Forums | MacLife

Bat · 2009-06-23 7:37 pm

[Jun 22, 2009, 11:17 am ET]

A post from last week on the Bohemia Interactive Forums says we can expect a playable demo for ARMA II this week. The sample of the now-gold military shooter sequel as early as today (thanks Ant and Joss). Word is:

Demo will be released next week, I expect monday or tuesday. We are now testing it, as we cut a lot of data and landscape it's quite difficult to not forget anything. Size will be around 2 GB.

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board. … adid=99308

...following

ARMA II in NA Next Month [Jun 22, 2009, 09:36 am ET]

Bohemia Interactive and Got Game Entertainment announce July 7 as the North American release date for ARMA II, the military shooter sequel that was just released in Europe. Here's the deal:

Prague, Czech Republic, June 22nd - Bohemia Interactive, creators of award winning military simulation Operation Flashpoint* and ArmA: Combat Operations and Got Game Entertainment, US leading publisher of interactive entertainment games, announced today their partnership for the North American retail release of ARMA II, one of the most anticipated PC Game of 2009. The two companies have partnered together to bring the game to most major retail outlets throughout North America this July.

Bohemia Interactive once invented the genre of realistic military sand-box games and it aims now to re-define that genre with its upcoming game ARMA II, the ultimate military simulator, powered by the 3rd generation of their original Real Virtuality engine that's also used to train soldiers in numerous countries from Australia to the United States.

"North America is one of the most powerful and important markets in terms of a game's marketing and distribution," said Marek Spanel, Bohemia's CEO. Spanel continues "We were looking for responsible and credible partners who will focus on ARMA II with the kind of drive and enthusiasm that this huge project deserves. We feel Got Game Ent. will be the right partner for us and I believe together we will make ARMA II a success in North America."

"We are very excited to bring ARMA II to the North American market," said Got Game Entertainment President Howard Horowitz. "This caliber of game brings Got Game Entertainment to a new level of excellence and certainly ushers in a new era for our company."

ARMA II will offer the ultimate realistic combat simulation experience in a modern day setting. With unprecedented freedom of movement, actions and tactics, unbeatable detailed weapons and military hardware, easy-to-use built in mission editor and one of the most dedicated online communities around. The game will allow players to immerse themselves into the battle as never before.

ARMA II is scheduled for an in store Date of July 7th, 2009. For more information please visit the official homepage at www.arma2.com and www.GotGameEntertainment.com

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board. … adid=99306

MacMonkey · 2009-06-24 3:08 am

Seen the trailer. Looks like a fully-done version of America's Army. But no can haz mac? sad

NightCougar_37 · 2009-06-24 4:16 am

There was an ARMA I? confused

Bat · 2009-06-24 5:04 am

There sure was an ArmA. I've mentioned it before. Heck, Wal-Mart carried it.

I'm pretty sure there's no OSX version, as there was none of ArmA or the first game, Operation Flashpoint, either. Sorry, MacMonkey.

There's not enough market to be profitable. What there was was gutted by Boot Camp. Only a few big games, like The Sims family, Spore, and the occasional racing game seem to make it; a few exceptions here and there. Sims 3 (Mac) is selling quite well via direct download and (likely) retail box.

Bat · 2009-06-24 5:10 am

E.g.,

http://www.gogamer.com/ArmA-Gold-Editio … ewprod.htm

http://www.gogamer.com/Armed-Assault--I … ewprod.htm

Bat · 2009-06-27 3:19 am

ARMA II Demo [Jun 25, 2009, 10:44 am ET]

Though it's not yet reflected on the ARMA II Website, the promised playable demo for the military shooter sequel from Bohemia Interactive Studios is now available. This forum post (thanks I Love Slippery Jim) lists download locations for the demo, and offers a tip to install the latest DirectX 9 Redistributable for those encountering a "Demo failed to launch, X3DAudio1_6.dll was not found" error. Here's word on the demo:

The fictional post-Soviet state of Chernarus provides the location for all the action in ArmA II and gamers will have the opportunity to explore its highland area in the demo version, along with the small Chernarussian island of Utes. More specifically, the ‘boot camp’ missions are all available which act as tutorials for the game’s many disciplines including helicopter flight, unit command and base construction. In addition, the full single player mission ‘Trial By Fire’ from the main campaign and the multiplayer map ‘Mini Warfare’, allowing ArmA fans the chance to trial three multiplayer modes, are included in the demo. A selection of over 20 vehicles, over 25 weapons and various soldier and civilian models will be included, although these represent only a fraction of those available in the retail version.

“Distilling ArmA II’s gameplay into a trial sized package has been a bit of a challenge because there is just so much in there that we want to show off,” commented Mark Allen, European Communications Manager for 505 Games. “In the end we’ve decided to be pretty generous, there are five types of rocket launcher in there for starters!”

Often good advice; there's a DX9.0c from March.

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board. … adid=99413

Bohemia Interactive has released a playable demo of ARMA II. The demo weighs in at over 2.8GB, so it's by no means a lightweight. Links:

FileFront
Fileplant
FileShack
Gamer's Hell

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsart … chid=21805

Bat · 2009-07-06 2:38 pm

If you’ve grown tired of the fast-paced yet linear style of military shooters like Call of Duty 4 and want to step up to something more realistic with more open world exploration, Bohemia Interactive's latest tactical simulation, ARMA II is a compelling alternative. Just be prepared to spend an hour or two getting familiar with the game’s controls: when we say this game is a sim, we mean it. If you’re the type who misses the days when sims from companies like Microprose, Spectrum Holobyte, and Jane’s Longbow series were the norm rather than the exception*, you’ll feel right at home with ARMA II (with the only omission being the 200-page manuals that shipped with the aforementioned games).

In the game you’ll play the role of Razor team, part of the 27th Marine Expeditionary Unit that’s been dispatched to the fictional nation of Chernarus. Chernarus is a former satellite state of the Soviet Union, with a pro-West democratic government trying to fight off a mixture of different factions including insurgents with no real allegiance to anyone, and Soviet-backed Communist forces who are intent on taking over the country. Your unit of Marines is the first to arrive on the scene; it’s up to you and your men to sort things out with your trusty M4 assault rifles and M249 SAW machine guns.

The game utilizes Bohemia Interactive’s Real Virtuality 3 game engine. According to Bohemia, RV3 is built on shader model 3, with support for parallax texture mapping, hemispherical lighting, and multi-core CPUs (according to the minimum system requirements, a dual-core CPU and shader model 3.0 GPU are required). The game takes place in a 225 square kilometer area based on real satellite imagery of Eastern Europe and features a realtime day/night cycle with dynamic wind and weather. The game’s physics engine also models real bullet ballistics, material penetration, and round deflection.
..

In any case, the game has a ton of different graphics options available in the graphics menu, so you’ll want to spend a good chunk of time playing with different settings in order to optimize the game’s performance for your particular system. End users have reported playable frame rates out of GeForce 7800 and Radeon 3800-class hardware if you’re willing to compromise on the graphics settings.

Besides performance, another topic that’s frequently discussed with ARMA II is bugs. Honestly we didn’t run into the blue screens, lockups, or any other show-stopping bugs others have mentioned online – the game was 100% stable on both testbeds with ATI and NVIDIA hardware. No graphical glitches or artifacts either.

3D Performance with ARMA II Demo *puts hand up

Bat · 2009-07-12 9:06 pm

NVIDIA releases SLI profile patch for ARMA II

As we noted in last week's ARMA II 3D performance article, at this time the game doesn't scale properly with multi-GPU technologies such as SLI and CrossFire.

To address this issue, NVIDIA has released a beta SLI profile patch that adds SLI profiles for this game as well as Anno 1404: Dawn of Discovery. Before installing the SLI patch though you'll need to have ForceWare 186.18 installed.

Now perhaps the 35 f/s barrier can be exceed. Crossfire also in Cat 9.7? Know soon.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsart … chid=21858

Forums | MacLife

#1 2009-06-23 7:37 pm

ARMA II Demo, Game Near

#2 2009-06-24 3:08 am

Re: ARMA II Demo, Game Near

#3 2009-06-24 4:16 am

Re: ARMA II Demo, Game Near

#4 2009-06-24 5:04 am

Re: ARMA II Demo, Game Near

#5 2009-06-24 5:10 am

Re: ARMA II Demo, Game Near

#6 2009-06-27 3:19 am

Re: ARMA II Demo, Game Near

#7 2009-07-06 2:38 pm

Re: ARMA II Demo, Game Near

#8 2009-07-12 9:06 pm

Re: ARMA II Demo, Game Near

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