Anyone here still play Operation Flashpoint?

[krashkart]

Just got back into OFP after finding the VTE addon (Vietnam: The Experience). I'm tweaking an Unscripted War setup to work with the A Shau Valley island and really enjoying it. The addon team really put some effort into creating a realistic environment to work in. My only major beef is that I can't see anything in the jungles, but then that's how it's supposed to be, right? :) OFP's graphics are dated but I still enjoy playing it. Seems to be a game that never dies -- and well deserving of the longevity.

[Dowly]

Yeah, I fire it up every now and then. Still a great game and the campaign(s)
are great fun. :yep:

Too bad BIS balls'd up the ArmA campaigns. :nope:

[krashkart]

There's something about the open-ended play in OFP that I just can't get away from. If a map gets too boring I can spice it up any way I like. Working with the Unscripted War addon is a lot of fun as it always results in hours of chaos and mayhem -- as long as I don't get shot up in a pitched firefight. I'm thinking of working Unified Artillery into the mix to replace the instant support that I get with UWAR. http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/picture.php?albumid=258&pictureid=2164

I haven't been able to try ArmA yet, but from what I've seen it looks interesting. Beginning some upgrades to my desktop this month, starting with a new power supply; hopefully it won't be long before I can start into some of these newer games.

What's different in ArmA? I can see better graphics, and I've looked at some of the scripting commands, but other than that is there anything special about it that I'm missing out on? And what happened with the campaigns?

[Dowly]

Only played the ArmA 1 stock campaign. It started ok, it was fun to lead your
small strike team and take waaaay too much time to plan your assault. But then
BIS got lazy and just changed the campaign to be basically the Warfare online mode
(kinda like realtime strategy thingamaling, no it's not as fun as it sounds).

As for OFP/ArmA comparisation, I still firmly stand behind what I've said before:
There's not enough new to ask full price for it.

Of course you get new graphics, changes and fixes to the gameplay,
new possibilities for modders and all that, but there still were a lot of things
in ArmA1 that were already an issue in OFP. Think Silent Hunter series, just
less of an clusterfudge. :O:

You should go straight to ArmA 2/Operation Arrowhead or wait for ArmA 3. :yep:

[krashkart]

You should go straight to ArmA 2/Operation Arrowhead or wait for ArmA 3. :yep:

Thanks. I'll take your advice on that. :salute:

If there were enough interest here I'd start a Subsim OFP group. :hmmm:

[Hottentot]

There is a mod for Arma 1 (Cold War Rearmed (http://www.armedassault.info/index.php?cat=authors&id=243)) that converts the original Flashpoint campaigns except Red Hammer to its engine. I haven't touched the original Flashpoint since I found it. I finished the original Cold War campaign, but that was enough for me. Resistance will have to wait.

The campaign was pretty good. It was far less buggy than the original OFP campaign and of course Arma brings much good new stuff such as rolling, proper iron sights and better graphics. I'd say it is 90% the same as the original, but they rewrote some missions and removed some. At least the orinal mission "Convoy" has been done almost from the scratch (and is in my opinion now much better), and then they removed at least two Gastovski missions. One of them was that one where you spot Shilkas in Kolgujev and another is the one where you alone infiltrate Guba's office. The removal of the latter was a good idea in my opinion, but I missed the first one.

My greatest complaint is that they did the voice acting pretty much all over again. Now everyone sounds too young to me and while the original voice acting of Flashpoint wasn't the best of the best, I missed it when I had to listen to the new actors reading their lines from the paper.

All in all I'd still say it's great. And free, so worth a try.

As for Arma itself, I finished the campaign and I can't remember doing anything as brain dead as that for a long time. Some of the early missions were indeed fun, but then it became just dumb. And the ending was one of the most miserable I had ever seen in any game.

[krashkart]

OFP's voice acting could do with a healthy dose of Samuel L. Jackson, IMHO. :yep:

[Dowly]

Only played the ArmA 1 stock campaign. It started ok, it was fun to lead your
small strike team and take waaaay too much time to plan your assault. But then
BIS got lazy and just changed the campaign to be basically the Warfare online mode
(kinda like realtime strategy thingamaling, no it's not as fun as it sounds).


Actually, this is the ArmA 2 stock campaign. :DL

Can't even remember ArmA 1's campaign. :hmmm:

[krashkart]

I barely remember any of the OFP campaigns. Haven't played any of them in a couple years at least. I do remember one Crisis mission that I had a lot of fun with, and I think it was the infiltration mission that Hottentot mentioned. Played that one so many times I had to invent new ways of destroying the island. :D

[Hottentot]

Oh yeah, another thing I struggled with the CWR when building missions. I did two of the latest Flashpoint adventures with it and noticed that for some reason it loves black people. It probably sounds stupid when I say it this way, but I got annoyed how I had to place 10 American soldiers on the map just to find a white skinned Doltstein and then hide the rest in the woods.

They made civilians and resistance black too. I cracked up when I played the original campaign and met the resistance for the first time: a happily grinning black man named Tomas and his likewise dark skinned commander Slava welcomed me to the new African Everon. Only the Russians were still all white.

Another thing that I wondered was why they made the civilians automatically hostile to the East. It became pretty difficult building a mission where I had to for the story purposes use the perspective of a Russian soldier, because suddenly all the civilians would run for cover and the police would start shooting me with their pistols, and there was no way to change it.

[Arclight]

Can't even remember ArmA 1's campaign. :hmmm:
Be thankfull. I remember some kind of strategic map where you could decide what mission to take. The strategic element was nice, but in practice it was just a mechanism that held together a number of botched missions.

The one that made me quit was one where you had to destroy a sizeable convoy. As a sniper...

[krashkart]

The one that made me quit was one where you had to destroy a sizeable convoy. As a sniper...

A sniper with an AMR, I hope...

[Dowly]

Be thankfull. I remember some kind of strategic map where you could decide what mission to take. The strategic element was nice, but in practice it was just a mechanism that held together a number of botched missions.

Oh right, I remember now. :D

[Hottentot]

The one that made me quit was one where you had to destroy a sizeable convoy. As a sniper...

My favorite is still the mission where you infiltrate alone as a black op to a base in order to blow up tanks. The base isn't alerted and you are supposed to do this all without raising an alarm.

The funny part: it's completely random if you raise an alarm or not. I shot a guard in the back of his head when he was alone in a concealed place. He dropped with one shot and immediately there was an alarm.

OK, let's not shoot anyone then. Let's infiltrate the base all sneaky like. Great plan! Except that the base is surrounded by a fence and while you can get the latest night vision goggles, remotely exploded charges and a high precision silenced gun, the army can't issue you standard wire cutters available in any hardware store in the world. This filled me with such twisted mix of anger, sadness and laughter that I even parodied it in the latest adventure,

Later it turned out that there are actually a few holes in the fence that you can and are probably supposed to use. I parodied this as well because it felt even more ridiculous that they fortify their base into an inpregnable fortress and then can't be bothered to check that their fence remains in good condition.

In the end I just ran in, hopped into a tank and shot anything that moved. Stealthy? No, but it got the job done.

[Skybird]

Great games - if ignoring the vehicles's physics and the AI that detoriates from title to title. I just cannot forgive if a platoon walks in column and one man gets shot and falls down, and nobody reacts and they keep on marching as if nothing has happened. And so many other examples that could be mentioned that illustrate that the AI is not just bad, but simply broken.

They should not waste time with adding more and more eye candy and weapons, but they should sit down, do some serious - difficult - homework, and get the AI into a working shape where it actuzally is of any use and reliability. But they don't. Which is the reason why I call them loosers. ArmA1 was worse than Flashpoint, ArmA2 was worse than ArmA1. Will not even consider to buy ArmA3, therefore.

[Arclight]

It's quite alright really, at least in the current OA version. Enemies respond to fire, they are alert and more often than not you'll get shot by the guy that got up on your flank.

Last game we even had to deal with frickin ninjas. Not a clue where the buggers had been hiding. Combed the whole town, nothing. As soon as we turn our backs they come out.


But yeah, physics can be wonky. At least it's the main point (or one of) being adressed in 3.

[Fincuan]

It probably sounds stupid when I say it this way, but I got annoyed how I had to place 10 American soldiers on the map just to find a white skinned Doltstein and then hide the rest in the woods.

...

Another thing that I wondered was why they made the civilians automatically hostile to the East.p

1. Faces can be set with the scripting command setFace

2. Sides can be set to be hostile or friendly to one another with the scripting command setFriendly

[krashkart]

Is there an easy way to place weapons and soldiers on watch towers? I write a script that prints my coordinates to screen on radio command, then script all the positions in later with setPos. The problem with that is remembering how to format the printout, and the time spent writing down all the coordinates. There has to be a better way. :doh:

[Dowly]

You don't need all the coordinates, just put the unit/object over the watch tower
and use the setpos command to move the unit/object to the right height.

unit1 setpos [x,y,z], z being the height.

Or something like that. :O:

[Fincuan]

You can order them to climb towers or enter buildings via simple waypoints in the editor(place the waypoint on top of the object and select "building position xxx" from the waypoints options), but I'm not sure if they'll actually stay up there.

Printing out stuff is best handled via copyToClipboard, which copies the data to the clipboard. It needs a string as input, hence the use of str

copyToClipboard (str (getPosASL _myObject));


You can also use diag_log, which writes any data into your arma2.rpt.

diag_log (getPosASL _myObject);

[krashkart]

You don't need all the coordinates, just put the unit/object over the watch tower
and use the setpos command to move the unit/object to the right height.

unit1 setpos [x,y,z], z being the height.

Or something like that. :O:


That's pretty much what I do, but nailing the exact height is the tricky part.



Suppose I'll have to upgrade to CWA to have use of the get/setPosASL command. :hmmm:

[Fincuan]

Aaah yeah :D

Somehow I just assumed we were talking Arma2 here. I'm not sure if either of those commands exist in the original OFP, but probably not.

[krashkart]

Aaah yeah :D

Somehow I just assumed we were talking Arma2 here. I'm not sure if either of those commands exist in the original OFP, but probably not.

Cold War Assault (OFP 1.99) does include the get/setPosASL commands. :yep: