Zipper5

Many mod teams still exist, such as the guys behind WGL (who now make ACE), and the FDF team, and the CSLA team, and some of the individual addon makers are still around, such as Gnat, Rellikki, and Jackal, to name only a few. However, there are also a lot of newcomers doing amazing work as well.

Uh... Someone is competing for most PMs? :confused: I believe there is probably console versions of ArmA II and Operation Arrowhead in existence, but I don't know if they'll ever see the light of day. I doubt publishers are too keen on the idea of putting such a game on the consoles, due to how little it might sell in comparison to the other bigweights in the market.

MW2 on the PC doesn't have dedicated servers or mod tools but it's the polar opposite of dead. ;) Nonetheless, we're still getting dedicated servers. Just, again, they don't want us modding the game... :rolleyes:

FSMs are Finite State Machines. They're complex trees of functions that all revolve around what happened with each one, and you can make it so that depending on the player's actions, something different will happen. Karel made all 3 of EW's missions using mostly FSMs, which is quite an impressive feat. But from a beginners perspective, they might be far too difficult to learn. To unpbo files, you first need to go here to download Kegety's tool package. Extract cpbo from there, double click the cpbo file and allow it to integrate itself into the explorer. Now, you can go to any pbo file, right click and select "Open". It will do the rest.

You're going to receive another infraction, templar, for publicly discussing the moderation of the forum. And it turns out this video is going to be split into 4 parts, as it's just over 30 minutes. I'll keep you posted.

Well, I thought I'd just say that I've finished editing together the video I've made to give an example of how to command AI squad mates in ArmA II and added a commentary to it as well, for those of you who asked for it. I'll probably upload it to YouTube in 3 parts tomorrow (it's a 30 minute long recording of a dynamic mission I had quickly made to give you an on-the-fly example) and I'll post them up here when they're ready. I hope you guys will find them helpful.

I think, templar, you're falling into the category of "troll" with comments like that. You may be on the fast track for a ban but, unlike that "other" forum, you'll be notified about it and given a reason. ;)

Well, I managed to do it, 5 times now, but I can't tell you what you're doing wrong. The next few missions from Manhattan on aren't really anything special and you won't be missing much of the story if you skip them. They're Warfare too... *shudders* Play Eagle Wing instead of Harvest Red. There you'll get a bug free and highly enjoyable campaign, on par with OFP's, despite it's short length. It's much better.

Use manual fire. The AI gunners only fire cannons in bursts, anyways. When you're ordered to kill the General, blow up everything you can in the immediate vicinity of the marker, concentrating specifically on any aircraft you see. I managed to do it first time. Use tab to quickly switch between targets. Also, you have to be careful of the Tomahawk missiles falling on the town. That's probably what hit you. I don't think there are any AA soldiers in the area. Essentially - don't fly your helicopter into the middle of the friendly bombardment of the town.

That should be perfectly fine if your game is legit. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

^ This. Completely agree.

It never did. Not even in OFP. Well, sometimes it would, and sometimes it wouldn't. You could never really make sure it would unless you did it after the mission had started. Hasn't changed in ArmA II.

I've had in my mind the idea to show myself playing through Manhattan successfully for a while now. I had actually started doing so a while ago. It was going completely fine until Rodriguez took a hit and I had to load a save game, upon which it crashed. I have completed Manhattan successfully many times in the past, so it's not ridiculously hard even with the annoying bugs. It gets really frustrating when the infamous corrupted save game bug appears, though. However, I'd recommend looking more towards the community stuff. You'll enjoy it more than you will with the campaign if you're annoyed by those bugs. They're really only seen in the larger of the official campaign missions, unfortunately.

Yes, that's correct. But that's almost the same for every FPS.

For the EW missions you depbo the file missions_ew.pbo in your ArmA II AddOns folder. Go into the campaign folder and there will be a missions folder. Inside that folder will be all the missions that are in the EW campaign. Just put them in your ArmA 2 Other Profiles\Your name\missions folder and you'll be able to open them in the editor. For the other official campaign and SP missions, they are located in the missions.pbo file in your ArmA II AddOns folder. The campaign is located in the exact same location as EW, and the SP missions are in the Scenarios folder. Be fore-warned, though, that you won't get a whole lot of learning out of the EW missions, as Gaia has amazingly seemed to have done their workings completely in FSMs. So unless you're savvy with them, I don't think you'll find much. The other missions are easier, though.

The only thing I liked about DR, apart from the fire on my lead command, was how well it ran when maxed out. However, it looked crap, and only performed well because it was a console port. So in that case, I guess I didn't like anything in the game apart from the fire on my lead command. :butbut:

You know, that's not a bad idea. I might just try that.

No, it's not a hard thing to do. It's an utterly unnecessary thing to do. Why couldn't they have just put the Echelon features in as default without requiring you to use one? That's just... Stupid on their part. Seeing a lot of that in regards to Codemasters. They may automatically do the suppression and flanking, but they don't do it very well at all. We've all seen them suppressing a harmless wall while the player runs around behind him and knifes him from less than a foot away. ArmA II's does it very well. If you're up close and personal with an AI with a RPK, and you don't deal with him and instead you run into cover, you are not going to want to go back where you were. You will die. Not the case with DR. I shall say, Templar, that the reason you get so much flack over here is because you are trying to help Codemasters. You cannot deny that they have shown abysmal customer support, quality assurance and business sense. OFP, as you know, was a great game. You honestly think that in any way, shape, or form, DR is a worthy successor to the game? I'd have thought given that ArmA II's mechanics are still very similar to OFP, that you would view ArmA II to be the true successor having played the original. We are annoyed at you because you are prolonging CM's bastardization of the OFP name with your content, something which they do not deserve at all for what they've produced. However, you decided to invest your time into DR for some reason. That is very suspicious, and given your obvious contact with CM staff, on a level that is more than simply asking a question, getting an answer, and leaving. You sound very much like you are looking to get yourself within CM's leagues. Believe me, given CM's reputation, you want nothing to do with them, unless you want your reputation tarnished as well. But so long as you continue to try and help CM with DR, you will always be viewed this way over here.

Hm, well that does a lot towards explaining why MP is so laggy in DR if no optimization is "necessary" to make missions for it. I'm sure many things used in optimizing it for MP are there which "should" be used, but aren't. There's only one death animation that I've seen that looks like what you described. It does look a bit odd if you really analyze it, but frankly, I've never really noticed or had to the time to do so. Besides, it's a guy dying. You should be moving on to the next target. :p I saw the AI get stuck occasionally in patches before one of the more recent beta ones. One of them actually fixed that issue specifically, and I have yet to see it happen again since. I think there are two major things you need to do to enjoy ArmA II. 1) Keep up to date with new patches and updates, they're being released almost all the time. 2) Try out a couple community made mods and missions. Many offer a better experience than BIS', or improve on BIS' work to a great extent. If you're not happy with the AI's current performance, then try using AI modifying mods specifically. ArmA II's AI is definitely much smarter than DR's, though. They know how to properly take cover, not like DR's do where they go behind a low wall and keep popping up at the same place. They know how to lean, how to strafe, how to flank, how to suppress, all without being scripted or having to be scripted by the mission maker. Whereas, in DR, you have to place down an Echelon, but even then they're even made so that they can't hit you by default. Plus, even though ArmA II's AI may not drive so well on roads sometimes, at least they do. DR's AI doesn't even seem to recognize roads and drives wherever the hell they want. The convoys that you see in the campaign and FTE missions for DR are all scripted to stay on the roads.

I agree that the SP campaign and missions aren't the best in BIS' games. However, I would say that they're more enjoyable and well-made than ArmA's were. OFP's have been the best so far, in my opinion. Very rarely does the AI act terribly for me, and I do a lot of mission making. And this is SP mission making, not MP mission making, so I'm always dealing with AI. I've seen them get stuck occasionally (usually when driving a vehicle), but very, very rarely do I see the rest of the stuff you mention. You should know that the AI won't react to your exact commands when in Danger mode, since it was exactly the same in OFP and ArmA. Keep them in Alert or even Safe if you want them to do so. They do hold fire when you tell them to, and follow you when you tell them to, but they'll react if they feel they are endangering themselves by doing so. In fact, I believe they do what CM promised DR's AI would do, what with their ability to ignore orders based on their morale, which I never, ever saw evidence of in DR, and still haven't to this day. I think the death animations are pretty damn good, actually. I recall a few people actually thinking ArmA II had ragdoll with it, since they looked so good. But then again, the death animations were much worse in ArmA and OFP. But your last part presents a very odd conundrum. Why, if you don't give a shit about MP in ArmA II, do you give a shit about it in DR? Your mission is designed to also be playable in coop. The irony of that is, from a technological standpoint, DR's MP is much worse than ArmA II's. You have no dedicated servers, unsynchronized commands, huge amounts of lag and very few missions to choose from. ArmA II's MP is not perfect, but like I said before, it's miles better than DR's, so why do you give a shit about DR's MP?

Yet, when I ask why you don't like it, you seem to avoid the question.

Who, me? Or Templar? :confused:

No, you say you find DR entertaining, yet I can't see anything about it that's entertaining. You don't find ArmA II entertaining, yet I can see every reason why it's entertaining. Therefore, I'm asking why exactly you don't like ArmA II.

What exactly did you not enjoy about ArmA II?

Yes, they may have said that. But judging from your thread you don't actually know how to play it and gave up part way through. If you put the effort in that you have with DR, you might actually enjoy the game. For some reason you want to do that with DR, but not ArmA II...