Armed Assault demo released

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-12-24 12:31am

Demo download.

Figured people would like to know.

Dendrobius · Post by **Dendrobius** » 2006-12-24 12:38am

Miscellaneous thoughts:

- "Out of the box" performance sucks. However with some tweaking, 1600x1200 with a mix of low/normal/high in various video options gives reasonable performance and looks better than OFP on my computer. Not a total lost cause there, but definitely feels like when I first ran OFP v1.0 on a K6/2 450 and a TNT2 Ultra.
(Spec: AthlonXP 3000+, 1.5Gb RAM, 6800 Ultra)

- AI is spotty. Sometimes they're brilliant: I killed two member of a six man squad, then engaged another squad, original four flanked me under cover then got me from behind. However sometimes they're stupid. I was crouched next to a break in a wall and saw an AI walk past the break without seeing me. Multiple times.

- Bushes of invisibility from OFP do not exist anymore. There are NO bushes to hide behind. Time to learn shoot and scoot, people.

- Weapons handling is much the same as original OFP. However there's a "dual zoom" mode for iron sights which I detest. Remember how in OFP you pressed the right mouse button to zoom in on normal view? Now you have to do that too for iron sights. VERY annoying.

- MGs are useful. Final-fucking-ly. Stable, high firing rate, and accurate.

- Sniper rifles got slightly nerfed, handling doesn't feel as good and you've got the M24 (5 round, bolt action) instead of the crazy M21 (20 rounds, semi auto)

- Ma Deuce (M2 MG) is finally given its due. One good spray and you can kill a lot of infantry at long range, as opposed to OFP where the M2 was a deathtrap most of the time.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-12-24 12:43am

Dendrobius wrote:Miscellaneous thoughts:

- "Out of the box" performance sucks. However with some tweaking, 1600x1200 with a mix of low/normal/high in various video options gives reasonable performance and looks better than OFP on my computer. Not a total lost cause there, but definitely feels like when I first ran OFP v1.0 on a K6/2 450 and a TNT2 Ultra.
(Spec: AthlonXP 3000+, 1.5Gb RAM, 6800 Ultra)

That's pretty funny. I love people who whine about poor performance in 1600x1200, especially with an average system like yours.

Dendrobius · Post by **Dendrobius** » 2006-12-24 01:23am

As said, with some tweaking. The main one was adjusting the line sceneComplexity in the .ArmAProfile file from the insane 300000 down to 75000. That made a hell of a lot of difference FPS wise, and didn't compromise too badly on the visual side of things

Also, for some reason, setting Shadows to High instead of Normal actually gives a FPS boost to anybody using something equivalent to or faster than a 6 series Geforce card. Apparently something to do with different shadow routines used. In any case, wouldn't argue with something that does work.

Low/Normal on other stuff, no FSAA and no Anistro, and it's playable at 1600x1200. Mind you, I'm not serving, and I've only tried the coop and the CTF, the Capture the Island mission I would expect to do bad things to my system.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-12-24 01:25am

Whoa. You'd rather play at 16x12 than tone it down and get some filtering?

I'm still 20minutes away from trying the demo, so I haven't seen the default values. It's strange they'd default to such a high level, though.

Dendrobius · Post by **Dendrobius** » 2006-12-24 02:03am

Well, ArmA seems to have inherited the mouse problem from OFP. If you're using a high DPI mouse and have it on max sens, OFP would give you an absolutely terrible experience, felt like it was "gridded". ArmA does the same thing, but it's better the higher the res you go...so 16x12 it has to be for the time being.

1280x1024 with some FSAA might work too, but I'm still horsing around with various settings basically. A lot of work to get it right. What I'm getting at though is that ArmA is playable on average/low systems like mine, with some tweaking.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-12-24 05:13am

Fixed thread title to rectify unecessary abbreviation and consequential total lack of clue as to what the hell "ArmedA" is.

Thank's Gamearena- 636kb/s. Sometimes it's good being a Bigpond customer. Sometimes.

As for resolution- I will never play at any resolution beyond 1240x1048 unless I get a suitably massive monitor to play it on.

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2006-12-24 06:25am

This pretty much sums up my first impression.

After i disregarded the hype i found it to be pretty much like OFP.
Minor gripes (I've pretty much only played coop so far):
- Crouched, full auto, aimed, blazing away with an AK seemed to be more accurate than prone, aimed, semi auto M-whatever number it is.
- There's an enemy APC yet none of your guys start off with any form of AT gear.
- Enemies eyesight seems to be 10 times better than yours.
- AI allies rifle seem to have full auto but yours doesn't.
- AI on your own side doesn't appear to be as smart as the AI on the enemy.

Gripe i expected but haven't encounted yet:
No jump leading to small fence i'd be over in a second in RL blocking movement completely. I haven't had it happen yet, but if it does then the game is off the buy list, there's no reason why in a game that's meant to be 'uber realistic' i shouldn't be able to clear something i'd not give a thought to in RL, especialy not in 2007.

Haven't had much luck connecting to a multiplayer game yet.

Overall, it's been interesting but not really fun. I've been keeping low, using cover and concealment, using the binocs to scout ahead, taken different routes and yet almost every time the opp will spot me first and i'm dead before i even figure out where the fire is coming from. Also, given the positioning of the blood splats the enemy AI all appear to be headshot specialists.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-12-24 06:29am

It's surprisingly and suspiciously exactly the same as OFP, right down to the sounds and UI. I know they're using the Germans for beta testing, but still.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-12-24 07:44am

Is there a single-player mission for this demo, or are you limited to a coop game where it's just you and seven other bots versus the entire fucking Russian Army?

It's a nice looking game, runs well, is basically exactly like OFP, nice animations ...

In the nitpick category ... why the fuck are the T-72s equipped with DShkM machine guns?

Dendrobius · Post by **Dendrobius** » 2006-12-24 08:59am

Nope, demo's limited to coop for you + seven bots vs a decent sized Russian Army. I think between the three of my friends and I we ended up with something like 13~17 kills each or thereabouts, so it's "only" a reinforced platoon at best in there, not quite the entire fucking Russian Army.

My friends and I just barely finished the mission. The 2x BRDMs were a pain in the ass...they'd come around a corner so quick you couldn't possibly pull a rocket launcher out in time. Eventually we ended up with two guys in the Hummer creeping up the road madly firing away at anything in sight and one guy on foot guarding the Hummer gunner's back. Worked well, because the .50cal does a good deal of damage to the BRDM. and the guy on foot works very well as a spare pair of eyes.

It's definitely tougher than OFP. and I think that's mainly because of the nerfed rifles more than anything else. Damn things can't hit jack crap beyond 150m in ArmA, whereas in OFP I'd be picking soldiers off at 500m with a M16 with the aid of a pair of binocs.

ArmA is basically an overhauled OFP: OFP2 is not meant to come out for some time yet, this is I think Game 1.5 as opposed to Game 2? It delivers in that respect. It's an incremental upgrade to OFP, not the next big step.