Looking Back on: Operation Flashpoint Cold War Crisis

[Commander 598]

I haven't noticed any real problems with the AI. In the first mission, at the first enemy encounter, I took the first burst of enemy fired right in the face. They're plenty accurate. I, however, can't seem to hit shit.

[Zixinus]

Yeah, its much harder to compensate than in Arma, particularly because you don't have access to firing ranges to learn how much to compensate.

I also noticed that this is the first game that truly took advantage of my sub-woofer. At first, it was the heartbeat but the explosions too.

Although, I would like to know a bit more about the mission while in-mission. In the second, I get "flank sunbeam" which I was confused about. I was supposed to help Sabre Team 3 or what?

I learned that I was to take out two more radars.

The artillery function is neat though.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

The best missions I've had so far were the "hold the control tower" and the "hold the village at the beachhead", large numbers of enemies from all angles, friendly forces and large volumes of fire.

Stark - I also think that the sound design isn't as sharp as OFP and ArmAs, there is a real lack of the snap and zing of rounds flying that they both had.

Actually, I'm surprised about your lack of intensity comment. I've been playing this game coop with a couple of my co-workers and my experience is, compared to OFP1, increased intensity. Like a lot. Are we playing the same game? I hear really LOUD zings when shots are fired at me and really loud snaps when I'm under suppressive fire (I personally the screen clutter when you're under fire). And I have absolutely no idea how the hell you're playing it Rambo style. I die all the freakin' time. Maybe I just suck. lol

[Stark]

I might invoke the ire of Stark again, but I suspect that the AI is for one reason or another, not quite up to old OP level. It might be the fact that the game is aimed at the console market but I think its done to subtly tone down the difficulty level a notch.

Please. Prove a link between 'console games' and 'terrible AI' or admit you're just bigoted. The enemy squad AI is worse than fucking Gears; even when they do attack they don't use cover and get split up; this isn't the fault of ON NOEZ CONSOLEZ. In any battle, the thing to do is get inside a building, because the enemy will break around it like water and you can headshot them all. That mission Ando liked (beachead village defence) got me 22 kills because everyone attacking the southern road is in sight of the building I'm in and marksman rifle = everyone dies.

The lack of tutorials or even mention of bullet drop outside of 'oh yeah your bullets drop' is pretty funny. I love how there is apparently no freelook for the driver, but you can use 3rd person camera just fine! You can nearly dodge rockets that way, too.

Pinto, the sound etc is fine in combat for me too, especially when you're being suppressed; it's just nobody can hit shit. The random fire is basically useless, but badguys with marksman rifles will really mess you up. At least on normal (how the hell do you change diff in progress argh) you can take many many hits (aside from instakills) and be fine after the magic medic shows up. The blood loss mechanic really doesn't work the way I expected it to.

[charlemagne]

(how the hell do you change diff in progress argh)

IIRC there's a loading screen quote that basically says that difficulty itself stays the same for every mode, it's just the HUD/interface stuff that gets "harder". (Btw I agree that it's insane to take away your compass but have your guys scream "Rifleman 200m South". Someone didn't think that one through. Having a button to show you looking at the compass in the hilt of your Rambo knife would fix that, but there's no such thing.)

The one thing I really miss from OFP is the in-game "cutscenes" with your squad mates bickering and talking rubbish while you're at camp or being hauled to the battlefield. That's a huge chunk of atmosphere missing right there. Battle sounds and "intensity" are fine, aside from the fact that I don't really feel the need to prone at all. In OFP you spent most of your time face down in the dirt, robbing through bushes hoping for the enemy to miss - in OFP2 taking cover almost isn't necessary at all, because Stark is absolutely right about those lousy Chinese shots. It also doesn't help that most mission briefings are like "be really aggro and keep pressing and hurry hurry hurry" - so you just keep on running towards red blobs on your radar or floaty yellow waymarkers. I've only done six or seven missions by now, but I did not feel the need or even the freedom to approach situations in different ways.

So far, I really enjoyed the OFP missions a lot more. It's not that OFP2 isn't fun at all, but somehow I feel a rising urge to search for the OFP install disc and check out if it's too ugly to bear by now. It's probably just that I see OFP with those dangerous nostalgic eyes, or maybe I've just been expecting too much from OFP2.

[Stark]

Sadly, it really is. OFP's clunkiness is really an expression of what we put up with back in the day.

[Zixinus]

Please. Prove a link between 'console games' and 'terrible AI' or admit you're just bigoted.

That's my suspicion. If I implied that it was a certainty, then please forgive for being vague.

However, I have some basis for this suspicion:

From here.

So, as you know, graphics and physics grind on large homogenous floating point data structures in a very straight-line structured way. Then we have AI and gameplay code. Lots of exceptions, tunable parameters, indirections and often messy. We hate this code, it’s a mess, but this is the code that makes the game DIFFERENT. Here is the terrifying realization about the next generation consoles: I’m about to break a ton of NDAs here, oh well, haha, I never signed them anyway.

Gameplay code will get slower and harder to write on the next generation of consoles. Modern CPUs use out-of-order execution, which is there to make crappy code run fast. This was really good for the industry when it happened, although it annoyed many assembly language wizards in Sweden. Xenon and Cell are both in-order chips. What does this mean? It’s cheaper for them to do this. They can drop a lot of cores. One out-of-order core is about four times [did I catch that right? Alice] the size of an in-order core. What does this do to our code? It’s great for grinding on floating point, but for anything else it totally sucks. Rumours from people actually working on these chips – straight-line runs 1/3 to 1/10th the performance at the same clock speed. This sucks.

Apparently its harder to develop decent AI for the xbox 360 than it is for the PS 3 which might explain the occasional soldier who is so stoned that he doesn't quite realize that there is a war going on.

But its also possible that the developers just wanted to make the game more "causal" by making it easier in more ways than one, and thus toned down on the heavy-AI software and rather just tried to make it look and feel like milsim than actually be one.

Or that the developers didn't care so much for the AI but for recording how realistic it sounds for a marine to fire his rifle (the devs actually went out to some USMC base and recorded a bunch of sounds, including how does it sound to get out of a vehicle).

Perhaps the developers thought that the AI was hard enough and that anyone that complains should just switch to hardcore mode.

But, perhaps simply its the case of pushed release and some things not being properly done on time.

How would I know, I only play the game. What happens inside the code or what's going on within Codemasters is another matter.

[Stark]

Jesus. What that boils down to is 'wow the 360's hardware is pretty old huh guys'. So fucking what? OTHER games have SUPERIOR AI to OFP2, so whatever limit that exists isn't necessarily relevant.

I mean seriously the 360's hardware was finalised years and years ago, and you're acting like you needed some nerd to tell you the PS3 handled CPU hits better? You haven't proven a link between 'consoles' and 'terrible AI'; you've discovered a 'no shit' feature of hardware that was fixed many years ago. Now you just have to establish that informs any of the issues in OFP2 which - let's face it - isn't going to happen. This isn't like the early 21st century when games were ruined by Xbox ports due to texture size etc.

The idea the game is meant to be 'casual' is asinine. It's aimed squarely at the simhard market (although the soft end), the GRAW market; it's never going to steal players from Counterstrike CoD. PROTIP: there's a big difference between pulling shit out of your ass and reasoning from evidence, and looking at the marketing for OFP2 it's very difficult for me to accept that they made anything other than a GRAW-em-up, a light sim title. The game just has shit AI ... and before you quote more nerd shit at me, the AI isn't bad for complex reasons; it's just passive and uninteresting and it's poor quality is exposed by the poor accuracy which means you can WATCH THEM for TEN MINUTES and see they're retarded.

[Zixinus]

I wasn't being sarcastic. I genuinely listed a few reasons that came to my mind as to why the AI is stupid and one of them is that the developers didn't care to make a stronger AI or they thought that what we got is enough for what they want to give us.

I only suspect the hardware limitations and I give a reason why I am suspicious of that, but I didn't say that I was sure that is the cause. Again, I just play the fucking game, I don't know what's going on within the code or at Codemaster's HQ.

But this one thing:

What that boils down to is 'wow the 360's hardware is pretty old huh guys'

No, it boils down to "the xbox360's and the PS3's CPU will work differently than a PC's".

But regardless, if this satisfies you: I can't say for certain that I know why the AI is stupid. I only made idle speculation as to why they made it stupid. My speculation was stupid. Can we move on?

Also, I already figured out that the AI is retarded. Like a few posts back? When I told you of a soldier that moved to cover when I made miss near him but then changed his mind and moved back to exact same spot where I shot him? As if he saw where I was shooting from, reacted as if he didn't wanted to get shot but then just forgot about it and moved back at menacing the nearby fence? Several times?

[Pint0 Xtreme]

it's just nobody can hit shit. The random fire is basically useless, but badguys with marksman rifles will really mess you up. At least on normal (how the hell do you change diff in progress argh) you can take many many hits (aside from instakills) and be fine after the magic medic shows up. The blood loss mechanic really doesn't work the way I expected it to.

I agree the blood loss mechanic isn't working as "realistic" as I thought it would. It feels like you can take as many bleeding hits as you want as long as you have a medic to patch you up. I thought they said that you don't regain blood when are patched up? Or that there's no such thing as a complete heal? Once in awhile you'll lose your ability to sprint. Other than that, it still feels like you get completely healed up when a medic patches you up.

That said, on Hardcore, you have to start at the beginning of the damn mission if you die - even if you were killed just moments before completing the mission. In that sense, it's fucking hard (and masochistically infuriating) to try to complete a single mission on Hardcore. It may be easier in the sense that the AI can't shoot as well and that you can take bleeding shots. But without being able to load from any given checkpoint, the mission is hard as fuck to complete. Unfortunately, if I want no HUD in the game, I have to choose Hardcore mode and tolerate the no-saves "feature" of the game. I really hope the next patch will let you put in the ability to adjust your own difficulty settings instead of having to choose between three preset difficulty modes.

[Stark]

Turns out idle speculation isn't evidence, and thus there is no evidence besides age of hardware (which is obvious). Oops. Consoles DO have hardware limitations, but you're making a very specific claim here. I never claimed you didn't know the AI was shit, which frankly is a very bizarre claim for you to make. The point is that the way it sucks isn't necessarily processor-related and just looks like the individual AI guys aren't reacting properly (or even as good as Gears guys, which is pretty poor AI itself). I bet you've seen the chinese guys get literally stuck on terrain and basically stand stock-still behind a crate until someone wanders directly in front of them?

[Stark]

I agree the blood loss mechanic isn't working as "realistic" as I thought it would. It feels like you can take as many bleeding hits as you want as long as you have a medic to patch you up. I thought they said that you don't regain blood when are patched up? Or that there's no such thing as a complete heal? Once in awhile you'll lose your ability to sprint. Other than that, it still feels like you get completely healed up when a medic patches you up.

You don't lose blood very fast (or it doesn't vary with different wounds) and bandaging is easy and fast and doesn't expose you. I've been shot in the open, run 20-30m to cover, bandaged myself and been fine aside from a yellow hip area which seemed to do nothing. I've finished missions with my arms splattered with my own blood but not seen any actual difference in my guy. Aside from legshots it's meaningless.

I'm really sad that sprint exhaustion doesn't affect aim too. You can feel your heart in your controller and still aim rock-steady.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

I'm really sad that sprint exhaustion doesn't affect aim too. You can feel your heart in your controller and still aim rock-steady.

According to this page in the strategy guide (no, I don't own the strategy guide), there is aim assist on Normal and Experienced difficulty.

Screenshots of a few pages of the strategy guide can be found here: http://community.codemasters.com/forum/ ... tegy+guide

EDIT: Removed image from post as it may screw up formatting.

[CaptHawkeye]

Wow, reading the list of hardcore options it sickening. You cant see your own equipment list on hard core? Why the fuck not? Is my guy really too stupid to look down and check his fucking pockets or something?

[Stark]

It's due to the lazy approach taken; they didn't remove the gamey menus and replace it with something more realistic or simhard, they just removed it. If you use keyboard it's not really that useful anyway. Removing things the the ammo type list is more retarded; it's like saying you can't tell the difference between the different triggers on your gun.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Wow, reading the list of hardcore options it sickening. You cant see your own equipment list on hard core? Why the fuck not? Is my guy really too stupid to look down and check his fucking pockets or something?

It's not that you can't see your own equipment list. It's just not on the screen until you bring it up. If you use your scroll mouse, your equipment list will show up.

[Stark]

Isn't that true on normal? It doesn't show mine until I bring it up?

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Isn't that true on normal? It doesn't show mine until I bring it up?

Then I have no idea what "equipment list" means.

[MKSheppard]

I do wonder how much more time they'd have gained by not developing the game for three systems at once, of which one is totally incompatible with the other (PS3).

[Stark]

Yeah, from what I hear the PS3 port is always the biggest moneysink. As a useless anecdote, when they ported Sacred2 to consoles it took nine months more to port to PS3, during which the developer went backrupt. Doesn't seem worth it for the size of market, much of the time.

[MKSheppard]

Yeah, from what I hear the PS3 port is always the biggest moneysink.

It's not just that -- even with just the 360 and PC versions; there are large enough differences to make development between the two essentially incompatible.

I mean, sure, you can share the basic overall textures, 3d models, mission scripts, etc etc between the two versions, but bugtesting two different binaries is going to be a lot more work than bugtesting a single binary.

[weemadando]

I'm currently trying ot get the mission editor to work.

I hope you guys all like having to uninstall and reinstall many many redists, because the studio was lazy and didn't just make sure that the game would install the current versions of all the files it needs.

But it's OK though - because some guys on a forum figured out a six step process to fix it. But for me it would take about 40 individual steps (counting each uninstall/download/reinstall by itself). Fuck that.

One of the best things about OFP/ArmA was that hte editor was in the game, and you could drop stuff in and immediately mess about in game to test it out. Not:
Get editor to work.
Make a mission.
Make a campaign for mission to be a part of.
Close editor.
Launch game.
Test mission.

Oh yeah - and 63 entity limit confirmed. Woo for spawning. I guess that totally negates my ability to plan ahead by levelling that village with arty fire before assaulting it as they guys won't have spawned yet.

[MKSheppard]

63 entity limit confirmed.

I wonder.......

360 Memory: 512MB
PS3 Memory: 256MB
Cheap $300 new PC at Best Buy: 2 GB Memory.

Want to bet that the 63 entity limit was put in so the game could run on 360/PS3? Even with the overhead of Windows, and limited to 2 GB of memory on a XP machine; you still would have gobs more memory available.

[Sarevok]

All the memory in the world is worthless when actual gameplay data takes maybe 1 percent and rest is fatty graphics and audio files. I am afraid even if available memory was ten times you would have the same shitty limit because the graphics and sound again would bloat accordingly to scale.

[MKSheppard]

All the memory in the world is worthless when actual gameplay data takes maybe 1 percent and rest is fatty graphics and audio files.

Erm. This is dedicated memory; not graphics memory Sarevok.

You'd be surprised how much space simply tracking an infantryman would take up. First you gotta keep track of his 3D position; then his inventory; what he's carrying, it's ammunition state; where he's looking (needed for visual computation so that they can't see through walls); his health state, various AI variables.

THEN we get into the nuts and gritty of actually plotting the battlefield. A 1 x 1 km battlefield done at 1m2 resolution would need a million datapoints; and if we want our battlefield to actually have a reasonable amount of elevation, that quickly bloats up the battlefield elevation file.

Then we got to lay down roads and such for the AI to use, where this texture goes, etc...