madrussian

There is really no comparison. Â The only set of controls that allows adequate precision has been available to us for decades... the keyboard and mouse! (complemented of course by a trusty joystick for things like driving and flying.) There are only two possible eventualities that will ever change this: 1. Â A console comes out that allows a mouse/keyboard interface. 2. Â We gain the ability to plug into our brains directly ala the Matrix. The main reason I hate consoles controllers (other than the inherent lack of precision) is that they are designed to rely heavily on the thumbs. Â Unfortunately, our thumbs weren't designed for this sort of thing. Â Think about it... ever heard the expression "all-thumbs"? Plus the general dumbed-down nature of console titles is a game-breaker for me. Â As a general rule, if the primary platform for a game is the console, I'm not interested (because by definition it cannot exhibit an adequate level of complexity.) Important to stress though... To each his own! (I should mention that I can think of one exception to everything I just said... sports games. Â They are actually better on consoles... feel free to call me a traitor if you like! )

Agreed. Â I'd even go a step further, and say I wish some of the stuff from the first preview would have been reiterated. Â Like the part about the PC being the primary platform and the console version being more of a port. They did kind of touch on this in the current preview (with relation to modability) but I really got a better feeling about the alleged PC-focus from the earlier preview. Â Long live the keyboard and mouse!

All things considered, only ArmA2 or OFP2 will ever have a chance of surpassing our beloved OFP1. And I really have my doubts, to be honest... But I got my fingers crossed anyway.

I like one-torso-hit and you're down for the count. Â Unless it's purely a glancing blow, you're going to go down and stay down with one torso shot, body armor or not. It's realisitc that way. Â Keep in mind that soldiers are trained to aim for the torso for a number of reasons. Â (The biggest of which is they are most likely to actually hit their enemy that way.) As an aside, I always hate those games that kind of mandate that you aim for the head all the time. Â It's really annoying and breaks the immersion, imo at least.

Monthly fees?!? Never! If there's one thing I've never been fond of, it's MMOs. By their very nature, MMOs deliver a watered down experience. Â To make sure no one "ruins the experience" of others players, by design the developers have to severely limit the possibilities and thus the freedom. Â Not to mention what happens once they "balance" everything. Â It's akin to being neutered. No, OFP/ArmA should forever remain open and mod-able with limitless editing possibilities... edit: There's a reason, after all, that OFP sold over a million copies. Â Indeed, OFP/ArmA is more like the opposite of an MMO.

Anyone care to comment on the new campaigns? Higher quality like in OFP?

Goody... been waiting for this since ArmA release! Congrats guys.

Don't forget the sharks! Â

I had a realization today about a major difference in the choppers in ArmA vs good old OFP, and I think many of us could potentially benefit greatly from the discovery. Please bear w/ me here, as it's a bit difficult to explain. Â Here goes. In OFP, while flying a helo in 3rd person, you were always looking straight ahead. Â No matter what sort of maneuvers you did, you could always see where you were headed. Â That is because your camera view was ALWAYS perfectly in-line with the body of the chopper. Fast forward to ArmA. Â Ever since the first time I hopped in a helo and took to the air, I was aware that something was terribly wrong. Â After several patches, things got better, but there was still something I couldn't put my finger on. Â Thank god I finally figured it out! In ArmA, while flying a helo in 3rd person, you are NOT always looking straight ahead. Â In fact, depending on what maneuvers you do, the camera can be 90 degrees off of the direction the chopper facing... or more! Â It's very difficult to fly when you can't see where you're going. I'd go so far as to say that flying helos in ArmA in 3rd person is currently like playing a console game with a really bad chase cam. The solution: I'd like to modify the config in ArmA to get the proper 3rd person view back. Â I've looked around in the config.bin (converted to a config.cpp using Unbin), but unfortunately I'm just getting started with configs, and I'm not sure I'm looking in the right place. In my ArmA config, in CfgVehicles I see the following: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> class ViewPilot { initAngleX = 5; minAngleX = -30; maxAngleX = 30; initAngleY = 0; minAngleY = -100; maxAngleY = 100; initFov = 0.900000; minFov = 0.420000; maxFov = 0.900000; }; Initially this looks like perhaps the right place to make the change. Â (Perhaps minAngleX and maxAngleX, or minAngleY and maxAngleY?) Â However, when I open my config.cpp from OFP expecting these four variables to have different values, unfortunately they are the same, so these four can't be the right ones, right? Do any of you with config.cpp experience know what variable(s) I should be looking for? Â Any other ideas? Thanks in advance. EDIT: Interesting side note- In looking at videos of helo flight in VBS2, the 3rd person view appears to operate just like it did in good old OFP, straight down the body of the chopper. Â Imagine that!

Hmmmmm... Does anyone know of any community members that are actually currently working to fix the animation bugs (such as the missing transitions)? I thought maybe I read somewhere that you were Q? Â btw- I'm not implying anything here, just curious. I wouldn't rule out personally taking a crack at it if someone happened to know where to begin. Â To start off, the one that bugs me the most is the missing transition between crouch to full sprint and back. Here's a quick description, for those who may not have experienced it: With my key setup I do not use evasive forward. Â Instead I use the turbo key, which I map to "left shift". Once in a crouched stance (stopped), I then hold down turbo. Â At this point, he's still crouched and stopped, as expected. Â Then, while turbo is still being pressed, I also press forward. Â This should transition from crouch to full sprint with appropriate animation transition, instead, he goes straight from crouched stopped to full sprint with no animation transition what-so-ever. If anyone has even the slightest clue on where to start in trying to fix this one, I'd be all ears! (Note- If anyone wishes to duplicate this bug, please do so in 3rd person, as if you try it in 1st person you cannot see yourself and thus may not notice. Â Come to think of it, maybe that why certain folks claim they don't see any issues... b/c they are always playing in 1st person and can't see the bugs! LOL )

@Forrestal Thanks for the info. Â Lots of true Game2 stuff after all! I do notice no bullet point for destructable buildings/deformable terrain. Â Did you happen to ask about that? edit: Was anything mentioned about improved animation system, etc? 3D editor sounds like Can't wait!

Good news. Â My hope is for the missing anim transitions and being able to turn off the god-awful mouse autocentering. Â Both of these have lots of votes in the BT. Â (Top ten on both for open issues last I checked.) Â Yeah, that savegame global variable issue is a biggie too. Â If it's all true, thank you BIS.

Yeah, like not having a mouse and keyboard?!? I think it's important to think in terms of target audience here. Â Any pc game developer that turns their focus to the watered-down console loses all interest from me and a slew of others I'm afraid, in this niche market of ours. The problem for me at least is consoles, by their very nature, are completely incapable of playing the type of games I would even think about. (Now I'm not saying I don't know very well that consoles are where the money is, which is very sad, imo.) In the mean time, may pc gaming live forever! edit: btw- Very insightful and well thought out post Baddo. Just needed to get my two cents in on what I think about console gameplay, and the direction the industry is headed.

I'm very familiar with scripting and mission making, but unfortunately I don't know squat about making addons. Â Been wondering... Regarding ArmA's new skeletal system, do any of you know for sure if it will be possible to create foot units of truly different height? Â (I'm talking about the real deal here, no cheating or tricks.) Reason I'm asking is I'd love to see a mission depicting an alien invasion with a ferocious and efficient species of invaders over twice as tall as their hapless prey - us! Or do we even collectively know enough about the tools to be able to answer this yet?

Last I read, the campaign in multiplayer will arrive with the next Medieval 2 expansion... with appropriately sized maps that won't take three real-life years to play out. Now I also seem to recall it will be hotseat only. Anyhoo, sounds like a step in the right direction, and we don't even have to wait for Empire to get it!

Holy moly! Â Look at those screens! Goodness, it appears we will have a more proper cover system, judging by the guy snugged up against that destroyed truck. Woot, announcement of ArmA2 coincides w/ my 100th post to boot!

Holy moly! Â Look at those screens! Goodness, it appears we will have a more proper cover system, judging by the guy snugged up against that destroyed truck. Woot, announcement of ArmA2 coincides w/ my 100th post to boot!

Please pardon my previous unwarented alarmism here. Â This demo is out now and free to all... I just downloaded it from 3dgamers. I do find the whole Games For Windows and Windows Live "brand" quite suspect though, and I'm convinced M$ fully intend to make make us pay a subscription to play the said games in multiplayer, which imo is kind of insane, given that short of MMOs, the multiplayer aspect of pc gaming has never been any additional charge over the cost of the game itself. No matter for this Games for Windows title Bioshock though... it's sinlge player only.

Maybe I am dreaming this up, but I thought I saw it would only be available through Windows Live. They'll be hard pressed to get fifty bucks a year from me to download demos, something we've been doing since the dawn of the PC for free. Please someone tell me I am on crack. Because I really want to play this demo, the game does sound mighty cool. Indeed I shutter to envision the day where we need a crack to play a demo.

Info on how to sign up for the ArmA Bug-Tracker is here. Seems like it took a little longer than you would think for BT access once you submit for it... but be patient, you do eventually get your login. For any who may have missed it, here's the link to the bug in the BT that covers the missing anims transitions (and a whole lot more): URL=http://bugs.armed-assault.net/view.php?id=2053 It is by far the best description of the missing anim transitions I've seen (covered in excruciating detail in the Notes section). Thanks to Whisper for taking the time to write it up and wamingo for the excellent details provided therein.

Here's our current best hope for fixing the broken anim transitions in ArmA: http://bugs.armed-assault.net/view.php?id=2053 This mega-entry covers all manner of anim issues, including the dreaded missing transitions. Fortunately it has been assigned. Unfortunately, that was a looooong time ago (submitted 02-27-07, assigned on 03-20-07). Â Now like I said, it covers a huge amount of anim issues. Â (See the notes section within the entry to see what I'm talking about.) Â I just wish they'd fix the missing transitions and get that part out ASAP. (as a hotfix perhaps?) Â The other stuff, while important, seems less so to me. Anyone that is bothered by the amin issues in ArmA, if you haven't already, take action, sign up on the BT, and vote for this fix. Currently this entry has 16 votes. Â The entry with the highest number of votes in the BT system has 39 votes. Â Guess what? Â That one's been fixed. There's really no reason we shouldn't be able to surpass that talley in short order, given the high-visibility nature of this issue. In my experience, other games don't have broken animation transitions! Â There's no reason at all our beloved ArmA should either. Raise the priority = all the ugly broken anim transitions in ArmA gets fixed sooner.

The missing anim transitions are the main issue I've got with ArmA right now. Â Until they are fixed, I can keep waiting (and not playing) indefinately... I think it all boils down to weather you use "Evasive forward" exsclusively or not (and thus experience fewer issues). Â For those that want to be able to transition from jog to sprint on the fly via the "turbo" button (which I use the shift key for), there are broken transitions galore.

I also have Rivatuner now but don't see any "render frames ahead" setting. Â Can someone please help with this? Â I've done tons of searches, downloaded Coolbits, etc. Â No luck... Normally this kind of stuff isn't this hard... I have an Nvidia 7950.

Looks like a nice step towards a proper "climb" function. Â Plus I think there are plenty of cases where jumping would make sense (i.e. no gear). Â Good work. I can't help remembering right now how H&D2 did it's climbing. Â For very short objects, you pressed climb and he would just step up. Â A little higher, and he'd have to take a bigger step. Â Even higher still, and he needed to use his hands. Â Finally, if the surface was very high (over your head), you could pull yourself up... but I'm not sure how realistic that last part was really with all the gear, etc. On another note, I wonder how hard it would be to include the ability to "snug up" against those sandbags or other objects of the correct height in order to fire from cover? Â Anyone that played the original Vietcong will know what I am talking about (afaik they did not include this ability in Vietcong 2). Â Can any of you imagine if we had that "fire-from-cover" functionality from original Vietcong, and the AI could use it too? Â

I personally always hated the "hold a button in and use you mouse to select what you want" way of doing it, because you temporarily lose the mouse. Â Not saying there's no room for improvement though. Â But I do kinda like the way it is now in OFP/ArmA. I wonder if anyone who has used voice control has figured out a good way to control the mousewheel menu interface. Â That would really be handy. Good call on the crazy use of binocs sometimes.