Madus_Maximus

Isn't this how Warfare and CTI type missions work?

Didn't 2K get another development team to make the sequel? I can't see it being anything but a simple cash in because it's quite clearly not made with the passion of the original. The original was made because it was something the developers wanted to play themselves. With the sequel no doubt it'll be "what the fans/shareholders want", which very rarely ends well.

It does, sort of. They have a dock device that has a keyboard on it that acts as a stand to prop it up like a photo frame. The point of this isn't to be a generic do all thing, like pretty much all tablets have been in the past. In the past it was just a desktop OS with a touch skin on top for some parts of it, but the base OS was made for a mouse and keyboard. This is more specific to certain tasks (designed from the ground up for touch) like reading books (which can have interactive elements like videos and so on if the publisher wishes), watching movies, listening to music, browsing the web, using email and using the vast majority of all those Apps in the Appe Store that turn it into something totally different than out of the box. What Apple tend to do is create something with limited functionality compared to other devices, but what it does do it does VERY well. It's not a "jack of all trades master of non" device. Think of how the iPhone didn't do some of the things other phones did, but what it did do it totally wiped the floor with those other phones, like web browsing and media consumption.

Contructive critisism: Rather than just say what needs changing, maybe suggest HOW it can be improved. Just saying interaction "needs fixing" isn't enough. I'm not saying I dissagree and I'm not being an ass about it. People have the habbit of saying "this needs changing! It sucks!" but never say how it needs to be changed.

25,000 + games on the App Store in under 2 years suggests otherwise.

I'm not sure if he was aiming that specificically at you, or more at Codemasters, because they DID claim it was exactly that when marketting it. BIS had to step in and put an end to that and threatened to sue them because it was a lie.

The major difference here is (well, there's two) is that BIS didn't promise the world with ArmA 1. They didn't say it'd be the greatest thing to ever grace the market or that it'd have features x y and z, or promise to be the second comming, which is how CM marketted DR. The second difference here is support. BIS actually support their games, for a long time (in comparison with other developers). I mean damn, they just recerntly released another fairly large patch for ArmA 1 and we got 1.05 for ArmA 2. You'll be lucky to see CM release a third patch for DR, never mind one that fixes as many things and teaks as much as BIS patches do. Then you have the BETA patches, which just get better witch each release and they come through thick and fast. As with any kind of business where you provide a service or product, it isn't so much the actual product, it's how you support your customers if and when something goes wrong with it. Good customer service means the difference between a good and bad reputation. You could have two companies that make the same products to the same standards. They get the same number of defects and the like. The company that deals with those issues in the most friendly and respectful manner is the one most people will prefer to use. The other company who just don't seem to give a crap will get bad rep and lose future business. Codemasters are in the latter category.

Runs perfectly well on my system. It ran like crap when I had my GeForce 8600, runs like silk with the GTX 260. ArmA 2 is a very GPU intensive game, but you don't need a monster rig to play it. I'd hardly call my rig monster, I'd hardly call it mid range either these days, maybe lower mid range. Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.8GHz, GTX260, 6GB DDR2 800MHz RAM (trust me, I noticed absolutely NO improvement in performance from 2GB. I knew I wouldn't, I got that RAM for running Photoshop and so on). RAM discs and SSD's are the extreme end of getting more performance, but at least they have benefits outside of gaming too. An SSD improves the performance of your entire machine. A lot of people have machines that too much hardware in them too. Very very few games are written to take proper advantage of multiple GPU's and multi-core CPU's. Most of the more recent ones are optimised for dual cores. It's hard programming for multi-threaded CPU's. This is why you see folk with uber i7's with their 8 logical cores running at 4GHz OC with 8GB of RAM and 2 GTX 295's in SLI getting such crappy performance, the software doesnt take advantage. Infact it often slows things down because of the overhead. It tries to address resources it just can't handle.

I don't think CM ever cared to be honest. They just see their customers as that, customers. They're a figure to them. I'm sure not everybody involved with the company thinks that, but the people at the top controling it all most certainly do. Codemasters go through developers like a drunk does vodka, they're forever switching teams around and hiring people because people just... leave.

If it's a USB drive, no, it won't improve things. USB is much much slower than a hard drive connection. An SSD is the best route to go if you can afford it. It'll improve performance accross the entire system too so it won't just be a gaming upgrade.

ArmA 2 is very GPU heavy. I recently got a GTX 260 having used an 8600, and my god the improvement is IMMENSE. Also, all that RAM is useless, the game won't use it all as it's coded in 32bit. It'll use 4GB tops, including the GPU memory, so about 3GB or so depending how much RAM the GPU has. Try running it in XP compatibility mode, that's been known to improve performance somewhat, and set the Maxmem to 2048mb or something so you know it isn't getting confused trying to address more RAM than it can. EDIT: What hard drive are you using? The hard drive is always the bottle neck in any system, even SSD's, only they're much less of one. ArmA 2 gives your whole system a work out and is always loading textures and so on. Having a faster drive will help out here. A lot of people use a smaller but fast drive to install the OS and key applications that require better performance, but that costs money and looking at your rig you've already spent a bunch on it lol.

Some random scenery shots... and a bus stop lol.

I'm pretty sure it was DX7, maybe DX8 was recommended? Either way it seemed to run worse on cards made for the version above what the game required for some reason. Well, worse in relation to the extra power the card had. I remember it running perfectly fine whilst using Fraps on a GeForce 2 but it sucked on a GeForce 3, 4 and 5, the frame rate was naff! It didn't seem to improve at all in normal play, but Fraps killed it. I vaigely remember a few other games at the time running like crap on the newer hardware too like Empire Earth.

Running the ArmA 1 stuff on the ArmA 2 engine shows how optimised it really is. The only reason it runs like a dog for most is because of the massive object density of the terrain, there's so many different kinds of trees and grass so densly packed. Sahrani runs smooth as silk on the new engine and also looks a lot better too. Goes to show that BIS know their stuff. The OFP engine was DX7 methinks. I remember many engines running like crap on that, and running worse when you put a DX8 card in there. I think MS changed something in DX8 that caused lots of performance issues with older games. At least that's what I remember.

If they did then nobody in the world would be using IE haha. God I wish what were true. DIE IE! Anywho. Chrome started off "meh" then went to "ooh" and it's not officially at the "not to shabby" stage. It's very similar to Safari in how it renders (well, it's using the same render engine, so naturally it'll be similar, it uses it's own java engine however). I'm all for anything that pushes open web standards to the masses. It makes the life of developers a hell of a lot easier. If IE died we'd have no more use for "if ie" tags and having to use several style sheets for the different versions of IE, and the one for every other browser!

I don't care what systems people use, it's totally up to you, what I can't stand is the sheer ignorance people present in their arguments. What does it matter to you that someone likes a different kind of computer to you? Do you also bash on people who like a different brand of car you drive? Or maybe a different brand of bread you eat? I only replied to the comments that were clearly ignorant of how things really are. Most people who hate or bash on Macs have never used one beyond a quick mess around at an Apple Store, or those crappy ones at school/college/uni. News flash! All public computers are prone to sucking! Think how many people use them daily and mess around with them. A lot of peoples dislike of them comes from simply not being used to them. They have a Windows machine at home and have grown up with it. They'll use Windows in most things they do, but then come to use a Mac for one small aspect of their daily life (comparitively) and dislike it because it's different. That's normal, but people love to make blanket black and white statements these days with nothing in between. It's a case of "Oh it's different so it must suck!", it should be a case of "Oh it's different, why? Maybe they're onto something". I'm sorry if I've somehow pissed some of you off for liking Macs, but really, why the hell should you care? I choose to like something you don't, big deal, move on. I hate it when people spout bull about something they don't know about, only what other's have told them rather than what they've personally experienced. If you don't like Macs, good for you, I don't care, you use the best tool for the job at hand and what you're comfortable with. Not everything is about hardware, which is what pretty much every single rebuttle to the Mac has been in this thread. What about Windows? What's so brilliant about the platform itself? Something many people forget is that most Mac users were once Windows users, they moved for a reason, Windows. I love kick ass hardware, but I also like good software, something Microsoft tend to be not all that good at dispite being a software company. Windows 7 however is great (as far as Windows goes) but still not up to the standards of OS X and even some distros of Linux (I'm on about the actual OS here, not the applications that run on top of it, they have nothing to do with the OS itself, it's up to the software developer what platform/s to support). Also, on a side note: We're in a niche market. We're in a niche market of a niche market. PC gaming is a niche, no matter what you like to think of it, it's not like the glory days where all the best stuff came out on PC and gave us loads of features all nicely implemented with good levels of complexity to test our brains. Now it's all consoles. We're also in a niche in that we play "simulations", or at least something pretty damn close without having to spend vastly more for the real deal like VBS2. PC gaming is getting less and less relavent by the day, and so is all this awesome hardware we use. You can play the most demanding games on the best rigs from 2-3 years ago. Back in the day that wouldn't be the case, you'd need to be at least a year out of date to have decent performance in the heavy new games. Think about it. Look at the sort of machines being sold these days. Most are cheap as chips very low powered netbooks or laptops. They're not gaming machines by any stretch. If you want better quality parts and a good build quality then you pay for it, or you build your own, but we're getting into niche again. Most people don't build their own machines, either becase they can't or they just don't want to.

Thsouads? The last time they had an Intel GPU in any of their machines it cost $999, all the higher end machines had discrete GPU's or the vastly superior (to the Intel) NVIDIA GeForce 9400M GPU/Chipset. Hardly "thousands". All their higher machines have always had discrete GPU's.

Or maybe I have other things to do?

Apple laptop haven't had Intel GPU's for over a year lol. Best update yourself there.

It uses notebook components because of the form factor. The whole machine is built into the back of the monitor, there's just no room to physically do it. You could change it in the same way you change a laptop GPU, but it'll require a steady hand with the soldering iron and most likely the upgrading of other hardware on the board like the chipset.

Comaplining about Macs and saying you can make your own for less is complaining about EVERY OEM machine. How many Dell All-in-ones can you upgrade? Oh that's right, the same number... non! Same with laptops, you can't do much with them either beyond RAM and Hard drives. Compare like for like. You can put 16GB of RAM into the iMac too by the way, rather impressive for an all-in-one the size of a monitor. A tower system is NOT an all-in-one. Also, the display in the iMacs are IPS panels. Look into that, tell me now how that HP is better? The HP uses a TN panel. The resolution is also lower on the HP, it's 1920 x 1080, the iMac display is 2560 x 1440, almost twice the pixel density. Getting an equivilent display on it's own would cost u almost as much as the iMac itself. Trust me, I've looked. The GPU in the iMac was the best mobile option available at the time. Why is the GPU the most important thing to most Windows users? I really don't understand it. It's like it's the only thing they have left to bash about Macs. Macs dont need the latest and greatest GPU's because they don't use DX, they use OpenGL and make better use of the hardware than Windows does. OS X is a more efficient OS than Windows is, period. Macs are more than capable of gaming, and very well. ---------- Post added at 08:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:05 PM ---------- High end computing goes well beyond gaming. Gaming is nothing compared to real "high end". Also read my other reply above this. That's the best MOBILE GPU available at the time they last refreshed them. Look at the size of the iMac and you'll see just how rediculous it is for people to compare the GPU's inside to a full blown desktop GPU. You don't see ppl bitching about the GPU's inside laptops do you? It's the same components due to form factor. Desktop GPU's are HUGE, they'd take up a good chunk of the entire machine and have to make them much thicker and heavier to accomodate the extra cooling required.

I find it interesting how so many people are happy to bash Macs, yet many of those same people actually want one because they're sick of Windows lol. People just put up with Windows because it has more software available, primarily games. Plus, think about the benefits of having an iMac for LAN parties. You'd just pull the ONE cable out of the back, pick it up, put it in the box with the keyboard and mouse and tada, one game capable monster machine with a big ass awesome quality display that's nice and simple to set up. Put on desk, plug in that ONE cable and you're good to go. Plus, if all you do on your computer all day is game then you need to assess your life. You can actually get work done on the Mac too and have access to a much larger software library than just being on Windows, because you can run Windows too. You can even use Virtual Machine software like Paralells or Fusion, or even the free Virtual Box from Sun to run Windows and it's applications at the same time as OS X, and use those applications as if they were native to the Mac, they show up in the dock and everything. Oh, and Windows runs better on a Mac because all the drivers are written specifically for that hardware so they're highly optimised. And to Ballistic09: The Mac Pro is a workstation too using server hardware, hence the price. Be a bit overkill for gaming lol. Although I'd love to see an uber gaming rig spit out the kind of stuff a Mac Pro does. Different tools for different jobs!

I'm pretty sure this isn't the same mod that was around for OFP. They released that by the way, it was a BETA and came out just before (or after, I forget) ArmA 1 came out when all the other mods were throwing their stuff out in the hopes of getting people play it before moving on to ArmA.