Millenium7

my suggestion: Grenade throwing should be angle dependant. I.E. if you look down below 45 degrees it should be rolled, between 45 and 120 degrees it should be thrown and over 120 degrees it should be lobbed high. In other words look down for low arc (rolls forward more, good for doorways), look ahead for mid arc (throw through window etc) and look up for high arc (over a wall) The 'bouncing' REALLY needs to be reduced, atm its bloody ridiculous I also think there should be a 'grenade' key. As it's too bloody fiddly hitting next weapon through a list of things to get to a grenade, then try to go back to your gun but... woops now its on burst fire mode, gotta cycle through again..... not good in CQB And finally something must be done about the strength of the throw. I believe the only way to do this is with some sort of visual cue. The 'hold it longer to throw farther' method is not the most viable, infact I hate it because if you hold it just 0.5 seconds too long your stuffed, needs to be more precise. Personally I think holding the fire/grenade button down, and then being able to roll the mouse wheel forward/back with a small visual bar to indicate throw strength would be ideal. Obviously disable the action menu while the fire/grenade button is held down so you aren't accidently scrolling through that. And also temporarily make the middle mouse/use action key 'cook' the grenade So to recap grenade throwing would be done like this... Hold down 'Grenade' key (or switch to grenade and hold down fire), keep it held down and scroll the mouse wheel forward/back for throw strength. Aim up/down towards target, aim low if its into a doorway, up high if its over a wall etc. Optional: Click middle mouse button if you wish to start 'cooking' the grenade at which point you have 5 seconds before it goes bang Release grenade key/fire button to throw grenade

another one is does anybody remember playing the first FPS dos games? such as doom, wolfenstein, hexen, heretic etc? you may not have noticed but those games allowed you to reduce the size of the viewport by using the + and - keys. Smaller viewport = less rendering and thus runs faster on older systems. I don't know what framerate they ran at, maybe 30fps. But no matter how fast your computer is, the smaller you make the viewport the smoother the game is, even at the exact same framerate. Because the physical size is smaller there is less of a difference in change/moving objects and so you don't require as high of a refresh rate for it to appear smooth. If you set it to the smallest size for a few minutes, then put it back to full screen it wasn't nearly as smooth

Nothing really 'extreme' about it. It's just that we aren't sensitive enough to pick up minor differences between 2 nearly identical frames. Given more contrast between them (such as the position of a mouse pointer when its moving quickly) you can pick up the difference above 60fps My last paragraph is more important, framerate aside your mind works much faster than 60fps, when you are playing a fast reaction based game your eyes may still see exactly the same thing at 60fps vs 120fps, but the 120fps will feel smoother and more responsive because its twice as responsive to the players actions

wow guys really back up a sec, there's a bit of misunderstanding here. A graphics card that is capable of all the rendering procedures will give the best possible graphics. For example trying to run a game that uses shader model 3.0 but only having shader model 2.0 will mean you will 'not' see the SM3.0 effects. If however all the rendering features are supported, from then on its just a case of how fast the graphics card (and cpu to a lesser extent) is. Because its not viable to play a game at 5fps if its absolutely maxed out, so therefore you the user will lower resolution, texture detail etc until it becomes playable When 3d graphics (models, textures etc) are created I can almost guarantee you that what you see in the game is NOT the same as what the artist initially created. Usually they create things in a higher resolution and then scale it down for the end product to meet certain requirements (such as framerate on their 'recommended specs'). What you have on the CD or game installation is that scaled down version, not the original. But no matter how good your graphics card is it cannot recreate detail which is not there in the first place. The only exception to this is the way things are rendered. For example Anti-Aliasing, the game still renders the same models and textures, but AA is applied by your graphics card afterwards to smooth things out. Anisotropic Filtering is another which lets textures appear sharper at angles due to the rendering technique. But at no point does it touch the actual texture or game model! it does NOT add detail to models or textures. It may apply a filter over the top but thats about it this for example would only be a case of the previous graphics card not supporting a certain rendering feature that the game is capable of and therefore must leave it out. The newer one would have supported it and thus given a better appearance. But it did not 'improve' the original graphics in any way. Rather the older graphics card had to 'lower' graphics quality because it wasn't capable of showing them correctly in the first place

oh I like this debate :D but just out of interest this is not strictly correct. If you had a 100hz TV/monitor showing 100fps (for this arguement lets also say 0ms pixel response time), if 99 of those were pure black and 1 was a pure white flash. You would notice it, ergo the human eye does detect faster than 60-70fps, you may even notice it at 200fps Then theres the issue of 'skipping'. Try having an object move very fast across a screen (such as your mouse pointer), the more distance it covers and the smaller the object is the more noticeable the effect. at 60fps you'll notice it 'jump' from 1 spot to another and not. At 100fps it'll be smoother, you may even notice it higher than that But the grand daddy of all is that regardless of how fast the eye can pick up movement. Your mind is much, much quicker. If you are watching somebody play at 60fps vs 100fps or even 30fps you may not notice a difference. However if you are playing you can most definately 'feel' a difference because your mind is very good as predicting what will happen at a specific point in time in regards to movement. If you are playing with a mouse and turn left, then right, then shoot etc things are delayed by as much as 33ms, and the final frame or transitioning actions may lag behind by just as much. at 60fps its 17ms and 100 its 10ms. If you absolutely suck (skill wise) you may not notice much of a difference but as you become much more accurate, faster and sharper you may even notice a difference as high as 240fps

I blame that horrible game type 'domination' which has infected every server like the plague. If that goes, teammate actually might start to exist, and ergo clans... and fun..

I agree on that, they shouldn't have recorded word by word and had it played in sequence, it just doesn't work. It would be far better even if they just recorded "move over there" with some emotion. And then showed the "6 move to building 12 o'clock 100 metres" in the radio text only. Makes for far less clutter and better sound, also meaning more time to record multiple versions for whisper/normal/shouting

wow. I think you have one major case of nostalgia :eek: Voice acting in OFP was FAR worse. Let me reiterate 11 o'clock, enemy, soldier, 100 11 o'clock, enemy, bmp, 200 1 o'clock, enemy at soldier, 100 4, engage, that, at solder, 400 4: roger 5 engage, that, bmp, 200 5: roger 4: ready 4, return to formation 4: roger 4, heal, at, that, soldier 4: roger Repeated over and over and over and over and over and over. It was certainly not better :confused: But I agree with you ono the other aspects. I was hoping for a lot more since Arma2 was supposed to be an engine redesign. I think more than anything the engine is forced to do things in sequence. I.E. someone dies whilst standing up it must wait for them to finish that before the unit is counted as dead and plays the dead animation. AI pathfinding is done in sequence, I.E. telling an AI to move forward, it must first plot a course around that tiny little rock in front of it and follow each step in sequence before considering or doing the next action. It's very clunky and frustrating at times. Instead the AI should be concentrating on moving 'forward' in most cases and then pathfinding comes second. This is why they are so ridiculously slow and clunky especially on roads, they slow down at each 'waypoint' in their path because they don't ever think ahead. And that waypoint must be completed successfully before considering the next. It should just be thinking "ok flat out, so i'm already at full speed towards the next one" You also notice this quite a bit with scripting and events. They lag behind because something else is happening. The radio is exactly the same, if I say i'm injured it should be done when I press it, not waiting for everyone else to stop talking. Hell even the LOD issue is the same nothing ever seems to happen instantly. If I had control over the engine i'd >Make AI far more aggressive with their decisions. If an enemy is spotted within close proximity it shouldn't wait for orders or decide on its course of action. If it's in 'aware' or 'danger' It should immediately swing its virtual ass around and start spraying, accuracy be damned. Then it can think of sprinting to cover and doing all it's other routines. If it's in 'stealth' or 'hold fire' mode then get to cover FAST >If it's ordered to drive forward then DRIVE FORWARD, plot the course as driving and adjust as necessary. >Radio commands should be mostly stripped out with only essential short responses given, better prioritising and the 'queue' not being essential (i.e. if something important needs to be said, pause/skip whats currently being said and play that one instead) For example if an AI commander is ordering troops to attack a small group of enemies 2,3 move up 4,5,6 flank left THATS IT! no need for 1200 responses over the radio with pinpoint accuracy and uber audible micro management. Once its cleared a simple Area clear Return to formation would do it >Current commanding interface replaced with a context sensitive radial menu >All death animations take priority, ragdoll would be best to allow it to flow seemlessly, but if a unit is midway through standing up when they get killed. Play the death animation immediately, not once 'standing up' has finished.

just for the hell of it I thought i'd try use the -cpucount= command line parameter, I tried it on 1 and ran the Benchmark 08 mission which seemed to use about 70% of my cpu which is a little more than 1 core but hey... though very surprisingly to me it gave me exactly the same average framerate as when using 2 cores, 29fps. Then I tried 3 and noticed it using about 95% and got 27fps.......... /sigh but whatever. Lets try -cpucount=8 just for the hell of it. 33fps but more importantly MUCH higher maximum framerate, like from about 35fps up to around 55fps in the same test. Yet slightly lower in some areas bringing the average down. Just going by eye it definately looked better, and played better as well. I dunno maybe worth a shot? P.S. I have a GTX275 and play at 1920x1080 with a varied combination, AA off, AF very high, Textures high, terran/object very low, shadow/HDR normal, postprocess disabled, vsync off

never thought i'd see a thread such as this. I'm not a bad shot and if the kill counter is anything to go by, pretty good actually. But I have a hard time hitting moving targets especially the zig zaggers

ahhh crap I was happily downloading from sprocket earlier, but for the past 1.5 hours it just won't do anything at all, link does not respond and times out. have tried it several times with new link and nothing. Whats more annoying is that I suddenly got disconnected from my download which was maxing out fine.....

just got the FDF sound mod and while some (not many) of the sounds are better such as M24 and silenced M4, others such as the AK are just horrific it sounds like a cannon with a laser effect Sticking to the default sounds

yes turn it on and off a couple of times, you'll notice when its off the sounds are very flat and bland like its muffled, the M4 well you might as well be tapping on your desk with your finger. Turn it on and it increases and improves the frequency range greatly, gives it a sharper and clearer crack with better bass. If the difference isn't astronomical after you've spent a good week or so fine tuning every setting then its a sign your speakers or headphones are just crap. It's like having a 12" black and white TV while watching HDTV its not gonna improve the picture beyond what the output device is capable of

even OFP had some of the most pathetic sounds in its time no surprise ArmA's weren't exactly spectacular, but are a massive jump from OFP 1.00. They aren't bad with an X-Fi that has the crystalizer enabled at 100% and I couldn't understand why everyone complained, but then I turned it off and As for your lack of 5.1 no idea whats going on there. Surround works perfectly for me, but the EAX sucks and doesn't really do anything other than lower and muffle sounds when they are behind (some) objects and terrain to the other poster if you have an X-Fi make sure its in game mode otherwise the game likes to crash

I'd like to see ArmA work alongside TS, or even the 'others' (vent users) by including another slider and checkbox in the audio options, which if you check and set to say 30% will reduce all ingame sounds to 30% volume when somebody else talks, and then jack it back up when they stop Cause at the moment it really sucks, can't hear anyone when in or near a vehicle or if your burst or auto firing. Want to be able to actually hear the game, yet I don't want to blast my ears out by turning TS volume up either. Keep them the same with TS taking priority when necessary

i'm a programmer so I might be able to shed some light. There are MANY different ways to write code and that makes it quite hard to judge what would be required. On one hand BIS may have written the game to incorporate just the 4 sides and any formula's and game mechanics revolve entirely around that. In which case adding more factions would require modifying just about all the code relating to them. On the other it may be as simple as a big free for all but units have a side assigned to them such as unit102 = west, west = enemy to east, friendly to civilian, side chat #1, etc. In which case adding another faction is just extra lines of code to define the side channel, enemy and friendly units and what units are assigned to that side. The triggers, scripts, mission editor and everything else will automatically fall in to place in the same way a vehicle addon will automatically show up in the mission editor and behave as its supposed to. Sure if you wanted to use that extra faction in a mission you'd have to modify it but so is the case if you want to use an addon. You don't have to write the code that controls how its rendered, how it operates, what it collides against, what to send over netcode and so on. The game is written to dynamically handle all that, its just another unit with a config to customise it Or something in between theres no single way of doing things. Though since ArmA is very much OFP at its core and OFP never had extra factions I think its the former, or at least hard coded and not script handled, so short of getting your hands on the source code and adding in another faction I don't see it happening

I never tried them but they look rather dodgy, sure they'll sound good, until you try something better. But with a USB connection your completely taking the sound card out of the equation, so an X-Fi will make no difference. What you should do is if possible go into an audio store and just try on a lot of different pairs. Amplification, equalizer and bass controls will GREATLY increase the sound quality so you can't always judge what will be the best when tweaked. But generally what you should do is find the most comfortable and best sounding/clearest set of headphones and then muck with the bass/equalizer (if the playback equipment has it) and listen for absolute clarity and smooth bass. Getting lots and lots of bass is not a problem on something like an X-Fi, but getting very sharp crisp and high quality sound is a different matter so thats what you should go for over pure bass. And for gods sake if you bring your own source equipment don't use rap, get something with a playback frequency higher than 50hz This is what I have http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/index.p....83;pt;1 they NEED a high end sound card like the X-Fi because they draw so much power and need the bass boost. But dunno where that pricetag came from, got mine for $200AUD ($160 USD). Give them a try if theres any in the shops.

to those argueing against 'simulated' surround sound in headphones, I was once one of you. I know you could tell where a sound was coming from but you couldn't actually hear where it was from. Not true with a decent setup Firstly open headphones make a BIG difference, 95% are closed (solid plastic on the outside instead of mesh) and keep sound in and block outside noise this greatly reduces the surround effect. Open headphones let sound in and out so you probly can't have them turned right up at night they'll be hear throughout the house. Though because they don't trap sound your 'surround' comes from about 1 or 2 metres away from your head and not inside it so you get what is identical to a true surround system. If you've only ever tried mediocre (yes you medusa) headphones that are all closed then you have no idea, comparing apples with ferrari's. I use an X-Fi and audio technica ATH-AD700 headphones ($200AUD headphones) and by themselves are VERY clear but bass is rather weak, with my very custom settings they are breathtaking and not lacking at all. Simple fact is 6 speakers cost more than 2, so unless there are $1000 surround headphones they won't come close to the sound quality of 2 speaker headphones. And the surround itself IS better with some quality open headphones, your ear shape is what gives you surround because the sound is slightly different as it passes through from a different direction. Surround headphones aren't spaced far enough to give the best effect, but the emulation from the sound card changes the sound itself to sound like it was coming from behind, above or below you

I think the weapon handling is quite good you don't want super terminators walking around spraying M249 fire accurately all over the place, even if you can fire the M249 from a standing position at full auto in real life with enough accuracy to mow down people I DONT WANT IT. That would make ArmA the same as OFP with the G36, theres no variety or 'right tool for the job' everyone takes the same weapon The only thing I don't like is the bouncy recoil, the amount is not a problem but when your view automatically moves down again. It's annoying and extremely difficult if not impossible to fire accurately until your view returns, the sight should jump up and right at a random angle and strength and not return. This way you can fight the recoil with your mouse and some skill is involved, not just click, wait, move mouse up a bit, repeat Oh and bring on suppressive fire that affects recoil and steadiness

hopefully we'll see some wildlife soon and I really hope you don't have to manually place them (but with the option to for missions that require it). Having 10, 20 or even 50 animals doing their own thing is not going to strain the server much, all they have to do is move a bit at random times and have a chance of being spooked when the player is near. AI soldiers have to calculate a lot more and theres missions with hundreds of them and the server handles that fine I'd like to see a lot more features that add to the depth of the game as well, such as blood trails, blood loss and the affects of it, rare traps could be interesting, proper haze and lighting in forests and so on. Bug fixes are good but getting patch after patch of them is just boring you need real game improvements, freelook in crosshair mode and much more aggressive AI were a nice improvement

angel I don't care about you getting silenced but theres only 1 thing I agree with you, the box. This game should never have been sold in stores, only online at least until patch 1.XX where a lot of things have been corrected because the general public isn't capable of realising the simple greatness of the game, they just want to pick at the flaws. I know its now becoming cliche but the game is so massive and so open ended compared to any other game that the bugs will obviously scale with the game, especially if BIS is a fairly small company. This game is not ready for the general 1337 zomfg wtf public its for the fans of OFP and regardless of what you say they'll buy it. And isn't that what matters? you have your CS kiddies, greenpeace frauds, mcdonalds worshippers, AMD fanboy's and none of them care about the outside world if they are happy with their product then so what. Why should it be any different with Armed Assault?, we are happy with it as a whole and that includes the investment and don't care what you say If there was any form of competition maybe things would be different, but there is nothing not a single game apart from OFP (which hey is also from BIS) that offers the same game as ArmA

no we are not, this is an artificial limitation implemented by BIS. Theres the actual draw distance which i'm guessing is the view distance setting, beyond this it just simply cuts off theres literally nothing to see except a solid backdrop colour, and this is ugly so they use fog to cover it up. This limits your actual visibility, try it place something 5km away with a 5km view distance and you will not be able to see it zoomed in let alone under normal circumstances. 5km view distance is actually about 3-4km of visibility Now onto the technical side, assuming BIS just uses the convential fog system which the graphics card handles you can't control the strength which is annoying and theres not a lot they can do except move the fog distance further. But this could expose the backdrop of nothingness because you can't set the fog to start at X and end at Y with a strength of Z. I'm not an expert on special effects so don't know how other games do it but if BIS can do away with the simple 'set fog on' system and use their own which allows minimum/maximum distance, varying strength and possibly positioning then you could have a much nicer effect (such as heavy fog hovering over a swamp, varying fog in forests, towns etc) and greater visibility, obscuring only the very edge of the view distance rather than a large % before it as well

definately not realistic, suma I want you to swivel around on your chair and tell me if in real life the room varies from ultra bright to very dark. Its a step up from nothing but its a long way from realistic or even pleasant, it doesn't even blind you if you look hard enough (and not very hard at all) you can still see soldiers/birds/planes in front of lights or the sun. You can't see terrain though. Your not blinded for long enough that it affects gameplay unless you put on or take off NVG's (which is still way too short) and the lighting is very similiar if not the same in all environments. Hope theres a big lighting improvement and the inclusion of haze, glare and other effects

double click the top right section of the editor, there you can change the forecast, fog, date and time of day. You can also modify these settings with commands which you can find in the biki Time of day, date and lightning look excellent (personally I love early dawn so its fairly dark with red skies, pouring with rain and lightning and a bit of fog ) but the rain is too weak its not clearly visible and never really pours down, its light rain at best and not loud enough. Theres just not enough immersion for it to affect gameplay Hopefully someone will mod it for tornado style rain, mud splashes when moving, puddles of water, rain drops on sights/binocs, different sounds for indoors/forests/roads/sand/mud when walking, mud splatter/trails instead of dust and so on. Oh and loss of traction would be good

I use window mode for mission editting and theres no problem. I'm using a geforce 6600GT as for the audio yes its annoying and I hope BIS fixes it, I also hope they add another slider 'voice adjustment' that when set to below 100% will drop all ingame sound/music to this percentage when someone on teamspeak/ventrillo/built in voip speaks and return to normal when they shut up. In OFP you either had to deal with migraine inducing volume levels on ts/vent or OFP's volume on a whisper to hear anyone