Hanzu

Forum rules say: §10) Do not dig up old threads Threads older than 4 months should not be dug up unless something significant is being added. If in doubt as to what is "significant", contact a moderator and they will give you their opinion. As always old threads will remain open or be closed at the moderator's discretion. Digging up an old thread simply to ask "any news" is also not acceptable, PM the thread starter or mod leader to ask. Have you ever thought this rule will do more harm than good? Plsese let me explain: This rule will forces people to post new threads of same old topics, because people cannot reply old topics that would perfectly match their topic. This will make forum to have lot of posts with just 1 or 2 replies and multiple makes browings sub forum main pages harder. Good example is ArmA 2 & OA - OFFICIAL MISSIONS subforum where same issues are always brought up (Razor Two, Manhattan, Badlands, Dogs Of War), because not everyone buy their game same time or play their missions same time. It would do good for the reputation of the game when you could end more than 4 months old discussion by replying fixed in V1.57 patch for example. "PM the thread starter or mod leader to ask." Well thead starter may have gone passive when answer for his thread or sulution to his problem too often takes more than 4 months and after that nobody could reply him, because of the rules. This way some people post few times here, get no answer and decide not to come back ever. Please consider updating rules and removing such restrictions.

I'm afraid these bugs are hard to be reproed in other MP coop missions and I have not studied yet how to make own missions. CIT I'm familiar with since there are already 3 tickets from me. I will create ticket for this one too if it is any help and I can attach my savegame folder there to serve as repro. Do you want dumps and .rpt files for all 5 crashes I experience or just for one?

Yesterday we played multiple hours Harvest Red Badlands with V1.57.76815 beta with 2-4 human players. Recently a fix was added to 76560 beta * Patch: Fixed: Locality issues of objects in MP (mainly updates from nonowner errors). Version raised to 1.57 due to MP incompability. All I can say is that this fix that was done is just a good try. Noowner errors still crash game or cause team or weapon anomalities which crash the game in 10-15 minutes even when we are just running in the middle of the forest with nothing special happening around. So it must be a script process which is looping in the background until game just has had enough script errors and decides to crash. This is what we experienced: Game crashed about 5 times with .RPT file reporting noowner errors. Also both crashdump files were automatically created. I can send them to CIT or whetever but first I want to know they are not ignored just like pretty much everything related to playing SP campaign with multiplayer. Most of the time when loading savegames one of us spawned as a bird even though others saw his character just standing there under the bird. The feature of spawning as a bird should be completely removed when playing campaigns where every player have to stay alive and there is no need for beeing a bird (observer)! Workaround for this is for that player to disconnect and reconnect to retake his character and get rid of the bird. Most of the times when loading savegames players 2, 3 or 4 reported (in Teamspeak) they were spawned as russian, Chedaki, NAPA, CDF or what ever and not as a member of the Razor Team. The host also noticed that there is no bottom left sceen faceicon for those players who reported to be in wrong team. This may also be related to the fact that savegames always load in high command state (CTRL+SPACE) even though you did not have high command on when you saved. It has been this way ever since Arma 2 V1.00 I guess. Savegame function should be fixed to also save status of control mode (normal or high command) that was selected when game was saved . Workaround for spawning to wrong team was to for Host to load savegame alone and then game runs already players 2, 3 and 4 join. This process worked 99% times. One time when loading savegame player 2's original sniper weapon was mystically changed as AK-47. This looks like that player almost spawned as russian, Chedaki, NAPA, CDF or what ever and not as a member of the Razor Team, but the bug process was interrupted and it only managed to change his weapon as russian origin. Well you may say Badlands has always been one of the buggies missions, but in fact lots of old contruction or movement related bugs have been fixed, but it still has other trouble and its warfare related gamemode and high command it is a good stress test for noowner issues. --- And no, none of us is using any mods. So it is not about that. You may say do not use savegame in multiplayer, well but automatical saves will also happen and when one of the characters die they will load automatically so there is no way preventing that. PS. Have anyone noticed mpcontinue.save will have higher priority than manual saves or autosaves? What I mean if I use SUSPEND to autosave and next time automatical save happens after cutscene or whatever, then someone dies and we need to resume (load), but for your surprise it will not load the last save game but the one before it. Actually it will l always load that saves done with SUSPEND fuction and never autosaves or manual saves made with SAVE function even though they are newer and done after SUSPEND save. So if you use SUSPEND save once, you need to use it for the whole mission to have any progress.

I have 4 default campaigns that came with Arma 2 Combined Operations and patch installs. Harvest Red Operation Arrowhead Operation Black Gauntlet EW I can host all other campaign except EW where Host button is greyed out. Why is this? Never tried EW (Eagle Wing?) before, so I don't know if it has worked with earlier patches. Using latest V1.57.76815 beta (hopefully it is not because of that).

Thank you Zipper! What a relief. :) I have been hosting Harvest Red for friends for past months and documented many known and new multiplayer only related campaign bugs. So if campaigns where MP is enabled by default are like this, I can only imagine how many bugs there would be with MP modified EW campaign. :eek: I think PMC (Lite)'s Operation Black Gauntlet is limited to 2 players just because also devs have now realized game is not yet in condition to run stable, desyncless and less buggy with campaigns where maximum player number is 4. My experience is that they are bugging much more when there are 3-4 players, than when playing just with 2 players.

I forgot to mention that Spirited Machine's launcher on Armaholic was needed for them to join cooperative missions in the first place, but I don't know why they failed to configure it in a way they could join everything else except Harvest Red campaign...:confused: I didn't find any reason to install that launcher for myself since I have DVD version of the game and I don't use any mods and. So my knowledge about the launcher was limited to the fact it exists.

There were 5 of us who updated to 1.57.76560 today. We play Arma 2 Combined Operations regularly in cooperative multiplayer only and we have seen a lot of desyncronization that gets autosaved in campaign or in separare cooperative missions, so we expected a lot from this build. However we could not yet properly test it in campaign since 2 of us use Steam version and even though they could install beta, launch it from separate beta shortcut (both saw 1.57.76560 in their title screen) and join my server for cooperative missions like "04 Scud Busters" or "05 Steel Pathers", they could not join my server when it was running Harvest Red campaign. DVD version owners could join anything including Harvest Red campaign normally. They were just disconnected automatically saying they miss some units or something. So it makes me assume beta patches are not fully compatible with Combined Operations and beta shortcut launches Steam version of the game in Operation Arrowhead mode without Arma 2 Harvest Red campaign content they would have needed to join my server. So is it a missing compatibility, a bug or just a lack of knowledge how they should launch their Steam + beta version to be able to play Harvest Red campaign?

V1.56 installed now and reverted (restarted the whole mission) and all same bugs are still there. :mad:

V1.55 & V1.56 - Harvest Red campaign Bitter Chill mission multiplayer cooperative bugs MODERATOR: Please change thread title from V1.55 to V1.56, because I can not.

The first time ever beeing able to play cooperative all evening without a single crash, freeze or slowdown. Thanks to V1.56 patch. Harvest Red campaign Bitter Chill mission still has same serious cooperative bug that has been there at least from V1.54 or maybe earlier. I will post CIT, screenshots, dumpsfiles and savegame files later when I am able to. Mission is reverted several times so it is not some random bug, it is there always. I assume everyone else who have completed this in cooperative have used endmission cheat here, but I prefer my workaround, since endmission cheat will have its bad side-effects.

Cut me some slack - it's my first poll. ;) I don't see any rules or guidelines how polls should look like and I don't see too many polls in these forums anyway which may be indirect result of common attitude when poll is not about someone's favorite subject. Not a good suggestion forum if it is like when you suggest something, you get slapped in a face right in the first reply. But thanks for CIT anyway where I should have directed my suggestions as a feature ticket in the first place.

In singleplayer and multiplayer campaign missions autosave happens when you successfully complete some task or move to a certain point. Very often all enemies nearby have been eliminated to trigger autosave, so why would autosave have to happen so instantly. Also in this game autosaves happen usually right before, during or right after some cutscenes. Playing cutscene and autosaving game simultaneously leads to weird bugs at least in campaign missions played on multiplayer side. Because of this it would be highly useful to add an option where you could set delay in seconds (for example 0-30 seconds) for autosave. This would also help when you want to collect equipment and do other preparations you would like to have done before autosave happens. Otherwise you have to do those preparations again everytime you get killed, bugged, crashed, autosavecorrupted or whatever. An optional counter of delayed autosave seconds could be useful too prepare for save and stop all activity. If this would be only visible in the host side, at least he could do the countdown in voice comms, so other players could stop running around and causing desync. --- Also every autosave should create a backup file of itself. For example called mpautosave.backup. If savegame would be corrupted or saved to a bad situation then, this backup file could be renamed to be use. Backup game progress should be always one save behing, meaning that it would not contain latest save but only the second latest where everything was still ok. This would save a lot of frustration. When you would not always have to revert and start over some mission, because of bad save. --- See my post for knowing what kind of autosave problems there can be still in V1.55 http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=110112 --- If you agree this post, don't forget to answer something to this post, to keep it bumped to top part of the new messages.

Hardest difficulty is the only thing motivating us. It takes away some fun when playing but gives it back doubled when a mission is completed. Yes there are. But in Expert you can only customize 3 options others are locked. I enabled all these 4 options (Super AI, YOU WERE KILLED, Multiplayer score and VON ID Enabled). Only the first one makes game still more harder and the last 3 make it easier). But anyway it is not the Expert difficulty that ruins game here. It is the bugs and poor impletentation of singleplayer campaigns for multiplayer cooperative. Or use a mod like ace 2 that increases combat atmosphere (no crosshair, better ai etc.)? You mean why NOT to cheat. Well this is not the only game I have played and hosted that has multiple bugs and so far there have been workarounds for everything, but with corrupted savegames, progress is always irritatingly slow. I guess I will just need to get some more patience for this one and be ready to start over daily. Thanks for the suggenstions anyway! I think the developers have done also some improvement for the multiplayer savegame feature, in case you have not tried it after V1.07 / V1.54. Here are also some tips for multiplayer savegame. Ofcouse only the host / server can use save game and clients don't even know when game is saved: 1) Back up your savegame folder somehere after each save game. Tell client players to stop moving and just ALT+TAB to windows to copy savegame folder to safe place. 2) Tell clients to stop moving in voice everytime autosave happens of before you save manually. 3) DVD host can save with Steam clients with no-problem, but I don't know if Steam host can use multiplayer saves at all. 4) If you continue savegame some other day and there are same players present, tell them to take same characters they took last time, just in case it is more compatible that way. 5) Sometimes gamesave is plaqued by bugs, clitches or is just not loading at all or gives an error message. In this case delete your save game folder and replace it with your latest backup folder.

I agree. And I just get angry when I see other people who posting "I completed mission Manhattan (for example) and I didn't experience any bugs". Well did they complete it with Expert difficulty where you need to spend much longer time in same map because game is harder? Or did they complete it with singleplayer where less bugs happen or with multiplayer cooperative where bugs are appearing more often? Or did they even complete all tasks in that mission they are talking about? It is much easier and faster to complete something by ignoring optional tasks. Or are they just one of those people who don't really identify bug when they see it? Sorry for ranting and if I offend someone, but I just want to make clear, this game doesn't deserve any better reputation before much more things are fixed without breaking as many old things same time then old ones are fixed.

Good question. Since about 2003 we (me and about 10 other cooperative fanatics) have only played on hardest difficulty on every game. In this game it means Expert difficulty where manual saving is limited to one save per mission (this is one of those things that should have been written in ArmA2 manuals). After you save once manually, Save gadget goes greyed out. For missions like Manhattan that includes multiple tasks to complete through lots of bugs and instability issues, not to mention enemies that fight better in that difficulty, autosave is our only hope to get through missions with all tasks completed. Yes we are a bunch of perfectionists (or at least I am as a host), but with such an imperfectly working autosave is driving me nuts. As I said, not with Expert Difficulty. The only workarounds to get more saves are either choose ESC and Suspend to get so called continuesave where game saves you to any location where you are when you quit the game alive. And you could also delete manualsave to make it not greyed out again, but that would feel like cheating. Also there are no proper menu for choosing which save to load. In expert difficulty you can have 3 different savefiles for one mission. They are autosave, continuesave and manualsave (not with these exact filenames but you undestand my point). But I have no idea how these are priorized. Looks like the newest autosave will always override continuesave or manualsave, so no help if you would like to use either one as your second last save. If the game would be more stable and less buggy and all tasks would trigger in every situation without endmission bugs, we might not need saves at all, but I don't believe campaign missions will ever get to that quality that saves would not be needed in Expert difficulty where you progress much slower than usual and because of that will soon run into problems with crashes or bugs preventing mission completion. Play multiplayer cooperative with Expert difficulty and you need to think again. :) It is not that we are bad players, we have an average of 10 years experience on many other tactical shooters and it is not about the lack of strategy and tactics - it is about game having bugs, multiplayer protocol not beeing good enough for even 4 player cooperative (compared to many other games) and finally game campaign beeing so complex that any anomalities can happen justifying need of using saves. Well someone may think singleplayer campaigns here were not meant for multiplayer coopeative, but well the only reason bunch of us went buying ArmA 2 series games was cooperative and nothing else.

IMO mission maker in this case is the same as the official game developers and I am pretty sure it is easier and faster for them to add autosave delay than correct 3 campaigns all with total of about 10 missions and all of them scripted to have about 10 autosave points. Isn't that about 300 autosave places or timings to correct...? I consider it a bit too big of a job for the developers and even if they would take the responsibility and optimize autosave points to less bug creating situations and separate cutscene and autosave from each other properly, there would not be going back after all that work would have been done, but with autosave delay, you could always default if it looks the delay is not working for you. I first added only 3 vote options with all starting with yes, because I didn't want anyone to vote no for this (no need to be democratic in suggestion forum). So if you have a better reason than 'whose responsibility it is' to resist this suggestion, then you can always vote no with ignoring the argument itself or just not voting at all to make this topic to have less publicity. EDIT: I don't like that you would vote no on both just on the basis of whose responsibility mission design is. Instead I would like to hear a reason why would you also say no to autosave backup files. And I don't play singleplayer or I don't play multiplayer cooperative is not an answer I would accept to add any more poll options. Sorry but with the first and only answer like that, I feel like you didn't read my full post before answering or maybe I just could not explain the importance of the issue well enough. Well maybe for me as a cooperative gaming fanatic this is not optimal game for me. People here seem to be more intrested for example in bugfixes how realistic weapon sounds are than making this game to have more bugfixes for its campaign missions or functionality need to play singleplayer content smoothly on multiplayer cooperative.

What I want to see most in incoming patches is default campaigns and missions beeing properly re-played and tested both in multiplayer cooperative and in singleplayer. If people go to a store to buy a game and patch it. They expect it to work at least in singleplayer content, if new patches just bring new bugs to this content, the game series is doomed to have a bad reputation and considerabely less sales it could achive when players tell other players "I can tell ArmA 2 has been properly fixed now, go ahead and buy it." Also I would like to have option for autosave delay in seconds and automatic backup file function for autosaves. (I want what?! Well better see my post: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=110150)

Never heard about such a problem even though have played OA 1.54 Manhattan for about 30 hours and completed it twice in MP with Expert difficulty. For that I had to fight all kinds of problems in it (out of memory errors after about every third autosave, one BSOD, one CTD, one corrupted savegame, AI beeing trapped inside APC, end mission bug, falling camouglage net killing Shaftoe and so on...). Ofcourse since I basically only play MP coop and nothing else, so I only need to commands AI characters when server is not full. In case I still run into that problem. I would like to know did you play it with Arma 2 or with Arma 2 Combined Operations? And what version? BTW. There is a typo in your location.:rolleyes:

Me too. Who could explain what the bolded text below means?... Arma 2: British Armed Forces - version 1.01 highlights - Brand new grenade launcher optics - Doubled quality of BAF-Lite experience - Broad range of fixes and tweaks ...does that mean that buying BAF will double the quality of textures compated to free BAF-Life that is included in 1.54 and 1.55 patches?

Sounds like post process refusing to turn off for unknow reason. I would try turning off both anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing from game settings and from nVidia drivers settings. I think driver settings may override game settings if same setting has set in a different way in two places.

I think Arma 2 update filesize is so much smaller because it so much left behind in features compared to Arrowhead and it just needed more updating to catch up. If someone has better theory please tell us.

Yes sorry for not remembering that, because in many forums it is allowed, will obey that now on. If this bothers someone just feel free to remove my latest replies to certain old posts completely, nothing really significant in there. Does "Threads 4 months old" mean threads that have been started 4 months ago or threads that have not had any new replies in 4 months? I would prefer autolock posts that goes too old according to forum rules and if something significant is found then possible poster could contact moderator to ask if he think it is significant too and wants to unlock it. :)

Never experienced anything like that with Arma 2 Combined Operations V1.54 For Arma 2 I would certainly try with V1.07. If that would not help I would try to revert and re-complete the previoius mission and believe it takes away something that was corrupted between missions.

You mean mission One Week Later. Try parking bicycle(s) far away enough from the plane. Vehicles brought too close to aircraft that is scripted to move, might have undesired effect for their flight path.

See post "How to use the Heli transport effectively (Razor Two, Manhattan)" by Atrocious. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=84132 You cannot fly choppers yourself in Harvest Red campaign. No idea how to unlock vehicles in the armory, my best guess would be that maybe they are unlocked when you meet them in the missions, but someone else may reply that as a fact.