Arma III Alpha

[BrotherTobious]

Way hey his back and glad he is dl too nearly a full set

Sent from 3 foot behind you.

[Tutonic]

There are, according to the A3 big tracker, big problems with Thomson routers with this game.

I can't connect to any multiplayer servers

[smilodon]

Loving the enthusaim hope we can keep this going till full release

Bleaugh, I'm bored now. Let's all roll Elven druids in Lord of the Rings Online and sing rousing poems about the mysterious ways of the woodland pixies.

[Tutonic]

There are, according to the A3 big tracker, big problems with Thomson routers with this game.

I can't connect to any multiplayer servers

I think I might have fixed the issue. Set my machine to use DHCP (it was static) and added it into a DMZ (these rubbish Thomsons gazelles won't let you have a static IP in the DMZ. I know, madness). Not ideal, but it seems to have sorted the problem...

[smilodon]

Have had a few issues with the game opening in the wrong monitor and a few freezes on loading a map. Otherwise seems reasonably stable.

[sulky_uk]

just looking at the dedicated server thing, there doesnt appear to be files but there is a work around

http://www.mordorhq.com/showthread.php?7324-Tutorial-How-to-run-ArmA3-server-on-a-dedicated-server

and from bohemias forums

ps good games tonight
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?147537-Tutorial-How-to-run-ArmA3-server-on-a-dedicated-server

hope someone can make sense of it

[Sparko]

Well I finished all the showcase missions today and everything is spot on apart from I seem to have to shoot someone about 6 times before they die is it just me or does the opposition seem harder to kill? We're we playing some sort of hardcore mode in arma2?

Touch wood, I don't seem to have had any freezes or problems launching either intact it runs a hell of a lot smoother for me compared to arma2

[kregoron]

just looking at the dedicated server thing, there doesnt appear to be files but there is a work around

http://www.mordorhq.com/showthread.php?7324-Tutorial-How-to-run-ArmA3-server-on-a-dedicated-server

and from bohemias forums

ps good games tonight
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?147537-Tutorial-How-to-run-ArmA3-server-on-a-dedicated-server

hope someone can make sense of it

doesnt look to bad tbh

[kregoron]

Had a few games on public servers last, sadly they werent really focused on any sort of tactical approach, looking forward to try it out with you guys

[BrotherTobious]

Yes it a alpha and it is very impressive but it does need some tweeking for example

http://i.imgur.com/t7wrH8r.gif

But in all seriousness it is amazing considering it is a alpha so pleased.  Was great fun had 5 or 6 of us running around on a server.

[smilodon]

For an Alpha I'm pretty impressed. If EA or EIDOS had made this then in it's present form it would have been a release candidate at the very least. My frame rates are a bit low (15-40fps) but that says more about my PC than the game.

Right now there's not a lot of content, just a few maps and a limited supply of vehicles to try. But Arma III is pitched just right. For an Arma II player it's very familiar, all the controls are where they used to be with only a few exceptions i.e. G now means throw Grenade and not select Gear (much hilarity when someone tries to arm up with a new gun and just ends up blowing their legs off with a grenade). Some of the problems in Arma II seem to be addressed. An example is that we used to be able to go prone, kneel or stand up. often kneeling put us too low behind cover and stand up was a quick route to bullet through forehead. Now we have the ability to adjust our stance to clear cover for firing without making ourselves sitting ducks for the insanely clever AI. And the AI seems to still have a masters degree in being super clever, sneaky and accurate.
But while it's a familiar experience it's looking very fresh and very new. Several times last night we all had to stop and just stand looking at the stunning mountain scenery and sunset. In fact it brough Tutonic to tears, but then again as a lad from the Fens he's probably never seen a real mountain, so we'll forgive him his blubbing session. And they have medics which is my favorite job in Arma (I don't have to shoot at much and thereby reveal that I'm actually as rubbish at Arma as I am as CS:GO!)

All in all it's shaping up to be a quite a game amd it's still just Aplha??? There's still the odd lock up and problem connecting to servers but I'm seriously stoked about Arma III and am getting ready to give up my Sunday nights once more to spend them crawling around in the brush shooting hopefully at tiny dots on the horizon while liberally handing out sticky plasters and nettle rash ointment.


[YOUTUBEHD]O618Kijg9J0[/YOUTUBEHD]
[Some bad language at the very end.]

[ArithonUK]

I've never played ARMA, but with the BattleField franchise effectively killed off by EA, this is looking like my next game purchase. Hopefully I'll get some play in over the weekend.

[BrotherTobious]

Cool give us a shout if you want any help

[Liberator]

What you have to realise it that the video Smilo posted is just a small village on an large open world Island, in ArmA terms it's actually a small map for Alpha testing. I would expect a t least one of the maps to be 10 times larger than this on it's final release.

It's sold as a combat simulation and there is no such thing as "bunny hopping", there is a "climb/step over" button for fences and such. Death on a lot of the Co-Op missions will be quite final, although we do like to incorporate a revival system on the missions we build. The world has real time and weather with a slightly accelerated clock, so you can go in during an evening mission and find yourself walking around a little later in the pitch black of 2am.

Most of the missions we try and pick/build last around 60+ minutes, so this isn't designed to be a CoD or BF type game in any way. No unlocks, no leveling, no golden magnums at level 50 (Although I think I remember there being one in ArmA2 from some of the ammo crates).

I'm really not trying to put anyone off, I'm trying to say that the enjoyment you can get from this game is purely down to the time you put into it and can be extremely satisfying and frustrating. If you want a quick 15 minutes of gun play while your pizza arrives, then this is not the game to load up.

Those of you who are not sure, if you hold out for a week we will be able to dish out some gift Alpha Keys that will allow you to play the showcase elements of the game, there are enough of us with the Alpha to hopefully accomodate those with a genuine hunger to get something more realistic and absorbing from their FPS but aren't sure whether to invest.

In the video they were playing a death match, it's not a menu option, it's basically a map area with localised spawn points for the two main factions. Extremely easy to build and implement in the editor, you could make one in 30 minutes from scratch. In fact I think everyone who buys the game should build such a mission, it gets in your blood and before you know it you're designing those combat missions you really wanted to play in all the other games that let you down. Want a gun emplacement, stick it on the map, want an enemy attack helicopter to come and see what happened to the bunker you just destroyed, add it to the map and put a condition in on the destruction of the bunker.

Just to put that video into scale.....

Here's a map of seaside village where they were fighting.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1932[/ATTACH]

Here's a slightly more zoomed out image to give you a better picture if the scale.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1933[/ATTACH]

And here's the entire island.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1934[/ATTACH]

All of which can be crawling with enemy troops, air support, armour, civilians and with the new scuba elements you can count all the blue stuff as combat areas as well.

Like I said, this in ArmA2 would be classed as a small map, so I'm guessing we'll see another couple of larger areas on it's way through Beta and Final.

[smilodon]

Bohemia Interactive do seem to have their stuff together although the early days of Arma were not free from problems and issues.

The thing to remember about Arma, for those who have not tried it out and who are thinking about jumping onboard, is that iArma is more of a co-op soldier SIM than a fps. There are death match severs that play a lot like BF3 and CoD4 but we usually play against a campaign against a wickedly difficult AI enemy rather than fight each other, so Arma on dMw servers is almost always a co-op game. A 'round' for want of a better term can last an hour or more rather than the faster five to ten minutes you get in games like BF3 and CoD4.

Also it's pretty impossible to complete a mission without a leader who is calling the shots and without everyone taking a specific role and doing what they're told to do. Mostly people get a role they like i.e. sniper, assault rifleman, medic, anti-tank, heli pilot, tank crew, but it also means that sometimes you're sitting in the back of a truck waiting for your attack helicopter to clear out the village ahead before you get to go house to house and mop up.
 
Arma is much more of a slow burn game which relies on full co-operation and then insane firefights. It's still immense fun and very challenging which is why we love it so much. It's also getting better and better with each version which seems to be something of an oddity in  market where game franchises seem to be run by accountants rather than game developers :sad: