ARMA 2

[Dog--]

Been researching this game a bit lately, and am interested in buying. Posted about it somewhere else on these forums (can't remember where), and I played the demo which was horrible and broken and I couldn't even play it properly. But someone said it's been fixed since the demo was released. I want to play DayZ, but I actually want to play the game. I was a huge fan of Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis and Arma 2 looks similar. Should I buy it and combined ops or just wait for ARMA 3? Supposedly ARMA 3 is going to get released next year, so I don't know if I should just wait or not?

 

[Krynn72]

It will probably go on sale for like 3 dollars during the holiday steam sales, so it may be worth holding off a little bit. I wouldn't hold out for ARMA 3 though, its still a ways away, and ambitious projects like that have a tendency to get delayed.

 

[CR0M]

I would say wait a while too. Plenty of people are still buying it for DayZ... leave it until the standalone has been released for a month or two and Bohemia has dropped the price if you want to save some cash. Otherwise, if you have spare bucks rolling around in your wallet and money is no object then go get it immediately - it's a mighty fine experience in its own right AND as a zombie littered deathmatch.

 

[Vegeta897]

Basically what Krynn said.

Except I really, really wouldn't get it on Steam. Such a pain to get mods running. And mods are really the best part about Arma. When you do get the game, talk to me on steam about what to look in to.

Also this thread really made me do a double take.

 

[Dog--]

Basically what Krynn said.

Except I really, really wouldn't get it on Steam. Such a pain to get mods running. And mods are really the best part about Arma. When you do get the game, talk to me on steam about what to look in to.

Also this thread really made me do a double take.

Is there another way to get it aside from Steam/ordering it online? I mean like a digital download (a legit one, obvs lol). I would go to Gamestop, but I doubt they'd have it. My local Gamestop has an extremely meager selection for PC

Why'd you do a double take?

 

[Krynn72]

I think you can also buy digital versions straight from Bohemia, I dont think its ever been on sale through their store though.
https://store.bistudio.com/

EDIT: Wait... maybe you can't buy download versions from them. I cant remember.

 

[Vegeta897]

https://store.bistudio.com/arma2-combined-operations

That's the developer's store. The downloads are fast and there is no DRM or extra software (besides the downloader)

It's not a thread I expected to see this late. Maybe when DayZ was exploding, but not now.

edit: **** you krynn

BIS store does have sales. I'll be notified if they have one and let you know. I'm sure they'll have one during the holidays along with Steam.

Oh and also, Best Buy or Walmart could have it for really cheap. Worth taking a look at your local stores.

 

[Dog--]

To be honest, I was looking at it purely because of DayZ. Then I started seeing all the mods for ARMA 2, gameplay, and stuff. As I said before, it looks a lot like Flashpoint which I had an absolute blast with.

I'd prefer to have the physical disc (I always like having a physical copy, I like reading the manuals and collecting the actual game for my shelf), because I only have an 80gig cap per month. Already at 50, so if I can I'll try not to download it (atleast not until December first), but whatever is cheapest I'll probably go for.

 

[Bad^Hat]

I got it for a friend on Amazon and it worked fine for him as well. They have their own download service that gives you a stand-alone version of the game that's identical to the Sprocket version, far as I could tell.

 

[Dog--]

Playing the Demo and can't wait to buy the full game.. It's such a tease: shitty textures, one mission..

My gig cap just updated yesterday and apparently I'm at 85 already.. So I guess I'll wait until next month lol. Might stop by Gamestop or a store like it and see if they got Combined Ops. I want this shit NOW.

By the way, what's wrong with the Steam version? I looked up installing mods and most just say "go to steamapps and drop mod here". Doesn't seem overly difficult.

 

[Viperidae]

By the way, what's wrong with the Steam version? I looked up installing mods and most just say "go to steamapps and drop mod here". Doesn't seem overly difficult.

The updates, even if they're only 100 megs for retail/sprocket, end up being gigs of downloads on Steam. We're not sure why. Also, awkward support for sixupdater (the thing that updates Ace mod, and many others).

 

[Eejit]

I wouldn't hold out for ARMA 3 though, its still a ways away, and ambitious projects like that have a tendency to get delayed.

Especially if some of the dev team are under arrest charged with spying.

 

[Sliver]

Especially if some of the dev team are under arrest charged with spying.

2 out of 140.

 

[Vegeta897]

Playing the Demo and can't wait to buy the full game.. It's such a tease: shitty textures, one mission..

Well there is the Arma 2 free version, which you can run custom missions for, but no mod content.

I looked up installing mods and most just say "go to steamapps and drop mod here". Doesn't seem overly difficult.

Steam has the game set up the way it's not supposed to be. It's hacked together. Arma 2: OA is supposed to be installed inside of the Arma 2 directory, but Steam has it in a separate folder, because OA can run standalone. This causes a lot of frustration and having really long shortcut parameters just to get CO running, in addition to the other mods. And you can only have one of these shortcuts set up since you can only modify the launch params for your one library entry for Arma. And steam sometimes blanks out your parameters and you have to remember what you did.

With non-steam you can just set up multiple shortcuts on your desktop (or wherever) that run different mod configurations. And third party applications will recognize your game and configure properly.

 

[Dog--]

Ah, was just really trying to keep it within Steam. I didn't really want to have ANOTHER platform (is that what you could call it?) to open when I want to start a game. Already got Origin for Battlefield, Steam, now Sprocket, I guess. Or does Sprocket download the game, and then you install it as a standalone program?

If that's not the case, I might just download it from Bohemia Interactive's website.

 

[Vegeta897]

Reaaaaad.

The downloads are fast and there is no DRM or extra software (besides the downloader)

Sprocket is just the downloader that the BIS Store uses. In fact the store used to be called Sprocket.

 

[Dog--]

Oh shit, sorry lol I thought it was a steam-like program.

 

[Vegeta897]

What you're downloading is literally a single installer executable for the game. (well, 2 for arma 2 and oa) And you get your serials through email. Easy peasy.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Stuff like this is why I appreciate the ArmA community so much:

 

[Eejit]

2 out of 140.

So every employee of the company is a dev working on this one title? Cool story bro.

 

[Krynn72]

Oh, lol. I thought he was giving your joke a rating of 2/140.

 

[Dog--]

So I went ahead and bought ARMA 2: CO from Bohemia's store. Have to pay an extra $20 because I'm over my 80gig cap for the month, too. Hope it's worth the price of a brand new game! From what I hear it is, though. That's why I did it

EDIT: So I've been playing it all night, finished downloading it at 2am, just stopped now at 11am. Playing Arma and DayZ. ****ing amazing. Both of them. I love ARMA 2 itself, it is just incredible. DayZ has none of the faults I've heard of. I join random public servers and hackers get banned left right and center. Not one person over the 4 hours I played DayZ complained of dying from a hacker, and I've seen tons of bans. The game didn't seem broken and shitty (like I thought it was) at all. Completely awesome experiences. Glad I picked it up, definitely worth the extra $20 I had to drop on it, as well. I haven't had a gaming marathon like that in a LONG time. I didn't know games existed anymore that could get me hooked like they used to.

 

[Dog--]

The more I play, the more I realized two major issues (that were also a part of Flashpoint).

1) The bugs and susceptibility to missions not performing the right way and breaking. I think this has to do with the missions editor. So far I've had a few mission break on me. I haven't started the campaign yet, just scenarios, but I've had to restart a few because of my squad not moving and just stopping, tanks and BMP's driving over teammates, teammates randomly firing at nothing and giving our position away, etc.

2) The optimization. God damn. My computer isn't the greatest PC ever built, but it's still pretty darn good. It should be able to run this game at max settings no problem whatsoever. There have been times when I'm in a big city with some guys around and a vehicle or two and it bogs down quite a bit. Still playable, it never went below 19fps, if you call that playable. It's really annoying though. I say it's the game and not my PC because I got 60fps when in a forest or airbase with a few guys around and stuff, usually around the start of a mission. It really depends on whats going on, big cities hurt alot, but when it bogged down before, I set my resolution way lower and put all settings to "normal" yet it was STILL lagging just the same.

Kind of sucks, but those bugs don't happen often enough to make me regret my purchase. Annoying, for sure, but there isn't a game that exists that doesn't have it's share of bugs, I guess.

 

[Viperidae]

The more I play, the more I realized two major issues (that were also a part of Flashpoint).

1) The bugs and susceptibility to missions not performing the right way and breaking. I think this has to do with the missions editor. So far I've had a few mission break on me. I haven't started the campaign yet, just scenarios, but I've had to restart a few because of my squad not moving and just stopping, tanks and BMP's driving over teammates, teammates randomly firing at nothing and giving our position away, etc.

Custom missions? Campaign? If it's the campaign, it's because that shit is broke as all hell.

2) The optimization. God damn. My computer isn't the greatest PC ever built, but it's still pretty darn good. It should be able to run this game at max settings no problem whatsoever. There have been times when I'm in a big city with some guys around and a vehicle or two and it bogs down quite a bit. Still playable, it never went below 19fps, if you call that playable. It's really annoying though. I say it's the game and not my PC because I got 60fps when in a forest or airbase with a few guys around and stuff, usually around the start of a mission. It really depends on whats going on, big cities hurt alot, but when it bogged down before, I set my resolution way lower and put all settings to "normal" yet it was STILL lagging just the same.

Yup. Shit sucks. Lower Viewdistance and postprocessing and it should be a bit better. Lowering terrain and object detail helps too.

 

[Dog--]

It wasn't the campaign, it was the custom missions that come with the game. I've tried a few. Some were fine, some were horrible. There is this mission "Little Bird", where you fly a small heli, and I couldn't get the thing started. Nothing I did, there wasn't an option to turn on the engine or anything. All I could do was launch missiles while sitting on the helipad. There was another mission where I had to follow my squad through a town, and they just kept running back and forth while the squad leader kept saying "LETS MOVE OUT" and "GOGOGO" while running in circles.

And I turned post processing off completely. I hate bloom, and that wavy heat effect it adds. It doesn't look like heat, just looks like everything is waving around really awkwardly lol

 

[Viperidae]

It wasn't the campaign, it was the custom missions that come with the game. I've tried a few. Some were fine, some were horrible. There is this mission "Little Bird", where you fly a small heli, and I couldn't get the thing started. Nothing I did, there wasn't an option to turn on the engine or anything. All I could do was launch missiles while sitting on the helipad.

That's not a broken mission. E is the default control for thrust, not W.

But yeah, most mission included in the game are generally broken.

 

[Dog--]

Man I tried literally every single button, trust me lol. Must've restarted like 30 times.

 

[morgs]

Uh, Q starts choppers for me.

 

[Dog--]

I tried Q and E, the only button I've remapped is the right click. Tap it for iron sights/scope, hold for zoom. Other than that it's a totally stock control setup.

 

[Vegeta897]

You are running the latest CO patch, right? I'd recommend the latest beta also.

And don't bother with the in-built missions. Especially the tutorials and stuff, like that chopper one. Waste of time and likely broke. Go to armaholic.com for missions.

The default controls are the best in my opinion, (especially the flight controls, but viper won't admit it) though I did rebind my irons/scope button to mouse 5, which is on the right side of my mouse, so I don't accidentally hit it when zooming in right click+hold.

Please do get in touch with me on steam, I can help with pretty much anything. How to set up mods, install the beta, etc.

As for graphics settings, no you should not be able to run "max". "Max" in arma 2 is not meant to match the performance of high end PCs. View distance should be less than 4-5k. You've already got PP disabled so that's good. I would disable anti-aliasing and use PPAA (which is only available in the recent beta versions, I believe) since fxaa is way way faster. If you haven't patched to 1.60 then that would be major reason for bad performance.

In conclusion, talk to me on steam.

 

[Dog--]

Patched to 1.62 already, view distance is 1600, disabled the anti aliasing and made it FXAA high (zero performance hit when adding that btw, it's great) and it works WAY better. I still get ~30fps when near buildings. PPAA seemed to give me a hit in performance. Only a few fps, but still.

Is it possible to get a steady ~60fps in this game? I mean as long as I'm getting 30+ I'll be happy, but it just seems so inconsistent.

I'll go on steam when I'm on my PC next, too.

 

[Vegeta897]

I can get 60fps pretty easily. What's your video card? I've got an overclocked 7950, which is pretty high end.
Zargabad can cause some lag, but any other default island should run fine, city or not.

 

[Dog--]

I've got AMD Phenom quad core 955 3.2ghz, 8gb ram, and a Radeon HD 6870. I feel like it's my GFX card holding me back, but it shouldn't be that much. I haven't found a game that I've played where I can't get atleast 60fps smoothly. ARMA is the first game where I've gone below. It's not overclocked btw, because my power supply is JUST enough to run all this. Don't wanna push it.

 

[Vegeta897]

I'd guess it's your video card. Don't bother comparing to other games though, Arma 2 isn't as well optimized as most mainstream games.

 

[Dog--]

I might buy a 7770 2gb (after I get a bigger power supply than 550w -_-). That should bump it up some.

I'm willing to spend that to play this game properly.

 

[Vegeta897]

It's really a fantastic game.

Even ignoring all the multiplayer experiences I've had, I've spent so many hours ****ing around in the editor, and custom content like guns and vehicles and islands just multiplies the potential.

 

[Krynn72]

I think we're still a decade out from getting a pc that can run ARMA 2 on max settings.

 

[Dog--]

And by then we'll have ARMA 3 and another decade away from running that at max.

 

[Unfocused]

I'd guess it's your video card.

Dog did say 'I set my resolution way lower and put all settings to "normal" yet it was STILL lagging just the same.' so wouldn't that point towards the CPU? How well does ARMA II utilize quad cores?

I've had a similar experience on maps with lots of AI - the game lags then and I also have a quad core (i5 2500k). My GPU is a GTX570 so I guess that's slightly better than what Dog has, but I don't think that really matters here.

I suggest creating a scenario and increasing the number of AI to see how that affects the performance (just place them out of sight, so they don't get rendered by the GPU).

 

[Viperidae]

Game runs decent enough (~40 fps) and I have the same processor as Dog. Plus, I was running it on a 5750 a year ago no problem. So something's not adding up.