Stagger Lee

Most retail outlets won't have it until the 8th, but it's available now for digital download just like Half Life 2 was. You can download it as many times as you need for 2 years and it's a FAST download. Was steady at 800KB per second for me. Finished downloading in about an hour. Just burn it to DVD if you want a hard copy available. Hardly anyone seems to be aware of this..come on we need more players for some massive battles! Go here: http://www.atari.com/us/games/armed_assault/dvd_rom and click on "Digital Download" on the right.

Yeah I was exaggerating when I mentioned queing up control orders, but it's actually not much of one. In fact it would be easier if we could queue up orders than deal with the control delays inherent in their design. Glad to see you've been able to convince yourself that they have implemented the perfect control system that mimics reality exactly. Looking forward to taking my time lining up a good headshot for you while you're performing the reload movements like a robot, frozen in place not able to do anything about it.

Le++: I'm not sure I follow. If you are standing and in the middle of a reload and your mate drops from a shot from a sniper, your immediate reaction would be either to drop to the ground, or sprint evasively to the nearest cover. This is a perfect example of why you would not want the game to force you to continue standing there for those precious seconds reloading as if nothing in the world were happening. As for getting used to the extra several steps the game makes you take before diving into the prone position, sure anything can be gotten used to. It really sounds like you're trying to convince yourself that lack of control over where you fall is a good thing. Sure it's better to find cover than drop right in the middle of a road. But I shouldn't have to dive three steps earlier than I should just to end up where I wanted in the first place. It's awkward, clumsy, and hurts the immersion a bit for me, and for more than a few others based on the responses this post has received.

I agree their passive ability to spot you from a distance, especially while partially obscured by soft-cover is a bit exaggerated. In one mission I had managed to gain entrance to an unoccupied building at night, and was standing far back from the 2nd floor window and no enemy had been alerted my presence, the room was in complete darkness, and I get one shotted from 150 meters by a lone soldier just walking down the street. He had no reason to be alarmed, and didn't even have nightvision. I'd love to see their end-of-month friendly fire reports. I admit things like this are to be expected when dealing with a.i. but there's always room for improvement, especially considering how much this game gets right and how great the a.i. is in other respects.

Gives new meaning to the term "No CD Crack" lol

If you haven't run into that situation in ArmA I question whether you're even playing the same game as me. There doesn't really have to be a separate reload cancel key, although it would probably work to have the same key you use to reload, cancel the reload by double pressing it. There's an even simpler way. Pressing a movement key would not cancel a reload, pressing a change of stance button would. Reloading is normally accompanied by an animation. Just wait for the animation to be finished before attempting to change your stance if you don't want the reload to be cancelled. If you are too hasty that's your fault for being impatient. Either way you're better off going prone before reloading anyway. I doubt most would have a problem with even movement canceling the reloading process. And there could just be a toggle for those who prefer to be sitting ducks for my bullet to their head while reloading. You would be welcome to it. As others have said, I want to be in control of my character, I don't want to queue up orders for him to follow when he gets around to it. Or would you rather this be the Sims? Â

Kwato: I totally agree with the things you mentioned. Those are things that hopefully can be corrected by modders. Personally I can't wait for ACE to be released. Control issues though would seem more likely to be corrected or altered by the devs themselves. I may be naive in hoping they'll read forums for feedback purposes, shrug.

First of all this post was not a bitch, it was constructive criticism and a plea to help make the game better in regards its controlability. It's called a simulation and yet it amazes me that people like you blindly defend it when someone simply asks for unrealistic elements to be corrected. The last thing I would be asking is for the game to be turned into a twitch action shooter like CS. I do plan my moves, and I do use my brain, I do use tactics. I just want to be able to cancel incredibly long animations such as reloading when I need to. Comparing this request to CS makes no sense, as you cannot go prone in that game in the first place.

I would think brains would be used in situations where you believe you are safe to reload, start reloading, are getting shot at, STOP RELOADING AND GET THE HECK DOWN. Just sitting there continuing to reload while having bullets whiz past your head would seem to be BRAIN-DEAD behavior.

No this post is specifically referring to ARMA and how the mention of "Game2" could potentially impact future support for this game. Use your grey matter. Think outside your box.

It gives the impression that continued dev. support for ArmA will be lacking as resources are being put toward it's successor already. Great modders are less likely to put forth as much time and effort as they would otherwise if they know this is just an "in between" game. I'm not saying great total conversion mods like ACE aren't coming, but it's probable that they won't be as good as they would have been if the modders knew that there wouldn't be another OFP sequel for a long while. It's just a little disappointing really, leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I mean it's probably good for stockholders or whatever, but it's not good for gamers for game sequels to be in development when the present game still has so many problems yet to be fixed. It's kind of like catching your girlfriend oggling some other guy.

I don't even have a problem with not being able to reload and move at the same time. The problem I have is not being able to STOP reloading when bullets start flying toward my general direction. This is just ridiculous. There is absolutely no reason they couldn't simply allow you to cancel the reload action if you attempt to change position or move. I'm not asking for the ability to have the reload animation magically finnish itself. I want the opposite.

Considering a large part of the game is scanning for enemy movement, and that a lot of us are stuck playing at around 1024 resolution which feels kind of like I forgot to wear my glasses, I find myself holding the right mouse button a lot just when walking around. When I'm doing so it feels like I'm sort of squinting and scanning a particular direction in the distance so it in no way feels unrealistic. Problem is when you hold the right mouse button down for more than a few seconds you start breathing hard and it screws up your aim if you want to shoot anytime in the near future. I found there's a separate Zoom option in the keyboard options, which does the exact same thing, except doesn't make you hold your breath and you can keep it held down forever, switching over to holding your breath without a hitch. I tried lots of configurations and found what worked best for me was to have one of the extra thumb buttons on my mouse set to holding my breath. It's a Razer Diamond back mouse; I had to configure it to a keyboard button out of game so I could map it in game. I would much prefer to bind the mouse wheel up and down to zoom in and out, but unfortunately the game sees the wheel like a joystick movement and only zooms if you continually mouse the wheel forward or backward at very high speed..impossible to achieve really. That and I do like the use of the wheel for the Action button and scrolling up and down menu choices..can't have it both ways I'm afraid..though I'm not sure why. Another alternative that appears to be impossible at the moment is to bind "hold breath" to a double right mouse button tap. So you hold the right mouse button for unlimited Zoom, and double tap it and hold for "hold breath". You can configure for this, but it simply doesn't work. I'm guessing a bug. For those without an extra mouse button I would recommend binding "hold breath" to an easily accessible key which you can hold down while still manuevering as necessary. The Left Alt would be good for this, but I find that works better as the current View control. If you're using TrackIR you won't need the View key, so that may be a good option for some of you. Hope this helps someone..it's made my gaming more enjoyable as it no longer sounds like a porno with lots of heavy breathing. Maybe if I change my avatar voice to female...

Not al all. Also the ArmA models arn't in full gear and in situations where your life is threatened along with ther fact there supposed to be fully trained soldiers,i think the estimations are spot on. Although that calls into mind an idea for a mod where your combat reflexes improve over time in the field. Hmm..

Your physics is wrong. It doesn't matter if you have 200 pounds in your backpack, or no backpack at all, you bend your knees, Â you hit the ground at the same exact time. The only difference extra inertia would make is that you might slide along the ground a bit if you were already moving forward. It's the old "drop a ping pong ball and a bowling ball at the same height and they both hit the ground at the same time". Diving foward is already modelled in that if you are running and you press the Prone key you do end up on the ground foward where you were when you pressed it. There is no reason for the extra steps.

Never used Sprocket but when I purchased it online from Atari I received a message that I could download it at whim as often as I liked between now and 2 years time. Also it's an easy thing to just copy the downloaded image to a DVD for backup. As far as activation, someone has mentioned they were able to use the same key they were given for two separate installations, so I doubt that's going to be an issue.

DMarkwick: I don't have a problem with the view being tied to the animation system per se. I just want a bit of smoothing, and additional animations such as going from prone to sprint directly. I don't really care if its been debated to death already. Have the developers ever given a response that they are have acknowledged the feeback on this subject? If this issue causes such controversy maybe they should realize its importance and look into it. INNOCENT&CLUELESS: Exactly!! JdB: Don't be a fanboy. I'm not saying I want this game to be like any other 1st person shooters out there. I love the realism of this game. I just want to be able to do things I should be able to do in real life. These control issues are Unrealistic. Do I need to spell it out for you? Oh wait, I just did. By the way neither Battlefield nor Counterstrike ever claimed to be realistic in regards to movement control. However THIS game does claim it in the fact that it calls itself a Simulation.

If your hard drive is partitioned and you have plenty of space on one of the extended partitions the error you are seeing is likely due to the fact that your active primary partition (the one Windows is installed on, most likely your C: drive) doesn't have enough space to store the temporary files the installation program uses. You will need to free up more space on your C:. I had this problem before and used Partition Magic to increase the partition size of my primary partition to fix it.

Never used Sprocket but when I purchased it online I received a message that I could download it at whim as often as I liked between now and 2 years time. Also it's an easy thing to just copy the downloaded image to a DVD for backup. As far as activation, someone has mentioned they were able to use the same key they were given for two separate installations, so I doubt that's going to be an issue.

Hey Frederf..I was wondering what "Lock" actually does..I haven't been able to figure it out.

Yeah, by default the right mouse button is "hold breath" which makes your aim better for a few seconds and zooms you in whether you have your iron sights up or not. So it's proper use is when you are 80% lined up with your target and ready to let a bullet fly. Just try holding down the right mouse button and after a few seconds you'll hear yourself breathing hard like you just sprinted a bit. You'll also notice your aim steadies for a short period. If you are already using a Sniper weapon it won't zoom in any more than it already is, but for the other weapons it will. So the Zoom function is exactly the same, just doesn't hold your breath, and it's not really bound to any useful key by default. I like to be able to zoom in "squint" at will if necessary for as long as I want to scan for targets, and then "hold my breath" as a separate function when I'm ready to shoot.

It appears that a squad of snipers will slaughter a squad of mixed infantry forces just about every time in open areas..no contest. Obviously in real life it's a bit easier to blend into the terrain, but honestly I'm not sure this is completely unrealistic. It's always seemed to me that as ballistics technology has improved, that rifle combat would be held at greater and greater effective ranges. The limiting factors in real life combat may have something to do with the cost of said sniping weapons, possibly the cost of training the men to use said weapons, possibly the degradation of sniper weapons over a period of use, and the fact that they are not nearly as well rounded for urban combat. But considering specifically outdoor combat with few intervening trees it would probably be best if the map creator restrict the number of available sniper rifles if he wants a semi realistic scenario to unfold. What do you all think?

Thanks for the quick responses. b1sh0p: The 10 players loadout suggestion you gave is along the lines of what I've been thinking for balanced missions, especially if machine gunners don't want to feel useless.

b1sh0p: Personally I thought about downloading it a few months ago but there were just too many horror stories regarding the large number of bugs and broken aspects of gameplay, and lots of reviewers mentioned waiting till the US release. I'm glad I followed their advice. A lot of people I know who frequent Counter Strike servers purchased it online back when it was available in Europe and gave up after a few days in disgust. We can be a fickle bunch. After talking to them about it for the past couple of days most of them are psyched and are willing to give it another post-patch try. Now the game's in much better shape is the time to try to convert more of these FPS twich junkies to our side.

Yeah it was a bit of advertising I guess..but there are only about 20 players split over 3 active servers so far..and more is better. Can't wait to join you guys from Europe. Thanks for beta testing it for us by the way, you all did a great job!