W0lle ArmA 2 preview in Armaholic.com forums

[Snake Man]

W0lle posted his ArmA 2 preview into Armaholic.com forums here.

Alright here's my GC report, at least that what I can remember:

I visited BIS at the GC on Friday. And what I've seen in the more then six hours was anything then I expected. Even though it was an early version, it was running very stable on both PCs except the one or other CTD. Compared to ArmA this is something totally different while familiar at the same time, with different lightning effects depending on the weather situation and time of day. You literally can feel a rain coming in for example. You might say "We have that already" but it's still something different and hard to explain actually. Lightning comes from different sources like street lamps, vehicles or the light of the moon and stars.
A much better AI then what we have now, even though not completely done yet. I've seen fightings going on in the woods and each time I've seen the same scene the behaviour of the AI was different.
Here are some of the things I remember:

- Even more realistic tides and stars
- Village signs are in cyrillic
- Better animations then we have now
- Improved lightning, no more shining vehicles when sunlight falls on them
- More fractions on each side: USMC vs. Russia and also two local fractions on each side
- Very dense road network with a lot of dirt tracks going into the landscape. I played around with it for like an hour, driving and running around in Chernarus. I got lost several times, despite the dense road network
- No trains, the tracks are just to improve the scenery
- No rivers or streams but small lakes
- Most buildings are not be enterable, but almost each one is destroyable. If they get too much damage they collapse like in ArmA
- Very nice church with incredible details
- Many, many different vehicles, actually too many to remember but: Crossbike, Mountainbike, BMP-1, BMP-2 and BMP-3, T-90, Avenger HMMWV, Mi-24, Kamov, PV3S, Ural with ZU-23, Tunguska, LAV-25. The editor menus are full of different vehicles and these in different configurations
- The BMP-3 has 3 gunner positions (2x front MGs, 1x main gun), the Mi-17 has gunners in the side door, rear door and the front.
- M1 with loader position, without a loader the gunner must switch to loader position and reload, then switch back to fire
- Both F-35 and Osprey take off vertically, but not sure if the AI can too
- Aimpoint optics looking much better now
- Player can interact with all units when he is near them and AI starts to forget about things, example:
Some russian tanks passed a village before.
If you ask someone in the village about tanks in the area after two days, they might say: yes there were 4 tanks going through yesterday
If you ask them 2 weeks after they passed, they might say: Yes there might have been tanks but i can't remember
- Campaign can be played with up to 4 players. It's not limited to that but because in the campaign there are only 4 members in the force recon team.
- Womans and many other civilians, old and young ones which fit perfectly into the area
- Civilians randomly move around in villages. While i was walking around in a village suddenly some russian patrol was there while the area was clear as I started
- Animals: Dog, Rabbit, Boar, Sheep, wild pig and a few more
- Editor is the same one we know already but has now a debug console where you can do all kind of stuff like pausing the game and fly with the camera around
- The command interface is slightly different, like order your men in a vehicle is now: Select them -> 9 –> Complex command -> Get in vehicle
- The vehicles are extremely detailed, like moving instruments, retracting gear, electronics in the wheel well, scratches
- Wounded units roll on the ground in pain
- Wounded or dead units can be dragged or carried
- Dualcore support, one core is used for the Micro-AI

Overall it looks and feels much better then ArmA, even if you consider that it's an early version. In fact, I haven't expected it to be like this

I was at CM too and what I've seen there was anything then impressing. Most of the time you either seen render images or video stills. At BIS I've seen a game running in front of me all over the time, paused only to show some details. A game I was able to use, to drive or walk around in it and not just a huge presentation with selected stuff. I was able to say, show me this and can I see that and it was shown to me. No chance for BIS to show only what has been done yet.

Big thanks to Marek, Jan and the Idea guys for a great day, their patience with me and the chance to see and use ArmA2 live.

Source armaholic.com.