EricM

Since 1.04 I get a lot more CTD than before... to the point I can't finish the damn Dogs of War Mission because it crashes on me almost every time it saves (autosave or user save as it seems...). It is SOOO furstrating, because I had a blast until now, but now I have to capture each city almost 5 or 10 times because of the freezes and CTD (and when I load the previous save, they're still occupied !) And here's the dilemma : if I try save too often I risk more CTD (with the savegame not being registered), but if I don't save I loose all the progress at the first glitch... I tend to believe I will never be able to finish the game because of it. Edit : I seem to have very few problems in non-warfare missions too. Edit 2 : will try the new drivers, but it seems more mission related than performance related.

if you have enough money, you can build an aircraft factory, spawn MI24's and fly them.

How come the physics, driving and destruction models seem so bad with an engine made for rally racing game ? I thought the MP and entity limits were due to that... Is it me or there's no normal mapping or parallax mapping on the ground ? (can't see in the video). As far as the environment is concernced, and with the videos I saw, it feels like playing with Sahrani loaded in Arma 2... : Good FPS and draw distance + post process effects galore, but much lower density and complexity than Chernarus... They have reflective water though and the particle effects look nice. I like the splatters on your screen to tell you where you were hit... Probably a must-have for consoles. When you're alone, you don't even have to be good to be the best...

The random town generation (if working correctly) seems ace. If they improve the random terrain generation used in Arma 2 to include a bit of clutter and trees (according to altitude and slope for instace) you could have an fantastic new way of creating new islands almost on the fly : try a few variations and save the random seed when you're happy with the result. Not as detailled as a real topographic map, but lots of fun nonetheless... Add a ambient life, combat and civilian module and you get new surprises at each play : new place, new cities, new enemies...

You don't need absolutely need to script, but it certainly helps... Because indeed there are some VERY BASIC things that aren't possible to do without it : change weapon and magazine for instance, this should be a drop down list to access the nice gear menu... (and not "this remove XXX" " This addmagazine YYYY" etc... A few more MP oriented modules (like respawn ?) would make the life of many easier. I would love BIS to make the High Command menu more responsive too in OA. Very good Idea, but the implementation leaves to be desired when a lot of things is going on. An please : Add a simple "Land" command to the action or move menu. Why do we have almost redundant actions like "Stop" and "Wait for me", "Engage" and "Engage at Will", but no "Land" action for choppers ? I still need to make the pilot disembark or script a radio trigger... very annoying. I thought Arma 1 Warfare menu was also better than in A2. Let's see what the new version will be... Arma 2 is very feature rich, but OA could bring it the little polish it needs... let's wait and see...

@Krondl : I think you can do that already if you change your pitch up by mouse -Y in one and mouse +Y in another.

As much as I loved Arma 1, there's not point in going back. You can get Saharni into Arma 2 easily and it works and looks better than in the original. Single player was nothing like Harvest Red. More like a string of random missions. Warfare was good in MP. Queens Gambit had its moment. I'd say Save your money for Arrowhead if you want to play the Army... and go to the Add-on discussion forum if you want to play on Sahrani.

Good Point. Though some Ridley Scott's films are pretty monochromatic (Gladiator / Kingdom of Heaven)...

Does this work in MP ? I think synchronising was the issue with ragdoll physics....

It's just a post-process filter for the screens. You can play with it in Arma 2 already. it's just to give it the "Bleach Bypass" look of so many war movies and series from Saving Private Ryan to Flag of Our Fathers. Note : I like it desaturated...

I just experienced the sound cutting and CTD yesterday. Never happened before 1.04. The game seems to load slower too. It's about the same ingame.

One question I have is the following : - BIS stated that you could merge vanilla Arma 2 units and island into Arrowhead. good - They also plan to introduce a new FLIR technology. good Problem is the following : I believe the flir must be based on special sets of textures and hidden selections. So far so good for the new Arrowhead units, but what about the units of vanilla ARMA 2 (Marines and Chernarus ?) will FLIR work on them too ? That would mean edit all the units to add those new features in vanilla Arma 2 too...

I get this error since 1.02 or 1.03 with MLRS and GRAD It works fine with static artillery (canons and mortars). Mobile arty is useless for me... no change in 1.04 I have german download version.

The game had ambition, but it has been going seriously backward lately for whatever reason (technical, financial...) : no editor on consoles, limited MP, bland outdoors, invisible barriers, no in/out animations, limited set of vehicles, no planes, indestructible trees - so I read... I believe CM made some questionable design decisions at the beginning (racing game technology being probably one of them) and hurt a wall later down the road. With the game delayed over and over and going over budget, they probably decided to cut all the extra stuff and dumb it down to get it out as soon as possible to recoup whatever can still be saved. Time will tell if I'm wrong or not... That's a sad thing, we should not rejoy. There are few good tactical shooters, even fewer in large open outdoors... if Dragon Rising is a failure, there won't be many more in the future. Let's hope BIS do well, because I don't see any other studios trying out such an endeavour in the near future...

What's there is good, but sadly, there doesn't seem to be content fix in this patch... I still get the Arty Module error message with MLRS and GRAD when I try to open the targeting interface... (It works for static artillery). The C130 turn radius is still unusable too. On another level, the analogue throttle is a bit fubar too (50% brake, 50% thrust) which makes it really hard to use. So... keep em coming, there's still plenty of work, but thanks for the updates BIS.

Maybe because : See the pattern ?

Very nice model... I like it better than standard Arma 2 soldiers (except team Razor which are very nice)...

Actually, yes, but I'm so busy with work at the moment that I haven't had time to advance much on this or send the new files.

Seriously great stuff. Nice to see some homemade stuff in Arma... "Aux armes citoyens, formez vos bataillons..."

Do you still need pistacia and pomegranate barks and leaves photo references ? Because I just come back from a trip to Jordan and I took a couple of these (including a 450 year old pistacia atlantica in Petra). Bye

This may sound a bit provocative, but don't you believe that BIS should somewhat change their business model and make the Arma series somewhat "under subscription" Ã la World of Warcraft or EVE Online instead of trying to sell standard retail DVD every X years ? I know there are psychological barriers and technical issues, but let's examine a couple of points : First BIS is developping the same game since 2001, always refining, adding new features, improving it, patching, debugging etc... We will probably never have a totally different game, just a steady evolution/perfection of the ultimate military sandbox game in a perpetual "work in progress" state. The series can count on a great community of fans that keep buying multiple copies of the game, playing, modding, supporting the game since 2001. So basically we fanboys already are on subscription, just not knowing it. With each new generation of the game, the improved quality and complexity of the game makes it harder for modders to offer addons that can rival standard BIS model (islands, vehicles, characters, animations...). Only pros or very dedicated and talented modders with lots of time on their hand (semi-pros) will be able to keep up in the future. From a business perspective (and for development planning) it's better to have a steady cash flow income instead of irregular sales that can be jeopardized at every new version of the game. With a subscription, BIS would have the resources and incentive to add little by little almost anything. Plus, BIS would control the distribution directly and get a bigger chunk of it. From a marketing point of view, you don't have to market a totally new game every time and bother with new publishing contracts and PR. Just like WOW or EVE Online, you aknowledge that you are building on the same winning formula and regularly exanding the universe and possibilities, upgrading the graphics etc... With its online coop campaign concept (quests ?), its huge and complex world (chernarus with its history), and its FPS/RTS/RPG/Persistent world features, Arma looks more and more like a modern military MMORPG. So, next time (Arma 2 expansion/Arma3 ?) why not aknowledge all this and ask this community for a lower but steady fee (how much is to be discussed) for as long as they want, instead of a lump fee of from time to time ? Those who eventually get bored won't waste much money, those who keep liking will support the game as long as it needs and as long as they want. In the end, if the game is good BIS would get much more money (see Blizzard revenues) and the users a better game. The Question is : what if you stop "paying" ? I guess you should still be able to play offline and online with your friends, but you would be denied the access to BIS servers for updates and thus stuck at your current version number and hence only be able to play with people with the same version as your version "grow old". What's your opinion on this ?

Yes, it's in direct mode. The intro speech, the CDF officer etc... Going back to 1.03 standard to compare the differences... EDIT : after some testing, it appears that it's only screwed when I'm using headphones. With standard speakers, it's not noticable. So it may be just my headphone...

Something weird I notice in beta build, in badlands (maybe elsewhere too, haven't tested yet), the stereo sound localisation is screwed. I must face the opposite direction (actually it's more 90 degrees) to hear dialogues and sounds... Note : I have no sound mod active. Anyone else notice that ?

Chambered bullet is sooo anecdotic/unimportant in the grand scheme of things... It only ever adds one more bullet at most. That'd be pretty low in my priority list if I were BIS, given the scope of other problems they face. If everything else was flawless/perfect, why not, the more the merrier, but now...

Lucky you, because I've got an error message and no matter how high I point (77,5°) the targeting won't show up with MLRS.