PR:ARMA 2 - Highlights Reel #3

[UKrealplayER666]

How do you know that.......... have you ran it in PR, and with that FOB ??

Its ArmA 2, ive played enough ArmA 2 to know thats going to lag, sorry if that hurts your ego

[Slightchance]

Well, now I'm going to have to get a new computer for this. I can't say I've ever played any Arma game (computer is too terrible), but from what it appears this is probably going to be consuming a lot of my time in the potentially near future. I wonder if there will be a new update next month.

[Foxxy]

i can see myself and my squad getting lost in the fob

[Jeepo]

Its ArmA 2, ive played enough ArmA 2 to know thats going to lag, sorry if that hurts your ego

UK_Force doesn't have an ego.......he has Gaz for that!

But I do ask the following question of you. How do you know? Are you a tester? A modder? I have played the series since OFP and let me tell you this as a PR:ArmA tester. The optimisation I am seeing already at this stage is unreal. 70+ FPS in a busy airport with about 20-25 testers on in the same direct vicinity......Maybe you need a new PC, or a better quality server?

Now what are people to believe, a tester with first hand experience or someone who has played "enough ArmA 2?"

i can see myself and my squad getting lost in the fob

I advise you to get the basics of map reading sorted then!

[UKrealplayER666]

Maybe im wrong, so be it, but from my experience as a mission maker and island builder (theres a good reason i dont want to join the PR team, your responses being one of them, take somones opinion without being a total a**e about it, its called maturity, try it) a large mass of statics like that will lag even the best of servers and computers once it is fully populated, its how the engines been made, unless youve managed to change how the engine loads its textures and objects then its going to lag, ive seen it before.

I dont want an arguement with you guys, im simply putting my opinion across (clearly somthing you cant seem to handle), your doing a fantastic job with the mod and i cant wait for its release so you can prove me wrong

[XXLpeanuts]

Its ArmA 2, ive played enough ArmA 2 to know thats going to lag, sorry if that hurts your ego

The FOBs in arma 2 only lag if theres a LOAD of AI stationed there doing "Ambient" things like fixing vehicles, patrolling and manning weapon systems, that aint gonna be the case, Arma 2 doesnt lag just because theres a few objects placed on the map!

[MaxBooZe]

Maybe im wrong, so be it, but from my experience as a mission maker and island builder (theres a good reason i dont want to join the PR team, your responses being one of them, take somones opinion without being a total a**e about it, its called maturity, try it) a large mass of statics like that will lag even the best of servers and computers once it is fully populated, its how the engines been made, unless youve managed to change how the engine loads its textures and objects then its going to lag, ive seen it before.

I dont want an arguement with you guys, im simply putting my opinion across (clearly somthing you cant seem to handle), your doing a fantastic job with the mod and i cant wait for its release so you can prove me wrong

opinion =/= fact...


Good job there, Looking forward to it

[xxxpsychoxxx]

That looks amazing !!!
Excellent work guys !
Cant wait...

[XXLpeanuts]

One thing i have been wondering is, is there going to be a realistic Artillery system, where Blufor can have Artillery placements way away from battle and teammates call in coordinates and then boom! lol

[cyberzomby]

Very nice! I really gotta start saving up for a gaming computer or better work computer!

[Jeepo]

Maybe im wrong, so be it, but from my experience as a mission maker and island builder (theres a good reason i dont want to join the PR team, your responses being one of them, take somones opinion without being a total a**e about it, its called maturity, try it) a large mass of statics like that will lag even the best of servers and computers once it is fully populated, its how the engines been made, unless youve managed to change how the engine loads its textures and objects then its going to lag, ive seen it before.

I dont want an arguement with you guys, im simply putting my opinion across (clearly somthing you cant seem to handle), your doing a fantastic job with the mod and i cant wait for its release so you can prove me wrong

Sorry if you think that my attitude was "immature", however most people who know me know that is not my MO. I am merely stating facts as I see them from first hand experience, and attempting to understand your credentials so as to ascertain on what grounds you can claim that something in a closed controlled mod can be called laggy, when you can't possible have played it and experienced the amazing things so far done by this mod team. Please refrain from throwing round the immature tag when someone attempts to answer your question, its not.....mature!

Opinions are more than welcome, and do bear in mind I don't speak for the team, I am just a tester. But opinions based on fact are preferred to those based on experience in an entirely different game mode and on a vanilla game.

[Evox]

haaaaaaaaaa waiting!

[volks]

well finally, Arma looks like something playable anymore.

[Sekra]

First of all I will point out that the following comments are not meant to start a flamewar (this post starts promising eh?) but as creative criticism and worries I have towards the A2 version of PR. Stating this I will say that I'm not going to reply to anyone but the devs themselves regarding these matters providing they want to discuss them. Now on to the business itself (sorry this will be a long one and forgive my english since I'm not a native speaker):

I would like to say that the first time I heard about PR team actually officially announced that they are going to release an A2 version I was ecstatic. FINALLY a "gamemode" for A2 that will kick *** in PvP / TvT play. I have been a fan of the whole BIS gameseries since OFP and I have a pretty good picture of what is possible and what is not with the engine (even though every now and then people release stuff for the BIS games that were thought impossible). And yes I've done quite a lot of editing with the games too even though 99% of it is unreleased. With PR my experience is much shorter, only for around a year now, but I fell in love with it instantly. I like the way things are handled in PR and in the PR community in general. Both games are great in my opinion and both have their strengths and weaknesses. As a coop game with friends A2 is superior to anything with the amount of mixed fun vs. realism that you can have with the game with all the different mods available. But it has always lacked that crucial kick *** PvP gamemode. Even with 20+ players the PvP games of A2 are boring besides the fact that unless these matches are setup in advance there may be only a few servers that sometimes have this many players. In my opinion one of the biggest problems is also one of the biggest strengths and that is the mods. Since there is a million micro / mini / single unit / single weapon addons it is a really difficult platform for "random playing". That is why gamemodes like Domination and Warfare rule in the A2 scene; they are easily jumped into at any point of the mission, they don't require addons and theres a lot of servers hosting them. Even though I do play them they dont quench my need for a PvP "realism" gamemode and thats where PR kicks in. If I play as an infantryman I don't want to "buy" my weapons based on my effectiveness on the field. I dont want to solo tanks or attack choppers as a normal grunt. If I play as a ordinary rifleman just give me the weapons I'm "supposed" to have and point me to a friendly squad and then to the enemy! I love the fact that I play my role and I know what my role is and I have people in my squad / team who play their roles and together we work to achieve a common goal. For me it doesn't matter if we win or lose if I feel like I've been able to do what I'm supposed to in my role (but of course winning is always better).

I would like to point out that I have the utmost respect for people like the PR team who provide us with free content and often with the cost of personal relationships keep on doing what they love. But the more I read from these Highlights Reels that are being released the less enthusiastic I get about the project. As a player who has knowledge of "both sides" to me it looks like you are taking features that take advantage of the strengths of the BF2 engine and turning them into features that are / will be limited by the weaknesses of the A2 engine. Let me start unraveling this whole mess from the premises, the maps. This is one of the biggest differences between the two engines, traditionally A2 maps or islands as they're called (even though they dont have to be islands anymore) are big, spanning over hundreds of square kilometers of terrain. The biggest island project for A2 that I know of is 40km x 40km. And while playing in a map of that size in a coop mode isnt that big of a deal, no matter if you play with 3 guys or 30 guys. But when youre talking about a PvP game with lets say even a 100 players that would mean that there is one player per 16 square kilometers. I wouldn't call that very intensive playing. Of course the flow of the battle can be controlled in various ways but the problem with maps this big are that the terrain itself becomes very.. how would you call it.. "round" as in you lose all the small "sharp and pointy" details in the ground where in PR you can find ten small terrain features around you where you can take cover from fire in A2 the terrain itself is usually extremely "flat" around you and the only place for cover are rocks, walls etc objects. I do understand that the engines have a different sense of scale and all but quite honestly when playing on a full PR server, do you feel like the maps are too cluttered? And you say you are starting as a minimod, but at the same time you are starting with a 20km x 20km map, which in regards of intensive gameplay would in my opinion require that 200 players mentioned in one of the posts in the A2: PR threads. I do fear that scaling up the original gamemodes from PR to these scales will undoubtly make them "void of life" and boring specially when you are playing on a 20km x 20km map on a server waiting to fill up with just 20 players. Also I do know from the horror stories of A2 mapmaking that the development times of the (good) maps are very long. I would rather have 20 4km x 4km maps for A2: PR than 4 20km x 20km maps. And who wouldn't want to see some of the classic maps of PR in A2?

And for the gamemodes described in the latest Highlights Reel. I sure do wish that you will include them as the "classical versions" from PR too. With the new counter insurgency gamemode all it takes is one teamswitcher or one person just giving the cache locations in a private mumble or where ever to the other team to ruin the whole round. Plus it seems quite obvious that these gamemodes seem to be aimed at player amounts larger than the 64 we are used to in PR. I just hope you remember to take in account that when ten players join a server it doesn't play the same way as it does with 64 or 100 players. Also what caught my eye in the videos was that you actually had to drag / Carry the ammocrates to the chopper? I quite honestly wish that was something for the video eyecandy only. While I've heard that some of the dev team has a history in the logistics units in the army I can just see myself telling my friends "I just spent the last 2 hours hauling ammocrates into vehicles in A2: PR and it was awesome!" The same goes with the supply crate being slingloaded under the chopper.. For those of you who haven't tried Arma 2 before, there are no such things as "ropes" in A2. What you see in that video is a static "stick" made from supermans hair sticking out from the bottom of the chopper and if the chopper would do a barrel roll (which you can btw do with choppers in A2) the crate would stick at the exact same position relative to the chopper model for the whole roll. Plus the fact that if you land with the chopper the crate below will be pushed underground. While 10% of the time it would look nice, 90% of the time I see this system used in other missions it looks rather silly. So why not just use the "good old way" like in PR because it works all the same in A2? With the dev team seemingly filled with "just" people from the Arma community I fear that the A2: PR will end up being "just another mod" for A2.

The way I see it you should first win the hearts and minds of both communities by providing something familiar and something new to both people. A lot of the people in the Arma community don't have a clue what PR is about and vice versa. Providing an initial release which would be "faithful" to the original PR in more than just name would provide a familiar style of play in a new engine to PR people and a new style of play in their familiar engine for Arma people would help bring these two communities closer together because we all know that there is a lot of misinformation and prejudice in both communities towards each others. In BF2: PR you have a proven concept that works so you should start from that and after you bring that to A2 start developing new concepts that take more advantage of the things that can be done better in A2 like upping the scale. Now I would like to remind here in the end that I'm in no way opposing progress and new ideas but when you lose sight of playability for eyecandy and other stuff like that you need to reconsider what you are doing. For me it looks like you are "Armafying" PR where I would like to see you "PRfying" Arma like you have done with the BF2 engine. I do hope that my worries are for nothing and that you already have these things figured out but I just wanted to voice my concerns as I do love PR as a PvP game over A2 anytime and I know if anyone can revolutionaise the PvP MP in A2 it is the PR team.

[BabylonCome]

All I can say is that I was not shot in vain (2nd video, Brit soldier being shot on street corner), the videos look the dogs balls and just show off a small section of the hard work from the dev's involved....

10/10 to Trinni for making the vids...

[UK_Force]

Please don't "assume" knowledge or quote the team as "immature" or "having an ego", they do not add to the discussion that much really.


We have invested heavily on Optimising the engine, and will be carefully selecting servers to be the official PR Servers. Also most of our team have come from the ArmA2 world, some being very well known to that community for many years, so to say that is to question the skills of these developers.

Do you also think Project Reality would create such a large static (yes it will be one static that can be moved around onto other maps etc) if it was going to lag badly, bearing in mind our Mod is 100% focused on PvP in a MP environment ?

theres a good reason i dont want to join the PR team

Finally, I don't actually remember asking you to join the team UKrealplayER666 ?


.

[D33PS1X]

PR to these scales will undoubtly make them "void of life" and boring specially when you are playing on a 20km x 20km map on a server waiting to fill up with just 20 players.

That's the only problem I see, Also, great job!

[Sekra]

Also for those people who are saying that you need to buy a new computer to play Arma 2, while it is true that the game can suck the living life out of any computer mankind has been able to produce for public sales in the same time it is one of the most scalable engines of all times. I play Arma 2 OA with a pretty old computer with a Intel C2D E6400 with factory clocks, 4gb of ram and GF8800GTS 640mb (yeah that's the older G80 chip one) and its still playable. What you need to remember that the main thing about the Arma engine is your viewdistance. For infantry I would suggest a VD of around 3km +- 1km and for flying jets add a kilometer or two to those.. While it is nice to be able to see that pile of 4 pixels that is the outhouse of the base from 8km away it doesn't serve any kind of purpose for playing. And if you tried A2 when it was released this is not even the same game with the performance increases that came with the patches in the last year or so.

[Drav]

Good feedback Sekra, thanks. I'm not going to reply to all your points individually as theres simply too many!

Rest assured many of the points you've mentioned are actually being worked on already, and many of the bf2 devs have been providing input and crits where possible.......

The void of life problem is something we are all keen to avoid, and the essential conflict is this:

You need big enough maps so aircraft can operate semi-realistically.

You need big enough maps so vehicles can operate semi realistically, and can be ambushed semi realistically

You need small enough 'action zones' so infantry fighting is large scale and focussed, with lots of players.


Thats the holy grail for everyone from devs to testers, hopefully the team can pull it off.

[Burningpunk]

When you say "Official PR Servers", what do you mean exactly?

I ask that because we run a BF2 R server and we can't wait to run also a ARMA2 R server (everything is ready, just missing the mod so far )

Btw, amazing work.....looking forward for the release...