probably be many years before AI is no longer so "stupid" that you don't want to shoot them. I think its best to think of them as a "mixed bag". They often follow the rules of tactical engagment consistently and well (often better than peeps) but they so often ruin the gameplay with their seemingly "idiotic" behavior. Based on the above, I wouldn't call them realistic or unrealistic. They just are what they are - based on today's level of artificial intelligence.

Thanks for the input. Does any know if there's a thread titled "Must-Have Mods" or "I can't play without this mod...". If not, I think it would be a very useful thread. *watches Pravin's Youtube movie*....ouch, that's an immersion killer. I don't remember seeing that so much in Arma 1.

Marine, since you were able to play for 2 days without problem, chances are, the problem has to do with your PC and not Arma 2. The first question one would have to ask is "what's changed in terms of hardware or software?". Since nothing has probably changed (at least that you know of), I would ask you if you've had a fan failure - case or even video card fan. Regardless, I suggest you get some compressed air and blow the hell out of your case and all its fans. A two-minute window might suggest heat buildup. What are you using as a power supply? Are you having similar issues with other games? The fact that you played the game for 2 days suggests that the oddball RAM configuration might not be a problem - but I'd get a 2 or 4GB matched set simply because it's the right thing to do! If this is software-related (which I tend to doubt), you've got your work cut out for you. Is your XP install clean? Or, no offense, like so many peeps, is your XP install six years old and then you wonder why stuff doesn't work?

How much RAM do you have in your system and what OS are you running?

I've read a lot of complimentary things about the AI in Arma 2 but my question is this: Does all this praise apply to vanilla Arma 2 or Arma 2 after some major patching? I ask because I found the AI in vanilla Arma 2 to be brain-dead to the point where I could not play the game. I've been applying the A2 patches all along but mostly with an eye to improved performance - and it has been improved! At some point, I'm going to have to get my feet wet again with Arma 2 but am hoping the AI will be much improved by then. I have to admit though, I'm having so much fun with Arma enhanced with WarMod, it's hard to pull away. I'm wondering how many people play Arma 2 with "AI-enhancers" with Zeus or just play vanilla. I also wonder if ACE 2 has something to do with a lot of the praise heaped on Arma 2.

RZR, if that works - please post back. This screen is so common that I knew what your movie would look like before I even viewed it!

The only still broken links are the ones on Armaholic for part 1 and part 2. The full FTP dowload links there are working though. Gunther, as I'm sure you know, your rig's only weak spot is your AMD cpu. I use the same video card as you (mine is the original 192-shader version) and it kicks butt in Arma. A Core 2 Duo in your box would make a big difference as Arma 1/2 is so cpu-dependent. But since you'd have to switch platforms entirely, I'd skip the C2D and go directly to the core i5/i7 series. I'm still good with Win XP. I tried running Arma under Win 7 and it worked fine except that I could not get any sound in Fraps movies (Creative driver problem which still may not be resolved). I will get the downloads going tonite. If I still have the original v1.3 zipped up, should I bother downloading it again?

Nice looking website, Günter!