Safari Ken

Not yet anyway; right now it's all manual, but you shouldn't lose much functionality. Knowing Arma's community, I don't think we'll be waiting long for launchers and updated mods, etc. Or, you can still launch the games separately. I like having the combined install, but for now it's also nice to have the option to boot into Arma2 with all my mods intact, same way I always have.

I use -nosplash with no problem, though I followed one of the devs lead in changing the other entries to -mods=@MOD (I wasn't sure if that was a typo when I first read it, but it seems to work). This is not for the command line of the batch file itself, remember. You still enter the -mods and -nosplash lines into Steam directly. Go to your Steam library, and go to the Properties dialog of the OA shortcut there (not the desktop shortcut, if you made one), and enter the info into the Launch Options. Even when you boot the game through the batch file, it will still use the Launch Options you set in the Steam shortcut, so things should work. Try getting just the -nosplash to work before you go and type in all your mods, just to make sure (it should work no problem). Once you get that working, I'd put the mods in one at a time, to make it easier to diagnose if you run into an incompatibility with the new game.

I would guess that some mods just won't work (I don't know that, I'm just assuming that most sound and graphics mods would need to be updated). However, I used the batch file fix in this thread, and I got some of my mods to work (AI Dispersion, for example). Others did not, but I'm sure they'll be updated soon enough. Anyway, mods work with the fix just like they did before, except you'll have to copy your @mod folders over to the OA installation. Then edit your launch options like you normally would (the OA launch options, that is). Even if you use the batch file to start the game, it still uses those Steam launch options, and so your mods should be in place. That's how it worked for me with Steam anyway. And thank goodness too! Note that if you, like me, used a separate launcher for Arma 2, to make the mod installation easier, you'll have to start doing it the old-fashioned way. Go to properties in your Steam shortcut, choose Launch Options, and type it on in there.

Oh, well then, you're not missing anything. I don't know the answer to your issue (because I only barely got it working myself), but it SHOULD work to just run that script. So if the script doesn't boot OA within about a minute of running that script (I say a minute, just to be conservative - I didn't actually time mine, other than to notice it took longer than I'd have thought), then it's not working for you. I only mention it so you don't have to wonder. :)

I agree. I love Steam. I'd buy all my games through it if I could. In fact, I've re-purchased some games that I already owned, just to have them on Steam! When it first got introduced as a distribution method for Half-Life 2, it definitely had issues, but I don't remember the last time I had a problem more serious than "Oh shoot, it lost connection to the Friends server for 20 seconds". The fact that you don't need to swap physical media, the fact that you no longer have to be online to play the Steam-bought games, the fact that I can reinstall games I bought years ago just by remembering my Steam password, on as many computers as I want, etc. Great, great service. I don't consider this specific problem to be a Steam issue. What we're doing here (combining two installs) is hardly a common thing in gaming. ---------- Post added at 10:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:16 AM ---------- You shouldn't have to open Arrowhead or Arma 2 after running that command script. The window pops open and closes, and a few seconds later, OA should boot automatically. I noticed that it took longer than I would have thought, so maybe you just need to give it a few more seconds.

Doh, that's what I was missing! Somehow I didn't notice that we're supposed to actually use that file as the executable. Now it works like a charm! :dance1:

This is easy enough to do in Steam, but it didn't work for me (even after I added the missing third asterisk after ARMA2DIR ;)). When I boot OA, it's just OA. I check by looking at the maps available in the editor, as well as to try and continue my campaign from the first game. The weird part is, one of the mods I have for the original game (I forget which one - I've got a few of them in there) has a side-effect where at the main menu, the 3D scene is replaced by just open ocean, seen from a little below. When I tried the above fix, that started happening in OA (which made me happy, figuring that meant they were finally combined), but nope, they are definitely not combined yet. :(