voodoochile123

Chopper is great for me in the campaign. It struggles to land properly only about 1 in 10 times. What you do is open the map, then find where you want to land. I find that green areas on the map are actually trees so do not land there. You want the grey areas which are flat open places. Zoom in really far with the mouse wheel and try to look for power lines or trees or anything that could get in the way. If it looks ok, then hold your mouse steady in the spot you want to land at, then press space to bring up the communication menu. Then scroll through the menu to support and then transport and then when you click, it will set the location at wherever your mouse pointer is. Then you fly off :) The chopper will try to land where you told him to, but if it's not safe, he will usually try to find a better place. Like I said he does sometimes pick the wrong place and crashes the chopper, but it only does this about one in every ten flights I make, so it's pretty good. You can also save your game mid flight, and if it does crash, you can just reload and then pick a different destination while you are flying. For me, on the mission you are talking about, I used the chopper for every single journey I made. In fact, when he would drop me down and I took the squad out of the chopper, I would instantly call him right back and have him stop back at the same spot. I would then run off and do what I had to do, and I could just run back to that same spot and I knew that the chopper would already be there just waiting for me.

My first impressions: 1) The game itself is amazing! I am amazed at the scale of the maps and the number of units you can use. Planes, choppers, tanks, AND infantry? I wonder if you bit off more than you can chew, but hopefully you can get it all working well. 1.5) Although the map is enormous, I wonder if I will get tired because there are only really two locations. After a while, I know all the towns and locations like my own town, so it may all feel a bit too familiar and repetitive for me soon. I want to go on missions where I don't know the surroundings, but because I have been stuck on the campaign for so long, I now know the entire south east quarter of the campaign map like the back of my hand. When the mission finally went on to the next mission (Manahatten), I was mostly playing in locations that I already knew. Not a problem at the moment at all really, but I wonder if I will still enjoy it in a few months. 2) The performance is really terrible. I have C2D running at 3.4Ghz and an 8800GTX, winXP sp3, but it's very slow for me, even with everything set to medium, no post processing, no AA, and shadows set to off. That's at 1680x1050, lower resolutions don't help. View distance under 2000. Nothing running in the background. I hover around 25fps in the campaign. It's playable at that speed and it looks 'ok', but I really would hope for this to improve a lot so I can improve the graphics and get it running a bit faster. Just 10 more fps with a few options set to high and I would be happy. 3) There are some bad bugs. Choppers explode on the ground for no reason, game just ends straight back to desktop. Two complete sets of dialogue get triggered at the same time. Etc. Nothing that has really ruined the game for me though, although the Razor Two mission I think needs some tweaking because as I said in my other post, I explored the entire country side for several hours and never found what I was looking for and didn't even get a mission failed message. 4) Really need to get rid of mouse acceleration! 5) The objects popping up isn't very good. I get patches of grass and appearing right in front of me constantly, and trees right in front of me will go from thin to very thick all of a sudden. It looks really strange and it really takes away a lot of immersion. I also find that the textures on buildings struggle to load sometimes. Sometimes I will land in a town and as I run through the town, a few of the buildings will look like cardboard boxes. Then my frame rate goes to 1 and the game hitches and then the building textures load. 6) The campaign is really cool. I love how the mission have multiple objectives and they are interesting ones. 7) The armory is really fun. I love playing with whatever I want but most of all I love when the missions come in to evade and whatnot. The only thing is that it's a shame some of them are so short. For example you only have to evade for 3 minutes, I would love to be able to play a full mission where I have to evade and escape for a full 1 hour mission. Maybe these can be made though? 8) The difficulty balance is perfect. I love how it's quite realistic but it's not really tedious. So taking just one bullet will knock you down and make you bleed, but you at least have a chance if you can get a squad member to give you first aid. I love that. I love that you really have to travel, but I also love that they gave a 4x time speed boost so that it doesn't get boring. 9) Overall I love the game itself and the gameplay. I just hope there can be some polishing. Some bug fixes, get rid of mouse acceleration and the objects drawing right in front of me, and get a lot of performance improvement. I think with all of that, it would be the best game I've ever played.

That could change the pace of the game a bit. I think without that, it makes the game slower and more tactical. You simply don't leave your cover until you know you are safe. If people can go running out of their cover spraying bullets it might take away some of the thoughtfulness of the gameplay.

1) Option to turn off Mouse Acceleration! 2) Fix the worst of the campaign bugs. 3) Fix the poor graphics performance. 4) Fix the crash to desktop bugs. That's all I really care about for now. Although I also agree that objects popping up constantly is really not nice. It wouldn't be so bad if it was all in the distance, but I get patches of grass appearing just 10 foot in front of me... It really takes away a lot of the immersion in to the game world.

Wow that is impressive performance considering you have everything on very high and are running at such a high resolution! Is that the speed in multiplayer, or is it like that in the campaign too? I have an 8800GTX which isn't as strong, but my CPU is running at 3.4Ghz and I don't have any way near that kind of speed. I can only run on low/medium. Hmm. I would hate to upgrade for just 1 game lol, I am tempted though. I wonder maybe the front side bus speed helps or something. Or if maybe more RAM helps. I have 2gig which has always been fine for XP 32, but maybe I should get more. Either way, I am waiting for a patch to hopefully do something to help first.

I like to play with the armory and also I want to play through and complete the campaign which I really enjoy! I am quite far now. When I have done all that, I will venture online and hopefully I will be a better player by then.

I finally did it, kind of :) I started from an old save and again, travelled around the countryside aimlessly for ages. I searched every inch of the power plant and drove around all the roads and villages. Then in one village, a little white car drove at me really fast and nearly hit me! It's lucky I had sprint ready. I shot his tyres out, but then he reversed and I panicked that he was going to run us over so I shot him in the head. Turns out it was the guy's second in command and killing him was enough to end the mission. I was tempted to play through it yet again to try to find the main guy, but 7 times is a little obsessive :) So I decided to just move on the the next mission. And yes..... this next mission is AMAZING! It's like actually being a high ranking soldier (I'm assuming). I have this huge area to explore and fight in. I love how the missions aren't all just go and kill someone. There are twists and turns all over the place and I love how you have to find evidence on some missions. I have done a few objectives already and I just love it. It's much more fun in this mission because there are more tasks now so I am more focussed on doing stuff, rather than just aimlessly exploring the whole area hoping to bump in to the guy. This is so fun. I could play this game forever :)

Thanks! I adore this mission, it's amazing. I still haven't managed to finish it though. I've had the option to move on, but I am determined to kill the guy :) I explored the power plant but didn't find anyone. I also got the report again of the car moving north, but I scour all the roads and I can't find anyone. Sometimes when I do this, the mission doesn't end. I wonder if the guy's car gets stuck inside a building or something and he can't reach his destination and I can't find him. It's very strange. I've spent literally 3 hours of real time driving around all the roads and flying over all the roads scouting for him, but I can never find him. I'll try yet again later, and I'll go back from an earlier savegame and hopefully I will find him. Wow! Maybe that's what happened to it in my game. He is probably stuck in the forest somewhere :) Anyway I will try again soon. Thanks everyone for all the tips by the way. I'll get him in the end :)

I think that might be due to Mouse Acceleration. Basically the view moves further the faster you move your mouse, which is not nice in gaming. So if you move the mouse slowly, you have to move the mouse a much further distance. If you move the mouse quickly, you only have to move the mouse a very short distance (like an inch) to turn a whole 180 degrees. This is a "feature" that some people find very useful, mainly when using MS Windows for example. But I think most people really dislike it in games. Usually it is not enable in games. And if it is, there is usually a way to disable it. You can't seem to disable it in Arma2, either from in the game or by changing the mouse settings in Windows control panel. I think being able to turn that off might fix a lot of problems. Usually in games where the mouse movement is uniform (so no acceleration), if my frame rate is a bit low, I can just increase the mouse sensitivity and that makes the frame rate seem faster. That's how it worked in Crysis for example. My frame rate was only about 25fps but if I increase the sensitivity it makes it feel more like 35+fps. In Arma2, I can't really increase the sensitivity because combined with the mouse acceleration, it just makes it far too fast. With high sensitivity AND the mouse acceleration, if you are running forwards and you quickly twitch the mouse just an inch, you can end up running all the way in the opposite direction. :p I really hope they can disable this, or at least add an option to turn it on/off.

Lol! :) I'll get him next time :)

Hmm, that's strange. For me I jump in and I right click to close the navigation menu. Because first of all, (after the pilot finishes talking), I have to press space and order all my squad in to the chopper. Then I flip to external view to watch and make sure all my squad get on board safely. Then when everyone is on, I open the map and I find the exact location I want to go to and I zoom in all the way so I can see where to land. I look for grey areas because the flat green areas are actually trees. Then I press space, scroll down to communication, and support, and then click where I want to go. And off we fly! :) If that doesn't work, come back and hopefully someone can help. It may just be some kind of bug and maybe when you close and reload your game it will work properly.

Thank you for the welcome :) And thanks for the link! That looks great.

Lol! :) I am totally going to go back and play this game in a moment :) I will succeed! To be honest it's one of the best games I've ever played. I adore it. It's truly epic... I really look forward to some patches though to tweak these minor irritations. I actually have very few complaints about it. It's really not that tough, so far anyway. But it's funny because the game is SO good, these few issues really stick out like a sore thumb. If they were to fix them, I'd feel like standing on a rooftop proclaiming my love for Arma2 to the world. At the moment though, it's a bit like being in love with a beautiful and intelligent girl, but who has really bad breath and she keeps punching me in the face.

To me, the best moment of this game was buying it and realising what it was... I was going to wait a while until I posted this but I may as well do it here and now. BIS or whatever you call yourselves, you are my heroes! I have never played OFP or Arma 1. I knew very little about them other than they are big FPS with online play. I never owned them because for the past 10 years I've been preoccupied playing other games, and I have never had a good PC or internet connection. Now though, I do. So I saw a trailer of this game and decided to just buy it. I didn't really know what to expect. I have just been playing around in the armoury and the campaign so far, but there have been a few great moments. The first was when I first installed the game. I went to the armoury and played with the rocket launcher. A mission came in where I had to evade being killed for 3 minutes. I hid on a hill behind some rocks and kept down, it was tense. Then my worst fear came true! (:p) Some kind of truck with massive gun on the top came driving over towards me. It stopped close to me and turned side on. I figured if I waited it would just shoot me, so I quickly jumped up fired my rocket launcher. The truck burst in to flames with a huge explosion! It looked amazing. The second cool moment was when I was playing through the campaign and I reached the mission I am now eternally stuck on. (I'll get past it later... grr). Anyway, it dawned on me that you can get in the chopper and tell him exactly where you want to go. It was like my own personal chopper. The game area is HUGE, like an entire country. So I had the chopper fly me quite far north in search of someone. I had him touch down in a flat field and then I ran with my squad through the trees. As we approached an enemy camp, another thing dawned on me... you can switch to other team members and use their weapons! So I switched to the sniper and picked people off from afar, and then switched back to the leader to gun down the rest of them. Then I ran back through the forest to the big field where I had the chopper wait for me. It was at this point that I realised, this is pretty much the game of my dreams, something I always new would be made some day but I've waited decades to play it. As a kid I used to play a game over and over, called "Midwinter" for MS DOS. Arma 2 is basically a modern version of that game and to me it is gaming heaven. I absolutely LOVE this kind of game. I also am mainly interested in the squad based action, the fact that you can actually fly choppers and planes and drive tanks... is just icing on the cake. But that's a hell of a lot of icing! It's a MAJOR bonus. All in all, I am amazed by this game. It's incredible. I just hope they can get a patch out soon to improve some of the issues which are currently tarnishing the otherwise epic experience.

Is your overclock stable? The game can really push your processor so if you overclocked too far, then that can cause a crash. Also, you might want to use driver cleaner to get rid of your old drivers and then reinstall new drivers for the new card. Also I doubt it has anything to do with your power or your new card. It's most likely drivers, your overclock, or a temperature problem. Have you monitored the temperature of your CPU when it is under load?