r3volution

Please let it be the Brits... ;) Honestly that would be just the best possible icing on the cake, of course those pics that were on armaholic would be something of a strong hint in that direction, but I guess nothing is certain.

Guess no surprise then (barring that highly intriguing snippet on the Town generator module naturally) so stuff it I'm going to bed.

Without wishing to delve into the incredibly speculative furore over DLC... HOLY CRAP THE BRITS ARE IN!!!! Now that that's out of the way, seriously, that MTP looks totally bad-ass. BIS you have absolutely f*&$ing OUTDONE yourselves this time!!! I think I'll excuse myself about now, before I spontaneously combust from sheer volume of excitement! Goddamnit, how am I supposed to sleep now... :D

Oooooh so THAT'S what was causing that. I'd been seeing that weird thing on the ACE backpacks and been figuring it was some kind of conflict... Pity these units are too good to stop using... ;)

I've managed to score a new computer that looks like it should be able to handle Arma2 pretty well. But I'd like to get some opinion on whether I should upgrade the graphics card. i7-920 @ 2.66ghz (I'll probably OC it to 3.0 or so) 12GB DDR3 1600mhz WD Raptor HD Inno3d GTX275 896MB I was thinking about buying an SSD to replace the Raptor as the system drive, but its too expensive at the moment. But my main concern is the graphics card, I'm not sure it'll have the bollocks to push a 1920x1200 widescreen monitor.

The OFP/Arma series certainly has a certain something that other games lack. After playing far too much Arma (the first game in the series I played) my attempts to play other FPS games have been limited by the fact that no other game has the scope and diversity of Arma/Arma2. I play other games sporadically, but nothing chews up my PC time more than Arma2 at the moment. Once you've had a taste and grown to like the slightly masochistically realistic pace of the game, it seems to inspire a certain starry eyed fanaticism, which other gamers often seem slightly wary of. In all my years playing the series, I haven't yet encountered another person in real life who has heard of, let alone plays Arma2. None of my friends seem to 'get' the style of the game, but then they're mostly twitch action gamers to the core. The key seems to be to realise that Arma2 isn't for everybody and in fact is probably one of the best examples of a cult niche in computer gaming. The community though (and BIS through providing the tools for them to work with) is what makes this game/series the most impressive I've encountered in my close to 2 decades of computer gaming. The sheer scale and variety of the mods is just awe inspiring, and even more so once one is cognisant of the vast effort in man-hours behind them. BIS has provided us with a fantastic sandbox to play in, and the community has consistently run with it, and filled that sandbox with the most amazingly detailed and professional mods of any variety imaginable. All of this makes the next bit so sweet, as due to an unexpected computer upgrade, I'll be playing OA on a computer that can actually handle it (unlike the release of Arma and Arma2 which both happened on the ass end of my upgrade cycle). Also for the first time I'll be able to go back and play the vast number of missions I've made over the years and been unable to play except at a crawl. FREAKIN SWEET! :D Basically, I fucking love this series and this gaming community. There, I said it. ;)

I'd be almost 100% certain that there will be just the one campaign and that playing through it will mean you play each mission as one of the 4 protagonists. Example: 2 missions as Helicopter Pilot followed by a few missions as Delta Force, or some such. I don't see them making 4 separate campaigns, as that's essentially what they'd have to do to make the campaign playable through by all 4 protagonists. Anyhow, those videos have me totally psyched. This is going to be eff star star star awesome... :D

Good call waiting for Operation Arrowhead, I can't wait to see the ADF tearing up Takistan. Also any time off was incredibly well spent, the quality of this mod is unfuckingbelievable! :D I'd also say that the features offered have basically set the standard for other mods to follow in terms of allowing unit customisation without having to have hundreds of different units to represent some diversity. Now if only there was a script for randomising the appearance of any infantry unit (yes I'm a lazy bastard)... ;)

I'd go for the ATI card if you're going to be primarily getting it to play Arma2. The ATI 58XX series seem to have a phenomenally good minimum framerate relative to (afaik) even the new Nvidia cards. Their maximum framerate seems to be not that much better, but the minimums are far higher with the ATI cards. Kind of bizarre but every review I've read which has tested the 58XX series in Arma2 has pointed towards this. The resolution you're playing at I'd say you'd be able to play it with most of the pretties turned way up if you got the ATI card. Also, the I7 920 is a Nehalem on the 1366 platform so you're going to need 6gb ram in 3 slots or the whole triple channel thing is not going to work, at least that's what I've heard.

Given the difference between the 5850 and 5870 is supposedly pretty minimal in Arma2, and only really affects the minimum framerate by a couple FPS, I don't know that the 5890 would offer a massive increase over the 5870 (though I'm always happy to be proved wrong). All in all once you get up to those sort of heights in terms of graphics cards, unless you're running an eyefinity type setup with multiple monitors and want to run some screamingly huge resolution display, there's more to be gained from chucking the extra money you'd have spent over the 5870 into either a better CPU or an SSD to tackle the performance issues with texture loading from virtual memory. At the high end, the CPU and HD loading speed seem to be the biggest limiters in Arma2.

Having been playing the arma series for something like 5 years now, or however long it's been since Arma came out, I have never once played a game of multiplayer. The strength of these games lie in the mission editor, while the editor is a bit overwhelming at first, the ability to use other people's scripts (such as the many awesome randomised patrol scripts) to easily create missions to your liking is insanely addictive once you learn the basics. While you can easily knock up a simple mission inside of 5-10 minutes once you know what you're doing, I've spent days editing and fine-tuning particular missions I've enjoyed. There's also a multitude of guides around to basic mission making and its even sometimes helpful to de-pbo some of the many fantastic sp missions around in order to figure out how to do some of the stuff that might otherwise elude you. Essentially, its possible to play Arma2 for hundreds of hours of incredibly fun gameplay without ever coming near the multiplayer section of the game, if you take the time to learn how to make basic missions (and it is pretty damn easy) then your fun is only limited by your imagination. :)

QFT! This may be the funniest shit I've seen in months. I literally nearly spat drink all over my keyboard at that first spinback and launch into the epic dancing... :D Superb video and talk about the funniest unit demonstration video I've ever seen!!! I think I'ma go watch it again. ;) *edit* Totally forgot Vader's entrance!

Honestly I wanted another option saying 'OMG please can we have all of the above', but in light of the fact that there wasn't I put animation & physics improvements, just about every other aspect of the game can to some extent can be worked around, but the physics are the biggest single jar to immersion in my opinion. Mind you moddable AI would be sweet...

Whoever made the Team America comparison a couple of pages back was totally spot on. Its good I don't judge a game by its cover, but sadly many people would and all this one is missing is "America Fuck Yeah!" on the front... That said, anyone who would be put off by a game cover without actually researching the game, is probably the kind of person who would buy the game, fail to RTFM and then be posting on the forum 15 minutes later saying how much it sucks because its not MW2CloneX. So maybe this is a good thing, it could weed out some of the potential numpties. All cover stuff aside, I'm totally pumped for this game. I might have initially thought it was a bit strong to replace Arma2, but seeing the content integration planned, as well as the ridiculously cool new features (not to mention the fact that mods should be easily portable) I've been totally won over. Bring this on, honestly how can I get the next month to pass faster so this damn game will come out quicker? :butbut:

Holy Crap! That looks absolutely amazing! Looks like perfect green zone for some intense infantry action.

I'll pay that. IMHO even NAPA having helicopters in Arma2 was stretching the imagination a bit. Damn, even a lot of countries barely have helicopters or an air force of any description let alone every ak toting rebel group. The nature of the kind of war that Arrowhead seems to be going for is far from balanced. Arrowhead is obviously shooting for a far more asymetric warfare style than Arma2 and thus will probably in the default units be less 'balanced' but don't despair because I'm sure within 2 months of Arrowhead being out the vast majority of the awesome unit mods available for Arma2 will probably be ported to Arrowhead. Fingers crossed on all the new engine changes being easy to implement on existing Arma2 addons.

Totally worth every microsecond of the wait! :D Now I'm off to celebrate ANZAC day weekend the only way I know how... with games... ;)

Hot DAMN those unit models look fantastic. Modelling them from scratch has paid off in spades, as they stand out immediately as ADF units. Can't wait to get my raid on with these ones! :D

Screwby! :D Looking forward to this one, been re-watching the series for the first time in a while and having never actually been in a war, it does to my perception seem to encapsulate the chaotic and brutal nature of modern warfare. Now having this in Arma2 will be about 10 thousand kinds of awesome!

This map is coming along very nicely, always good to have more variety, and especially to see maps using the summer vegetation! :)

@ the_antipop : Sounds good, guess I've been made cynical by all the american MRAPS which still require the gunner to poke his head out. :) Vis a vis the A2 steyr, isn't it basically just a stopgap till they start issuing the A3? And wonder if the A2 addresses those issues that I heard about a while back with the safety catch being able to be disengaged by the rifle being bumped or falling over if stacked? Damn, I can definitely see fun times ahead with this mod...

That is a freaking awesome idea. Be great as a way to add some tension to the missions trying to emulate counter-insurgency and policing etc. :D

They might be tactical but damn they look like chinese made bb guns now... ;) That Hawkei thing looks neat, but why do I have the feeling its going to be yet another up-armoured vehicle that has an exposed gunner position rather than CROWS? What on earth possesses the people designing these to armour everything BUT the poor bastard who has to stick his head out the top? Or is it going to be completely unarmed and I've just got it all wrong? Anyways, can't wait for release on this lot... :D

Re the above; wasn't one of the features of the new version having multiple gunshot sounds for the one round, thus giving a bit more variety? Or am I reading this wrong?

Wow talk about diverse camouflage! I did chuckle at the 55th Commando Brigade wearing camouflage that looks amazingly similar to the DPDU Australian forces in Afghanistan are wearing. :D Damn, I'm getting more and more pumped for this mod! :D