colt

I think a lot of this confusion could have been prevented if they had staggered their Press Announcements. In the space of a couple of months we've had news that Xbox Elite is nearly finished, the announcment of Armed Assault and Game 2 and they have commitments to VBS1 community. All of these communities want info on their particular product. Add to this the confusion surrounding Publishers and nothing concrete is coming out and of course this leads to (wild) speculation... But I'm confident BIS will do what's best for everyone. Just hope the AI routines and collision detection from Elite make their way into ArmA !

Have they mentioned a possible release date ? I browsed their forums but couldn't see anything, it seems a bit weird releasing Alpha screenshots. How much develpment time are we looking at ?

Is there any chance of some official information being released about engine / ai / improvements ? I think BIS mentioned that ArmA was much more than OFP 1.5 so it would be nice to know how far they've moved on from the original. Screenshots are nice but it's the enhancements to the gameplay and engine that I'm interested in. So pretty please, with sugar on top - give us some info...

I think I owned all of the Falcon games and Falcon 4 was the first pc game I bought back in 1999. I read about all the ups and downs of the game, numerous patches, different modding groups , blah, blah, blah  and to be honest my interest dwindled in all simulations. I recently bought a new computer and was checking out some old demos and installed IL2 Sturmovik and thought WOW ! So I thought I'll pick this game up and started mooching aorund some Sim forums and discovered that Falcon 4: Allied Force is being released on June 28th (US) ! It's basically the core of the original Falcon 4, but given quite an overhaul in terms of bug fixes, improvements, AI increase, new Theater of Operation, stability, etc... It's also worth noting that this is a commercial release. Some links: Developer's Falcon 4: Allied Force page: http://www.lead-pursuit.com/news.htm SimHQ interview with the developers Executive Producer: http://www.simhq.com/_air4/air_135a.html There seems to be a few flight simmers here , so I thought it might be of interest.

A new (english) demo is out: http://www.gamershell.com/news/23258.html

When can we expect some official news about the engine enhancements ? Has it been based upon VBS1 and if so, is the Armed Assault engine equal to or has it been been further enhanced to supercede VBS1 ?

bineg drinking ? BINGE drinking ?! Wot u talking 'bout? U looking at my bird, MATE ? Heh, only joking ure my best mate reaslly Who are you? Actually, the reason people get loaded on the weekend is due to the antiquated UK licensing laws. Most people go into town or  the city at around 8.00 pm, the pubs shut at 11.00. So you get people drinking quickly and downing the most potent drinks. That way, when the pubs shut and you go to a club, you're too drunk to question the barmaid when she asks for Å2.50 for a bottle of water.

1. OFP (PC) 2. Airborne Ranger (C64) 3. Gunship (C64) 4. M1 Tank Platoon (Amiga) 5. Psi-5 Trading Company (C64) This REALLY needs a modern day release 6. Championshp Manager Italia (Amiga) 7. Kick Off 2 (Amiga) 8. New Zealand Story (Amiga) 9. Jet Set Willy (C64) Â Fantastic music but had a horrendous bug 10. Rogue spear (PC)

OFP 2: Don't make me smack you upside the head...

84 Charlie Mopic is an excellent low budget movie. No huge Hollwood gloss, an unknown cast delivering tremendous performances. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096744/

To coincide with BBC's T.V. show Battlefield Britain, their website has this 'little' four level flash game. Check it out: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history....x.shtml

I'm not surprised that it's scheduled for 2006. In all honesty, I thought 2005 was far too optimistic and the games engine wouldn't have been that upgraded. The kick in the teeth for most people I feel, Â is the way it was announced. Considering the rapport that BIS and the community have I would have thought a post by a BIS member of staff explaining that it's been delayed would have softened and appeased most people (yes, I know it's the weekend). Then again, Codemasters the publishers haven't exactly been a fountain of information. OFP Xbox, due <s>Spring 2004</s>, <s>Summer 2004</s>, <s>Autumn 2004</s> Summer 2005 has hardly been mentioned in the press (and that includes E3). Then all of a sudden up pops the two new release dates. A bit more communication is needed. I just hope the OFP brand doesn't descend into Duke Nukem Forever farce.

Well FSW is apparently out this week in the U.S. and I must say, the videos on IGN and the official site have whetted my appetite for quite awhile now. http://media.xbox.ign.com/media/566/566987/vids_1.html http://www.fullspectrumwarrior.com If anyone here decides on buying it, I'd like to here your opinions on the enemy a.i. and on the replayability value. Currently only available on Xbox, although a PC version is being released sometime in the future.

With OFP 1, BIS initially had trouble with one publisher dropping out if I recall correctly ? BIS were unkown developers and no-one really knew how OFP would fare. Screenshots, videos and feature lists were released to reel in consumers, generate word of mouth and more importantly grab the attention of publishers. They certainly don't have to do that with OFP 2. Besides, Codemasters will call the shots regarding ANY information released, not BIS. So don't hold your breath... Â

As posted on : http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10692 Gabe Newell, Managing Director of Valve Software : Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve. Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code. Here is what we know: 1) Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule. 2) Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled. 3) For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account. 4) Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree. 5) At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools). 6) Periodically for the last year we've been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don't know if these are related or independent. Well, this sucks. What I'd appreciate is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great. We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can't imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community. Gabe ------------------------------------------------ Hope BIS take the necessary precautions for OFP 2.

PAH ! Â Airborne Ranger was the Daddy and the C64 pwned all !! ( R.I.P. Micropose... and their manuals... and their keyboard overlays... Â Â )

Given that OFP 2 will have significantly larger maps. It's natural to assume that there will more than 1 airport, possibly more than 2 even. With the current game engine the auto pilot / other a.i. controlled planes only use one airfield (see Nogova). I hope that the ability to choose which airfield the auto pilot / a.i. planes land at will be implemented. Airfields could simply be designated  A, B, C, etc. e.g. Pilot -> action -> Land at airfield A Land at airfield B Land at airfield C Other ideas: i) You could give the airfields a designation such as West, East or Resistance ( changeable in mission editior ). A.i. on both sides would then only use their designated airstrips. ii) Have a specfific building ( radio control tower ) with a trigger so that when a unit enters the building it enables the rest of it's side to use the airfield in question. I'm sure that it would be of benefit to island makers and mission designers. Â

I completely agree with you Bucket man. One of the reasons why OFP is such a landmark game is the freedom the player is given. I hope OFP 2 has natural boundries such as the originals ocean / sea. The thought of running into a 'wall of trees,' an unclimbable mountain, an uncrossable canyon gorge or running to one end of the map and re-emerging at the other end ( ok for planes) would seriously Do. My. Head. In. Â Still BIS' mention of terrain streaming is interesting. I just want my freedom , man Â

The animations I'd like added: 1. Bolt action sniper rifle animation. 2. Shotgun Animation ( just pump action ). 3. The animation process of bi-pod extension and retraction by a soldier. 4. Lean / Peek animation. For an A.I. Movement / Animation ( and your player ), I would definately hope to see included a "Passive Awareness" animation. E.g. In the in-game Command Menu ( Editor = Behaviour ), press "F ?" -> Combat Mode -> Passive Awareness The soldier then adopts a "Passive Awareness" stance, with their gun held across their waist. Their default speed and yours ( W key ) would be equivalent to that of when their gun is shouldered. Perfect animation and rate of movement for setting patrol waypoints along roadsides or through urban enviroments. Cranks up the atmosphere and the immersion factor.

Well, I would argue that Resistance provided "minor improvements " and more. OFP 2 is a full on sequel, so I would hope that BIS ups the ante quite a bit. Â I was just looking at the requirements for Raven Shield and the Minimum specs for that is 800mhz, 128 Ram and 32 MB 3D video card with hardware T&L. Should that be the base system for OFP 2 ?

An animation for bolt-action sniper rifles would be welcome.

I was thinking about how BIS could implement suppressive fire the other day. My idea: Choose your machine gunner  "F ?" then go to 'engage' or 'action' in the command menu and then have an option to 'suppress'. Once selected you right click and draw a window around the area you want him to fire on. You could use a hot key to turn suppression on or off.

Now that OFP 2 has officially been confirmed and speculation about it mounts, I was wondering if the thread in question could be 'fractured'. That is, different parts of OFP 2 given their own suggestion threads of what the community would like to see in the next OFP installment / engine. The current thread in General has a great deal of info already, but all wide and varied, ranging from clipping improvents to mod implementaion to "better graphics". What I propose is that the individual forums could be given their own "What would you like to see in ofp2 ........" Sticky. E.g. "What would you like to see in ofp2 - Addons & Mods" - Mod makers could request particular texture features / proxies / classes / animations, Â etc. they would like implemented. "What would you like to see in ofp2 - Mission Editing & Scripts" - Mission designers could request new waypoints / script functions / triggers etc. "What would you like to see in ofp2 - Multiplayer" - Those who play Multiplayer could ask for server commands / browser options, etc. This would isolate the individual parts of OFP that make up the whole and allow the developers easy access to specific areas, rather than having to sift through all the myriad of ideas in the General forum thread. By all means keep the original thread open as it contains many terrific general gameplay thoughts and hopes which will no doubt be added to. This is only a suggestion, but I think that this would be beneficial to both the community and to the developers. Â

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">However, I do think most current games show the war as a big game where you're actually having FUN killing hordes of enemies.<span id='postcolor'> I don't know if any-one here ever played Cannon Fodder on the Amiga by Sensible Software? If I remember correctly, Jon Hare in an article when it first came out ( ages ago ) said that that they were trying to show ( in a satirical way ) how war / death was becoming something that gamers / public shrug their shoulders at. I think they addressed it very well from the title of the game and the opening song - " War Has Never Been So Much Fun", to showing all the civilians queing up in front of a hill and being marched through to the next mission depending on how many men were killed previouusly. Every time one of them died, they were "rewarded" with a gravestone on the hill. The longer you kept them alive - they would rise through the ranks which would mean a more distinguised gravestone. The top of the screen resembled a football score - Home 555 : Away 555. The numbers representing the number of kills. Cannon Fodder in it's own subtle, unique way did make you realise that hey, it's just a game and just be very grateful it is because no-one wants to experience that in real life, because to everyone except family and friends you ARE just a statistic...

@ foxer Hendrix was a paratrooper. Everyone must check out "Machine Gun" - Filmore east