Pummel

Hey Knight thanks a lot, I got it working thanks to your help! :) Trying to remember everything I did... but here goes. 1) First off, I was missing some mods. The Carrier Ops mod download page at armaholic.com doesn't mention CBA and maybe one or two others, so first I had to install that. That got rid of some of the errors although the game still didn't load. 2) I then got a different Launcher because the one I had didn't let me arrange the mods in any order. I now have a new swanky one :) 3) I also screwed around with my mod installs because I originally just put everything in their own folders. I'm still not sure how you are supposed to do it (I will have to read up on this and then tidy up my Arma folder), but for now I just left everything there and then duplicated everything by putting anything from the addons folder in my arma2/addons folder, and the same with keys and scripts and whatever else. 4) It still wasn't working at this point, but then when I was exploring my new Arma2 Launcher, I noticed that one of the options is to run the game as Arma2 and one is to run it as Arma:OA, so I selected that and then the mod worked first time, no errors, and I went on to play it for an hour or so :) LOVE IT by the way! Can't wait to play some more. Thanks for everything.

I spent some time trying to get this mission to work, looks really cool, but unfortunately I couldn't get it to work. I am new to modding so I am probably doing something wrong. But I downloaded all the required and recommended mods and installed them in to folders. Then I ran an Arma2 Launcher which found all the mods and I ticked them. Then I ran the game. First issue was a message saying "addon mando_portables requires addon caweapons_e_javelin" which I tried searching but I couldn't find much help. I saw people talking about deleting it if you dont own OA but I do own OA (I am running Combined Ops). I can just click past that though, but then another error pops up saying, "error compiling pixel shader psspecularalpha 0" and then when I close that it stops loading the game. I did some trial and error and noticed that if I disable "Expansion" from the Arma2 Launcher, the game will actually load and I can select the Duala Campaign, and then the difficulty and the mission, but when I click play, the game just locks up and sits there for ages. I once left it alone and after about half an hour the client crashed. Any help would be much appreciated!

I enjoy this but I have difficulty with the mando missiles. I select AG mode and I open the little MMA video screen and locate a target, then I lock on with the left mouse when its over the target. Then I fire but the missile doesn't seek, it just shoots in to the sky. I thought it might have been firing rockets so I tried both right mouse button and left Windows key, but both did the same thing. Where am I going wrong? Other than that I love it. I miss some of the freedom from Bennys Edition because somehow the RE makes the map feel smaller. But overall I think it's better, not just in terms of gameplay like promoting PVP and improving the costs and income etc, but technically it seems better too. Like when one of my units dies, it updates on the UI far faster. I also like the visual representation of who is in my vehicle and where I am injured.

...nevermind....

^ and they made those sales even though it was hindered by poor internet in the world. I always desperately wanted to play OFP but I never even bought it because I knew it would suck on my 56k connection - which was the best I could get at the time. Anyway, another point I wanted to make in addition to my "hype kills progress" post above, is that the money that BIS earn from all the extra DayZ people, is not necessarily going to be a good thing for us. Success like that has a way of changing things, and there is a good chance that the bosses of BIS might end up thinking to themselves, "Why do we put all this money and effort in to making deep military simulations when we could just make a simple zombie game that sells like hot cakes??" If it was any other company, they would have ditched Arma3 by now and would be making a full version of Dayz2 to cash in on the popularity and mainstream appeal of zombie games. Luckily I think BIS are an anomaly in the industry because for some reason, they seem more interested in making great games than just 'selling out' like every other company does. But money is a big motivator so it does worry me.

Here is why my cage is so rattled about Dayz. I hate hype, especially when the game is not deserving of it, and Dayz is not worth it (yet). It was the main thing that ticked me off about Minecraft. Great little game for the right niche crowd, but when it took over the world it just seemed so stupid and wrong and reactionary. Dayz is heading the same way. Personally my thoughts on Dayz are not that simple. I don't love it or hate it. I actually want it to succeed, because it could be something that I would love to play. My gripe is that it's just not there yet, and judging by the bits I've seen, it's not even close. I'll do the positive stuff first. What I like, is the persistant nature of it. I know how important this is because I was a big fan of Ultima Online and Everquest, and I know that building something that lasts, is an incredibly cool thing. Whether that's just a reputation, or a character and their gear, or both, it's all really good stuff. Secondly, I love the mood - due to the zombies and scariness of it. It's something you don't get elsewhere in Arma2 because you are only ever up against men with weapons, which itself is scary but not to the extent that DayZ is when you get that real sense of terror, largely thanks to all the creepy sound effects that play. Thirdly, I love the social experiment aspect of it. It might not have even been entirely intentional, but the idea of all different types of people put in to a dangerous and tense situation, and some people go nuts and try to kill everyone and others try to remain honorable. I love that stuff. Again it mirrors MMO's (not the WoW type boring ones, but the Eve type interesting ones), some people will make friends, some will make enemies, some will become infamous in time. So basically, the game has a LOT going for it, and it's all stuff I find very interesting, and I would really like to be a part of it. But what I really dislike, is that it's far too shallow at the moment. There is no future in what you are doing, and there is zero motivation to play. I think of most of the people are playing it because either, they are a hype following sheep, or because they have just never really played any online game outside of the usual Counterstrike / CoD type stuff, so the idea of survival and big open worlds etc. is all very new to them. But those of us who have been playing games like that for around 14 years or more, are not impressed. Basically, the game NEEDS a lot at this point. You could take it any number of directions, but as an example, here's what I think it needs. There needs to be more incentive to stay alive, and more penalty for dying. Currently you can start the game, wander for a few hours and find nothing, so just suicide. You then get to start over and try exploring a different area, and you haven't really lost anything. That's what I did - because I walked miles in one direction and saw nothing of interest, and I happened to reach the the edge of the world map and I didn't want to walk all the way back... Also if people die and their friend picks up their tins of beans and whatnot, then you haven't really lost anything. Again, MMORPG's have been doing this stuff for well over a decade and it is FAR more refined, and seeing as this would be considered "Permadeath", then it should be looking at Roguelike games. Basically, you should earn more and achieve more when you play, and when you die it should not be recoverable. Nothing will build the tension more than that, and it will make staying alive feel a lot more meaningful. Secondly, there needs to be a motivation to go through all this crap. As much as I love Arma2 and Capture The Island and warfare modes in general, the running long distances is always a bit of a downer. But at least in those other mods, you are earning a lot of money every minute so most of the time you can buy a humvee, fill it with snipers and medics and anti tank people or whatever, and head off like that. It's a LOT more rewarding. There is also a huge motivation to keep playing, because eventually you will be able to afford a tank, and then a fleet of tanks, and then a chopper to transport your tanks, and then a gunship, and eventually you could end up flying around in a jet fighter/bomber and bombing the annoying enemies you have been striving against for the past few hours. Where is that motivation in Dayz? You really expect me to run 20,000 metres to some crappy old abandoned warehouse only to find a revolver and a tin of beans? No thanks.. What you need is far more stuff that you can get and do. Some more choppers and vehicles for a start. There also should be some kind of angle, because say you play the game for a month and eventually you and your buddies have your own gunship and you can fly around and kill anything you want, so what? What is the motivation to keep playing? That will just get boring very fast. What should happen is that they run out of fuel and ammo, and the fuel and ammo is coming in to the region via a supply route that is heavily contested by both players and zombies. Maybe there is also a black market of it. Players should then be able to bargain with each other and fight to take control of key structures and locations and trade routes throughout the world. You should be able to start companies or organisations, either legit or mafia-esque, controlling things for your own needs and wars will break out. Without all that, everyone is going to be bored of it very soon and the whole thing will just be a big over hyped flash in the pan. So what bugs me is the chance that all this hype will interfere with the game's journey to where it needs to be.... Hype often does that and it always worries me, just like with Minecraft. If everyone gets rich out of the Alpha, then why would they even care to make big and difficult improvements to the game? It's down to gamers to steer the future of these games, but because they act like such over excitable little children, it ruins everything. Again with Minecraft, I felt exactly the same as how I feel about Dayz. It was such a brilliant 'core', I could travel around a nice world that procedurally generated itself around me, and I could build structures. Great! But now what? I wanted enemies to come along and try to break in to my structures, so that would motivate me to move out of my mud hut and build a stone house. And then tougher enemies come along which can bash down stone walls, so I need to build a serious fortress, and then I need to climb up on to the roof and start shooting them with my bow and arrow. Perhaps as time goes by the numbers of enemies that spawn each night, gets bigger and bigger, and one man can never defend his own fortress. So at that point you need to build automated defenses - catapults, ballistas, AI soldiers who will dump cauldrons of hot oil down on the enemies, and you can build a moat around your fortress etc.. Imagine how fun that would be, like a first person tower defense game, and in a persistant world. But no..... a zillion morons go bat crap crazy over the alpha version of the game and the main guy is floating around the mediterranean on his yacht and is still expected to come back and finish off the game. It's never going to happen, and in fact it didn't happen. He even hired a full team of people but the game went through beta and to release in no time and very little new stuff was added. Just meaningless crap like new craftable items, pots and pans, and whatever else. I felt cheated out of what could have been an amazing game, and I bet the same happens to Dayz.

I have such mixed feelings about DayZ. I love that it's something that you can't really get anywhere else, because most zombie games are dumb, manic shooters, and DayZ is more of a survival type experience. But the hype sensation is starting to bug me because I don't think it's entirely justified. It may well be once it's finished, but not now. I have been trying to understand why people bother playing DayZ and putting all that effort in to surviving and collecting virtual gear when they could just play Arma2 itself, which is better in a lot of ways and a lot more generous. But judging by what people say on the forum, they have never even tried Arma2 and only play DayZ because they followed the hype there. I think it's sad that people just follow the crowds so much these days, because it means lesser known gems are more ignored. It happened last year with Minecraft, and while millions of people were going ape **** over that game, and all the online gaming sites were smugly acting all honorable for championing an indie game, there were countless other lesser known games that didn't even get a look in. It's like the hype breeds more hype and all the gaming sites jump on the bandwagon because there is money in it, making stories about it and catering to the hoardes. What annoys me the most though, is that the majority of what people enjoy about DayZ, like the freedom to collect and use anything and roaming the extremely vast, seamless countryside, scared of what might be through the next set of trees is exactly what Arma2 has already been providing people since 2009.... There are only really a few differences with the DayZ mod, and when you break it down, there's only one of them which is all that different to Arma2, and that is the sense of paranoia and fear you only really get from a survival horror type setting. I like that, and I'm glad it exists at least. But by playing Arma2 itself, although you might lose a few nice things like the sense of paranoia and the persistant sandbox / second life feeling, you gain far far more. It's really an amazing 'game' and it's just so sad that all this manic foaming at the mouth hype is aimed at a simple zombie survival mod and it feels like such a slap in the face to the gigantic elaborate game which powers it. p.s. Dont bother telling me to post it elsewhere. I posted this on the review of dayz on some other website and I wanted to cut and paste it here. I am not interested in registering on the dayz forum.

Well I don't do many because I can't drag myself away from multiplayer for more than 5 minutes :P But this one seems amazing: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?128669-CAMP-Carrier-Operations-Duala And then for others I usually just go to armaholic and sort the list by rating and then try stuff. Here's the link: http://www.armaholic.com/list.php?c=files

Modern gaming is so crap, it's no surprise to me that DayZ is a big success, and it's very deserving. There just aren't many interesting games these days. I have always loved the idea of a hide and seek game or a survival game, or an orienteering type game or whatever, but there is just nothing like that. To me the biggest and most promising advancement was the MMORPG genre popping up in the late 90's. When I saw stuff like Ultima Online and Everquest, I imagined a future with massive online worlds allowing for all kinds of cool gameplay - massive wars, small sneaky infiltration moments, survival moments / escape, but none of it happened! All that happened was that World of Warcraft showed up and dominated the entire genre and made it super boring. Lucky we have just a few games out there like Arma2 which are actually able to provide something a bit different to what you get everywhere else.

I don't know for sure yet because I tend to not enjoy games as much these days, as I used to. I already have a good computer, 120gig Corsair Force 3 SSD, i5 2500k at 4.5ghz, and an HD 5870 1gig. But I would really love to move up to a big 27" monitor with a very high resolution (2550x1440) and that would require a better graphics card. Depending on if/when I do the upgrade, I plan on getting a 680GTX. It wouldn't just be for Arma3 though, I would also love to be able to crank other games like GTA5 and ArcheAge and whatever else takes my fancy. But again, I'm still not even sure I will do this. It's a lot of money and I don't *need* to upgrade.

Remember that resolution is just as important as everything else. For example pretty much any card could run the game on highest settings, if your resolution was only 640x480 :) But the higher the resolution, the more you will need, and nowdays resolutions can go very high!

I would recommend downloading a bunch of player made missions. I can make some fun stuff in the editor but I find it really boring playing something I made myself, because I already know where everything is and what is about to happen :( But playing something that someone else made is a lot of fun :)

That video on page 1 was AMAZING! Animations look great to me, and the graphics in general are just mindblowing.

Yes thats it :) It's usually worse for me than that video shows. I would be very happy if Arma3 has fixed that.

Cool thanks I'll give your other mission a shot! Performance for me was ok. I lowered one of my settings (object detail), so it's not as high as I usually play it on OA maps, and more in line with how I play on Chernarus. Still looks nice though. I also tried it on lower difficulty and I wupped them :) So I'm glad I can go through the difficulty levels now to push myself. It's a shame missions like this aren't more integrated with the game, because anyone who doesn't know about modding is really missing out! This is just one mission and yet alone, it almost transforms this game in to a flight sim :P