Okdante

Well, that is very fair dealing from BiS and the publishers. They have given you (...or the Germans) two options - either buy "not so complete" game and be the first to have it or wait until the proper release. It's fair that they said it clearly. And about the full price for the early German release? You can update it later, so why should you pay less? And you will be able to put hands on this game earlier than the others. You have option and you know what it takes. Simplified> Have the exclusivity and be the first but with bugs and download the update to proper game later or hold out for non buggy release. To be the betatester - and now this game is not a beta...let's say gammatester :D - is a privilege :]

Seems like mOdErN_wArFaRe_SnIpEr will prevent you from crossing the borders :D :D :D

I like this feature. You can always leave your equipment somewhere on the shore. Swimming with all the equipment would make the game just far more unrealistic and some missions far too easy. Plus, I am not quite sure if standard ammo is waterproof. Chm...probably yes.

Border patrol and SAM sites could do the trick... BigFoot could even more. No talking about the White Rabbit (since thee possess no thy Holy Grenade...). But usually there are rangers on the borders. In this case one could be enough. Walker Chernarus Ranger aka Chuck da Norris :D Don't even think about only an attempt to come close to the border...don't even think about it! Because He knows!

Still seems like 17.6.2009 in Czech Republic. But wheeeeey...look what we are going to have...a limited edition http://www.gamehouse.cz/pc-hry/arma-2-limitovana-edice-7383.php incl. Army backpack, camo-wallet with logo, 2 paper figures, 5 Chernarussian postcards, map, t-shirt and soundtrack... :D (yep, I know, those "news" about LE has been out for months...)

finger...or if u want more immersion then nose.

I think it does. Maybe not each raindrop, but you can see the difference between those water surfaces. And what about wind effects? Either they have different surfaces premade or - more likely I think - the surface is "really liquid". We will see. But

Beautiful...absolutely. Looks like the places around our cottage. I really do like how they make it believable. Not so shiny, with strange colors and strange postprocessing like COD or Crysis, but much more believable and realistic. One more step now...let the water flow.

Just a quick OT about the testers...IDEA games were hiring testers for ArmA II about two months ago. And they received a LOT OF requests....

US will shoot you for desertion. In a plane or heli, they will warn you and then shoot you down for crossing airspace. On foot or in a vehicle there will strong entrenchment of forces guarding the border and landmines everywhere and in case you wanted to cross territorial waters, there will be mines, coastal guard and sharks :D And if nothings stops you, there are still the zombies, UFO's and....the white rabbit. But in fact, I can't imagine how they will make realistically that you just can not walk out of the map...and I have not found any info about it yet.

That would be nice feature in Arma2. No extra shift+alt+some key for deploying bipod necessary. Let the soldier automatically deploy bipod when prone or behind wall (the second one could be quite difficult to make). Together with improved accuracy (less recoil). And the bipod should not work like in Americas Army...when you deploy it, it is fixed to the ground. The best option would be similar to the viewing (float zone vs. crosshair).

6:00 - end There are some partisans, that most probably noticed somebody's firing at them. And of course they return fire. Soldiers are covering (themselves or each other?), leaning and looking for covers. Here you can see, that Arma 2 does not bear that, what Arma 1 suffered, and that is soldiers dropping prone in the middle of a street, because it was the easiest option for them. By now, they - according to tactical teaching - do keep close to the edges/sides, looking for covers. It is indeed a generalized system, so sometimes they do a nonsense, but globally the AI behaves very well, in this huge area is able - quite without any problems - to fight like this absolutely everywhere. Edit: Yep, it is exactly one month old, but I haven't seen any regards around here, so so... :)

Ok, that is recalculated to CZK even a bit more expensive than the one shipped from US with Dslyecxi's 20$ discount. And I am afraid that if there was a Czech retailer, it would be similar. Edit: Found it...http://www.highinthesky.cz/obchod/sortiment/trackir-5-p781/ Yep, the price is same as the recalculation of the one in German shop (incl. TrackIR Pro) but without the Pro...

Talking about Czech, there was a preview on Czech Television's programme Game Page... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyveolKNHs4 I don't know whether it is already mentioned here. It is in Czech. They are talking about non-linear campaign, that you can play the campaign with 4 other players online, that for developers the main problem is available time :], about war being mainly about people (so the interaction is crucial), fighting in realistic distances, AI avoiding dangerous places (places that has been previously a target of fire), about "Linda program" growing trees realistically, about that head-swinging improves the immersion, climbing over fences improves the mobility, about AI not standing/crawling in the middle of the street ant being able to fight in huge scale areas...if you need an exact translation, maybe I could provide it, but I don't think there is any extremely important unknown information.

Czech Republic...so eventually I could go with the German one as well. 6 vs 100 is a big difference and in the next 14 days I could have it shipped to Tubingen where my gf is now.

I wanted to order TrackIR, but the international shipping price is quite high (almost 100$)...so I am not sure. Maybe I could use a friend in US, but is there any other - cheaper - option to get this? I used the link from Dslyecxi. Btw, is this tool useful for e.g. graphic programs? Any experiences? For example if it could be useful for scrolling the map in ArcGis? And is it compatible?

I am just a "player", "user" and only good about giving feedback and downloading other's stuff:D Never did any add on, campaign nor mission. Only messed up a bit with editor :D I've got other path of life to walk. I could help only with the storyline and all that non-technical stuff :D :D But.... anyone can use this as an inspiration. Erm... :D (still I'd like to see something like that did in a professional way)

That is a good idea, an up-to-date game about Indian navy hunting Somali pirates could be nice :D Ok, so here we go with a campaign for ARMA II... Citizens of Chernarus are pirating on foreign fleets, selling the goods and recieving the ransom, their leaders are having a good time and living a luxurious life. Chernarussian Defence Forces is impotent and corrupted and silently tolerating the pirates, officially fighting against them. National Party is stealing all the humanitarian aid sent to the starving and poor Citizens of Chernarus and reselling it to the citizen. Chernarussian Movement of the Red Star wants the pirates to use the money in favour with the great almighty Red Star. Some foreign nations have bad experience with Chernorus regarding near past or colonisation past and also, they are bounded by international laws and by peaceful image. There is no way to invade a sovereign country, there is nobody to "free", there are some joint operations to protect merchant fleets, but still the foreign factions are not really "joint" and as always...the the Seventh Superpower is watching to pick up any mistake they make and give it a full publicity. Some of those foreign factions care more about public opinion, some of them care more about the goods. And there we have a pretty complicated situation...and moreover we have some pure money-loving foreign mercenaries "randomly" supporting different factions and foreign companies, merchants (and sometimes silently superpower governments too) selling weapons to everyone who has money. Sometimes we have a classified vessel of some foreign faction with controversial shipment taken over by pirates and given enough publicity by the 7th superpower... Such a plot could involve almost any superpower (US, RF, UK, France, India, China...) and any combat situation. Do you see? Or you say there could be a problem with the old-fashioned full scale land combat situations which of course is what we all want in the game...who knows which foreign faction gets pissed off too much, gets the spike and will not care anymore about the international laws and int. public opinion. And as a bonus, we could have some Chernorus neighboring country in a war/status-quo with Chernorus. Both countries randomly (regarding the best profit for foreign factions) receiving foreign aid and used war equipment. And the main hero? Optional. A situation you can't solve, after one status-quo, there will be another status-quo... isn't that the name they used in the early stage of Operation Flashpoint? World is complicated. That would be immersion! You never know who you should side, because in the war...everyone is guilty.

Eeexactly! I can't imagine that, so it means it could be much better than the cliche ...and of course the same it could be much worse. But there is much more you can work out about such plot. With a "guarantee" like involving the US is, even if you did a washout, it would sell somehow. Nobody would buy a washout about Switzerland and Iceland (in case of Iceland...maybe Russia already did, eh :/ ) With a cliche plot you usually have nothing to ruin, but also nothing marvellous to create, except you were genius.

Talking about that US something...does not matter what. USMC, USAF, US Army...ok, let's say US armed forces. Really don't care which. Imagine that there were majority of games and movies in the world about German army, would you care if the next one was about Heer instead of Luftwaffe, Marine, KSK or Polizei? If you were e.g. Japanese? A diversity would be nice. Why not to have a fake conflict where e.g. Japan SDF and Indian Armed Forces would take part? (a game professionally made and distributed, I think it could strike the market which is full of cliches with a success) And I, as a Czech, would be much more into playing something that "exotic" (if it was really professionally made) for me, rather than again that well-known US nothing new under the sun. FarCry2 went into Africa-like conflict and they did a great footstep with that. And maybe showed a bit what are the problems in Africa sometimes about and some people to hold communion with oneself. But I would walk into a political thread about impact of our culture and our companies onto some African countries and I guess that's absolutely off-topic. Just FarCry2 was a good move talking about story.

Because e.g. SAS: Secure tomorrow is...how to say it politely...you know. And I don't think people in EU are too much keen for "standart/family evening/patriotic hearoes" US movies...apart from "just-watching-pictures" and movies with no storyline but great effects and eye-candy :) (like the death race for example)

Americas Army, Delta Force series, Vietcong, Wolfenstein, MoH series , OFP, Arma, SWAT series, Soldier of Fortune, Spec Ops series, some of Tom Clancy's (even if there are different nationality characters).... CoD series are showing more sides, but does not mean, that without cliche. But it's more about movies than games. Movies are full of that stuff ...retired FBI agent, SWAT officer, Delta Force member...or whoever, wanted peace in his life but somehow got pissed of, grabbed gun and took the justice in his hands... :D :D :D Which is the same as in OFP...but as I said, in OFP it was more like a parody, that does not necessarily needed to be funny inside, because just usage of that cliche was fun itself.

This is almost impossible I guess, or at least a bit difficult. English is a "simple" language (no offense!)...or rather simplified by international usage, so it can be easily used for variously glued sentences that still sound ...erm, O.K., not too weird. In other languages you have all that stuff like endings, form, inflexion... I didn't like the original OFP plot, which is naive and black&white. I hope that BI had taken that a bit ironically regarding the usual cliche. I don't think Marek Spanel meant the sentence too fanatically seriously. Whatever happened, it's gone and was not B&W. (even though there are still some "anti-commie-and-no-matter-what-happens" people in Czech Republic, which is a bit like if there had been a guy in 1938 who would have been afraid of return Austrian monarch, stuck in the time 20years ago, not seeing the actual world and actual threats). But in Arma, US soldiers were not the "shiny-good-paladins", the story in Arma was much more colorful and in the end, you still were not able to name "the good side". Btw, playing US in ARMA II does not necesarilly mean you are going to play the good-guys :] And playing the "bad-side" (and in war almost every side, everyone, everything belongs to the bad-side ) is usually more fun, because you are supposed to be "good" in your real life

I always wanted a campaign where I could see the conflict from the view of the opposite side. If there's going to be only a campaign for US, I'd like to see something not so black&white (I hope with all those factions ARMA2 is finally going to be more colorful and less naive), not so US-centric in the expansion, e.g. with US and Russians both as bad guys...fighting a small guerrilla against big bears :D :D. BTW, Resistance was a great expansion and great campaign.

No way, the czech version !must! be the first released, am i right? :D If not, seems I will brush up on my knowledge of German language :D What is the exact date of German release?