instagoat

Two Words: High Command If all features were properly implemented (go codes, more diverse commands), this would be such a big game inside a big game, I´d pay another fifteen bucks to get it.

I think they´re out already: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=98191 Beautiful Units, these.

The tutorials in Arma 2 are pretty inadequate, unfortunately. Not only a bit buggy, but also not really telling you how to do things beyond the very most basic things. There´s been a few teasers of the Operation Arrowhead tutorial section, which is looking fantastic compared to the one in the vanilla game. Better late than never. Playing together with people is more fun, yes, especially because you can properly communicate. I always try to drag new people into the game to play with, but they usually don´t make the first hurdle of getting past the initial difficulties the game poses for them. Once you´re past those, though, it really only gets better.

Hi! Arma 2 is pretty difficult, but not as difficult as OFP back in the day. The AI doesn´t shoot you trough walls anymore, they´re not able to aim as well and tanks don´t have X-ray vision anymore. The command system is one of the remnants of the old OFP, and its essentially the same, that is, pretty complex and unintuitive. The only way to figure it out is to take it step by step, and try things out in the editor before applying them in the campaigns. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=81123 This should be helpful. As for EW... One thing that is important to Arma 2 is a mindset that takes a while to take on, essentially the motto of Dwarf Fortress (which is a gruesomely hard indie game about building a mountain fortress in a fantasy setting.) "Loosing is fun." Use the Editor to experiment with tactics, and hone your AI squad command skills. Put down an enemy squad on patrol, and try to ambush them. Set up a convoy, and try to attack it with a helicopter. Challenge yourself: the advantage with self made training scenarios is that you always know what to expect, a luxury you usually don´t have in user made missions and the campaigns, especially Missions such as Cipher where everything is randomized. It´s all a matter of mindset. For example, I play MW2 like I play Arma, and it becomes very boring because even on the highest difficulty, it gets reduced to a shooting gallery. I don´t enjoy the game, because its neither offering me the freedom that arma does, nor is getting an enemy actually rewarding. That, and its twitchy. I like to be able to plan and think ahead, before tackling an objective. Hope this is at least a little bit helpful. Cheers Insta

Hi I´ve noticed these bushes before, but didn´t think it was such a big issue. Now that it´s being brought up here, I thought I´d post some references. These screenshots were taken at 057068, south of the road near the Ural and UAZ wrecks, at the road leading west from Mawimbela. http://img202.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=arma22010050813320137.jpg There seems to be a few plants that block bullets, but these three that I noticed fall over pretty quickly. Hope this helps. Insta

Haha. I love how this is not only mocking the L4D2 boycott, but also the "hugely successful" MW2 boycott. The features list in the wiki puts any other game that´s been released recently to shame in terms of improvements and response to the community, and the direct (if you can call OFDR that) competition went belly up even before they really began their support for it. I just hope people who stumble over that thing understand that it´s not serious, otherwise that might result in a backfire.

The interface, basically, is fine. It´s just too big in various places, the front-end was replaced by the context sensitive menu (so only people who remembered the numbers like us Flashpoint veterans could immediately access all relevant menus from the get go, everybody else had to sort of find out by trial and error. I still confuse numbers very often because I don´t have the list on screen anymore.), and there´s still a few menu items which are labeled incorrectly. Last year I put a lot of thought into improving the interface, and all I got was basically one short animation with fancy swipes and a deeper but narrower interface, which was just moving the problem around to different places. The only way to "improve" it is to throw a lot of stuff out, and then you end up with something like DR, where you don´t have enough fine control to really coordinate large squads. On top of that, I hated the radial menu. I´m looking forward to what BIS themselves came up with, but I hope that it´s at least correcting some of the labels. (Advance should actually mean Advance guard, Flank doesn´t commmand a Unit to actually flank but instead take up flank guard, and several others.) THe AI apparently has been improved: even the harshest reviewers of Arma 2 say that it has less problems than the original game, and was rarely making trouble. Cheers Insta

That list gives me goosebumps. Gorgeous stuff, looking forward to all of this very much!

thumbs up on the laserpointers. Only thing that´s a little disappointing is the AI clipping trough the cages at around 1:28. I guess they will improve that for the final version. I hope.

Sry, I forgot this: single click on the map screen. The laser will appear as a target like any other, except it cannot be targeted by normal weapons, while laser guided weapons can only be locked on laser targets. There aren´t any special audio or visual cues to there being a laser target: with Human pilots, you´d need to communicate them the location of your target (they will spot it within 2 kilometers of it, usually, depending on their altitude.), while AI pilots with a search and destroy waypoint will circle an area until they find the laser, and then drop their ammunitions on that. I think the ACE wagn should provide the information you´re looking for: http://ace.dev-heaven.net/wagn/Documentation Cheers Insta

Hi! Calling in Arty and designating Targets is easy, provided the assets are available in the mission. To call in AI arty, press 0: Artillery support should be listed in this menu if available. Press the appropriate number key, and your character will send a request to the AI arty, which will check if it is avialable for you, and then respond appropriately. If they are ready to give you fire support, single click on the desired map coordinates. With player controlled arty, this becomes much more complicated, since then the whole call-for-fire procedure you´d do in real life has to be applied to get accurate fire on target. I don´t have my arty manual on hand right now, but I´m sure there are such manuals available on the internet. You can of course try out the manually controlled arty for yourself: place an arty piece on the map, and link it with an artillery module from the modules section (F7). Get in, and you will get a command menu entry to active artillery mode. Laser designators also work easily, but are really only worth anything if the mission has air support or artillery support available with laser guided ammunitions. In ACE2, take the SOFLAM, load the battery, and then aim at your desired target and single click: this will activate the laser. (The red dot should be readily visible.) AI planes with laser guided bombs will see this designator, and throw bombs at it. They usually need two passes to get it right, but they are still fairly effective unless there are a lot of AA threats around. With players, it´s probably best to observe some sort of regulated procedure to minimize the hazards that come with high speed jetfighters throwing a lot of explosives around. Hope this helps Insta

The spacebar spotting is a very valuable tool, because only when you assign targets to AI using this, you know which unit they are actually going to attack. If you use the menu, you can´t tell which way they will run off. The "see-everything-"glitch"" is, I think, an unintended consequence of the way this tool works. So instead of going "throw this out", I´d first like to hear a suggestion as to how I could still exactly tell my AI to target enemies, if it gets thrown out. On top of that, I maintain that Arma 2 is a game, and features like this compensate for all the shortages of visual fidelity you have in real life. And if people want to use this feature, let them: it´s in the game, so its obviously to be used in such a manner, even if it wasn´t the primary mission of this tool when it was designed. Cheers Insta ---------- Post added at 12:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:32 PM ---------- It already is this way. You can only "reveal" units with this feature if they already have been identified by your character. It also treats enemies as if you were an AI, ie, if the AI runs behind cover and stops there, its "ghost" will continue tracking from behind cover until you "realise" that they´re not actually there. Then the HUD will guess the position of the enemy AI. It´s not like this feature is completely magic based. :P

More positive feedback about the preview version makes me positively more excited. It´s nothing really new in there, I guess, but by now it´s pretty obvious how consistently good the press response was, even from places that were previously pretty harsh about Arma 2.

No offense meant, but this statement is kind of redundant. Hard coded tools always work better than third party addons (which can bug out quite often, unless they receive as much care as the ACE features which already are quite polished by now.), plus, not everybody likes to have five billion terabytes of mods just to get working FLIR (which we do NOT have right now.) and functional AT missles. Plus, the Littlebirds currently in ACE2 are, as far as I know, the models from Arma 1, so at least their basis is BIS to begin with. The Rucksack system that will be hardcoded into Arrowhead will very likely be better too: the one in ACE2 has some serious drawbacks caused by engine limitations right now. The new default system would mean that it either could be enhanced and improved, or resources moved to entirely different areas in the relevant mods. I don´t know why people keep complaining about these new features just because they were already present in a mod, which cranks up the realism scales to where it´s borderline fun breaking for most casual gamers. By that logic BIS shouldn´t have have made Arma to begin with, because features like leaning and a whole range of units had already been made as mods for Operation Flashpoint. No, thats "copying". I doubt they´re looking over what the community has made and copypasting everything they like just because it´s been demanded and works. Actually, that´s a pretty harsh accusation to make. Just my two cents. Again, not intended to cause offense. I just don´t understand how one can make such a ruckus about hard coded solutions that will be available to everybody, and which will work across the board with a very low failure rate, if any at all. Cheers Insta

This new training area is very nicely made. I doubt anybody will now be able to complain about not having something in the game that eases them in. Hopefully there will be similarily comprehensive (and stable) trainings for vehicles too. The new toys look beautiful too. Only things that are now missing for the weapons are targeting brackets for the Javelin, and the holographic reticule on the scar needs to look like its actually a projected light, not a very fine stencil on the glass. Thank you in advance for this new training area, BIS, now I finally might be able to drag my friends who refused to play the game over the complexity of the keyboard layout into Arma 2.

Bullets impacting near you give an earthy thumping noise. The high pitched cracks come from supersonic bullets flying past your head: they´re basically sonic booms. Cheers Insta

Great review. That the flashlights/lasers aren´t in as it seems is a tad bit disappointing, but no gamebreaker, I think. I agree with the reviewer: I´d skip those for a more polished overall gameplay experience. Also, if they´re not in right off the bat, Bohemia might introduce them at a later date with patches. Along with a functional 3D real time editor, etc... Good going so far, though. Edit: Five posts while I was typing this? I´m slow. Good to hear that at least the flashlights are in. :>

I think the covers cheesyness is about on par with the current US Army ad campaign -> Though instead of waving flags you get a lot of vignetting and mad angles and lots of dramatic half-speed, colour-overlayed, photoshop filter action. I don´t mind. I think Arrowhead is just going with the general way design is going, increase in action and complexity over simplicity. Wether its game covers or phones, everything gets more laden down with features and widgets. And because the US Army is featured, and the current way the US army advertises itself is pretty cheesy, I´m actually almost happy about the cheesyness in the cover. Let´s hope what the game inside has to offer has similar oomph. Also, it´d be cool if the US army could get a nifty bombastic theme in this one too. Maybe something that´s not so hollywood-esque, though.

Hi! For the weapons, all guns are available in the Editor by default, however, they have to be unlocked in the armoury to be tested out there. Same goes for most Units/Vehicles. (Again, those are all available in the Editor without unlocks.). For class/vehicles, there are between 10 - 30 individual vehicles available per faction, in six factions. (USMC, CDF, Russian Army, ChDKZ, NAPA and Civilians.) For individual soldier classes, the USMC faction has 22 different ones, from Officers over Riflemen, Sharpshooters to AT gunners and Corpsmen. Each faction has about the same amount of individual Units. On top of that, of course, tons of mods. My total of Units right now has got to be in the range of 400 ish (Bound to keep increasing over time.) As nice as the addons are, though, they can prove to be a bit troublesome in multiplayer. Can´t say a lot about that though, I´m not an MP person. For SP, though, the mods are all very fantastic. Hope this is a bit enlightening. Insta

I think the blouseless guy is the grenadier unit (At least in a screenshot in one of the previews he was tagged as such.). I actually love that one, right because he´s not got the full uniform on. I would think that a dictatorship puts much more effort into keeping their soldiers in line (just look at North Korea) and looking the same, though I don´t know how strictly the US army enforces uniformity while in the field.

Thanks for these, they are fantastic. I love how much detail you put into these models (for example the pockets on the upper arms, and the elevated patches). Again, thank you for bringing this beautiful addition to the community and to my addon collection.

I think it´s not really poor in what it can do, what´s poor is how consistently it is doing it. In vanilla Arma 2, the AI way too often does stupid things that should´ve been avoidable. Many of those things are relics from OFP days (AI running over teammates, friendly fire issues, lack of foresight and survival instinct...) Admittably, a lot of these are very likely hard to implement, but probably necessary to convince people that you can actually have decent open world AI. As for that, the AI is already decent, it´s just not being decent all the time. I like that a lot of the press is rather positive, however, Arma 2 was received positively too, until the actual game was reviewed. Let´s hope Arrowhead will be polished to mirror shine finish, instead of the rush-esque feel the original gave you upon release.

Good video, apart from the friendly fire in the beginning. I like what they say about the AI, though I´m not thoroughly convinced yet about how well they work. The new training missions sound fantastic, the lack of those was one of the reasons why a few of my friends couldn´t get into the game, lack of drive to figure things out for themselves. (For various reasons such as lack of time.) Fully functional training missions will help in keeping people interested even in the pretty difficult time when they fire up the game after buying it. That the performance wasn´t stellar in the city really was no surprise to me, though. The detail in the new buildings seems to be quite high, and with all of them being enterable, there´s a lot more the computer has to cope with, as opposed to the non-enterable buildings of previous times. Good going BIS. Also thx to everyone who posted all these links. Cheers

Thank you, Lovecraft, for your inspiration. Full size here: http://img130.imageshack.us/i/thedeep.jpg/

http://www.armyrecognition.com/Asie/Yemen/Wheeled_Vehicle/BTR-60/BTR-60_Yemen_News_02.jpg The camouflage is very similar to those of yemeni military vehicles, I think. So for a mixed arid/desert terrain, it really does make sense. Taliban vehicles during the war were mostly kept either sand or old soviet green camouflage, back in 2001/2002 ish.