ArmA quality

[Dodger]

Hey guys, I just had a chance to install and run ArmA for the first time. I am really disappointed in it. I did the training mission. The M16A2, no probs. The Minimi, no probs. The grenade launcher, a bit tough at max range. So on to something else, a basic mission. I choose the one where I have to drive a truck to pick up re-inforcements. The start was awesome, action packed and quite realistic combat dynamics. I jump in the truck and am driving to the pickup point. The driving dynamics are really quirky. The truck swerves all over the place and over compensates, but probably more frustrating is the fact that if I drive just slightly off the road, 1 or 2 wheels only, on the edge of the road, my truck slows down like its in 1ft mud. Cmon, man... this even happens when going down hill. Then on another mission, I jump on a TT650 trail bike. I decide to zip up a little hill and the bike struggles. I've had a TT250, and those things have enough power to wheel stand all the way up the hill.

EDIT: Just another thought. Of course this is an action game. It's unrealistic to expect perfect performance characteristics between real world vehicles and in game. But.... what gives with the trend of games of the genre to underpower military vehicles?

So I get to my spot where I am to snipe an enemy base. I am nicely concealed in some trees about what appears to be 500-800m from the base. I take out one target and immediately the return fire is deadly accurate. And the guy is firing an AK47. How could he even see me? I am using regular skill level too.

Then what might be a system issue, the cutscenes are sometimes so ordinary on graphics, that you can see that the rifle is completely 2D.

My system is quick... Q6600 @ 3GHz, 2GB, 8800GTX OC2. So no performance issues.

Anyway, although it looked promising, I think I will either take it back to the store, or sell it on ebay.



Im going to test Beta patch 1.05.5143 see if that helps.

[Primaryman]

ArmA can be very frustrating indead. There is so much potential here but the game is constantly let down by bad design. I real struggle to believe the developers actually played the game because of some of the bad gameplay!! Major thing I hate is the fact that your fellow soldiers are useless idiots not crack trained troops. You constantly have to micro-manage them to keep them alive. In missions I have to tell them to disembark, go to this location, go prone, look in this direction, target enemy and when thats done I have to tell them to stand up and get back in the vehicle. My god thats stupid, all I should have to do is say "Squad on me", then when I jump out they do, they follow me in correct formation, they scan the horizon in the direction of the threat, when under fire they take cover and return fire, and then follow me back into the Hummer. Is that too much to ask?

Anyway enough of my rant and onto some helpfull stuff.

The Delivery Boy mission:
One good thing about ArmA is the ability to assign any function to any controller. If you have a joystick map steer left and right, forward and back to this. The truck (and any other vehicle for that matter) is so much easier to control with an anolog stick. When you finally pick up the soldiers you'll have 4 minutes to get back, it took me three attempts, you need to go full speed and make sure you don't go off the road, but it can be done. I don't think I could have done it without the stick though.
I think the decision about the slow speed over dirt as opposed to road is to highlight the importance of roads in strategic planning, but I agree uphill preformance has been totally porked and should be fixed.

Sniper Mission:
Enemy AI is notoriously omnipresent but not overly. There doesn't appear to be any modelling of camalflage or fatigue etc but I find that if you take precautions you can usually get by undetected.
1. Don't get silhouetted against an open sky, cross ridges crouching at low points with terrain behind you.
2. Don't fire in the open. The muzzle flash is dead give away.
3. Fire from cover using lean or crouch stance. After firing either duck back behind the cover by straightening up or dropping prone.
4. Don't expose yourself from the same location twice. Fire then Relocate, keep them guessing, hopefully they'll still be looking at the old location.

I don't have a problem with the accuracy which I think is realistic. If they engage you while they are standing and your moving they generally miss, if both of you are prone they get you first time which i think is real. So don't lay prone in the open, always engage behind cover, using the lean or kneel stance.

This is how I completed the Sniper mission. I got into a position with a slight rise infront of me, went into the kneel pose and edged forward slowly until I could just see the target, I was a few metres from the crest of the rise. Now I shot the general and quickly took out the guys manning the nearest mounted machine gun emplacements on the roof, then I dropped prone. With the rise acting as cover I turned around and crawled perpendicular for a few metres away from my original location, then turned to face the way I wanted to egress, then jumped up and sprinted like mad further down the slope. As I ran away the helicopter crashed into the ridge, this was probably a lucky fluke so I can't comment on what to do when the helicopter catches up to you.

Performance:
I have a similar system Core 2 Duo E6700, 2GB Ram, 8800GTX and I use the standard HIGH setting at 1024x768 and it looks really good with good FPS so I can't understand why your getting 2d elements, sorry.

I was feeling like you at the beginning ready to toss it out the window but I'm really getting into it now. The secondary objective missions in the campaign aren't that good because they generally can be difficult to complete successfully so now I don't get upset if I fail. The major battles where you are just one grunt in a company of grunts are really cool though and worth it.

Plus I can see alot of mods and patches coming out in the future that'll improve the game heaps. Besides I just like flying around in the little bird!!!

[Dodger]

Thanks for the info!!

I can definitely see some very cool parts to the game also. Its less arcade than BF2, but doesn't have the refinement of even the 1.0 release of BF2. It also didn't have the same budget..

D

[Wild.Bill.Kelso]

I'm glad you posted this dodger. ArmA also comes out in the US tomorrow. But even though their website site says "hitting store shelves May 1st", I cannot find any store that is carrying it.

Maybe I'll wait and see how it goes before I go out of my way to find a copy.

[Dodger]

Hey Bill, I figured that might be the case for you. The game definitely has potential. Its incredibly scriptable. Could write some awesome modules for TB. It's just very buggy at this stage. I found the source of my texture problems. Something to do with my 8800gtx and possibly vista.

iB::Topic::1.4 VS 1.5 with E6600 + 8800GTX

One other thing, the body moves around quite a lot in an attempt to simulate natural human movement. Unfortunately, it is not so realistic and is more of a hindrance. It's probably more realistic to have some movement rather than the dead still handedness of say counter strike source. But its a bit over the top. In real life you can move and get an accurate shot off far faster than in this game. Also, the body movements sometimes makes it challenging to sprint through obstacles, which in real life would be no problem.

I was using the beta patch last night which fixed up the fog issue. But the 8800gtx texture bug isn't fixed. Its quite funny, sometimes the textures degrade so much, your talking to untextured characters. Looks like a retro game or something.

On Primaryman's suggestions, I finished the next round of the sniper mission. It's quite good.

[aXr]

Yes I agree with alot of what you said, the driving dynamics suck. I can't even have my G-25 plugged in at the same time as my x-52. Does anyone know how to get them both to work at the same time...annoying to drive with key or a stick. The best part is the multi player mode. I also use voice buddy with it along with touch buddy and also my nostromo n 52 for main control. I just think the coolest thing about it is the body control with the Track IR. This is the right direction for FPS in my book. I still love the sim with the hope there will be many improvements along the way. Kinda like the ever evolving Live for Speed for racing...just keeps getting better and better. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a game colaboration between flight driving and shooter development teams someday. That way they could all put in their specialty and really make something over the top. As far as sims go it would be nice for all of them to have an arcade mode along with the true die hard sim mode which I guess the driving sims have started doing. This lets the casual player get in a little fun as well as help to sell the sim better. I would love to just be able to jump in a plane and do a little easy dogfighting sometimes as well. I have gotten to the point of not enough time and patience to dedicate to all the learning curve involved in alot of the really complicated sims...but I'm still trying anyway. Still think ArmA is worth keeping dodger but it's your call...I'm just a casual player that likes to try all the new technology and software as part of the hobby almost as much as playing the actual sims/games.

[Snake_Eyes]

If anyone is using my ArmA profile for the game. I keep refining it, the latest version was uploaded yesterday.

I have even ventured as far as using the "Clone" button for Pause, Freelook, and a couple of others that spring to mind.

Comprehensive readme with the profile points you in the direction of what keys need to be adjusted in game, TS Keybinds, etc.

[aXr]

Yes, I have been using it...thanks again. Looks great. BTW The new beta patch 1.07 plus the xtra fix after that has really made a huge improvement on ArmA. Still get some random crashes but its a beta and looks like they are getting it down. I can actually fly a helo now. Still needs more tail rotor longer but 100% better. My system is getting old with 6800gt and amd sempron64 2800 aka socket754 but it looks pretty decent with above 30 fps at only 800 X 600 75Hz. I want framerate over super crisp lines but it really does not play too bad.

[aXr]

Here is a link to ArmAs main site where I posted about TB and the use of a touchscreen. It looks like they are pretty impressed from the posts and your profiles got a nice link to it which I think gives people a good idea about it all. iB::Topic::Touch-Buddy touch screen GUI for ArmA

[Dodger]

Looks like the problem is actually with Nvidia. Nvidia has said they know of these texture memory problems and will have a driver out in August or September to resolve it.

Nvidia will fix 8800 by mid-September