Pummel

I hate blur. Whether it's Arma 2, Crysis, Shift 2 Unleashed, or any other game that has blurring, I always find that it's better if I just turn it off. Sometimes I also turn HDR off too because I find that some games overdo it and it gets to be too much. But usually it's just the blur and I have everything else on.

Not sure if this applies to single player and other types of games too, but I'm particularly interested in CTI, when I have my own team of AI. I find that if one of them is very far away, and then I tell another one to go somewhere, they seem to run the wrong way and the AI in general just seems to misbehave. I think it might be because they try to run to each other first? Or something like that. I don't fully understand it but I am just wondering what is going on, and is there a way for me to make them not do this? Thanks.

Not sure, I think uses both. But I ask because in one game, I played as commander and the team donated me a fortune and made me rich, but I still couldn't upgrade anything. Maybe it just needs to use both. I'll check now :) I'm about to play.

I tried searching for this but I couldn't figure it out. In CTI (Benny), when I am the commander and people send me money, it seems to go in to my usual character's spending pot. But to buy upgrades that seems to require a different type of money. Is there a way to convert the money? Also while I'm hear I thought I'd ask this in case anyone knows, I played a CTI game with the "Gossamer" something mod, which was fantastic, but I see that they are all on Chernarus. Can this game type ever be made to work in Takistan too? Thanks :)

Cool! Thanks, I'll do that.

I managed to fly some planes and choppers in my most recent game. I love the way to control missiles from the pop up hud screen. Very cool. It worked great in the KA52, although I couldn't figure out how to lock on to anything using the SU25 or the other choppers. I need to play it some more I guess. I might have to work out a way to practice because practising in game with a $30,000+ flying unit is not ideal :) p.s. Thanks for the replies just spotted that. I'll just hunt for other servers I guess to see what each one does. Every game I've played so far has been fun though. I'm still new at Arma 2 in multiplayer, but from the bits I've tried, CTI certainly seems to be my favourite way of playing online, and Gossamer Warfare is quickly becoming my favourite of that too. It's such a great experience with two good teams.

Ahh thanks. Yeah it would be great to be able to command them like that. But I can't complain, this game is already FAR more powerful than I ever hoped for really. This is like a game of my dreams really, it's amazing. But yeah for now I will just start using team colors.

Played this Gossamer thing for the first time the other day and I loved it. The servers all only seemed to run Chernarus though? Not sure why that is. I would love to play it on Takistan sometime, but it's nice to return to Chernarus once in a while too. I found that the game was a bit low on AI. I ran around capturing villages and often with only a few little defenders there. I also had one bad game where the commander was not very good and was constantly moving the base and wasting money and we lost our most important base and the game fell apart from there. But overall it's been a lot of fun and it's my favourite way of playing Arma 2. I love starting with nothing and having to slum it with just me and a few guys, and then we get some vehicles, and then tanks, and then choppers, and then attack choppers :D You've done a good job with the polish too. I'm not really pro enough with Benny's yet to be able to compare them thoroughly, but this does seem very well put together. Very nice tidy UI and nice voice commands for everything. I love Bennys too but it's nice to have a good quality alternative. Couldn't you just give the versions names or something? And have like Gossamer Apple (the original), and Gossamer Beetroot (the new one). I haven't read about the update yet so ignore this if it makes no sense :P

Ahh ok thanks! So when Commanders ask for donations, are they just using that for their own units?

..Ahh..

Well why on earth wouldn't you give me the answer instead of being a prick about it?

Thanks guys, I guess I'll have to use that "Stop" trick and hope that does the job. I don't think this would matter most of the time, but on CTI (Capture The Island), it's often useful to send some of my guys to one part of the map, and some other guys to another part of the map. And when they don't like being split up, it makes it tricky.

Is this not just lag related? The first time I played in multiplayer, the other players were teleporting all over the place and I couldn't shoot anything. But then I found a server that I get a 20 ping to, and it's as smooth as single player.

I have TAB as lock on to enemy target, I think that is the default key. So when flying attack choppers, I am almost constantly spamming the TAB key to see what's out there. I fly choppers with keyboard and mouse just fine. I sucked at first but I'm awesome now :P I find that to be a great chopper pilot in this game, you have to be very forceful with it. Don't try to fly it like a real life chopper. So say you are flying in one direction and fly in to a bunch of enemies and want to turn around, forget about making nice gentle turns. You should throw the chopper on to its side and then pull up, just like flying a jet, and then you do a sharp 180 degree turn and come back on yourself. The finer points are learning how to do turns like that without losing too much speed, but sometimes you will want to lose speed. As mentioned earlier, you can't turn left and right unless the chopper is going very slow, so sometimes if you want some finer control over the chopper, its nice to violently throw it sideways again and kill all your air speed, and then if you level it out quickly, you will all of a sudden be stopped and stable in the air. And you can then turn and take some shots or whatever. As for being on foot, the key thing in my opinion, is playing it like real life. The number 1 thing I learned which turned me from a noob dying every 5 seconds, to surviving a lot, was learning to use cover. You can lean in this game, so if you find a building, you can hide behind the building and just lean out and take shots at enemies. It makes you so much harder to hit, and if they get a flurry of shots coming at you, you just lean back in and you are completely safe. You can also do this with big trees, vehicles, and anything else that is wider than you. Another thing is the ability to crouch and lie down prone. Not only does it help your aim, but it makes you far harder to hit. And often there are quite large rocks and bounders in the ground, so if you find yourself somewhere without a building or thick trees to hide behind, you can just hit the deck, preferably behind a rock, and you are safe there. Another thing I learned was if you ever have to fight on the move, like you have to check to see if someone is inside a building or something, don't just run and hope to shoot because the chances are you won't be able to stop and take aim in time. Instead, hold shift as you go and you'll walk, and the character will be far better able to aim as you walk. So just before you get to the door, start walking and taking aim and be prepared to take the shot. One last thing, maybe this is just me, but I would say that 95% of firefights in this game take place at long distances. I hardly ever get in close range fights. It's almost always at long distance, when the enemy is so tiny you can almost not see them. You then zoom in and you can just about see them and start taking shots at them. Not only do you have to deal with the bullet drop over distance and making good shots, but if you aren't shooting exactly in the right place, you are never going to hit them anyway. So to help with this, I pull my monitor closer to me when I play this game. Usually my face is around 3 feet away or something, and when I play this game it's more like 2 feet. It still looks good and it's still comfortable, but it just makes it easier to do pin point shooting, and that is a huge part of this game. Other than that, it's all about practice makes perfect! :) p.s. Once you get online, check out the game mode called CTI. I am kind of new to multiplayer but that is my favourite mode so far. Enjoy :)

Cool thanks for the link. I used to play the demo a lot and I used to make some really fun 6 man missions. It was mainly just one big tactical assault of a town or something, but they were fun. I don't see many like that now that I have the full game.

The graphics cards with large amounts of ram are for very high resolutions, or for people who run multiple displays. Also SSD's are useful for more than just graphic stutter. The main advantage of an SSD is the load times, of everything, games and applications and the OS itself. It makes the whole PC seem snappier in general use. It's also cooler, and completely silent. But yes, for gaming it would be best to have good cpu/ram/graphics card first, and an SSD is icing on the cake.

You don't know anything about the engine. It works great for me in enormous maps, and smaller areas are a breeze, even on my dated PC. The only thing that slows this game down is mass AI (mainly in single player) which has nothing to do with the engine. And all this talk about physics is silly. The physics kills PC's even in games like Mafia 2. I had to lower it on my PC because I don't use nVidia and I don't have a dedicated physics card. Put physics like that in a game like Arma 2, and you'll make the game unplayable. The sensible solution to flying tanks and stuff is to just tweak, not throw everything out. Although it looks silly, I was always impressed because the flying men/characters do that because the game understands how much force has hit them. For example if I shoot a tank head on with my tank, sometimes it just explodes. However when I shot a tank with my tank, but I was far away up a mountain, my shell fell from the sky with added force and landed near the tank not on it, and that made the tank fly in to the air. That's an intelligent engine, and the forces are the same as real life. The only difference between that and real life, is that in real life things would shatter and disintegrate before they flew that far. Shooting a man with a tank should make their body disintegrate in to a shower of blood.

Lol CryEngine is completely mismatched for this game. It just wouldn't work. The reason why the Crysis engine is so much prettier and does so much swanky stuff, is because everything is much smaller. Just play the game and look at how 'big' the locations are. They are all narrow and restricted with mountains blocking you in and you can't climb them and invisible walls everywhere. It would be fine for some little single player missions, but Arma is about enormous multiplayer missions, and the Crysis engine would just destroy PC's if it was used on huge locations. Look at Crysis 2 multiplayer, the maps are all tiny, and that is why. Use Crysis engine on an area the size of Chernarus or something and your PC would just laugh at you. Crysis engine is for super visuals, Arma engine is for super size. You can't have both! Maybe in 10-20 years when the average gamer PC has 8 core CPU's and 16gig of RAM minimum etc.. I am just glad that Arma 2 looks as good as it does. When I use 2xAA the game is gorgeous.

4gig DDR 2 here. I also have a SSD which is nice. If/when I next upgrade my computer, I'll get a new processor with new motherboard and new RAM, and that will most likely be 6 or 8 gig of DDR3. But for now, there just aren't enough good games for me to care.

The Armory missions are the first things I played in this game. I remember the first one, having to survive for about 4 minutes. It was night so I hid behind a rock in some trees and nothing could find me. And then in the last minute a truck stopped nearby and I quickly stood up and shot it with my rocket launcher. The sight of the explosion at night time was great :) I wish Arma 2 had more interesting missions. It's a shame because the single player content is very buggy and sluggish and uninteresting, and the multiplayer is good but too repetitive. Most of the servers I can find a good ping to, all play the same missions over and over. With the ability to make your own missions, I wish there would be more creative missions... Escape missions would be awesome. Same goes for silent infiltration to steal something, and 1 man assassination missions, etc.

I can't really play on US servers because of ping time :( I'm stuck in Euroland. As for PC specs, the game is being killed for me by my CPU. (C2D at 3.4ghz). I am planning on getting a sandy bridge so I think that will make a big difference. I just hope that I don't also need to upgrade my HD 5870 to a GTX580.

To those of you with high end CPU's, how well does the game perform for you? I have an HD5870 graphics card which is really good, but my PC only has an old dual core which isn't great. I was thinking of getting a sandy bridge but I'm not sure if I should try to budget for an HD 580 as well, or if my current card would be enough?

That sounds great, if you find the name, please let me know! I'm new to this game and finding enjoyable servers is a bit hard for me sometimes.

Thanks guys, I can just make a note of the IP. That's a good idea.

Anyone know of a way to do this? Thanks.