Friedchiken

That is a good quote to get the attention of all the BF fans. Â BF isn't a poorly designed game but I disliked it due to it...well..not being like the OFP I loved so much! Oddly enough, the only games that keep my attention for years are the single player ones. Flashpoint, Baldur's Gate II, Mafia... Well, if BF2 had great singleplayer missions, I would have liked it, but alas that really isn't the point of the series.

I just finished playing with FFUR 2006 in the mission editor. I set up a small house on desert island, surrounded by trees for cheesy effect. Then I setup 3 resistance fighters with 3 civilians and set them to "destroy" the hostages if they saw any SWAT members (the US blackops in this case). I myself tested the triggers to make sure that they worked. Then I placed myself on a hill overlooking the house, where I could try to pick off the hostage takers deep inside the house in an emergency. Lying in some placed bushes, I gave the go-code to the 5 man SWAT team to infiltrate the "forest" and storm the house. At some point during the infiltration, I saw the hostages go prone, and then the gunman at the door started aiming somewhere. I took my badly aimed shots and missed both the guy in the hallway and the door. I couldn't see anything until I started hearing a lot of shrill high-pitched shots. I saw all the hostages down, and the door-man prone behind a body. When I saw an officer non-chalantly run in front of the gunman, I thought that gunman would shoot him. Nothing happens for a few seconds, then I see all my officers standing. When I run to the house, I realize that the doorman was already dead. I take his AK and jump into the house, only to find all the hostages safe (but psychologically plastered to the ground), and the gunmen with multiple bullet wounds. The AI saved the day without my crappy sniping with an overpowered .50 cal. Playing with the mission editor is fun.

Well, when you don't buy your games, you get really easy to frustrate. Cliff Blezinsky said it himself.

YAY they liked the presentation! It's great to know that a good idea can be communicated despite language barriers and crappy marksmanship  Though I think the " cooperative support for two, at least" statement will give nervous people heart problems. No new info, but I like how Gamespot mentioned that BIS is looking for a western continent publisher.  It should help in setting the publicity straight in terms of shopping for publishing options. Edit: Indeed, what a relief!

hm, they developed the content. now they can't use it anymore.... Life sucks.

Well, I imagine that I could do a lot of property damage with a normal garden shovel. I heard that the soviet military ones have a bladed size and a saw side. Imagine the destruction!

Well good for us, at least the AI in AA is more optimized compared to Elite. With a lot of work at scripting, maybe we can improvethings over FFUR2006. Plus we haven't actually seen a real infantry battle in terms of an updated version.

Well said. However I meant that "better scripting support" would be something like turning off the default ai for certain scripted units, let them perform the complex action, and when they need new orders they revert back to regular AI mode. Basically I'm for anything that would help anyone script the AI with minimal performance hit.

Would be darkly hilarious, but unlikely for mission design reasons. But I wonder if there are now any systems in place to prevent bunched up ejects, as soldiers hitting each other's parachutes is funny looking because we all know that in reality very bad things happen as a result. Didn't the guy in the video look over his shoulder independenty of the gun in one part of the video? And then I hear this rumor that un-fixed aim is an option under difficulty, but I could not confirm that. Obviously BIS has some pilot models handy. In fact, I would go so far as to hope BIS gave pilots only a handgun and smoke grenades, as even if there are parachutes, the pilot should not have a rifle ready to storm the battlefield. A handgun only kit would prevent most players from ejecting over the conflict zone as an insertion method. Myself, I would like to see more kneeling instead of proning. Crawling in a cluttered street sounds really rocky and painful. Personally, due to stupid habits of childhood, I know very well that crawling in the wilderness is also very painful for the hands stomach. I even grabbed a handful of... sticky noodle balls one time I like it because it reminds me of those convoy radios in those videos. Though maybe this should be an option for easily irritated people.

Why? I mean, Codemasters seems like a fine publisher, and ArmA looks like a marketable game (I mean if they marketted OFP, then there's no reason they would think ArmA is too niche) This has also puzzled me, but I guess maybe Codemasters wanted to fund other projects more mainstream like those music games shown at the Codemasters booth at E3. Or maybe the deals with Coalescent Tech and the founding of BIA were a serious intrusion into the business deal BIS and Codemasters had. It seems that BIS and Codemasters have never really elaborated as to why they split up, so I guess maybe we need to respect that secrecy. The reasons could have been very complex, not worth explaining.

It would be hella cool if BIS could release a document file listing all the relevent AI script commands to facilitate AI enhancements within more complex missions. For example, later user missions could have squads of regular AI soldiers supported by script driven machine gunner squads that lay on area fire. While the "regular AI" would be good for providing a fairly independent adversary/friend, it would be cool to have more support in creating scripts for AI to perform very complex actions. We could have scripted sniper-spotter teams that are able to report using BIS's dynamic language system. Â We could radio in tanks to perform a single shell barrage on a selected area of fire. Â For atmosphere purposes, we could have a group of AI enter a house and clear it while the player watches the streets. Â Maybe reinforcements rappelling from a chopper could come and lie in positions to secure the area you just cleared (like behind junk and near corners). Or when preparing for a counter attack, non-player controlled AI squads would arrange their own soldiers in pre-chosen places, just to reduce the amount of player work in arranging a defense. So while the player is free the play a mission, there's nothing wrong with adding a few script that let the AI do few cool looking tasks that they would not usually perform.

Well, personally I would try to buy a copy within the first week of release. And then refer as many people as I can by giving demonstrations of the crappy laptop graphics but awsome gameplay. Â Because most people around me are concerned that new games won't run on their student laptops they bought a couple years ago.

I read in the newish second ign interview that placebo respects the work mods like the Chinese PLA enthusiasts (sorry, forgot the name guys ) do towards scripting AI responses. This makes me wonder if AA will have better, more efficient execution of complex AI scripts. If so, that's great! I think that it would be a great design decision to have a set few of user-made missions where we sacrifice a little cpu resources for more advanced AI behaviors.

This is probably closing bait. Search and don't bribe But know that video options don't show up if your monitor doesn't support them. Â My laptop cannot select 1600x1024 resolution for example.

I like how William said that the "elite" King's Guard are really standard recruits with above average qualifications. This little security issue is going to make the campaign quite funny in some ways.

I don't want that broken english back, no thanks. 2.. attack ... SOLDIER, 100, twelve oclock. BLEH. The newer radio sounds were a lot better (a lot better! ) edit:What is wrong with the smilies on this forum lately? Some will like the new voices, some won't. Â I like them, as we still maintain a lot of different male voice samples while improving the transitions a little bit. im not talking about the voices.. i was talking about the sound that makes when conversations finish (end of communications (radio sound)) Ah, apologies. Well, I can see how that radio beep might be annoying, but I like it because if reminds me of those videos of patrol convoys. Maybe it would be a good idea to have the radio beep as an option in the sound menu? That could work as a compromise.

Uh... an interview confirmed this about 2 weeks ago. Â And the video shows the tank commander moving independently with the mounted machinegun. Someone official needs to make a forum list of all the confirmed aspects of development. Â At least update when things get finished.

hehehe    It could be called a stand-alone expansion pack, though that's a terrible accusation, if you look at the Sims 2.

Say, did anyone see the Codemasters E3 booth tour (on Gametrailers.com)? They seemed to put a little money in the booth, though all the games look like mainstream music games, an MMO and racing game. While it sucks that BIS had low exposure, it would have looked odd to have AA stacked with these games.

Oh, never seen those before.

Well, if you think about it, every game from Ghost Recon to Counter-Strike just plays the reload animation without the mag removal if you look at a character from the third person. It's just a performance design choice not to have the first person view, as the "camera" is placed in the head of the in game character. While you could put a type of LOD on the player's specific weapon for the purpose of reloading, the lack of reload modeling allows mod makers to make a lot of various types of weapons fairly quickly without animation experience. It's sorta the same reason why the first few Rainbow Six games had no gun models.

Good lord. I agree with you 100%. I hate this in ofp...lol. It takes away so much richness from otherwise very good sounds. I hate this too, but other games like R3:Raven Shield have this problem. There's just not an easy way to anticipate when the player will play off the trigger.

I keep trying to not say such things, but these PR guys really remind me of my diffential mathmatics professor. Nice guy, but couldn't speak english worth a damn. Few people ever came to lecture after the first 2 weeks. Ok I'll say it, I was appalled by who was manning the stations. It's not their fault, but I hoped maybe they could have gotten a good english speaker to represent the game. They could have searched for a guy willing to work for free and just pay the work ticket to the convention. But then again it's hard to make work arrangements overseas. Hopefully BIS can get another change for decent marketing.

At least it will have the Elite improvements. I'm just a little bummed out since they optimized the engine and rebuilt the engine on a clean slate. The already finished improvements are still really cool.

True, but then again there are some missions which are very random and have intelligently set up AI positions and tactics where even large group of human players can face serious problems. Of course I would like to see AI improved a lot but I also understand it is very hard to program to operate intelligently in open terrain, one horrible example is the AI in Delta Force series. Even most current tactical CQB games just rely on pre-scripted AI actions and fast reflexes to produce an illusion of intelligent AI. So I would expect the significantly improved AI will be seen in Game 2 but not perhaps in AA. OFP currently has 'Super-AI' option which makes AI have very fast shooting reflexes and movement (a bit of a AI challenge cheat), perhaps there could be slider to adust this instead of on/off setting. Or maybe 'Super-AI' could be adjusted for each soldier in the mission editor and not by server settings. Some spec ops AI's really could have faster reflexes than the current skill max in the editor.l Ultimately it would be best to have different adjustable skills in the editor for shooting accuracy, situational awereness, reflexes, speed, etc. but that's not probably in AA. I don't like the current "super-AI" system due to how it eliminates the differences between special troops and conscripts in the campaign. It also tends to break BIS's rather harrowing sneaking missions. Hopefully the new AI difficulty settings will alter this current system.