OldGeezer

I'm using Nvidia's latest beta driver: "ForceWare Release 169 BETA 169.28" dated January 10/08. When you select the driver section from the main page, you can click a link for beta drivers to be included in your search. I chose it because it apparently improved Crysis performance.

Even where the game only makes use of one core, it's not like a quad-core is a waste of money or anything, heh heh. I just upgraded from a 3GHz P4 to a 2.4 GHz Core2 Quad. With only one core in use, one might think I'd be better off on the P4 at 3GHz...at least I wondered about that at first. But then I remembered that my P4 was on a motherboard with an 800MHz front-side bus, using DDR 400MHz ram. The Quad runs on a front-side bus of 1066MHz and uses DDR2 800MHz ram. I'll stick to my measley 2.4GHz thank you very much. Out of the four games I have installed at the moment though, I think ARMA is the only one that doesn't use multiple cores.

Arma Gold comes prepatched to the 1.08 version. I ran the 1.09 beta patch before even firing it up. On my brand new Core2 Quad/SLI system, it runs beautifuly well...which is a relief. I actually owned the standard Arma but couldn't find it (I think I might have tossed it a long time ago after running into one bug too many). Hopefuly with this latest beta patch it represents a more finished product, but I bought it more as a benchmark than anything else (it brought my P4 3GHz/Geforce 7600 AGP to its knobby little knees, but makes me grin on my new beast). Now that I see it running like a dream at 1440x900, and that it's been patched twice since I've last tried it, I may just start the learning curve again and get into Arma again...as pretty and smooth as Crysis is, the arcadish action is starting to get old. With 3 full campaigns, Arma Gold should fit the bill...hopefuly the add-on campaigns are a tad more exciting than the original one (I made it about half-way through before getting fed up with the bugs and dreadful performance on my machine).

I just got Arma (1.09 beta-patched) loaded onto my new machine with two 8800GT cards running in SLI mode, and with graphics set to "very high" but with no AA or AF, it's running great so far (gotta figure out how to display fps)...much better than I expected it to. For 1800 bucks CDN, this puter can run ARMA and Crysis at the highest settings (dx9) at 1440x900 (no AA and AF) at perfectly acceptable framerates, so I can't complain. I like my SLI setup just fine. Motherboard: Asus P4N32-E SLI CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz Ram: 4Gigs Corsair DDR2 800 (4,4,4,12) Video: Two "BFG 8800 GT OC 512Mb" cards in SLI mode Sound: Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer Hard drive: 500Gb SATA Case/PSU: Antec Nine-Hundred "Ultimate Gamer Case"/Antec TruePower Quattro 1000 Watt

I'm disappointed in ArmA because it doesn't have animals. It would be so much more realistic if there were natural wildlife around. In real life, when possible, soldiers will often airdrop big bunches of bananas into enemy encampments where there is a large gorilla population, causing them to invade the encampment and instinctually attack the military personel. Hopefuly someone will make a gorilla warfare mod. Even cattle could make things intersting with a couple of well-placed gun rounds causing strategic stampedes. I thought there was going to be wildlife.

Totally understandable. Different strokes for different folks. IMO, death should not be belittled. I'm one of the few weirdos who hates dying without consequence. That time-out instills the importance of being careful out there, at least to me. I either go make a coffee or call it a day.

dumb statement. The reason Evolution gets played so much is because so many want to play it. In fact I cant thank of a game that does co-op better than ArmA I think people who are flaming the co-op side of Arma are afraid to work in teams. And all this sh...eek about co-op people being afraid of fighting real people is stupid. Try some of the team vs team stuff and you'll se what it is to be out gunned and afraid Instead of running and blasting through the caos of 'nobody knows whats going on' till you die and spawn for the umpteenth time. There realy is enough stuff out there to suit all play styles, and I lovem all and play them all. When I have the time...speaking of which, it would probably be better spent PLAYING right now. Why is it some people insist that playing against humans rules out the ability to work as a team? Nonsense. I see absolutely no logic in that argument. If you're not playing bots, you suddenly feel you and your teammates must play like lone-wolf Rambos?

Coop isn't defined by "people playing cooperatively", it is defined by "people playing cooperatively against fake computer opponents taking the place of real (human) opponents", just in case you're missing the point (my apologies if you're not). It may not mean the death of ArmA, but guys like me are gonna write it off if the popularity of PvP games doesn't take off in a big way. Hopefuly some like-minded individuals will set up dedicated servers (I wish I had an extra computer) either with the current maps or with mods that have absolutely no AI (with prolly a nice little performance boost as a result), running some single-objective-based teams game with no respawns. I say single-objective-based because the maps would be too huge for standard team-deathmatch where you'd end up with the last two guys hunting for eachother forever -you'd need them to have a meeting point (base or other objective to invade/defend). Coop (fighting idiot AI soldiers with killer aim) and respawns are the total opposite of what ArmA wants to be: "Realistic". Getting whacked by a bot that has zero brains and incredible detection/hit-rate is NOT realistic. Neither is running out knowing as soon as you get killed, whoop-tee-doo, you get to reincarnate and run right back out again. THAT makes ArmA (or any "tactical" shooter) barely one notch above Quake or Unreal Tournament...I found it extremely ironic that one of the Coop-playing posters in this thread suggested that PvP players would be more at home in arcade games like those. Then again, some people cannot stand sitting out a round (or just finding another server) when they get killed and will only play with respawns. I have no problem with sitting out when I die (like I said dying is supposed to suck, and it makes for a more heart-pounding, even frightening experience), but it's totally understandable if others don't as they are two entirely different types of gaming experience. It's prolly also more convenient to play coop in the sense that there is always a whole 'other team' present which makes it much faster to fill a server up and get a game going. However, there is no substitute for a human opponent if you want a realistic tactical experience. Your enemy is almost always unpredictable, sometimes cunning, and when teamwork is used, downright scary. An opposing team of serious human players is the only way you can actually claim to be truly playing a simulation of military combat. Claiming that Coop is somehow more serious or realistic than PvP is laughable at best.

Your reply makes me wonder if everyone's on the same page as to what "coop" means. Coop, to me, has always meant a human team vs an AI team. How does playing against humans instead of dumb-as-a-post AI remove the possibility of "helo inserts/extracts, the fireteam movement, tactics"?

Heh heh! That was the biggest complaint on my GR servers...at least with some types of players. I hate respawns and never enabled them. And I always had one response: "Dying is supposed to suck" When you're playing against humans, and you only get one life, you'd be surprised how careful everyone gets...becomes an entirely different kind of game. I don't care if I have to wait a half an hour or more for the next round. It's like playing poker with real money vs a pile of free plastic chips. Your heart pounds more when you know there's something at stake. I think respawns are as hoakey as coop is. Not that there's anything wrong with playing coop...it just sucks to some player types and rocks for others.

I don't mean to insult anyone, but I not only never play coop type games, but I can't even understand them. Whenever I want to play against AI, I play the single-player portion of a game (usually the main reason I buy a game). I've always been of the (admitedly possibly wrong) opinion that coop is generally played by those who do not fare well against human opponents. Sure, AI can be extremely hard to defeat in a game like ArmA, but it's hard because it can detect you instantly and can reliably kill you from a great distance if it is programmed to do so, presumably to make up for the fact that the AI can have a difficult time walking around a rock or crossing a bridge, much less devising a clever strategy...at least in a game like ArmA or OFP or Ghost Recon where you (or the AI) can't just run and jump around shooting maniacally ala Quake or Unreal Tournament. Playing against humans, at least to me, is the whole point of multiplayer gaming, with human allies working as a team being an excellent, but secondary feature when possible. I used to run a Ghost Recon server regularly (fanaticaly for a while) way back when -the original GR, not that newer crap- and I usually found that people asking to switch to coop were usually the ones on the bottom of the scoreboard. Not that they're bad players in general, obviously they do well at coop which can be exceedingly difficult, but it's an entirely different type of "difficult", and I've already gotten sick of that type of "difficult" in the single-player portion of ArmA (an enemy that has amazing aim and superhuman detection skills). Not that I totally suck at it or anything...I think I'm most of the way through the campaign so I can take on the AI, but unlike OFP, I'm not really finding it all that fun...not fun enough to play it all over again after each patch to see if the absense of all those bugs makes a difference. I feel bad for some of the Europeans countries who played the campaign when it was at the alpha stage [ducks behind cover]. Anyways, I find Coop is pretty much the same as the single-player game except your teammates aren't idiots (relatively speaking at least). Getting my ass handed to me because a human snuck up on me by crawling behind cover would be refreshing in ArmA, but I wouldn't know because every time I check, the few servers that are local (have acceptable pings) are invariably playing coop. Maybe I've been unlucky the few times I've tried so far, but I know where you're coming from...I figured the multiplayer aspect (all humans) would be where ArmA shines. Maybe with time human vs human will become more popular. Maybe someday someone will create a must-have mod that excludes coop mode entirely

I have yet to actually enjoy playing the original ArmA campaign, due to either bugs or mission design, and even though people are still complaining about bugs, now they're working on expansions?! I'll pass. The PC gaming industry currently sucks because there is apparently no real incentive for publishers to release finished products that pass rigorous testing before being sold. I swore I was done with PC games after I bought that bug-ridden pos Silent Hunter 4, and stupid me, I renegged on my own word and bought ArmA. Serves me right I guess. I'm done supporting the PC games industry, since obviously nobody is ever going to regulate and police it.

Then get a GF and Get a Job then have a wonderfull life. Â or just be a nerd at the computer.. i knw which i choose along time ago lol. Once you get laid for the first time you will understand too. Â Yeah...Someone who uses his computer specs as a signature and 3550 posts logged in these forums telling someone else to get a life and lose his virginity...right. You tell 'im, you superstud you! This thread's title makes all complaints about the game entirely on-topic, and makes the illiterate moanings of obvious losers who tell them to lose their virginity entirely off-topic. I just hope all the bugs and campaign issues get resolved, and the devs ignore the requests for trivial cosmetic changes until that is done.

Any chance of nude patch in the future? Just for my character though, not the other soldiers (I'm not a sicko or anything like that).

I remember walking into Electronics Boutique (in Ontario), and asking Mr Pimples at the counter if he had any copies of Armed Assault in stock. He checked on his computer and said "nope". Then I glanced at the shelves a few feet over and there it was on the shelf. I had forgotten that the game was annoyingly renamed to "Combat Operations" in North America, so naturally "Armed Assault" comes up blank at the store. Yeah it was my fault, and I'm not suggesting that's what happened in this case, but I wonder how many North American customers phoned around trying to find "Armed Assault" and figured nobody had it in stock (coz technically nobody does), even though there are lots of copies on the shelves.