GBee

Well apparently not in the Crete Army? Holding your breath for precision shots is how I was taught by the UK armed forces. Now if laying down supressing fire you would not hold your breath, but if trying to pick off a target at medium to long range then accuracy is greatly improved. I know there is a difference between how the US trains it's infantry and how they are trained in the UK. The US tend to rely on expending a large amount of rounds with a low accuracy whereas the British train for accuracy and conservation of ammo.

Minor point, the enemy aren't Russian in Armed Assault. As far as the rest of your post, I think a simple menu option to 'Secure the prisoner' when an AI/Human surrenders would be enough. An animation for binding their hands (and feet?) and then just leaving them on the battlefield would work. It would also be very easy to implement and wouldn't interfer with either your mission or gameplay in general. It can be suggested in-game and/or in the manual that when leaving a secured prisoner on the battlefield one of two things happens: they are taken back to base by support troops following behind you OR after completing the mission you go back for them. You don't have to see this happening or do it yourself, it will just be implied. Things like interrogation are taking it a little far IMHO, that will be part of Game 2 but not Arma. A possible added gameplay twist would be that secured prisoners could be rescued if they are found before the mission end. Surrendering needn't be something that happens frequently, it might be that you play a dozen missions and only see it once. Though for AI the chances of nearby soldiers surrendering if one of their friends does might increase for example.

This was actually a concern of mine, that you could be on a level area of ground, someone starts shooting at you but you can't even see an area they *might* be hiding to return fire. If it's done carefully, i.e. some grass detail is visible at longer distances then it will probably work. In real life you can't tell whether grass is tall or short from a distance, so it's not unrealistic IF they get the visibility distances/LODs right. Hopefully you'll also have things like muzzle flash and smoke to help reveal a supressing MG position. Items like binoculars/scopes will help if you have time to get them out whilst under fire. As far as being unable to see when you are lying in long grass, I don't see a problem with that. The enemy can't see you either. Re the dots in OFP:E, that didn't represent the direction from which you were shot but peripheral vision. An enemy standing to you left or right, outside your in-game FOV but within your real life vision range would be represented by a red dot (Green for allies) at the very edge of your screen. A nearly transparent dot would make them further away whilst a strong dot meant they were close. Aside from the friend/foe colouring I thought this was a good idea for OFP:E. In the heat of battle you wouldn't notice the dots so easily as you were focused on the action, at quieter times, you would notice the dots more - as with peripheral vision in real life.

It was possible in games as early or even earlier than quake 2. It's likely that the engine is capable but that performance issues may mean that it isn't included. In smaller games you only have to worry about a couple of hundred bullet hole decals, in Arma there may be thousands.

I'll play the campaign first, I want to play the game and only when I've grown bored of the campaign missions will I open the editor. I must admit whilst I loved messing with my own missions in the editor, I never really found any of them completely satisfying. I fyou create your own missions you know what you are likely to encounter, when and how. There are no suprises, no suspense and even the need for careful planning and tactics is diminished when you now exactly where everything is going to be.

Well unless a North American publisher shows interest in publishing the game, I'd say you're screwed. Blame your own games industry though, it's not like BIS are refusing to sell the game over there. In one of the interviews. http://www.ga.com.ba/clanak/514.html

Err yes you can ...

You can do that already with a one line script command, forgive my memory but it's something like flyInHeight. Although it would be quicker if that was part of the waypoint wizard ...

Seems you've got confused. A german publisher has sign Arma for distribution in Germany, Austria and I think Switzerland. Another has signed for Polish distribution. Another for the Czech republic. I think there may be one or two more ... so a total of 4 or 5? No global publisher has been signed and this now seems unlikely to happen. BIS will sign with regional publishers instead. BIS are also planning on distributing the game online, though what system they plan to use has not been stated.

Sorry to put two posts back to back, but one thing we haven't seen in any screenshots yet is the artillery. We caught a 2 frame glimpse of some blurry field guns in one of the early vids but we haven't seen a clear screenshot or even video featuring any since. We don't really know what to expect either. Will it be towed artillery? If so will it be towable or static? Or will it be a self propelled such as the Paladin (for the South). Or when they said artillery, did they really just mean man-portable mortar launchers?

Guys, you only need to look at OFP:E to see how the nighttime lighting effects were improved from OFP and they aren't going to take steps backwards. Some people here also need to go out into the country at 1am when there is no moon or bright light source. You'll be suprised to learn that there is no such thing as colour at night ... just shades of black.

As far as the different details on the soldier models, i.e. with/without kneepads, short/long sleeves, camelbacks etc My guess is that BIS are trying to vary the units so that squads don't look like a bunch of clones. I remember reading in these forums that Marines don't wear ACU, so I don't think the short sleeved units are marines. In one screenshot a short-sleeved soldier is seen to wear the 'bull' patch. I do however believe that we will see marines in the game, it's probably just that they haven't been modelled yet. Like we have yet to see tank crew and pilots.

If it was a working feature then it would have been released but it never has, which demonstrates that with the current engine BIS are unable to make it work. The more you watch that 'moving in vehicles' VBS video the more bugs and unrealistic aspects you can recognise.

I'm pretty sure the bad looking animations are a result of the sloppy re-encoding to divx done by the original hoster of the file. The speed looks to have increased 1.5-2x normal.

AFAIK the bad looking animations were a result of the video be re-encoded to Divx. It runs at 1.5-2x speed so everything looks wrong.

-TL- Grab it from www.armed-assault.co.uk, no queues and reasonably fast. Edit: Grr, why does Ikonboard not automatically link urls?

When you are focusing down the sights of a weapon you loose peripheral vision and the near sights become blurred. In that screenshot you still have a large field of view, the far distance and the near sights are both in perfect focus. What actually happens in real life is hard to model in game without extra keybindings and a complicated order. In real life you can hold the weapon up to your eye but not focused on the sights or the target giving you a larger FOV in order to spot a target. When you've spotted your target and have brought the weapon to the approximate bearing, then you focus down the sights, at which point you loose the FOV but get a much better aim. In order to replicate this in game you would need two distinct parts to the aiming process - the weapon ready view and the firing view.

gabgab, it's been confirmed in the latest interview that moving around in vehicles will NOT be included. Edit: Let me phrase that better.

That is possibly the best interview to date. It addressed most of the remaining questions and has certainly put a few endless threads to rest. I also only noticed one dodge from Placebo - on the question of enterable buildings.

yeah 1:35 its river - nice fast water Didn't see anything I would describe as a river, i.e. above sea level?

You don't ever get the US Marines called into assist the US Army because they have a faster response/deployment? I thought that's why the US Marines existed? We know that not all character/player models have been finished/revealed yet, so I think it's entirely possible that in the final game the storyline will be that the US troops on the island are re-enforced by Marines.

Agreed, somethings not right with the speed. Edit: If Placebo provides a link to the original version I'll switch that for the divx one on my site.

Bullet penetration means that different materials wood, stone, metal etc have different properties. So you can fire a 0.50 cal MG through a wooden shack but not through a stone building. A pistol might penetrate sheet metal but not 1in(2cm) armour plating. We don't know if it includes bullet decals, especially not for moving vehicles. So whether that truck always has those bullet holes, who knows?

The streaming terrain should theoretically make it possible to create custom maps of 100x100km, 400x400km ... who knows the limit? Of course that's theory from what we've been told and guessed about streaming terrain. The reality might be, that despite streaming terrain, the limit is a lot smaller. You probably wouldn't be able to increase player/AI numbers on the map to match it's size because of their load either. Who would want to populate such huge maps with objects, towns, roads? I'd love to play huge maps, but creating one would be a nightmare.

I'm mirroring the official trailer (divx version) on www.armed-assault.co.uk Trailer Mirror: www.armed-assault.co.uk