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Dasquade gave us a headsup about some really great news about Armed Assault.




Quote armedassault.com :
Today at Games Convention in Leipzig, Bohemia Interactive announced ArmA 2, its latest military simulation game for PC DVD-ROM and next generation consoles (originally known also as Game 2).

ArmA 2 is set in a near future, year 2009, in a fictional post soviet country Chernarus. Players will be sent as members of United States Marine Corpse Force Recon squad to this area to prevent further civilian casualties and ensure ongoing stability in Chernarus.

Arma 2 is based on the latest generation technology, offering large –scale game world, authentic and extremely detailed modern units, weapons, vehicles and environments, challenging single player and vast array of multiplayer options.

ArmA 2 is expected to be released in 2008. Full game website will be available soon at http://www.arma2.com

Discuss in our forums.

On Armedassault.de we can read {SF} c930 from the Sniper fans was at the IDEA stand at the Games Convention.
There he had the chance to see and play with Queens Gambit but also see some Arma II and get some new information about it from Ivan Buchta (Enviroment Design, BI).

I have taken the liberty to translate this into English, if anyone sees I made some mistakes I would appreciate it if you would let us know so we can correct it.

Here is the info, some new some we already know:

- ArmA2 is "Game2".
- Release: 2008 (target).
- The campaign is set in Eatern Europe, back to the roots.

Yesterday evening Jerry hopper from Armedaussault.eu sent me a link showing around 30 pictures of Arma II on the IDEA Games stand.
I decided to contact the original maker of the screenshots and found 10 videos showing Arma II in action.
Forrestal, the original creator of the videos and pictures allowed us to publish all his material.
So, if you want to view 10 videos in which you can see many aspects of arma II I advice you to head over to our Arma II Video's page.


But thats not all. Forrestal also sent me the official Arma II press kit which was given at the time of his visit.
Here is a part of the official press release:


Title:                          ArmA 2 (working title)
Format: PC DVD-ROM / Next -Gen Consoles
Publisher: TBA
Developer: Bohemia Interactive
Genre: Tactical Combat Simulation
Release date: Q2 2008

Bohemia Interactive takes a new step into the heart of military realism and set yet another mark for true combat experience which has already earned them worldwide awards’ in the past.

ArmA 2 is set in the near future, in the year 2009, in a fictional state of Churners, a post Soviet country where civil war has been raging on for over 2 painful years. As a leader of US Marine Corps’ Force Recon you are dismounted with your squad to prevent further civilian casualties and ensure ongoing stability in Churners.

ArmA 2 is based on the latest technology generation, offering a large –scale game world, authentic and extremely detailed modern units, weapons, vehicles, and environments; challenging single player and vast array of multiplayer options.

Key Features:

- Lifelike combat simulation (bullet ballistic & deflection, material penetration, etc.)
- Story driven single player full of twists and surprises
- Resource management, RPG elements
- Advanced dynamic conversation system
- Unique AI combat system
- Over 50+ weapons and drivable vehicles
- Multiplayer with large scale maps for 50+ live players
- Built in mission editor

Download the presskit from here (23Mb)

spoock posted a link to games.tiscali.cz in the BIS forums in which we can see 3 new videos showing even more of Arma II.

In the first video you can see some AI moving on a road and more important you will see them using the corners as cover and lean to peek around the corner.
Also note the use of hand signals!

The second video shows you a Hind flying over a town.

The third video shows you some actual gameplay. You can see the effect of looking through the sight while walking.

View the videos for yourself from the games.tiscali.cz website.
Feel free to discuss Arma II in our forums.

Author: Warlock
Language: Czech
Translation: yes
Video: Yes, view 3 videos here
Score: Not rated


Czech server games.tiscali.cz released new Arma 2 preview. I tried to translate it, but English isn't my native language, so excuse me if there are any grammar errors and typos.

Translation:

We just saw the announced continuation of armed assault (originally known as a game 2) in action and the project leader Marek � paněl answered a lot of our questions.

The Plot
The whole story is set in a post soviet country called Chernarus and it seems to be very complicated. There are four opponent sides. Minority related with Russians conquered the part of the republic. The government is powerless so they ask USA for help. So you as a player arrive to the area to stabilize the situation.
Then the Russians come into the scene because they want to destroy radical nationalist anti-Russian armies. The radical anti-Russian armies aren’t as kind to the civil population as Russian related minority on the island, so this Russian act seems to be well-founded. As an answer USA take back all their forces but by the coincidence you and your squad will be stuck on Chernarus. If you were following orders in the first part of the game, then you now will have full freedom of choice. It’s on you if you will be searching for the shortest way out of this mess or if you will try to find the cause of this conflict. Happiness of the civilian population was always on the second place. The main interest always was the huge amount of uranium on the island.
By full freedom of choice I don’t only mean free movement in the area. Some sides of the conflict aren’t automatically your enemies, and there is no problem in becoming allied with them. But if you want to be allied with them you have to do something for them, problem is that when you do something for one side, you can make another side mad. It’s your choice if you want to help civilians defend their villages from terrorists or not. The feature of playing for different sides of the conflict was used many times in many other games, but as far as I remember none of those games had a as large world as Arma2. Whole Chernarus has 300 square kilometers and everything is created 1:1 exactly like in Czech středohoří.

You are not alone
Most of the time you will have 5 members in your squad, and you can switch between them as Maruk states: “The Idea of the game is that we don’t want the player to save, load, save, load and all over again. If you lost one of the team members you will get someone else after some time. Only if you lose your whole squad is it time to load. We don’t want the player to be too frustrated from those saves/loads”. In Arma 1 soldiers were usually walking in the middle of the street so they were easy to take out. In Arma 2 the AI is much smarter. They always cover their movements in urban areas without any commands from the player. This will ensure a much greater gaming experience than the one found in Arma 1. You can check this out in the first video. Movement will be improved too as an example you will be able to reload your weapon while moving.

New killing machines
AVV (Amphibious Assault Vehicle) will be very important for US marines and you will use their adaptively. Russians will get new modern tanks like T-90, less armored, but amphibious BMP-3, eight wheeled APC BTR-90 and anti-aircraft Tunguska-M1.
In the air category there will be a new transport plane and attack plane (C-130J Super Herkules, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter) for the American side and On the Russian side there will be a new helicopter ( Mil Mi-24), which is back from the Ofp days. You can check more model details of the Mi24 in the second video. And because Arma2 is based in the near future, there will be some vehicles which are not usually used nowadays.

Less can be more sometimes
On the multiplayer question Maruk answered: "We are concentrating on 2 game modes. We want quality not quantity“. Those two are: Conquer the island, where two groups of players are gradually conquering areas, for each conquered area they are rewarded with money/credits. Every team has it’s leader which can manipulate with those credits. For those credits he can buy new vehicles or he can build factories.

It looks like very interesting mix of FPS and RTS, as a proof of the popularity of this mix we can mention Half-Life mod: Natural Selection or a unofficial modification in Operation Flashpoint. BIS are currently working with its creators on improvements. Of course matches in this game mode will be long and they will be hours long.

Second game mode is something like the SP campaign in multiplayer. It will be a cooperation of players counter AI. BIS is trying to rework the whole SP Campaign or at least most of the tasks from it to the multiplayer campaign. The Important thing is that the game will be saving all changes in game world and all completed task to the server. So you can continue later.


Graphics
Some people might be disappointed over the physical engine which is basically like the one used in Arma 1. Destruction of the environment isn’t of high quality as for example Battlefield Bad Company, but you can still destroy some smaller objects like boxes, trashcans and buildings like in Arma 1, but don’t expect more. Maybe it’s a pity, but the implementation of a complex high quality Destruction model would cost too much time and require too good HW in a large world like this.
ArmA 2 is set in the autumn and apart from orange colored leaves, it’s all in a dark mood. One of the industrial zones in the city reminds me of Stalker but its normal in post-soviet countries.
Arma 2 will be fully supporting dx10 and Windows Vista.

When, where and what with
At the end we were talking about Arma2 on next-gen consoles, and it would be same as the PC versions. The only difference will be a auto-aiming feature for consoles. Question is: On which console can we expect Arma 2. This depends on the publisher which BIS is searching for right now. Copy protection depends on publisher too but Maruk assured us that we don’t need to worry about Star force again. Date of release is set on June 2008, but like Maruk stated it can be 6 months later or sooner.


Links:
- Arma II Forum discussion
- Arma II video page
- Arma II Picture Gallery

Ivan Buchta, the Environment Designer from BI, wrote this article at BIS site about the landscapes in ArmA2.



In our company, there was always an ambition to create landscape which would feel real. As we constantly improved our tools and refined our technology, it is finally possible to take the image of real-life countryside and bring the best of it into ARMA 2. We have chosen a piece of forgotten land somewhere in North Bohemia in the hopes of bring you a wild and hilly environment suitable for large-scale combat operations.



Click in "Read more..." to check all the article.

From our designers' point of view, real-life landscape offers the structure of real land, which allows us to utilize all of the vehicles and weapon platforms available, and offer you at least a little bit of the soldier's life, which surprisingly consists of very little actual combat and hours of movement. Of course, the combat will be your major experience in ARMA 2, and as the battles will take place in landscape that really exists, we hope that the impression from such battles will surpass anything you've seen in a wargame so far.



It was always my big ambition to recreate some place that I know to the latest detail. Fortunately, there were others around who reminded me to not to forget about gameplay and visual appearance. When you want to give people something nice to play with, the reality must be sometimes abandoned. This means you would not see a carbon-copy of real countryside including all the boring parts, but the gaming environment loosely based on that terrain. However, we were still able to take plenty of reference from real-life data, including aerial photography and proprietary GIS database which we created solely for the purpose of building the Northern Region of Chernarus.



Certain artistic freedom had to be applied to the sea coast, which unfortunately does not exist in North Bohemia. As you see from the comparison images above, we also decided to choose different composition of tree species, inspired mainly by my recent visit of the Czech-Slovak border mountains. Prevalence of spruce trees certainly helped us to achieve a more "mountainous" look compared to the map's real counterpart, which would match perfectly to the original proposal of "distant mountainous country somewhere in Eastern Europe, swarming with hostile insurgent factions."

Matt Rochelle informed the community about some updates on the bistudio.com website in the BIS forums.

Quote Spanel Bros :
Improved AI, especially in Close Quarter Battles : The best part of it is that the system is fully dynamic - no AI scripting or player commanding required.

AI using taunts and hand signals : What we are trying to do now is to "sell it" - to make sure AI communicates more about what it thinks, using taunts, hand signals, or other animations. While this will not make the AI any smarter, it should make it look better, more life like, increasing the immersion.

Dual core / multi core optimizations : The advent of multiple cores means a real challenge for any developer. We identify this as one of the main possible areas to achieve a higher frame rate in our engine but we also know this is not going to be a walk in the park.

Read the entire article on the www.bistudio.com website.



View more Arma 2 screenshots in our Gallery or view some Arma 2 movies on our Arma 2 video page.

spoock has posted 2 links to new Arma 2 previews which have been released after the BIS presentation at Digitex in the BIS forums.
The first can be found at Saigo's & Binariz3 blog and the second at dobryweblog.cz.
Both reviews are in Czech language but [CAVE]guerilla has tried to translate as much as he could and posted it in the topic as well.


Quote [CAVE]guerilla :
- you can comand around 100 AI and send them to 1 target
- better shader for dynamik lightning (Shader 3.0)
- dynamic shadows, really real light
- shooting with every weapon out of vehicles (not sure here)
- better swimming, twice as much soldier movements (not sure)

4 campaigns

- 1 linear (i guess they mean straight)
- 1 free (RPG?)
- 1 total free (take a side and go to war)
- 1 Multyplayer campaign (a dream comes true here)

Then something about importing the 3D VBS Editor and demolitation of houses with and without interior, they got 1 house working so far.

About 10 GB files (several DVD disks) for ARMA 2
Converting for XBOX360 with autoaim till 12/2008.

No dynamik destruction model like wished but something similar like shot a hole in a house and enter it, also possible for AI's. AI is gonna hide behind walls, pillows, trashcans, autos with surpressing fire and granates while flanking you somehow.

- DX10
- the grass is fat and low for better view, just better
- fog looks more real
- shadows, i did't understand that, so far the same as ARMA 1
- better smoke fx
- better forest texture with fog on the ground etc.
- beautiful object reflection if "ODLESKY" means reflection, dunno
- Viewdistance stays the same as ARMA 1 as there isn't even a cpu to handle this.

and more which i could'nt understand

Additionally 4 videos have been submitted to Youtube showing more of Arma 2.
You can view all 4 videos by clicking "Read more".

You can discuss Arma 2 in our forums.

A while back Czech magazine Level released an interview they had with Maruk from Bohemia Interactive about Arma 2.
The interview took place at the Games Convecion in Leipzig.
While Maruk is talking, you can watch some ingame footage.
VojtzechGamer has made English subtitles and has added them to the video so everyone can now read what is being said.

You can download the video form links:
here.
The subtitles you can get from here (right click and select "save as".
Make sure the subtitles file is saved in the same folder as the .avi video!

You can discuss it in our forums.

Ondřej � paněl has posted a new message in the developers blog about building destruction in Arma 2.

Ondřej � paněl :
When we demonstrated Game 2, dynamic buildings destruction was one of the features we were talking about, and one which was liked a lot by those who have seen it. We did some redesign, learning from the problems we had, and after that the building destruction system for ArmA 2 should look like this:

* Based on ArmA destruction
* Buildings having multiple parts collapsible independently
* Physical simulation used for falling debris / wall parts
* No permanent debris left

Read the complete article at the BIS developers blog.

Leave your feedback about it in our forums.

frostwyrm333 has posted in the BIS forums about 2 new Arma 2 presentations. Both are in Czech language but frostwyrm333 took the time to give a short summary of the info given in the first video already and he said he would give some more information about the second video soon.


Quote frostwyrm333 :
Here you can find the details of the first video:

- they are making a better lightning system
- they improved vegetation and performance
- with directx 10 it will be possible to make antialiasing for blending textures like grass and forest backgorunds
- they will move to shader 3 so bumps will look less weird and more realistic
- they mentioned destruction system, the real physical destruction isn't possible today and it would be very problematic with networks. There was a mention that none of todays game uses it, just some static effects for things that fall (unreal tournament 3 with physx in 7 fps in low q. where is 30 fps in normal game in high q. ), and it would be complicated with ai
- at last there will be animation blending. They created it for those gestures, but they dont know if they will allow reloading while moving.
- separate animation for different positions in vehicles will be possible but they wont create different anims for every one.
- Arma 2 will have 100 vehicles.

As we could read on bis.4players.de last week Gamestar have had the chance to preview Arma 2 and will release an article about it in their upcomming release of 03/2008.


Quote Gamestar :
While working hard on the release of the tactics shooter Amrmed Assuault 2 the bohemia interactive team introduced the gamestar reporter to the virtual battelfield.
A preview report about armed assualt can be read in tne new magazine 03/2008.



You can view more pictures in our Arma II gallery.
Discuss in our forums.

Maruk has posted at community.bistudio.com the following info:

Projected Minimal PC System Requirements

* Dual Core CPU
* 512 MB RAM
* GPU with Shader Model 3 and 256 MB RAM
* Windows XP or Windows Vista

Projected Optimal PC System Requirements

* Quad Core CPU
* 1 GB RAM
* Fast GPU (8800GT level) with Shader Model 3 and 512 or more MB RAM
* Windows XP or Windows Vista

Post your comments in our forums: Arma 2 system requirements topic.

k@voven has translated the preview from the German PC games magazine. He tried to translate as much as he could but some he didn't know how to translate. All important information should be covered though.

You can read k@voven's translation by clicking "Read more".




k@voven informed the Arma community in the BI forums the German PC-Games magazine has written a preview about Arma 2 in their recent release.

Quote k@voven :
I'll give you some facts:

- The new Island Chernarus (the mag describes it as country, so I don't know if it's really an island anymore) shall be 230 square km in size. The name means translated into english Blackrussia. (I'm not sure with this one, because in German you call Belarus also Whiterussia)
- The landscape is made after an original landscape in CZ
- In this country pro communist forces strike against the democratic government and try to get back to Russia. But their attempt fails and so they declare the Social republic of Charnarus. The remaining democratic forces now ask the West for help and the USA are sending their forces. It takes place in 2009.
- You don't play one anonym soldier anymore, but someone out of a small 5-man team, called Razor from the US Marine Corps. You can also switch between the members if you want.
- More than 50 weapons and more than 50 vehicles
- Online gaming with up to 50 players
- There shall be RPG elements (like talking to civilians)
- In the new view called High-level-command your troops can be navigated like in a strategy game.
- AI will be better (Called micro AI. Will be able to move precisely through the environment)
- The Editor will have a 3D Mode

Vehicles I can spot:

The long wanted Osprey
Good old MI-24
AH-1
Huey
M1A1
And many weapons, but I don't know their names.

Further there are train tracks, the trees look really cool in some kind of autumn style and the grass also looks a lot better.


adamicz posted a link to Tiscalli games where they announce they will release their Arma 2 preview this coming Thursday with more and better screens and possibly also some new video's.
View the available screens at the Tiscalli gameswebsite.





No compromises. The military simulation from CZ stays ultra realistic.

Marek Spanel is a very relaxed man. We recognize that quickly when we visit his enterprise somewhere in CZ. This is because he was able to earn glory and much money with the tactic-shooter Operation Flashpoint, which was selled over two million times. And if you consider that only ten people worked on the first game of BI you can imagine, why Marek is always in a good mood.
The inofficial sequel, called Armed Assault for legal reasons, was sold up till now 300.000 times.
Now BI is working with 50 people on their next game, following the consequent way of the predecessors. Armed Assault 2 will be a hard war-simulation, who's first objective is being realistic. That's why we took a closer look at an early version of the game in the office of the developer, asked Marek many questions and even took a video, which can be found on the magazine-dvd.

There shall be no experiments. Marek says straight on that ArmA 2 will be exactly the game fans are waiting for. No less then being the most realistic war-simulator on PC. The setting will be the fictional country of Chenarus, freely translated into Blackrussia. Protests smolder and pro-communist forces try to reintegrate the country into Russia. The conflicts escalets when the "Cheanrus Red Star Movement" conquer vast parts of the country and even the capital Chernogorsk in 2009.
But the reintegrations fails. The premier minister Alexander Baranov is executed, the leaders of the rebellion call out the Social Republic of Chenarus. The remaining democratic fores ask the West for help. Naturaly the Americans don't let themselves be said that twice and send their forces into the country. Together with the army of Chenarus they shall drive the rebells back and free the country.

BI has learned. In ArmA the player only was a tiny little wheel in the war-machine. Sometimes as pilot, sometimes as simple soldier or as BlackOp. The story only was about the missions, not about the person sitting behind the gun. An idenfitication with your character simply failed under these circumstances. Many players didn't like that. So like in the ArmA addon Queens Gambit BI is counting on special characters. In ArmA 2 you play in a 5-man US Marine Corps team. This squad called Razor consists out of individualists, who even have an own biography.
master Sergeant Patrick Miles joined the army with 19. Through outstanding duty in Iraq he was made leader of the Razor team. Other team members are Chad Rodriguez (heavy weapons), Brian O'Hara (medic), Randy Sykes (sniper) and Matt Cooper (grenades).
As soon as this squad enters combat you can switch between the characters as you like. In addition you can controll the behaviour of your men.
A reworkes version of the ArmA command-system will be also found in the second part. The developers still work on a more user-friendly handling. For example you don't have to order assaults via keyboard anymore, but your mouse will automatically recognize if your sending your men into cover or if they have to engage a target. Soldiers now even use cover on their own and spy around corners. This is because of the new micro-AI system. It gives the soldiers the possiblity to behave acurat in special situations, like moving around objects, take cover or give suppressive fire.
"The micro AI is a real break-though for us" says Marek. With the new technic fights shall be a lot more exciting. "A fight with 5 enemys now is a real challenge.
Different to CoD4:Modern Warfare events aren't scripted. AI is reacting to each situation on their own. Sounds good, but lead to some funny situations in the first versions of the prequel, when your own men cleared a whole city without your support or needed patrols didn't make it to their designation. But BI worked hard on this part, promises Marek.

A bit more complicated will be sending whole armys into battle. There will be battles in Armed Assualt 2 with up to 100 men on each side. How many you will command yourself is still uncertain. At the moment you have around 30 soldiers under your command including tanks and gunships. For commanding these masses effectivly a new system called "High Command System" is designated to help you. This works similar to a strategy game, where you select your units from a top-view and send them around on the map. Though this feature wasn't finished in the showed version, you even shall be able to change the direction your units are viewing. But still you will take part in the battle.

The massive enviroment in ArmA 2 includes 230 km^2. This time the developers even took real terrain as archetype. They simply took a part from CZ and changed in into the country Chernarus. Beaches and souther flair as seen in ArmA won't be found anywhere. Instead you have untouched forests, vast plains and big cities, like Chernogorsk.
Many missions are no longer set in open air, but in bombed houses or factories, since the developers want to put close quaters combat more into the foreground. Another new technic will make destructible buildings possible. With the right weapons you will be able to destroy buildings completly. The cool thing: The holes in houses can be used to shoot through. (This system wasn't finished, too in the shown version) How many houses will be destroyable is still uncertain. But we guess that only a small part of a city will have this system.

A label of the serie has always been the very acurate vehicles. More than 50 ground and air vehicles will be included in ArmA 2, like the russion T-90, or the Hind. A view into the cockpit reveals details, players are only used to in flight simulators. Even a small fan is turning.
But that's not everything. Anti-Air measures like the Tunguska tank or the BTR-90 for transporting troops are included as well. In fact you know many of these vehicles from the prequels, but even new things made in into the game, like the MV-22 Osprey, which can be seen on the DVD.
In addion there are civilian vehicles, but not old cars like the brand Lada or tractors. This time you can find modern VW Golfs for example. (A hint for the strong German community?)
Coming to weapons the developers also have amazing knowledge. Ivan Buchta, responsible for the design of the enviroment, turns out as a real expert on this area. With bright eyes he tells us about the real examples of the over 50 weapons you can use, including over a dozen variants of the AK-47. Fights won't be just simulated, but calculated accuratly. Ballistics consists out of factors like deflection or the stuff the material is made of. "If a bullet hits your leg, it has been really fired and it's flying path correctly calculated.

At the end some things about the engine. Such a huge world with millions of objects and dynamic acting AI eats a lot of ressources. This is one point why ArmA 2 isn't shining like Crysis or CoD4. Nether the less, modern Direct-X-10 graphics and multi-core-cpus will be supported. Another thing Marek is pointing out: Why should tanks and choppers glare and have complex effects, when in just doens't simulate reality?
BI stays true to his way of developing games not following the mainstream. On the one hand there is the danger do develope past the main markets, but on the other hand the fans of the realistic fights will thank it the guys from CZ, so Marek Spanel can stay a very relaxed man.


Conclusion:
After the visit in CZ I had to play a round ArmA at first. Thanks to many patches it's much better then at the start. A prove for the work the developers are still putting into their products and how importent a working community is for them. 'cause since ArmA is a born-and-bred simulation, BI is listing properly to the fans and what they like or dislike. The results flow directly into ArmA 2. The properly greatest defect was the AI which stays under observation. Only a test of the final product will show, if the new micro AI works. But on the sector for military games there is no ways past the developers from CZ.

Original article by Robert Horn.