SixMarbles

Three gripes/suggestions: 1) Null zone/Dead zone There is a notable 'dead zone' in each joystick axis, including the throttle while playing ArmA. This is fine for joysticks which may be getting old, and whose potentiometers are beginning to show spiked input instead of nice, smooth operation. However, I recently bought a groovy stick with sensors and all, and I have to move the stick quite far from center to show any control input in helos and planes in-game. I'd like the null zone/dead zone to be an option one can set in the control menu, or at least tweak in the player profile (Username.ArmAProfile). Note to posters: 'Floating Zone' is something different altogether. 2) Multiple joystick support I'd like to purchase some pedals to go with my shiny new joystick, but that would be pointless since ArmA only recognizes a single DirectInput device with controller ID 1. 3) Legacy OFP throttle behavior In Operation: Flashpoint, there were two separate models for throttle behavior while flying fixed-wing aircraft: Model 1 - Increasing the throttle on your joystick would also increase the throttle in your plane in a linear fashion. In other words, your power setting in a plane depends on your joystick's throttle. Model 2 - The aircraft's throttle 'chases' an airspeed. If you're cruising level at 300 km/h, and you pull up to gain altitude, your engine rpm or n1 would audibly increase so that you'd continue to go 300 km/h. This is fancy and all, but is only truly useful for keyboard/mouse pilots. My suggestion is to restore the OFP throttle system so that joystick users have better control of fixed-wing aircraft. In the OFP system, the moment you tapped a throttle key on your keyboard, the game switched to model 2 throttle behavior. Additionally, the moment you touched your joystick throttle, the game switched to the more realistic model 1 behavior.

I would prefer that posts here be useful and constructive. Posting a "you're wrong" message doesn't help me or anyone else solve the joystick axis issue, but thanks for the bump anyways.

I have discovered a partial solution to the problems listed above. 1) PPJoy and other handy utilities such as GlovePIE can be used to combine joysticks into a single 'virtual' joystick so that ArmA can technically use more than one. Also, I have personally tested an extremely useful tool called JoyToKey which allows you to emulate mouse or keyboard input using a joystick. I mapped my pedals' primary axis to mouse X-axis in J2K, then in-game I mapped rudder to mouse X axis. Thus, I had easy, sensitive, scalable rudder authority in-game with NO NULL ZONE and using two input devices. GlovePIE specifically is useful since you can write scripts to alter axis deflection values, which I'll be doing for the purpose of eliminating that enormous null zone in the X, Y, and throttle axes. In my vision of a utopian future, all deflection greater than zero will cause DirectInput to interpret a large jump in that direction (either positive or negative) thus 'cancelling out' the game's built-in null zone. Additionally, I'll have to scale down the remainder of the axis so that the interpreted axis will reach its full potential when I reach full joytick deflection. So far this solves issues 1 and 2 from my first post. Issue 3...the ball's in the mod community's court now. No patch has been released for some time and I get the feeling the ArmA development cycle has effectively stopped. Thus, I don't believe it's possible to restore OFP's throttle system without modifying the game software itself.

If you can get in touch with an admin, get them to do a #monitor command. If the server frame rate is low, perhaps it's because so many cities have been 'woken up'. Evolution (in its current state) is written so that towns are empty (except for AA) until a player comes within a hundred or so meters of the gray circle on the map denoting that the city is held by enemies. In a larger server, sometimes players split up and pursue several cities at once, which means that more AI is spawned at once, which can bring server fps way down. On our server, we try to coordinate all players to attack one city at a time, all together. At the same time, make sure people don't go screaming around in harriers waking up the whole map while you're fighting in a city. Fortunately, as the last friendly unit --including friendly AI-- leaves a city, the AI all de-spawn.

It's for all axes, including throttle, X and Y. Again, it's not a problem with the X52 specifically, because the config utility shows smooth control deflection with the slightest deflection of the joystick or throttle. Other games (X3: Reunion, Wings Over Vietnam, Flight Sim) all detect tiny deflection because those games either have no built-in null zone or have a scalable null zone. I simply wish ArmA's null zone was customizable by the player.

I am currently using a Saitek X52 HOTAS system. I know the deadzone is an artifact of the game and not of the joystick software or DirectInput because the calibration utility shows control deflection at even the slightest movement of the joystick. In addition, the joystick features a very large deflection range (6-8 inches depending on the axis), throughout which movement is quite smooth and linear as shown within the calibration utility. In my other games, I do not experience this large null zone. In ArmA, however, I must traverse about 30% of the deflection range to produce movement in game. I did not notice the large threshold before, as I was using a joystick with a significantly smaller deflection range and a smaller, radial-style throttle (Logitech Extreme 3d Pro). This joystick's potentiometers were beginning to die, as a small deflection would produce fairly large spikes in input. In fact, operating the twist axis would sometimes produce large swings to the right on the x-axis. Thus, the large null zone was useful to me before, but is an annoyance now that I have a more precise joystick.

Just a note: I took a look at some of the incoming traffic when I was browsing server list...some servers gave me a 'heartbeat' on 2304, some on 2312 etc. There seemed to be no pattern for which port was used, be it by version, localization etc so I assume it is configurable by the host. I don't know which config file dictates the port used to broadcast your server but it'd be helpful to know so that I can use a more consistent setup (be advised: I'm not talking about the game session port, just the server listing). I'm a little leary about DMZ because of the obvious security risks and I'd like to set up a permanent port triggering or port forwarding profile.

I'm unable to connect to any server or successfully host a server. As a client, every connection attempt is met with "Connecting Failed". When hosting a server, a few seconds into the round, I get a dialog that states "No challenge value was received from the master server". I have forwarded the appropriate ports, disabled my router's firewall, and even gone so far as to enable DMZ for my PC's local IP. I have called my ISP and have found that the following incoming ports are blocked: TCP 80 TCP 448 TCP 135-138 None of the above are required for online play. I am able to successfully host and join other games and voice chat servers (Ventrilo and TeamSpeak). Version: US v1.06 OS: WinXP Pro Router: Linksys WRT54G I am aware that certain games seem to have issues with Linksys routers - Battlestations: Midway would crash to desktop for anyone attempting to host from behind a Linksys router, and this issue was fixed with the release of a patch. The router may be the problem! Additionally, I did a google search for "No challenge value was received from the master server" and found that other games produce this message when GameSpy horks up. Thus, I feel that GameSpy may be to blame. I have tried both solutions listed on Bohemia's wiki: Start -> Run -> "netsh winsock reset" uninstalling the various listed network drivers Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Are you behind a router? If so, would it happen to be a Linksys? What NIC are you using? The first things I'd try are the solutions listed on Bohemia's wiki: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki....servers EDIT: Not sure if this stuff works on Vista or not. If not, sorry, I'm a n00b with Vista. I refuse to buy it for at least a year or so. Be sure to restart after trying the first solution, and make sure to back up your registry before attempting the second solution. I hope you get this fixed, as multiplayer is also the reason I've bought the game.

The problem seems to have fixed itself...I haven't made any changes to my network or hardware, but I can now successfully host and join servers with no problem. My spider-sense seems to have been correct; it may well have been a temporary hose-up in GameSpy. Oh yes, and as it turns out, ArmA server browsing through GameSpy is entirely UDP-based. Kind of a shocker, but smaller packets I guess, and no error checking; seems to be highly peer-to peer as all server listings are shunted through a direct UDP connection from the host to browsing clients. Bad for hosts cause of all the constant queries, good for GameSpy. Thanks for your help, I'm glad this one solved itself

In answer to your question SlurrpyChillyFries, I've gone as far as setting up a DMZ, which effectively forwards all incoming traffic on all ports to my local IP. My friends are able to connect to my voice chat server and game servers (other games), but I get no response from the master server in ArmA. To me, this either means that my server isn't sending a heartbeat to the master server (or that my router is blocking it), or that return traffic is blocked by my router. I hate software firewalls and have none installed (Windows Firewall is disabled as well). I may get a packet analyzer like Ethereal or something and sort through all the incoming/outgoing packets to see which direction is having problems. Not sure if that will help, but we'll see. PS - I'd assume that a heartbeat and server listing will be sent via TCP as opposed to UDP, just to narrow down my search. If I'm wrong, please let me know. If you happen to know which port as well, I'd be grateful. Cheers!

Much appreciated. It's killing me. I'm a huge OFP fan since '01 and I am missing my fix. *twitch twitch*