Nuku

The most recent mission that got me riled up is one called "PathFinder". The objective is to destroy two well-guarded Shilkas, and seize and hold a town. You start with 2 squads. And you start in front of the first Shilka. It was a massacre: can you imagine what 4x25mm rapid-fire cannons does to infantry? I managed to get past this one by hiding in a bush and letting all the AI infantry get slaughtered, stole a LAW from a fresh corpse, got the Shilka, and ran. But now I still have to destroy a SECOND Shilka and capture a town crawling with a platoon of Russians?! On top of that I've got at least one squad of really pissed off Russians chasing me from the site of the first Shilka. That's FUBAR. It gets better. There was supposed to be a second squad to help me take the village, but they got slaughtered just hopping out of the M113. So la tee da, I'm by myself again. There were some Ah1's buzzing overhead, but after only immobilizing some armor (I had to finish them with the last LAWs), they didn't do much. I guess the bottom line is that the friendly AI isn't up to the task for these scenarios either. A lot of the scenarios assume that the AI squad doesn't take very many casualties, but they always get slaughtered.

I've had a lot of fun with the multiplayer aspects of OFP, but stopped playing the single player campaign out of sheer frustration. This is a tactical shooter where you can die from a single hit, but most of the missions are set up for Quake-style combat requiring the player to eliminate forces 3-4 times his unit size. Over and over again, I find myself all alone, with the entire rest of the squad dead, and given set of 2-4 objectives guarded by 3-6 squads of Ruskies and an AFV or two. And all I've got is this dumb M-16 with 3 frickin clips. WTF?? The friendly AI always gets itself killed at the first objective, leaving the player to "Rambo" his way to finish the remaining objectives which are usually along the lines of "assault and hold". One man can't take and hold a position in a game with this level of realism. What sadist concocted these hairbrained scenarios, and what masochists playtested them and gave them a seal of approval??

I just saw the movie myself. It's very good, and very graphic. Most critics put it best when they describe the gore level as "the Omaha Beach scene of "Saving Private Ryan" stretched over 2.5 hours". I think anyone who likes OFP and like games will find this movie very interesting. It's been canned by most other groups looking for something else: e.g. an anti-war statement; character development; drama; etc. Black Hawk down pretty much tells (and shows in graphic detail) what happened, when, where, and how it went. It's more like a documentary (similar to "Tora Tora Tora" or "Gettysburg") than a general entertainment flick (like "Saving Private Ryan" or "All Quiet on the Western Front"). There is no sappy political or moral statement made; no character development; no plot twists. And for this reason alone, it's been canned by many critics (who were apparently looking for something else -- I guess they never read the book). Overall the movie just shows the events from a third/first person perspective. Anyone who tries to make anything more out of the movie is a fool.

Okay, no secret, OFP eats bandwidth like candy. If I wanted to put together a LAN party of 10-20 guys on a 100Mbit fast ethernet LAN, would OFP bring a stacked "repeater" hub to it's knees with massive collisions? Would I need to get myself a hub-switch and break em up you think? I've always wondered, with multi-player gaming with data constantly streaming, at what point it makes sense to put hub-switches between "repeater" hubs. Anyone with experience in the matter?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from CanisDEK on 3:49 pm on Nov. 22, 2001 If you used that dirty beta that might explain it. Hosting 18 people on my 1333Mhz t-bird, 512MB ram and a 512Kb upload connection is a good experience. GR is meant for 36 players, while the official maps for OFP only supports 10 players or less and that must be the DEVs estimate for the games capabilities on what is possible on normal peoples good connections. <span id='postcolor'> I'm running the retail version of GR. My group likes to play co-op missions. We've since found that the pre-canned missions lag horrible with more than 4 people, but "firefight" and "recon" games do not. Humor me. Run co-op missions 10, 11, or 14 with 6+ players on your server and let me know if it lags. We still haven't determined if the lag is due to the server or due to the bandwidth.

CanisDEK, you repeatedly post about GR being able to hold 12-36 players without lag. Are these co-op servers or deathmatch/team vs team games? My consistent experience is GR cannot support more than 4 players in a CO-OP "Mission" type game. I've experimented with Co-op "Firefight" and "Recon" games with up to 6, but the server tends to crash in mid-game. Give me an IP of these super-GR servers you're using, and I'll shake em down with me and my buddies (greng@home.com).

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from CanisDEK on 5:30 pm on Nov. 10, 2001 </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from BigQEd on 9:14 pm on Nov. 9, 2001 The actual game play on OFP is better than GR... (Edited by BigQEd at 9:15 pm on Nov. 9, 2001) <span id='postcolor'> The MP gameplay of OFP is almost non existant. I like infantry combat and GR is much more fun. It's all about gameplay and IMO GR is the winner simply because it has a very solid netcode and lag free gameplay PLUS up to 36 players which is good for ppl like me who are a member of a squad. OFP is simply not suited for suqad battles. <span id='postcolor'> WHAT? Have you tried GR with that many people? I had a guy try hosting 6 people with a 1.5Ghz PIV, 1Gig RAM server and Ghost Recon choked hard. It was Flashpoint 1.1 all over again. Guys slid and warped around. Everyone was going through "Groundhog Day" with trucks coming up the road, disappearing, then coming up the road again. You could empty 3-4 clips into a guy and he'd never notice, then suddenly you're dead from someone who shot you 30 seconds ago. I don't think GR is any better than OFP for squad sized MP battles.

And don't forget, you have to use a particular TYPE of crate. The side must be "empty". Not West, not East, not even Civilian.

You have to use particular types of ammo crates. I think the "Side" has to be "empty" ammo crates. DEFINITELY not West or East. I don't even think Civilian-side crates work.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from JRMZ on 5:21 pm on Oct. 21, 2001 nope<span id='postcolor'> Let me rephrase the question then [oh omnipotent net-god that represents all server owners ]: 1) Are there any servers hosting games *besides* Capture-the-Flag (CTF) and Deathmatch? Â The realism and flexibility of OPF seem wasted on just those two types of games. Â And there are better, faster paced first-person-shooters for this type of gameplay. 2) Is there anyone with a server that wants to add to their stable of scenarios, but is stymied by a lack of missions? Â Or lack of players showing up to use their server? I'm not looking for someone to just *give* me their server, but simply willing to add some missions to its cyclic list if they're looking for something different.

I've tried looking around for dedicated servers to play on, but everyone's playing CTF or deathmatch. Â I want to play more structured, mission oriented missions with other people. To that end, I've made several of my own co-op missions and played them peer-to-peer with friends. Â However, I only have a P3-800 and a 128Kbit Cable-modem link, which means I can only host up to 3 other people before things start getting real bad (and I have more friends than that ). Is there anyone running a dedicated OPF server in *North America* with high bandwidth that's willing to host my Co-op multiplayer missions? Â E-mail me at greng@home.com if interested. Thanks.

As a host/client, I can press 'P' and get the netstats of all the players connected to my machine. I'm trying to understand what these statistics mean, and what are "good" numbers. There are 3 numbers for "Ping" (fastest/average/worst) I guess? Units are milliseconds? Also 3 numbers for "Bandwidth". I have no idea what those are, or even what units those are in. Is that used bandwidth, available bandwidth, data going or data coming? And "Desync". I don't know what this means either, or what units it's in. Anyone care to enlighten me?