Uziyahu--IDF

In my experience, it would be better to spend that month working on gameplay, A.I., special effects, etc. Sound effects are an exercise in aesthetics. Hearers are not grateful when given authentic sounds. Too many want "kewl" sounds. Better to leave it up to the user-community. The Avon Lady's project that allowed users to swap out sound effects seemed like a good idea.

GR:AW on the PC is quite impressive, but GR1 was crap compared to OFP. Perfectly constant running speed and breathing while running? Can you say "Replicant"? Yes, GR1 got the CQB better than OFP(except for the very real clumsiness of moving with a weapon and gear), but let's not hear any baloney from you about engaging squads in GR1. That simply did not happen. You engaged individuals in GR1. Never squads. Not until GR1 was patched past Desert Siege and into Island Thunder did you begin to face off against small fire teams. GR1 was mostly facing the highly-unlikely single soldier patrolling through the forest on his own. It was Rogue Spear dropped in a forest, and that was when it was at its worst. GR1 was always better in an urban environment, which was to be expected, given that it was essentially the Rainbow Six/Rogue Spear engine updated. Yes, the graphics, animation and A.I. weren't bad, but when you're a single enemy soldier with only yourself to worry about it's pretty easy to get that little right. It's not like the other enemy soldiers in GR1 actually HEARD and REACTED TO their buddies' shouts and warnings. GR1 enemy A.I. soldiers were player-seeking missiles on feet. They homed in on you nomatter what. It wasn't because they were listening to their buddies. And the framerates rarely hit 30 on my 3 Ghz, 1 Gig RAM, GF 6600 GT, SB Audigy 2 system at very much less-than-ideal game graphics settings.

In ArmA's case it is safest to bet on the best news.

Someone said that A.I. wasn't so practical on a console. That's funny, because the A.I. in OFP:Elite is an improvement over that of OFP:R, yet they got it to run on a box with much lower specs than most machines running OFP:R. Ask NAXASTA on the OFP:E board about some of the amazing things he has seen OFP:E A.I. do. Lots of OFP's A.I. requires that the mission designer place units and waypoints intelligently, with an eye to the enemy side's defense/offense. Design your mission stupidly, and the A.I. will behave more stupidly. (e.g., program a squad without rocket launchers to engage 1 enemy shilka; program a UH-60 to fly into a zone infested with shilkas and strelas.)

Meh, i dont like that bullets go in a completely random direction... Agreed. Conical dispersion is completely unrealistic. You'd think that Red Storm/UbiSoft would have went with a more vertically oval dispersion/reticule bloom, by now. What they seem to have done is add barrel-climb/muzzle-flip that works in combination with the old conical dispersion model. It pisses me off when I've got an M249 SAW in a crouched position and I'm burning through a belt, but the tango looking down my barrel has bullets going to the left and right of him, splashing on the alley walls that are so far off to the side that I wonder if my barrel is melting, already. While Soldner was arcadish, the fatigue model, destructible buildings, practically-infinite DEM-based map, and deformable terrain were very cool. There's nothing quite like hiding in a building from a tank, only to have him blast chunks out of your hiding place, leaving you nowhere to run. lol Exploring the terrain in a Land Rover-type vehicle was breathtaking. It felt very natural. The long viewdistance and the scenes from the tops of mountains/hills was jawdropping. Teut Wiedmann made a valiant attempt at making a great game. His effort got blasted by the same media hookers who shot down Operation Flashpoint: Elite, the best version of OFP currently on the market. These are the same ladies of the evening that talked up Ghost Recon 1, with its approximately 400m x 400m maps, complete with invisible walls. Leave that ridiculous fixed crosshair to games like Ghost Recon.

Side-switching is a small problem in World War II Online. Some people will pay for two accounts so that they can tow their own artillery guns and use the extra account for spying. It isn't so common as to be unrealistic, though. You've got to keep in mind that you're going to have spying and sabotage in a conflict. Side-switchers only imitate real-life traitors and spies. The important thing is to ban those players who routinely sabotage so as to intentionally ruin the whole game, not swing the tide of any given battle to their favor.

It would be a nice idea if there were some kind of integrated squad/clan support and the squad leader could administrate promotions, as in World War II Online (now). For some reason piloting and tankering seemed to work naturally in Joint Operations: Escalation. Pilots didn't get much in the way of points, so only those who enjoyed flying did so. Tanks were taken out easily by infantry, so lots of JO:E players would prefer to remain on foot. But I think I like BF2's approach to piloting better: the flight models require such practice (helos because they're helos and jets because the maps are so darn small) that only those who practice can effectively operate them. It is not impossible that a grunt might have acquire a pilot's license in a fixed wing or rotary aircraft. If I had stayed in the Army, flight school might have been something worth spending my extra cash on.

UA v1.1 looks awesome and fear-inspiring, just as arty should be! Some of the best explosion and dust effects I've seen in Flashpoint!

I wonder if the sun's reflection in the water is in the same place, nomatter? Sahrani's sun seem to be moving laterally, as the Sun does in Alaska. In Alaska, the sun will pop up over the horizon but not ascend very much, then it will move across the horizon, finally dipping back down again.

Destructible buildings worked nicely in Soldner (thought it may have been quite system intensive) and didn't seem to make much use of physics, using damage modelling, mostly. Same with World War II Online. So, it should be possible to make something that adds to the gameplay without requiring a physics card. (Still, I'd love to see walls come crumbling down...) Thing is, you can program your game to work with or without the card, like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter on the PC does. With the card, the special effects and number of objects reacting is so much better.

I think the PhysX card by Ageia can make destructible buildings in OFP a reality. Did you try the PhysX demo that came with the driver that installed with the Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter PC demo? The things it does are amazing, and that's only in software mode. I don't have the card! Crumblin' Down PhysX Fluid Demo

Yeah, give me a rocket launcher and a half-way clear line of sight and I can "snipe" you with it over pretty long distances. Hopefully ArmA A.I. will use rocket launchers against infantry more often.

Well, the way some people analyze OFP A.I. so much that they claim to be able to predict what it is going to do, I broke down the GR1 A.I. behavior pattern in only an hour or two.

GR1 A.I. is shite on toast. Only after you patch the game up to Island Thunder does it BEGIN to be worthy of mentioning on the same page with OFP. For one, it isn't until you patch up the game PAST Desert Siege and up to Island Thunder that the game starts to send TEAMS at you. Before that, it's all single soldiers. Additionally, the enemy A.I. shoots you, you're unable to fire while you're reeling and grunting from the impact, the enemy A.I. waits until the EXACT moment that you are recovered and once again able to return fire to pop you again, rinse-repeat until you're dead. It has been very rare in GR1 that I have successfully returned fire so as to prevent my death once I've been hit by the first shot. It's like the enemy A.I. waits until the exact CPU cycle that the game finishes playing your "Urgh, I'm shot!" animation. Yes, the CQB A.I. in GR1 is superior to OFP, but that's because GR1 is basically built on the Rogue Spear engine, which is basically the Rainbow Six engine. (Much of its so-called genius lies in that you can actually shoot through the corners of some(all?) walls, which the A.I. puts to better use than the human players.) You can even use the same tactics in GR1 that you use in Rainbow Six. Just treat the map like a "giant" (they like to think so) room, sticking to the walls and "slicing the pie" around mountains and hills. Wow, they talk! The DF series has had talking A.I. for ages. Wow, they use suppressive fire! The DF series has had suppressive fire for ages. Sorry, but I can only give GR credit for being fun multiplayer, whether adversarial or coop. If I do that, though, then I have to call OFP multiplayer the ULTIMATE, which is exactly what it might be (unless you count World War II Online, maybe). The best thing Ghost Recon has going for it is the UbiSoft FragDolls. Playing GR with them makes the game a true pleasure. Personally, I prefer the UK Dolls over the American ones. (They now also come in French flavor, by the way.)

More recent programs (like the newer versions of Windows Media Player) allow you to change the pitch without changing the speed.

Sounds like a great addon! I'm looking forward to trying this out!

It's probably a better idea to put the missions within the addons, as the size of the mission.pbo is usually much smaller than the addons needed. This will also motivate addon-makers to provide missions to go with their addons, AS IT SHOULD BE. If you had addons within the missions, you'd have the same huge addons in a multiple number of smaller-sized mission.pbo's. I like the auto-download feature in other games. Hard-drives can fill up quickly, though. There's no easy solution. I like the idea of a B.I.-selected Board of AddOn-Makers who act like Quality Control, make sure the AddOns & Mods are quality stuff, then provide an approved version. Other AddOns & Mods could be "At Your Own Risk", without a Board Certificate.

Uh, there was a case of an M1 Abrams rendered inoperable by some kind of mysterios spike that DID penetrate the armor. Armor always has its "chinks", just as Achilles had his heel. It is true that you shouldn't be able to destroy an M1 with enough 5.56mm NATO, but you could probably render it immobile with enough .50 BMG fire. As for getting players to fear for their lives in a computer game, the way to do it is to make the game an RPG. Few players want to give up the rank and skill gained from days and days of using a single character. The careless players would die stupidly, just as many human beings do.

H&D2 was reminiscent of Rogue Spear in gameplay. I thought it was a fine game and I had a lot of fun with it. The Mafia engine it used chugged, though.

A soldier in a full run in combat may have adrenaline coursing through his veins and tunnel vision. Everything he sees is moving, because he is moving, so he may not notice a soldier who is not moving. The non-moving soldier would notice the running soldier because nothing he is watching is moving but the running soldier. I once hid underneath a Charlie Brown Christmas tree with nothing but 3-color Desert BDU's, a pair of 3-D camo trousers (like ghillie pants, sort of), a pair of green Israeli scout boots, a paintball mask and a glossy green softball helmet. My opponent, and experienced hunter, walked right by me without seeing me, even though he looked right at me when I stirred. He was no more than 15 feet away. OFP A.I. does a fine enough job of noticing the enemy. It is very true that soldiers often do not notice the camo'd enemy until it is too late.

It would be nice if someone (not me) could whip up a video of the VME A.I. in action...

I was reading that the pylon wings would sometimes result in a crash, since each one provided lift. If a Hind try to do a fast bank, the bottom wing wouldn't have lift (no air across it) and the top wing would have more (more air across it). This would cause it to basically dump right out of the air. Apparently they have to do straight bombing/strafing runs and can't behave the way more maneuverable helos do.

Your military might be in bad shape...but at least your choppers look pretty when painted as some kind of large bird. They should paint one like a giant locust / grasshopper. I saw some Bible prophecy program try to tie Hind helicopters into the flying locust symbolism.

Yes, I think that this is a difficult thing to implement on a highly-varied map. World War II Online is still trying to figure this one out, last I read.

Who else likes the music for the ArmA E3 trailer? It gets me excited and the closing scene is just perfect, showing off the scenic view from the hill.