-)rStrangelove

To sum all the discussion in this thread up a bit: - PR is a mod with certain rules for BF2 - ArmA is a game with editing capabilities. A custom mission can be designed to play like PR (up to a certain extent). We saw useless discusssions about which one is better than the other, but it's like comparing exotic fruits with a hole meal on a table. PR is what it is and cannot change. An ArmA mission can be whatever you want it to be. All it takes now is that PR fans come together with ArmA mission designers and have a CONSTRUCTIVE discussion about what to do. Amen.

I like the way how they implemented speech in Oblivion. Prerecorded messages but spoken by all different characters. I think there were about 4 or more speakers recorded, 1 old male, 1 young male etc etc. Yes there were messages you recognized were repeated sometimes but since there were soo many different ones you hardly paid attention to that. The different moods like anger or happyness were also very well done. [EDIT] @Celery: I have played the german version only, dunno about the quality of other versions.

Finding the right servers to play on is a bit messy atm. Some are on 116, others are still on 114. As you already said, some are passworded (due to cheaters and whining kids) while others only accept you when you have the desired mod or no mod at all. No wonder you dont see full servers.

I'd start with no mods but a sound fx mod tbh. ACE & other mods change the gameplay completely and have side effects when playing online. That doesnt mean realism mods are bad. I just wouldn't try them without even knowning how the original game feels. And the only thing ArmA clearly lacks is sound fx. Everything else is fine for a start. Go & play Evolution. Lots of teamwork, lots of battles, lots of fun.

Both games share the 'rough charme' as they were a bit buggy right after release. They also were patched over the years and became better and better. The 2 advantages ArmA has over OpF is that 1. It was developed with community mods and multiplayer sessions in mind 2. It appeared to be more optimized towards usage of Direct3D features, like shaders etc.

Sounds like the typical GTA concept.

Midwinter was on C64? I only played it on Amiga500. Still got it btw. Also Battlehawks1942 now came back to my mind. Simply awesome at that time. Later followed by Their finest hour, which had a great editor and a dynamic campaign btw. Basically you were shown interesting targets / flight groups operating in your AO. You chose on of those targets and setup a flight group with basic orders. Normally you had light fighters going against enemy fighters, heavy fighters against enemy bombers and bombers against group targets / ships. You then hopped into the mission and whatever the outcome was, other AI groups had the same success/failures as you. So when playing on the axis side you could change history and let Operation Sealion start. Pretty interesting game. When Secret Weapons Of The Luftwaffe came out i was instantly hooked of course. Flying a B17 was really scary with all those rockets zooming by. :P

Nice! :)

What this community here has proven during the last years is that almost nothing is impossible. If something is really needed/wanted badly enough, one or more ppl will try to make it happen, or get as close to it as you can. We always used the BIS games as a platform to work from. If we would've waited for BIS to include features this community wouldn't be what it is today. This is a 'CAN DO' community. Lol propaganda aside, if you played a bugged ArmA mission in the past you should have done your fair share of contacting the author and report what to do to make it better. Also, what is 'the average player' ? There's such a wide range of custom missions possible with the editor and scripting, you can't simply please everyone/ the average player. Most missions are very specific, if you didn't like the context of that mission, play a different mission or provide feedback to the author. Already in ArmA. You stay together and you live longer. Done. ;) Did i miss something? I guess lots of the squad system game mechanics in BF2 come from the kits the players are using. A good combination of different kits make sense when working together as a squad. We can do this via scripting in ArmA. There are already missions where you can only fly when you're a pilot for example. You choose your role when connecting to a server, as easy as that. Again, already in ArmA and the rest was already done via scripting. If you're hit and you're still not dead, your arms may be shaking and/or you can only crawl. Mod scripts like ACE and others simulate being thrown down when bullets whizz by, you can slowly bleed to death when not healed etc etc. Only thing i haven't yet seen (i don't know everything about the ArmA mod scene, nobody does) is that the AI is reacting to MG fire from the players. This has yet to be done i think. I really liked the kits in BF2, but so far only common things used in ArmA are the medic giving back health (revive only via scripting) and the engineer repairing stuff with a truck / and laying mines. Other kits can be scripted in ArmA, like that MG gunner providing ammo to others etc. This should be discussed in depth here some more, i think it has the greatest potential. Big islands aren't bad tbh, it's great to attack cities from several sides without a com HQ telling you to 'return to the mission area or die in 4 seconds'. However, if you really want to narrow down the area the players are using - scripting comes in again. It's just about how you implement it while still retaining a realistic scenario. The COM HQ message won't work in ArmA, but respawning shilkas and other dangers can do wonders. Great discussion. :D

I had this when ArmA came out. I think it was my system back then (CoreDuo@2.8Ghz, 2GBRam, 8800GT, WinXP) and i had the shaders on high. Using the lowplants addon and reducing the mouse deadzone helped somewhat, but the northern woods were always a bit painfull to play in. Now with my QuadCore@3.3Ghz, 4GB ram, GTX260 i don't have this problem anymore. I remember somebody told me that some ppl get arkward mouse lags when trying to fiddling around with mouse speed in the windows options. You should always leave the windows settings on default and rather tweak your mouse via the mouse drivers, Logitech G5 in my case. Don't use mouse acceleration or anything other fancy things. I have to use lowest sensitivity of 400 with my G5, along with very low sensitivity in the ArmA mouse options. And i need the Y axis to be twice as high as the X axis to get a round circle when moving the mouse.

Has anybody mentioned M1 tank platoon (Microprose) yet? Afaik the handbook was very accurate on how to drive up to mountain tops, use the laser finder and shoot from there. If you drove up too far you were instantly under fire by all vehicles in the valley in front of you. You fired smoke, and drove up to another mountain to do the same procedure until the valley was cleared of enemy tanks and bmps. Was a great relieve to finally push down into the valley and use MGs on the remaining uazs and trucks. har har! :D Yeah, and then Rainbow6 came along as the next big thing. OpF was the final step i guess. ArmA 2 will be very good, but i don't think it will be such a 'big' step from OpF. Already preordered btw. :D

Maybe if someone of the PR players here could provide a feature list what makes PR fun to play, an ArmA mission scripter might be able to get something together. If you study online server lists these days missions where you build up bases, capture cities and revive wounded players seem to go a long way. It seems that by mixing the best features of a reality milsim and the BF2 flag system you have the best balance between realism & fun for the most ppl.

Amazon.de has it for 10Eur, or 20Eur for ArmA GOLD.

I respect your opinion of course. That said, consider this: - you want to install the game, but you've moved and your provider hasn't setup your connection yet. - you want to install the game, but bad weather/terrorists/provider technicians/ a digger on the building ground next door have messed up your con. Could take days until it works again. - activation servers are out of service because the game is so great, everyone & his dog wants to activate it on the same release day(week) - activation servers are out of service because there are legal issues between BIS and your local publishers that need to be sorted out atm. - activation servers are out of service because BIS are out of $$$ and have to call it quits before they release a free-all patch (god forbid) - some hacker who rather plays another milsim attacks the activation servers - some hacker releases a key generator, leaving you with the server message: 'Key already in use. Activation cancelled.' I'm sure there are other points. I love DVD Boxes on my shelf.

I thought the KA-50 is the counterpart for the Apache. Hind is like a flying bus with rockets, like the Blackhawk. :D

I believe if every buidling in ArmA would be accessible / with AI pathnodes added, there would be a lot more lag, esp in MP PvAI. Either that, or the cities would've been a lot more smaller. Either way, when comparing ArmA with other close combat games like CoD / Fear, ArmA will always loose in the close combat area, but win in the 'free move & find targets' area. These are simply 2 different gaming styles. Period. ArmA X will never be like CoD X. Although personally i'd say custom made buildings and scripts turning the micro AI into a CoD 'action shooter' AI could be great fun really. From my experience the question is not about what's possible with the ArmA AI, it's more about what can we do without making the AI getting in your way. When it comes to combat, scripting the AI is really a pain in the *bum*. ;)

If this is true, why can i (as a grp leader) send any unit to a predefined building pos? They will stay there until i say otherwise and they will shoot through windows and from rooftops if there's no other building in the way. This normally works. If you haven't been able to do it via scripts then maybe you're using the wrong ones or in case you've written them, you're doing something wrong in ur script. Just a thought.

Since you're talking about BF2:PR i guess you mean MP PvP experiences? I'm a typical coop player and haven't had many PvP sessions but from what i remember it was a bit frustrating. Combat was done over wide distances and most of the time you hide and try to pick up movement until somebody sees you and you're dead. Positive experiences all came from coop sessions. Healing wounded ppl under fire by the AI, cover a street with an MG while everyone else crosses behind me - things like that. What really draws me into the game is that sometimes you suddenly realize you've got responsibility for the other guys, esp when you're a pilot. I remember some really stressy moments as a LBird pilot under fire by a shilka and thought "damn i got all those guys onboard i can't make a mistake now. gotta get this thing down safely." I almost forgot it was just a game. :)

Yeah, i heard about that this morning. What a shame. When it comes to Duke Nukem (3D) i have so many great moment going around in my head. Was the second FPS i ever played, right after Doom1 back then. Great story SP, great editor, so much fun. I'll miss Old Duke. :cool:

Last time i checked Evolution Blue (1,2,3 etc) ran pretty good as a local server.

If you wanna watch movies the XBox360 is out of question due to the noise it produces. You can play games from HD now, but as long as something spins in the disctray the noise is horrible. Well, you could crank up your 5.1 system a bit, that might help. Oh, and online gaming is free on the PS3 as i heard.

...and you don't have to pay for MP fun on PCs. I'd pay monthly fees for an ArmA MMORPG though. M$ really gets away with everything.

The forum just told me 'fanatic' is considered a bad word in a signature. What's wrong with fanatics? Aren't we all?

What do you want to fix? It's a generic failure message that your gfx driver stopped working. There are 1000+1 things that can cause problems in PCs. Hence nobody has a clear answer to this problem. I guess the only thing that helps is to have a stable system and a stable game. Now that i think about it: there are also 1000+1 sites on the www where ppl overclock their systems and tell others how to do it. See the irony? ;)

Thx Deadeye - much appreciated :)