Evil Weasel

Hi TPW, like everyone else I'm absolutely loving your work. Altis without your mods now just feels sterile. Also like everybody else I've got a suggestion for the mod; could you maybe add empty, parked, civilian vehicles near to some of the buildings? Basically like the civilian vehicle module in A2, although I always thought that it tended to over do the amount of parked vehicles compared to the amount driving around. At the moment your mod has the opposite feeling, with every vehicle on Altis been driven 24/7. Could I also suggest that at some point you stop coding to give eating and sleeping a try :)? We need people with skills like yours for the long term and at this rate you'll be a gibbering wreck within a week.

Hi, I'm considering upgrading my computer a bit and I wanted to get anyones experience/ advice as to whether what I'm planning will make Arma2 OA run any faster or more smoothly. My current set-up is an over clocked Intel Core 2 Quad 9550 with 4Gb of 800MHz DDR2 memory and an ATi 4890 graphics card. It's running Windows XP Pro and Arma is installed on an SSD. I get between 15-30 FPS normally, dropping to single figures when there's a lot going on. I'm fairly happy with this as I do run a lot of mods, but it does seem to stop some scripts, such as Mando Missile, running properly at lower FPS. My two financially possible upgrades are - 1) Spend about 80 pounds on a new motherboard and 8Gb of 1333MHz DDR3 memory. Given the cost and hassle of installing a whole new board, will the faster memory result in a noticeably faster game? 2) Spend about 150 pounds on an ATI 7850 card. Will I get a noticeable increase in speed and graphics quality over the 4890? Also will it be any quieter as the 4890 sounds like a vacuum cleaner when running at full capacity? I'd really appreciate any comments from people who've upgraded in a similar way and any other tips on possible, relatively cheap, hardware performance boosters would also be gratefully accepted.

Hi, just wanted to give you a big thank you for highlighting this program. I've never tried voice recognition before, and I've only got a cheap headset microphone, but it works brilliantly! I'm particularly impressed by how easy it is to edit the profile to add new commands; if you're using Mando-Missile it's an absolute must and it's fantastic to be able to avoid certain death by screaming "Eject" just before the SAM hits your aircraft. Of course the slight down side is that you feel like a bit of tool when you're talking to your computer, but I don't play Arma to look cool, so what do I care. Thanks again.

"I believe these issues are with the scripts themselves. They will only run as fast as your CPU can process them - it's the nature of the beast." I appreciate this and I know that I probably do try and run a silly amount of scripts at one time. However there is a noticeable difference in the speed that scripts are run between the current betas and previous engine versions.

Generally the betas have offered increasing stability and a slight increase in performance for me. The removal of the grass when flying has been particularly good as I find that it's now possible to fly at speed over Chernarous without fps dropping to single figures. There is one thing, which was mentioned in previous beta threads, that I would like to see addressed. My default add-on set contains a lot of add-ons that run additional scripting ( Mando missile, SLX etc..). It's noticeable with the betas that the running of the scripts is very slow, to the extent that it can take 10's of seconds for them to respond to user input. Effectively a lot of the add-ons become useless. I appreciate that Bis's main responsibility is to maximize the performance of the vanilla game but, given the number of people who use add-ons that run scripts, it would be great if they could look at this issue. I don't exactly know how the different threading options work, but if it was possible to introduce an option that prioritized the running of scripts that would be fantastic.

Fantastic stuff Mando! This is just what aircraft in Arma were needing. I've already spent a very happy couple of hours tank hunting with a Maverick armed A10. I've no idea how many hundreds/ thousands of hours that you've put into your various script packages, but it is definately much appreciated by the rest of us. I'm afraid that, as for all geniuses, us lesser mortals always bring demands for more along with our praise. I've got two ideas/ dreams that I hope might inspire you to have a think about them :- 1. It strikes me that the mando-gun TV targetting system is more than half-way to a stabilised gun plus ballistic computer as found in modern MBT's. I've had a fiddle around putting a 360 degree gun on a stryker and it tracks targets perfectly, even whilst both vehicles are moving, including losing them when they go out of sight. If this could be adapted for use as the main targeting system for the in-game tanks it would be amazing. The major problem I would forsee would be getting the actual tank turret/ gun to follow the track of the targeting system. 2. Is there any hope that a helmet-mounted HUD/ targetting system could be simulated for AAM's. The reasons that I think it may be possible is that, firstly, the Bis A10 can recognise when a selected target is covered by the planes HUD ( it draws a green target box around it when it is in the HUD area, but not when it is outside. Secondly ICE's heli-HUD addon adds a rather useful HUD that follows the pilots line of sight rather than being static to the vehicle. Combined this in theory means that it should be possible to tell when the pilot is lookng at a target and allow them to select it and fire at it. Hopefully you're scripts could be adapted in these directions and go even further to bringing Arma closer to reality.

Hi Mandoble, Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â thanks for the quick reply. That's it exactly. Whilst you were selecting the target the plane would have to be left to fly on it's current course. I'm picturing this as the time during a real Maverick's targetting when you would be focussed on the cockpit TV screen. Â Once the target was selected and the missile launched you could then revert to flying the aircraft. I suppose you could leave the option to keep with the missile camera and maybe change target in-flight; I have to be honest and admit that I don't if this is possible with the real Maverick. If you could create something similar to this that would be great.

Hi mandoble, Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â first of all thanks for this great bit of scripting. As though you don't have enough work I've got a suggestion for what I think would be a great addition to Arma. Would it be possible to use your fantastic reco plane targetting overlay to select targets for Maverick missiles before they're launched? I'm hoping that it would be possible to move the camera position to the nose of each missile in turn, thus giving an accurate simulation of TV-guided missile. A potential problem that I could forsee is that the range of the missile would be falsely curtailed due to targets not being visible beyond the users set view-distance, although I guess that it might be possible to increase the view distance to a larger figure using the setviewdistance command whilst in the targetting view. I would try myself, but I'm afraid that my scripting skill is less than minimal and I figure that an expert like yourself would be the man for the job. If you could put together something like this I believe that it would make a fantastic replacement for the current Maverick missiles, when used by human pilots, as it would require you to actual select targets rather than just tabbing away.

Just wanted to say thanks for this release and for all of your hard work before this. I've had fun playing around with the warfare version and I really wanted to highlight the fantastic helicopter sounds. I'm not qualified to comment on the individual sounds, although they are certainly nice and distinctive, but the overall volume and change of volume with distance are simply brilliant. It's the first sound mod that actually sounds as though there is a real-life helicopter going over you. Gone are the days of copters sneaking up to 20m away before their sound registers. Once again thanks and for god sakes put your feet-up for a while and bask in the glory of a job well done!

Hi, first of all thanks for all of your work on this very useful addon; much appreciated. I've discovered that you can effectivley already do this by setting the STM_groundOffset value to a negative figure. For example I've set it to -500, with a min. view distance of 1000 and max. of 3000. At sea level you get a view distance of around 2000 which drops down to 1000 when there's a lot going on (I've got a lot of cpu-hungry mods running). It works very well indeed and the last thing that you think about in the middle of a firefight is how far you can see! I usually have a practical view distance of 50cm to the wall that I'm hiding behind. The only improvement would be a slightly quicker adjustment to the lowering FPS, as you sometimes get around 30 seconds of 10 FPS or so before the view distance fully drops. I have to say that this mod has made the final difference for me to making Arma both highly immersive and fairly smooth to run, so many thanks again.

ArmA is two games in one -> A really bad one when you have to play with fps lower than ~30. And a fantastic one with fps over ~30. No wonder so much ppl complain about vehicle steering and other handling problems in Arma. With low frames it's close to impossible to drive a car. With high fps it's easy as hell. MfG Lee You've got it spot on Lee-H_Oswald. I tried running Arma with an Nvidia 6600GT and it was highly frustrating, even with everything on low. I spent Å130 on a 7900GS and it nows runs fantastically smoothly with everything on medium/ high. I've been slightly baffled ever since by the level of complaints on the forum about Arma. Yes, there are some bugs, but overall playing Arma is an amazing experience. Despite my love for OFP, going back to it feels like a return to the dark ages. I'm afraid that the unpalletable truth is that the minimum graphic card spec for ENJOYABLE play is a 7xxxx series card ( sorry, I don't know the ATI equivalent). If you have an older card and can afford to upgrade, do so. You will be stunned by the difference it makes.

Lee_H_Oswald, you were spot on regarding the difference between the Nvidia 6xxx and 7xxx series. With a AMD 3800+ dual core rig, 2 gigs of ram and an AGP 6600GT 128mb card, the best I could get was bare minimum fps with all settings on low, no anti-aliasing, a view distance of 1200 and resolution of 800x600. Even then too much foliage or too many buildings gave that lovely slide show effect. I've just splashed Å130 on a pci-express 512mb 7900GS ( I've got a dual motherboard). Everything else is exactly the same. I'm now thoroughly enjoying all settings on normal, a view distance of 2000m and resolution of 1024x768 with "normal" anti-aliasing to avoid the jaggies. It looks fantastic and so far I'm getting lovely smooth frame rates anywhere on the Island. If you can afford it get a new graphics card, you'll be amazed by the difference. One of the best Å130's I've ever spent.

Just wanted to reccomend this fantastic film to fellow OFP lovers http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/. It's a dysopian vision of the world in 2027 set in Britain, which is based on the book by P.D. James. It's is a great film in itself, with fine acting, a thought provoking story line and wonderfully realised atmosphere. Indeed I would say that it is a film that will constantly feature in top-100 film lists in the future. However the specific reason that I would advise you to rush to go and see it is for a 15 minute urban battle scene, which occurs about 3/4 of the way through the film. It involves street fighting between the British army and members of an armed uprising. The military accuracy is more than a bit dodgy, unless the UK has re-equiped itself with Hummers, T-72's and Alvis Stalwart trucks by then, however the atmosphere and sense of realism is the best I've ever seen in a film. I have to admit that I've not seen Saving Private Ryan, but it more than matches Blackhawk Down. The camera work is quite stunning ( it looks like it's been done in a single 15 minute take, although I suspect that that would be impossible), but what makes it is the effects. Visually it looks incredibally good as the bullets ricochette around. Tank shell and RPG explosions actually produce proper dust and smoke clouds, with no petro-chemical balls of flames too be seen. The level of gore is just about right as well; when somebody gets shot it's very far from the usual Hollywood 'clutch the wound and drop immediately dead' routine. What really sets it apart from any other battle scene though, are the sound effects. Assault rifles 'chatter' convincingly, near misses pop and crack as they fly past and shell explosions go off with an overwhelming bass thud, that really overwhelmes the senses. If Bis can get effects even a tenth as good as this into Armed Assault, I'll be more than happy. As you can tell, I really like this film. What can I say, but go and see it NOW!

Thanks for all the work put into this Mod. I've managed to add the A.I. improvements into my own edited ECP config by adding the relevant init Eventhandlers to the units. The only thing that I'm stuck with is how to add the impressive suppresive fire feature. Do I need to add a line to the officers init Eventhandler, or is it activated in some other way? Any help would be really appreciated.

First of all snoops_213 thanks for putting in all the hard work to add CoC compatibilty. To back up the post from Major Woody I've played around with various different CoC settings ( HA, zero precision error etc..) and the rounds invaribaly miss by around 500m or so. I don't know whether it's an issue with the CoC settings for the addon, but I'm afraid something is definately amiss. On a different note, if you were looking for further CoC conversion projects, have you thought of doing DKM's M46, the BM-21 from the NKA mod and the various artillery pieces included in the ROC mod. The M110 would be paticularly welcome.