Support NeoGAF

[Arucardo]

It´s just that the engine is so poorly optimized that Arma games always play (at release) like they were coded by a bunch of amateurs.

Don´t get me wrong, i´ve bought every game in the series since the original operation flashpoint and loved them, but they have always ran badly on even the best computer specs.

Plus... do they even have a Q&A department? Arma 2 launched with so many bugs that it´s almost libel for a lawsuit to release a game in that state.



I hate getting excited about a game and then having to deal with constant bugs, playing alpha versions of mods just makes me feel like a human guinea pig

I would gladly donate for a kickstarter project for a stand alone version of DayZ, would love it.

Hate to sound like a jerk but have you ever actually written a line of code?

Also, can you point us to an engine that can do a similar level of simulation on this scale?

 

[OrangeYouGlad]

hahhaha

we just went to the island called something similar to oatmeal due north off the coast of elektro..




There were DOZENS of zombies there and not a single piece of loot. we held them off but were eventually overwhelmed (new chars wielding pistols)


this makes me wonder


is the zombie plague air borne? How did it reach the island? Did a zombie swim over there to eat a human? hmmm.

It's a virus and they're not traditional zombies since they're not even dead.

 

[demolitio]

I think you have to give ArmA 3 a chance before calling for a standalone game unless they raised money for Rocket as a kickstarter (which I usually don't like but this is a proven concept) and that would allow him to get some other employees, but it's clear that this is a mod for now and should at least stay that way until he really starts nailing some of the other concepts he has in his head. The core concept is there and it's great and now he's adding to that. It'd be riskier for him to go and make a standalone game on another engine when he's got a good understanding of this engine and ArmA 3 is said to run better than ArmA 2 and it's perfect for this type of game. The engine has had a lot of rough spots, but we can't write it off for ArmA 3 yet.

I'm sure some point down the road, he will start a studio but right now it's still very much a mod that's growing in gameplay. ArmA's engine allows him to work on his concepts without worrying about learning a new engine and doing everything from scratch, and I really think Bohemia knows how big this mod is to their game now and will help support it as much as possible in ArmA 3, maybe even making it some sort of DLC or expansion like other studios have done with their mods. This will sell their game and they know that. I always thought the sandbox mode proved that Bohemia is willing to put fun and different gameplay elements in their games even if it's not in the main mode so there's no telling what they might do. Hell, I still laugh when I play as a seagull in ArmA 2...

And Sethos, I edited my post above for a reason and suggesting it might have engine problems isn't exactly a big shocker given the history of ArmA 2. The engine is far from perfect and ArmA 2 released in a very bad state and they admit to some of the performance problems regardless of what type of game it is. We know it has advanced AI, civilians, ballistics, and 5000 things happening at once, but that doesn't mean it didn't have A LOT of problems. It was poorly optimized and improved in patches, but they already talked about how it was one of their main focuses for ArmA 3. We can suggest performance issues might be engine related because it's been that way in the past and even still today in some ways. Suggesting something that's been known to exist is hardly blaming the engine for everything with no reason to do so at all when it's just something that comes up a lot and is mentioned often. To suggest what the problem might be isn't exactly blaming the engine since we were trying to help find out what the problem was. A lot of people in here are new to the series and some don't know its problems. It's not like just one thing causes performance drops in this game so the point still stands about the other causes for a drop, but it apparently isn't the MAIN cause for this one. Some people have big drops in areas while others have smaller ones but they're drops nonetheless. It's far from perfect...

You can like an engine while still seeing its flaws. Personally, I can't wait til' the summer "open beta", preview or whatever the hell they want to call it for ArmA 3. I'm a huge fan of the series and I'm trusting Bohemia can pull off a great game at launch since they learned a lot. It's still a little weird to see canceled programs ingame but it's nothing new to the series I guess.

I hope this game stays as a mod for a long time until other things are nailed down with the mod. For one guy to build a team and use an engine he's not familiar with wouldn't exactly be an easy task so the ArmA 2/3 engine provides an already established open world engine with the advanced AI and ballistics, etc. that he wants for the mod along with really good mod support that will allow for some big gameplay changes. To start over and make a full game when the main game isn't even completely nailed down yet is a big jump to make.

 

[Sethos]

And Sethos, I edited my post above for a reason and suggesting it might have engine problems isn't exactly a big shocker given the history of ArmA 2. The engine is far from perfect and ArmA 2 released in a very bad state and they admit to some of the performance problems regardless of what type of game it is. We know it has advanced AI, civilians, ballistics, and 5000 things happening at once, but that doesn't mean it didn't have A LOT of problems. It was poorly optimized and improved in patches, but they already talked about how it was one of their main focuses for ArmA 3. We can suggest performance issues might be engine related because it's been that way in the past and even still today in some ways. Suggesting something that's been known to exist is hardly blaming the engine for everything with no reason to do so at all when it's just something that comes up a lot and is mentioned often.

You can like an engine while still seeing its flaws. Personally, I can't wait til' the summer "open beta", preview or whatever the hell they want to call it for ArmA 3. I'm a huge fan of the series and I'm trusting Bohemia can pull off a great game at launch since they learned a lot. It's still a little weird to see canceled programs ingame but it's nothing new to the series I guess.

I am by no means dismissing known problems or calling this the perfect game engine. However, people just seem to have hopped on some sort of bandwagon when it comes to the ArmA II engine with the famous word 'janky' and what else has been tagged on to it. I wouldn't call it poorly optimized as only a handful of actual core engine issues have been solved since release, like multi-threading was a big one but it's not like it went from unplayable to perfect since release, it has only gotten more 'backwards compatible' so to speak with the slower rigs, in my experience. However, this isn't pointed at you but whoever prompted this post;

Hate to sound like a jerk but have you ever actually written a line of code?

Also, can you point us to an engine that can do a similar level of simulation on this scale?

Have the people who keep harping on about the engine problems actually got any suggestions for an alternative engine that can do half of what the ArmA engine can? There's a very good reason why they have a huge military licensing program behind their RV engine and seperate studios developing modules for it which is used by the military the world over; because it's offering something extremely few can. While it may not appear advanced, the RV engine is actually pretty advanced and very well built considering its applications and how much you can mold and shape everything that plugs into it.

I don't even think people are quite aware what is actually possible within this engine, what kind of mods have been created by the community that will blow away all the trash that passes as mods for other games, the ACRE mod is one of them. This kind of engine simply can't be created without natural issues arising, it just can't be done without an insane amount of QA, huge budget and so many years worth of testing. Every open world game in existence just naturally have more glitches, bugs and little issues and the more open, the more issues - It's all built on a sort of chaos theory.

Some of us actually appreciate the fact that a military spec engine is available in commercial form with this kind of player creation ability, no other studio will do that in a billion years. The players who has actually taken part in larger online squad based co-op engagements that are milsim based know what the engine can and what kind of experiences can be had that no other engine offers. Then it's just disheartening reading the same trash over and over again from people who tried the demo, played a zombie mod or looked over a friends shoulder and saw a bug, saw animation issues or one of the many other minor issues the engine has and probably always will have.

So a genuine question, if this game were to go standalone, what engine should be licensed and do you honestly feel it would keep its current 'charm'?

 

[MickeyKnox]

It´s just that the engine is so poorly optimized that Arma games always play (at release) like they were coded by a bunch of amateurs.

Don´t get me wrong, i´ve bought every game in the series since the original operation flashpoint and loved them, but they have always ran badly on even the best computer specs.

Plus... do they even have a Q&A department? Arma 2 launched with so many bugs that it´s almost libel for a lawsuit to release a game in that state.



I hate getting excited about a game and then having to deal with constant bugs, playing alpha versions of mods just makes me feel like a human guinea pig

I would gladly donate for a kickstarter project for a stand alone version of DayZ, would love it.

Then don't play.

Everything that makes this game so great is built right on top of the core aspects of the Arma engine. Is there jank? Yep. Are there bugs? you bet. Does the experience of playing this warts and all, put to shame the most polished AAA title out there? Absolutely.

This thing is lightning in a bottle, the core experience is in the human element, the lack of direction and the natural (even if it's somewhat abstracted) way you as a player can exist in this world. There's no other engine out there that provides the framework for this kind of experience to exist.

The overwhelming response has to have an impact on Bohemia's plans for the engine going forward, from Arma 3 and on. So the future is simply filled with possibilities, and given how incredible the experience already is, that's an amazing thing.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Hate to sound like a jerk but have you ever actually written a line of code?

Also, can you point us to an engine that can do a similar level of simulation on this scale?

I don´t mind, i opened myself to you asking exactly that. I do some in house work on construction project cost software development (i´m a civil engineer), and some plugin work for CAD and GIS software. I´m in no way a game developer, but they have been working on this type of games for more than a decade now and they have always had optimization and Q&A problems, it just seems like poor management. *shrug*

I am by no means dismissing known problems or calling this the perfect game engine. However, people just seem to have hopped on some sort of bandwagon when it comes to the ArmA II engine with the famous word 'janky' and what else has been tagged on to it. I wouldn't call it poorly optimized as only a handful of actual core engine issues have been solved since release, like multi-threading was a big one but it's not like it went from unplayable to perfect since release, it has only gotten more 'backwards compatible' so to speak with the slower rigs, in my experience. However, this isn't pointed at you but whoever prompted this post;




Have the people who keep harping on about the engine problems actually got any suggestions for an alternative engine that can do half of what the ArmA engine can? There's a very good reason why they have a huge military licensing program behind their RV engine and seperate studios developing modules for it which is used by the military the world over; because it's offering something extremely few can. While it may not appear advanced, the RV engine is actually pretty advanced and very well built considering its applications and how much you can mold and shape everything that plugs into it.

I don't even think people are quite aware what is actually possible within this engine, what kind of mods have been created by the community that will blow away all the trash that passes as mods for other games, the ACRE mod is one of them. This kind of engine simply can't be created without natural issues arising, it just can't be done without an insane amount of QA, huge budget and so many years worth of testing. Every open world game in existence just naturally have more glitches, bugs and little issues and the more open, the more issues - It's all built on a sort of chaos theory.

Some of us actually appreciate the fact that a military spec engine is available in commercial form with this kind of player creation ability, no other studio will do that in a billion years. The players who has actually taken part in larger online squad based co-op engagements that are milsim based know what the engine can and what kind of experiences can be had that no other engine offers. Then it's just disheartening reading the same trash over and over again from people who tried the demo, played a zombie mod or looked over a friends shoulder and saw a bug, saw animation issues or one of the many other minor issues the engine has and probably always will have.

So a genuine question, if this game were to go standalone, what engine should be licensed and do you honestly feel it would keep its current 'charm'?

I haven´t the slightest clue on which engine someone would use to simulate a large island and the ability to interact with objects on the scale that this mod does.

I´m sure the author weighted all the cons and pros and came up with Arma 2 as the best choice for his vision, as much as i dislike the engine itself.

I was one of the countless fans that preordered Arma 2 and was left with a game i couldnt play, that was shipped (knowingly) with bugs that made it impossible for the player to finish the game or even play it. In my opinion (at the time) i felt it was a clear case of fraud, to sell something they knew was not working.

I guess that "tainted" my opinion of them somewhat from that point onward. They finaly managed to fix it to a playable degree, but not before releasing a paid for expansion (another point of contention).

Hopefully Arma 3 will be a set in the right direction, if it´s playable at release. I guess the beta will server to make a better informed judgment.

Then don't play.

Everything that makes this game so great is built right on top of the core aspects of the Arma engine. Is there jank? Yep. Are there bugs? you bet. Does the experience of playing this warts and all, put to shame the most polished AAA title out there? Absolutely.

This thing is lightning in a bottle, the core experience is in the human element, the lack of direction and the natural (even if it's somewhat abstracted) way you as a player can exist in this world. There's no other engine out there that provides the framework for this kind of experience to exist.

The overwhelming response has to have an impact on Bohemia's plans for the engine going forward, from Arma 3 and on. So the future is simply filled with possibilities, and given how incredible the experience already is, that's an amazing thing.

I´m pretty excited about the mod since i first watched a gameplay video on youtube and proceeded to check out their site. It´s probably the most ambitious gameplay experiment in the last few years in pc gaming.

But as i said, ill wait for a more stable release, i don´t have the luxury of time to come home at the end of the day and spend what little leisure time i have to test semi-functional software.

Once this goes out of alpha and has at least it´s features locked in, then i´m sure it will be a much more enjoyable experience.

Anyways, sorry if i came over as a jerk with my posts, not my intention, i´m sure you all are having the time of your life with this amazing mod

 

[wolfmat]

It´s just that the engine is so poorly optimized that Arma games always play (at release) like they were coded by a bunch of amateurs.

.. how did you end up here again? Don't just say random shit, mate.

ArmA was pretty much a badly running game, yes. ArmA 2 was pretty good from the start though. The point it's at now, all that can be said is that there is no other engine doing all this so well.

Poorly optimized? Bunch of amateurs? You're a crazy person. You can fly with a jet over the whole island at full speed, and the vegetation, AI units, multiplayer combatants, buildings stream seamlessly while the sun goes down and the shadows wander. That's 28 km^2 of highly diverse asset soup being streamed. It is simply unprecedented.

Don´t get me wrong, i´ve bought every game in the series since the original operation flashpoint and loved them, but they have always ran badly on even the best computer specs.

No they haven't. When ArmA 2 came out, my brother bought it on release day, we benchmarked the shit out of it and it ran above 30Hz for 4 hours, then we stopped playing.

Operation Flashpoint was released in 2001. That's 11 years ago. Are you aware of what kind of a difference that makes? It was a vision, and it ran extremely well for what it did on the hardware that was available at the time. I had a 900Mhz CPU and a GeForce 2 MX when I got the game, and it ran just fine.

Plus... do they even have a Q&A department? Arma 2 launched with so many bugs that it´s almost libel for a lawsuit to release a game in that state.

Of course they have a QA department. What kind of question is that? And what kind of lawsuit is that supposed to be? What is the problem that is being addressed by such a lawsuit? Before you would want to go to court, you might want to consider demanding your money back. But with that tone, you're gonna get a middle finger sprayed on your Lada's windshield.

I hate getting excited about a game and then having to deal with constant bugs, playing alpha versions of mods just makes me feel like a human guinea pig

Well, too bad. Don't get on it then. And don't attribute the mod's problems to the engine, or Bohemia's QA quality. What is wrong with you? This mod willingly ignores the conceptual framework for mods on a lot of really touchy levels. Fundamental issues like these would be expected on any engine out there under these circumstances.

I would gladly donate for a kickstarter project for a stand alone version of DayZ, would love it.

Well, I don't think you can reproduce the capabilities of the ArmA engine with like $1M or whatever amount of money you can realistically expect in the best case from a Kickstarter funding month. So I'm not sure how you envision a Kickstarter to work out. I think it only has a shot at all as a mod.

 

[Icefire1424]

I'm increasingly convinced DayZ will be to the PC what Demon / Dark Souls was to consoles. A brutal, unforgiving experience where any mistake made by the player will ultimately lead to their death.

First attempt went well enough. Lasted five days in game until there was a server reboot and I respawned on the beach, only to get gunned down by a pair of rookies who saw the rifle on my back and wanted some of that. *Sigh.

Had a few deaths since then. Fired off an Enfield a little too close to Elektro and was unable to hold off the resulting horde who eventually used me as their chew toy. Got a little too impatient in a town and alerted a zed when I was making too much noise. The one shot I risked with the pistol was just enough to bring his buds running - all 30 or do of 'em.

Dead, again.

Latest round I'm surviving, but just barely. Went from lost, freezing and starving to merely injured and bloody. Less than 6K blood left, but able to track down enough food and water to keep going, and a book of matches and some wood to actually get my temperature up past...well, zero.

Point is, every death is a lesson learned, and every attempt is always better than the last.

Man, this game is good.

 

[Longshot]

I really don't understand how people can say ArmA II runs on a poorly optimized engine, my 3+ year old gaming machine runs it fine.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a technological marvel.

 

[AndyMoogle]

There is no other engine in its current state that is as mod friendly and can offer anywhere near the same experience as the ARMA engine.

Also, this engine really isn't poorly optimized at all. I guess people really underestimate the CPU power required for a game like this. That doesn't equal poorly optimized at all.

 

[Hari Seldon]

This game definitely deserves to be labeled "Alpha" lol. Has a ton of potential but the bugs are extremely frustrating right now.

 

[Sethos]

The main problem when it comes to performance is the fact that people don't know how the settings correlate with the hardware. Some people just crank up the view distance thinking "Oh my GPU can handle that" despite being CPU and HDD iops intensive. AI operations are CPU bound and people also trip over the video memory setting, thinking Very High is better than Default in most cases. The Real Virtuality engine is actually pretty good when it comes to performance, people just pass judgement based on ignorance in many cases.

 

[wolfmat]

Also, the current performance weirdness has nothing to do with ArmA itself, it's a programming issue from the mod's PoV.

 

[mbmonk]

I am in need of some advice here. My first night playing I spawned on the beach and tried to hit some of the smaller city's near the shore ( way too many zombies, and a couple of bandits ). That resulted in no loot and 3 deaths.

Last night I decide to push inland toward smaller towns in order to get away from other players and hopefully deal with fewer zombies. I spawn near Komarovo and decide to push into Bor. I get to Bor and there are still a ton of zombies. I run into a barn and despite having decent amount of ammo the zombies just keep coming and coming (respawning, I assume). I run out of ammo and die to the swarm.

I guess I just don't understand how you are supposed to get weapons and items w/o having to fight off endless hordes of zombies. What am I missing here?

Apologies.

 

[demolitio]

There is no other engine in its current state that is as mod friendly and can offer anywhere near the same experience as the ARMA engine.

Also, this engine really isn't poorly optimized at all. I guess people really underestimate the CPU power required for a game like this. That doesn't equal poorly optimized at all.

You're right, the developers only admitted to performance issues and bugs at launch just for the hell of it when it was all just people with shitty CPU's even when the forum was littered with the same problems including the constant 23-24 FPS bug no matter what setting you had it on.

Talking about a game's flaws doesn't mean there's engines out there that do it better or that there aren't great things with the engine, but to blame CPU's and say it didn't have performance issues when Bohemia admits there were is kind of funny. I don't get why we can't talk about any issues or flaws and just have to praise it every two seconds. Everyone that bought ArmA 2 before this mod knows it does things no other engine can do but that doesn't excuse the problems either so of course people are still talking about it since it plagued the game's launch and made their forum a complete mess. Does that mean the scope of the game is any less impressive? No, but there's no free passes for problems. It was very inconsistent in the beginning and can still cause performance issues that some people have which is why it's not hard to say all the shit going on at once in a town can kill someone's framerate.

3. And…What is the weakest point? Where you know the team must work harder to reach higher levels?

Undoubtedly, what people mostly didn’t like about ARMA 2 on release was the bugs and performance issues experienced by some people. Even if it’s so hard to test every possible situation in the game of such scale, this is something we know we must improve and we will do our best to bring Operation Arrowhead in the best shape on time, that said we never want to compromise on our ambition, or the scope and scale of our games, I think we’re fortunate to appeal to a demographic that realizes that when bugs sneak through it’s not through lack of attention, but rather a desire not to limit the scope of the game, we don’t want to be some kind of generic, bland shooter, there’s far too many out there these days.

But hey, it was all just people with weak CPU's including top of the line quad-cores at the time. It was what littered the forum and what caused so many tweak guides to come out. If the own developer admits it and says it's a focus of ArmA 3 and it should run better, then chances are there's some merit to the complaints. Instead, we just assume the users are dumb and don't know anything about the engine when some of those people are modders themselves. I think it's naive to just blame the users when most people understand what view distance does to framerate, etc. So the developer admits it but we blame weak CPU's, dumb users not knowing settings, voodoo magic, etc. just to avoid minor critiques of the engine? I've been a fan since day one but I'm not going to blame people for a problem that's VERY well known which is why there's a stigma out there. It's a lot better now but there's still problems and when someone suggest FPS issues, towns with lots of NPC's and advanced AI can be the problem. No, that's not saying "OMG it's shitty" but it does affect framerate which is why I brought it up. And it should affect it, but the game is inconsistent in a lot of areas to where you can look out on one side and get 60FPS but then look directly at a wall and that's it and get 20.

Like I said above, this mod belongs on this engine and should stay with ArmA 3 until they have all the gameplay concepts down and then he can decide to go from there. I really didn't want to get into the engine talk but I hate blaming the people playing the game just because it's the easy answer.

Edit: Yes, we now know this is a mod bug as it's been established already.

 

[Sethos]

demolitio, could you find me one of these threads where they 'admit it'. I'm a frequent user of the BIS forums and don't recall that kind of wording. I do recall log gathering, hardware and replication gathering and trying to solve any users problems as with every game but I've never seen Dwarden or any other BIS employee 'admit' to having severe performance issues. Every game in history has problems for some and most developers will continue to optimize just like BIS did with their improved multitreading that fixed some HT issues and optimized render calls.

May very well have missed a thread or two, so I'm curious.

Again, not denying performance issues but I don't remember them outright 'admitting' to it per say, I don't remember it being as bad as you make it out to be.

EDIT: New Beta patch today for ArmA II

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthre...uild-post-1-60-release)&p=2154564#post2154564

[93017] Fixed: LOD blending not working reliably
[92956] Fixed: Sound: Music often stop playing after window focus is lost and regained
[92925] Fixed: switching backpack with dead unit in MP
[92821] Fixed: Joining unit in the vehicle to a different side group did not change the perceived side of the unit.
[92781] Fixed: SelectPlayer makes direct communication unreliable (see https://dev-heaven.net/issues/30991)

Includes VON fix

 

[AndyMoogle]

You're right, the developers only admitted to performance issues and bugs at launch just for the hell of it when it was all just people with shitty CPU's even when the forum was littered with the same problems including the constant 23-24 FPS bug no matter what setting you had it on.

Talking about a game's flaws doesn't mean there's engines out there that do it better or that there aren't great things with the engine, but to blame CPU's and say it didn't have performance issues when Bohemia admits there were is kind of funny. I don't get why we can't talk about any issues or flaws and just have to praise it every two seconds. Everyone that bought ArmA 2 before this mod knows it does things no other engine can do but that doesn't excuse the problems either so of course people are still talking about it since it plagued the game's launch and made their forum a complete mess. Does that mean the scope of the game is any less impressive? No, but there's no free passes for problems. It was very inconsistent in the beginning and can still cause performance issues that some people have which is why it's not hard to say all the shit going on at once in a town can kill someone's framerate.

I was talking about how the game runs today, not on day 1.

A friend of mine runs this mod just fine on a 8800GTS and a C2D.

EDIT: Also, to clarify, I meant that the CPU will matter a lot if you want to max the game out and run it at 60 fps.

 

[Irish]

I think I have a new favorite weapon.... the motherfuckin' crossbow. Zombie after zombie was falling to my bolts tonight. I was just living up to the Sam Fisher name.

 

[demolitio]

demolitio, could you find me one of these threads where they 'admit it'. I'm a frequent user of the BIS forums and don't recall that kind of wording. I do recall log gathering, hardware and replication gathering and trying to solve any users problems as with every game but I've never seen Dwarden or any other BIS employee 'admit' to having severe performance issues. Every game in history has problems for some and most developers will continue to optimize just like BIS did with their improved multitreading that fixed some HT issues and optimized render calls.

May very well have missed a thread or two, so I'm curious.

EDIT: New Beta patch today for ArmA II

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthre...uild-post-1-60-release)&p=2154564#post2154564

So I'm supposed to go back three years just to show it to you when I linked a direct answer about it in an interview where the interviewer didn't even mention performance and he mentioned it on his own accord?

I guess that employee isn't good enough even though he's the PR manager. I don't get what specific thread you want when there's so many performance related ones to choose from. The tweak threads alone back from 2009 show how many high end PC's had trouble and even some others that had the same bug as me, but I'm not going hunting if you can't even trust the PR manager who said the above quote.

Jan Pražák, Bohemia Interactive’s PR manager

All I'm saying is it's pretty lame to blame the users for issues that Bohemia acknowledged. It can be a good engine and still have problems but blaming users for everything is a cop-out that BIS never even said. They acknowledged problems and made a lot of patches to help out. Does that mean it's a bad engine? No. Does it mean it needed work? Yes. Every game has optimization patches but the PR manage himself said it was their main concern.

Here's a "thread or two". You can go find a lot of great PC's from 2009 that had some big problems. I even had the 23-24 FPS bug until a patch a few months later. And no, it wasn't a settings change as every setting resulted in the same FPS bug and I know how the settings work.
http://forums.bistudio.com/forumdisplay.php?83-ARMA-2-amp-OA-TROUBLESHOOTING

I was talking about how the game runs today, not on day 1.

A friend of mine runs this game just fine on a 8800GTS and a C2D.

Yea, it's MUCH better today. OA really improved a lot of things as well so I was grateful for that expansion. Sorry for assuming you meant launch as I just don't like it when users are blamed for problems that affected quite a few people that their PR manager even said about launch. Like I said, I'd like to see this mod stay on the engine as it's perfect for it though.

 

[Icefire1424]

I am in need of some advice here. My first night playing I spawned on the beach and tried to hit some of the smaller city's near the shore ( way too many zombies, and a couple of bandits ). That resulted in no loot and 3 deaths.

Last night I decide to push inland toward smaller towns in order to get away from other players and hopefully deal with fewer zombies. I spawn near Komarovo and decide to push into Bor. I get to Bor and there are still a ton of zombies. I run into a barn and despite having decent amount of ammo the zombies just keep coming and coming (respawning, I assume). I run out of ammo and die to the swarm.

I guess I just don't understand how you are supposed to get weapons and items w/o having to fight off endless hordes of zombies. What am I missing here?

Apologies.

Choose your battles carefully. If you want to solo the game, the odds are stacked against you. Playing the game as you would Left 4 Dead will leave you, well...dead.

Stealth and patience is probably the most vialble option until you learn the nuances of the game. Zed's are extremely aware of sound, and will come running when they hear a gunshot, especially powerful weapons like rifles. Keep low, keep quiet (hold Shift to walk slowly when crouched) or go prone and you will find you can slip by zombies who are fairly close to you.

Try not to get in gunfights unless you end up in a group, otherwise its pretty easy to get overwhelmed quickly.

 

[Orgun]

EDIT: New Beta patch today for ArmA II

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthre...uild-post-1-60-release)&p=2154564#post2154564

Finally, no longer have to use mumble for grouped up convos.

 

[demolitio]

I think I have a new favorite weapon.... the motherfuckin' crossbow. Zombie after zombie was falling to my bolts tonight. I was just living up to the Sam Fisher name.

I can never find one and it pisses me off. Nothing like continuously finding the bolts but not the crossbow itself. I always end up with bolts in my pack out of some lost hope that I would find the weapon itself...lol

This mod needs a flamethrower with actual fire physics and wild forest fires, etc. Why? Because it'd look amazing...

 

[Sethos]

So I'm supposed to go back three years just to show it to you when I linked a direct answer about it in an interview where the interviewer didn't even mention performance and he mentioned it on his own accord?

I guess that employee isn't good enough because we have to love the engine 100% as if there's no problems in the world. Nothing is changing your mind so why would I dig for threads from over three years ago just for nothing? I don't get what specific thread you want when there's so many performance related ones to choose from. The tweak threads alone back from 2009 show how many high end PC's had trouble and even some others that had the same bug as me, but I'm not going hunting if you can't even trust the PR manager who said the above quote.

Well, you keep talking so I ask you to back up your claim. Most of the threads in there go a long way back, some of the stickies were made around the release of the game. It's not like the NeoGAF forum. Maybe you should just settle down a bit mate, nobody is out to get you or anything. I've had my own performance issues, most of them related to the god-awful 5970 and the CF support but also the Hyper Threading support that caused micro stutters and drop in FPS on i7s which were fixed. Again, I just like real evidence of some pretty significant claims you make, as I just can't take your word for it - I don't know you. I never even heard of the "24 FPS" bug in this game but again, I'm not an all-seeing oracle so it probably passed me by. Back when ArmA II was released, it was one of the best looking games around while being completely open world, it was ahead of time, some people just didn't get that.

I do know for a fact, hanging out on those forums for a long time that many issues were down to people's inability to properly configure the game and awful hardware. I've had less issues with this game than I do most games today. This game does require more maintenance and know-how on setting up than most other games, which trips up a lot of people.

 

[Alexios]

The second benchmark is more of a stress test. Regular missions or the first benchmark are better indicators of performance. I put 204 enemies in the largest city in the game and I still had a higher framerate than in the second benchmark.

Do you happen to have links to any decent ARMA 2 Free missions to test then?

I managed to complete the first but it only comes with the one and then some weird challenge mode. It was supposed to allow for custom missions etc but I can't bother using the editor myself and I can't find any place to download something decent from. The included mission run fine but it really only had like a handful of squadmates, a handful of enemies and an APC and chopper going around in the actual mission area even though the mission description speaks of all sorts of amphibious vehicle support and shit like that so it wouldn't be very taxing, I imagine a regular mission could have a lot more shit going at once.

The AI was kind of a mess too though, I could just sit there and my team would get owned, nobody would administer first aid, etc. Am I supposed to micro manage everyone myself, that's not my kind of game when it's so complex, maybe if it was lighter and more intuitive like Rainbow Six I could do that but ARMA 2 doesn't seem to work like that at all...

Overall I guess ARMA 2 Free may be bad way to get a first impression of the series with. It would have been rad if it had developed like TrackMania Nations did for TrackMania or something but oh well. Is there any recent or updated or good ARMA 2 demo to try?

Edit: I guess I'll download the Operation Arrowhead demo, that seems to be the most recent sample thing available.

Also, I see way too many add ons listed on their site, only a few are on Steam though, what gives?

 

[kai3345]

I'm having this weird issue where on certain servers the game will run silky smoothly and on others I'll be viewing a slideshow.

 

[Sethos]

I'm having this weird issue where on certain servers the game will run silky smoothly and on others I'll be viewing a slideshow.

That's a known issue with the Day Z mod currently.

 

[Arucardo]

Finally, no longer have to use mumble for grouped up convos.

So awesome to see BIS fix DayZ specific bugs in the engine , I guess I'll have to get a beta patch and stop running A2 through steam.

 

[childplease]

We need gaf tags do I dont accidentally snipe you guys while providing base security.

 

[Orgun]

We need gaf tags do I dont accidentally snipe you guys while providing base security.

Good point, I'll make a new profile with a gaf tag this evening. Looking forward to trying out TrackIR

 

[childplease]

Good point, I'll make a new profile with a gaf tag this evening. Looking forward to trying out TrackIR

Please post impressions I am looking into getting one.

 

[Blizzard]

We need gaf tags do I dont accidentally snipe you guys while providing base security.

You play on non-hardcore servers so you can snipe by the nametags in the dark? D:

 

[Slair]

Good point, I'll make a new profile with a gaf tag this evening. Looking forward to trying out TrackIR

You got one? Bastard How many pennies did you have to pay for it if you dont mind me asking?

 

[dionysus]

I've been playing Arma 2 just so I can get familiar enough with the game to not be a total waste of space when I jump over to this mod.

I have an overclocked i7 720 and a 6890, and no matter what I drop the graphical settings too I can't get above 30 fps with frequent dips. I would think that graphics card is beastly for this old a game, so I must be CPU limited? Does dropping the draw distance reduce load on the CPU, or is it still calculating those long distance interactions?

Probably jump on the mod a bit tonight to get my feet wet.

 

[Sethos]

I've been playing Arma 2 just so I can get familiar enough with the game to not be a total waste of space when I jump over to this mod.

I have an overclocked i7 720 and a 6890, and no matter what I drop the graphical settings too I can't get above 30 fps with frequent dips. CPU limited? Does dropping the draw distance reduce load on the CPU, or is it still calculating those long distance interactions?

Probably jump on the mod a bit tonight to get my feet wet.

Remember, don't use default Video memory and yes, dropping view distance will / can increase performance A LOT. However that depends on current setting / what setting you drop it to. Mostly it'll net you 5-10FPS.

 

[Orgun]

You got one? Bastard How many pennies did you have to pay for it if you dont mind me asking?

Yup! Turned up today. Got an almost new TrackIR 5 off ebay for £100. No Trackclip pro though, so if I don't like the cap method then i'll probably buy one of those.

 

[dionysus]

Remember, don't use default Video memory.

Explain this?

 

[Sethos]

Explain this?

Just some odd thing with the engine. Default memory seem to be best suited for Nvidia cards, every other setting seem to work better with AMD cards. I believe Very High is for 512MB+ cards.

( Remember to delete ArmA II .cfg between changes, else the change won't work )

 

[childplease]

You play on non-hardcore servers so you can snipe by the nametags in the dark? D:

Prefer hardcore servers so I can be hidden

 

[mbmonk]

Choose your battles carefully. If you want to solo the game, the odds are stacked against you. Playing the game as you would Left 4 Dead will leave you, well...dead.

Stealth and patience is probably the most vialble option until you learn the nuances of the game. Zed's are extremely aware of sound, and will come running when they hear a gunshot, especially powerful weapons like rifles. Keep low, keep quiet (hold Shift to walk slowly when crouched) or go prone and you will find you can slip by zombies who are fairly close to you.

Try not to get in gunfights unless you end up in a group, otherwise its pretty easy to get overwhelmed quickly.

Thanks Ice. I tried that and it worked out much better. I could go about anywhere I wanted with slow crawl and rolling.

EDIT: Just figured out how to handle aggro'd zombies.. yes!!

Thank you for your help

 

[Slair]

Yup! Turned up today. Got an almost new TrackIR 5 off ebay for £100. No Trackclip pro though, so if I don't like the cap method then i'll probably buy one of those.

Sweet! I'm looking forward to your impressions on it with DayZ, I've been thinking of one myself, but dont know if i can justify it for just DayZ.

 

[nekosaur]

Direct comms! Yes!

I really hope a performance fix comes out today.

 

[Arucardo]

Sweet! I'm looking forward to your impressions on it with DayZ, I've been thinking of one myself, but dont know if i can justify it for just DayZ.

Yeah, if you don't play any racing or flight sims it's a bit crazy to pay so much for it :F . If you want to get an idea of how it is and have a decent high fps webcam with no IR filter (ps3 eye is almost as good as a trackir, no joke, but from what I hear there are some models with IR filters that are a hassle to remove) you can try FaceTrack (no leds or cap required obviously) or FreeTrack (needs a wiimote or a infrared led point cap).

I have a ps3 eye and built myself a 3 point IR Led cap for FreeTrack and with a modified freetrack exe (to get 100fps) it's really close to TrackIR. I've also had a chance to try TIR 5 but after I made the cap for freetrack it really put the breaks on getting a TIR setup. If I could just get the motivation to rework the leds in to a clip I can put on my headphones and file the leds to get a more even light signature I probably wouldn't even bother with a TrackIR set anymore.

If I happen to see someone selling a TIR 5 with a track clip pro for under a 100eur I'll probably still buy it tho, lol.

 

[drizzle]

I'm mostly playing with a friend, and we're a little bored at the moment, so we decided to go for the airport later today or tomorrow.

Any last advice before I find my obvious death in there?

 

[Dwarden]

A2: OA public beta 1.60.93040 https://twitter.com/FoltynD/status/205309614605074432
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthre...0-(1-60-MP-compatible-build-post-1-60-release)

included are fixes for backpack inventory bug, VON direct channel bug and much more!

 

[McBradders]

A2: OA public beta 1.60.93040 https://twitter.com/FoltynD/status/205309614605074432
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthre...0-(1-60-MP-compatible-build-post-1-60-release)

included are fixes for backpack inventory bug, VON direct channel bug and much more!

How long does it take for this to get to the point where it will be pushed out over Steam?

 

[wolfmat]

Just some odd thing with the engine. Default memory seem to be best suited for Nvidia cards, every other setting seem to work better with AMD cards. I believe Very High is for 512MB+ cards.

( Remember to delete ArmA II .cfg between changes, else the change won't work )

As I understood it, picking default makes the game look in the config file, in which the RAM amount is configured, and uses it all. The initial value is autodetected.

So REAL killers would pick default and adjust the appropriate value in the config.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

How long does it take for this to get to the point where it will be pushed out over Steam?

I want to know too.

 

[OrangeYouGlad]

How long does it take for this to get to the point where it will be pushed out over Steam?

I'm not sure Valve allows beta patches over Steam. You'll have to wait until they finish this patch, which may be awhile since it's the last patch for ARMA 2.

Edit: They pretty much have to finalize the patch and submit it to Valve for it to be pushed out.

 

[Sethos]

As I understood it, picking default makes the game look in the config file, in which the RAM amount is configured, and uses it all. The initial value is autodetected.

So REAL killers would pick default and adjust the appropriate value in the config.

According to this, it has no effect to change it manually.

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/arma2.cfg

 

[Neverfade]

We need gaf tags do I dont accidentally snipe you guys while providing base security.

Speaking of this, how the hell do you change your name ingame?