OL

Hi there, I have a request that might be a bit odd/unusual! I am in the process of moving my ARMA II and OA products to Steam, as it seems like it would be easier to manage that way. For instance in the past when I have had SSDs fail or had to reinstall Windows, it has meant a fresh installation of both products and downloading all the patches. Having them through Steam would avoid this! I have the CD version of ARMA II which I have activated through Steam no problem using the key supplied in the DVD case. However, I purchased my version of OA through Greenman Gaming. The CD key they supply is 30 characters in length with no dashes between the groups of characters. I have tried a few different variations of inputting the CD key into Steam with no success, like no dashes and dashes every 5 characters. However, Steam reports each method as being invalid. Can anyone quickly check their CD key and let me know the format it is in so I can get it activated through Steam please? Thank you :)

You are going to need to install the game in order to be able to email the registry file to BI support. They will then email you the correct key for you to be able to use with Steam.

Use the contact form at the below location and ask the support team nicely. They will want further details, but are very helpful :) http://faq.bistudio.com/arma-2#faq-160

To update this, I have been in contact with Jiri @ Bohemia support who provided me with my key extracted through my registry files. This has enabled me to install the game via Steam. Cheers :)

After a few rounds of emails with Greenman Gaming they have supplied me with a 16 digit code. I will test it out this evening to see whether it works, as obviously it is different to the format displayed above...

Oh man I loved playing this game mode in the first ARMA. I will definitely check out this latest version!

Yep I have the reloading sound bug too. To me it seems like what should be a sound that's audible within 5m is audible from 100m instead.

Thanks for the reply. That is how my retail ARMA II key is formatted too. I wonder why the difference for Greenman Gaming? I think I will contact them.

Seems to be happening to me today too. Am on the Dev build running Windows 8 x64.

Hey Gang, Thanks for reading; I hope this is the right place to make this post. I'm having an issue installing beta patches via a method other than using Play With Six. I believe it's because of how I purchased and installed ARMA II and OA... ARMA II was purchased via retail DVD and installed accordingly. It lives in D:\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2 OA was purchased via greenmangaming.com and installed via their Capsule software. It lives in D:\CapsuleGames\ARMA II Operation Arrowhead - PC When trying to install beta patches from http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php, the patching software reports success, but the beta version reported in game doesn't change. Only when an update is released and installed via Play With Six does the beta version reported in game change. Any idea how to work around this? Often it takes a little while for the latest beta patch to hit Play With Six distribution. Cheers!

Thanks guys. With a bit more research on the forum and through use of regedit, I have cured my issues!

Apparently there are new AMD drivers coming out today for the Radeon 7xxx cards that will improve performance for a lot of games. Not sure if ARMA II is one or not...

Your CPU needs to be faster. You should be able to overclock to 4Ghz+, which would improve performance massively.

Would I be right in thinking that a 4890 would be the best addition to my computer to get more FPS? With everything on medium and a view distance of 2.5km, I can barely break 20 FPS in the 3rd or 4th mission at present. Of course upgrading the graphics card is much easier than stripping everything down to upgrade the CPU!

I've just started playing ArmA again after a 6 month break. I think I'll give HiFi and FFAMM a go to see which I prefer. The stock sounds could do with some beefing up.

I've just started playing ArmA again after a 6 month break. I think I'll give HiFi and FFAMM a go to see which I prefer. The stock sounds could do with some beefing up.

Overclock that CPU! ArmA is awfully CPU limited.

I too had the problem with the .zip file extracting the pbo files to the wrong place. However, got it sorted sharpish. I'd like to thank the author for doing a really good job. The infantry stuff is pretty much as good as Fromz's, but the better vehicle sounds make up for it.

From my experience ArmA is massively CPU dependent. Overclocking or buying a faster CPU would be my first upgrade. AA, especially with the transparency (nvidia) or adaptive (ATI) modes enabled kills FPS in towns or forests. However, basic AA doesn't seem to cause that big of a hit.

Optimal is exactly what it means; the best. Obviously, with the way they are building the engine, it will take advantage of all the horsepower available to it, which is great. That is one thing that has frustrated me about ArmA; it hasn't used the second core on my CPU and it ignores 2Gb of free RAM over the 1Gb it uses currently.

It seems to be very CPU limited. I play ArmA on the computer in my signature, and it generates a "score" of just under 11000. However, someone who I play with a lot has the same GPU paired with a Core 2 Duo CPU at a slightly faster speed and scores something like 4000 points higher. Another guy has a P4 3.4Ghz CPU with a 8800GTX and scores only in the 8000 range. I would like to hear from BIS exactly what relevance the "score" has on performance, and for them to say exactly what area of the computer is best to upgrade for better performance. Also, maybe we could start a survey where people list the important parts of their computer and show their score?

Make sure that within CCC everything is set to application controlled and the the transparency anti aliasing (or whatever term ATI use for it) is off. This improves my FPS massively on a similar computer.

Right, Basically, I am sure that I need more CPU power to improve my ArmA experience but am unsure as to which CPU to upgrade to. I reckon I can get 3.4Ghz out of either an AMD 5000+Black Edition CPU (2x512Kb cache) or a 6000+ CPU (2x1Mb cache). Extra cache demonstrably improves things like Super Pi times, but will it improve FPS in ArmA significantly? Can anyone comment on performance improvements from extra CPU cache on either the AMD or Intel platforms? Cheers!

I think a lot of this has to do with loading textures from the HDD, because of the little amount of RAM that ArmA uses. If the developers had optimised the ArmA experience for computers with large amounts of memory, then performance may have been much more consistent. I have tried to reduce texture loading delays as much as possible by having lots of fast RAM and by having the ArmA directory on the fastest part of my 10 000rpm Raptor HDD but it doesn't improve things that much EVO can also place a strain on the CPU with large numbers of enemy units. I know the EVO Blue++ version I play on the >>VR<< server, which is designed for 50 players drags my system into the teens FPS wise when approaching towns. It also makes FPS much worse in wooded areas for some reason, even though my 3870 is a powerful card, shader wise. I think I may get a faster CPU this weekend...

I installed this last night and played EVO Blue+ for a while. I really like the new gun sounds, bar the volume/distance issue. Perhaps the vehicle sounds could be looked into again too. I also got the error below when starting online gaming: