bedges

Aye. The timing is a wee bit off. A new game to release and patch. Very few of us in the Community can appreciate the pressures involved. Given the context, the time-lag is understandable. That said: What a pointless waste of time. "We love and adore the Community who support our software, so here's a poll to provide an accolade to those who, according to the populist vote, contribute the most to supporting OUR games." (but we'll run the poll - TWICE - collect the votes, discover the "winners", and not bother just posting the results, because let's face it - it doesn't really matter and neither do they) BIS is dead. Long live BIS. Placebo? You're a twat for not taking the lead on this. Fuck the webteam, do it yourself.

"The Bohemia Interactive Forums database has encountered a problem"... when attempting to edit a message in a social group.

:j: Surely being declared the winner is prize enough? Just announce it already and let the accolade be its own reward. If BI wants to send something extra when they get the time, that's an added bonus.

Just a quick note to say thanks to all who have participated so far. The free-text responses make interesting reading, and the percentages have given us a few things to think about. We'll post a selection of the comments in a week or so - some of them are just too well-written not to share. In the meantime, the survey is still open for those who have yet to respond.

We're currently running the second OFPEC Member Survey.The feedback you gave us last time around was central to our efforts to improve the site and decide what direction to steer it. Now that ArmaII is so tantalisingly close we thought we'd run another survey to gauge the Community's mood. There are 22 questions in total, and several optional free-text areas where you can give more details. Take a moment to have your say.

The board titles in ARMA: ARMED ASSAULT / COMBAT OPERATIONS and OPERATION FLASHPOINT, are still displaying "!Forum description". Additionally there seems to be something weird going on with the MODEL EDITING (OXYGEN) forum section, as it's not collapsible like the rest. Otherwise looking good, kudos to all concerned.

This has been mentioned already but seems a bit buried and is not among the requests in the sticked summary. Imagine a 12-loon group: units 2 and 3 are drivers of vehicles, units 4 and 5 gunners of those respective vehicles. The remaining loons (including group commander) are on foot. Commander orders 2 and 3 off into the distance, and orders the remaining infantry to return to formation. The remaining infantry leave 2 huge gaps in the formation where the vehicles would normally be, rather than either spreading out to cover the gap, or simply closing in to the commander. I'm not sure what real-life formation protocol would dictate in this instance but to a layman it seems odd to leave the gaps in a formation for non-existant vehicles...

I read that and thought "hmmm - what exactly is a sequel?" So I consulted the ol' Cambridge Dictionary and was given the following definition: Now I confess I've been too busy coding OFPEC lately to take much notice of OFP2 - or ArmAII for that matter - but from what knowledge I do have I think I'm right in saying that in terms of #1 above, the hype for Dragon Rising has yet to make mention of any of the original characters or storylines from CWC or Resistance. In terms of #2 above, Codemasters' justification for calling Dragon Rising a sequel is pretty tenuous. It's a new product. ArmA is a 'result' of OFP, as one could probably trace the development of the software and techniques from one title to the next. All Codemasters have to work with is a genre which is the 'result' of the release of the original OFP. All this is very easy to say, picking apart a definition for the word 'sequel' from a single source, and at the end of the day the legalities of this issue - if it ever gets that far - are beyond the scope of this thread and forum, unless there are any barristers present. Either way, there are two points I'd like to contribute to the conversation: Given the size of BI as a business entity, it has a lot more to lose in terms of its employees' livelihoods. For that reason alone I think putting the record straight on all counts is only reasonable behaviour. Hype-tactics aside, I think it's right to call Codemasters on this issue, and any others which appear fallacious. On the other hand, anyone who is going to read a review which says Dragon Rising is the sequel to the original Cold War Crisis, and from that infer that Dragon Rising is worth buying because of their positive past experience of CWC/Res, is probably already a member of the Community or at least knows where to look for the real story. I don't think BI has anything to worry about on that front. The real battle will be fought in the pockets of the buying public, and all either company can do is ensure they release as good a product as they are capable of producing, and be open and honest about it. In that respect, BI currently leads the game by a few points. Whether that continues to be the case, only time (and in-game vids) will tell.

Not sure at what stage you are with your investigations, but perhaps OFPEC has some tutorials to offer which might help. For example, Suite of O2 Tutorials by Brsseb.

Thanks for the links Sanctuary; bought Evochron this morning and it's pretty enjoyable. What's missing from the game and from the others you mentioned as far as I can tell, including this new build of Carrier Command, is joined-up genre-crossing gameplay. Being a loon on a planet, ArmA style. Cross 4km of BI-tastic realistic terrain in the pouring rain to get to a base. Climb inside a craft and lift off. Pass through the atmosphere and head for the orbital station. Dock the ship, get out and explore the station, etc etc etc. There's the ocean too, obviously - if you're going to do space, why not underwater while you're at it? I wish BI every success with this game, and I'm sure it will be quite popular - there seems to be a lot of mileage in resurrecting the fond memories of grown-up kids with disposable income, as can already be seen in both film and music. Personally, I'll wait for a game which will bring it all together, seamlessly, and deliver a real sense of freedom at all scales, macro and micro.

Those being?

I too was intrigued by this idea when Hoz first mentioned it, and I too read a bit more and perceived a sinking feeling - no pun intended. To my mind if you're going to do sci-fi you need to do space. If BI were to combine this excellent planet-side premise with an Elite-type space shooter/trader/explorer, complete with all the multiplayer aspects BI have become known for, they'd corner the market. An epic task, obviously, but not one beyond their talents.

we're working on it. we were unlucky enough to suffer a major crash at the time ArmA was released. that in itself was bad enough, but we spent such a long time clawing our way back to a recognisable state that the community moved on without us, and our resources seemed to have stuck in perpetual OFP mode. starting the BIKI at the same time didn't do us many favours either... things have improved a great deal over the last year though, and continue to improve. i won't claim that OFPEC is trying to be the only source for editing information for the Community - that's just unrealistic. we are trying to be a decent source - searchable, easily navigable, approachable and above all helpful. only part of that comes from the staff, the rest is down to the members. by the community, for the community and all that. to echo wolfrug's comments above, although it's easy to get caught up in the editing frenzy and forget about recording that knowledge someplace for the benefit of others, there may be an impression that even when you do sit down and write a tutorial or a handy function, there are a lot of hoops to jump through at OFPEC before you get stuff you've worked on accepted for hosting. that's not the case. we do insist on public beta so that everyone can have a look and suggest improvements to the scripts, because that way everyone learns. at the very least we make sure the things work and are easy to use, to maintain a reasonable standard that benefits everyone. given that the staff are volunteers with real-life priorities, that process can take time and very occasionally it can seem as if the resources are simply ignored or forgotten about. all i can say is that we are doing what we can as best we can to support the editing Community, and we'll continue to do so for as long as folk type our URL.

ofpec is and always has been the editing center, and our mission to host a library of resources which have been proven to work and are useful to the community has not changed. we provide beta boards for testing of both arma and ofp resources respectively, and our ed depot staff are always on the lookout for interesting resources so that we can get them into that library. the problem with the methods discussed above is that a forum is necessarily good at discussion and bad at hosting lists of resources in an easy to access manner. that's why you need a 'depot'. if ofpec's slogan needs repeating, it's by the community, for the community. if the ofpec ed depot is almost what you need but not quite, by all means make some suggestions so we can improve it and bring it up to the standards that do meet the community's requirements.

thanks to the timely intervention of Machoman, OFPEC is now back up to full speed.