Update: Mirrors and some troubleshooting tips in this thread.
The demo of soldiering giganto-sim Arma II, which contains a surprisingly large chunk of the full game – including a limited version of the extremely versatile scenario editor – is now available. Get it here.
The demo comes to just under 3gb, but it’s an essential download for those of you who want to check out compatibility and performance issues before buying. And anyone else vaguely interested in the game, obviously. I’ve been caning the full thing for the best part of two weeks, and I’ve kept delaying the RPS review because, well, I just keep finding more stuff to do in it. I’ll stop tinkering and post full impressions early next week. Launch trailer and full demo content details below.
From BIS:
Overview of the demo content:
Boot Camp:
———-
Boot camp provides you with several scenarios which can help you to better enjoy the ArmA 2 demo.
To play the scenarios, start the game and select SingleplayerBootcamp from the main menu. The following tutorials are available:
Basic Training – You can learn the basics of the game controls, movement and principles of first aid and infantry combat in this tutorial. If you’re new to the world of military simulations, it is strongly recommended to learn these basics.
Parachute Jump – In this tutorial, you have a chance to try precision-jumping with a steerable parachute.
Helicopter – Learn the basics of helicopter flight, transportation of troops and attack chopper tactics.
Team – Learn the basics of your team’s command and control. This tutorial will teach you how to command your subordinates and manage your team.
High Command – You are often given command of whole groups in the bigger battles (e.g. Death Valley scenario). This tutorial describes the basics of the high-commander’s job.
Construction – In a large-scale scenarios (Death Valley in the demo), you can construct defenses, HQ buildings or structures which enable you to enroll certain unit types.
This tutorial will teach you the basics of the construction interfaces.Singleplayer:
————-
Three scenarios and an editable mission template are featured in the demo. Scenarios are accessible from the main menu’s Singleplayer > Scenarios section.Trial by Fire – A marine assault team is inserted on the Utes island to capture an OPFOR base. To successfully complete this mission, advance together with the rest of your team, follow your orders and avoid being too brave.
Death Valley – Small mission to introduce and also teach you how to use the RTS/FPS blend mode for ArmA 2 – The Warfare mode.
In this large-scale battle, your objectives are to capture all strategic locations or destroy all structures on the enemy base in your area of operation.
It is recommended to play Team, High Command and Construction tutorials before you start playing this mission.Benchmark – This scenario is an unplayable cinematic benchmark test that will help you determine the best setting for playing ArmA 2 on your computer or to compare your hardware. Average FPS is displayed at the end of this scenario.
Mission Template: Basic – To start this mission template, activate “My missions…”, select “
”, “01:Basic”, choose the side you want to play for, and edit the mission conditions. Multiplayer:
————It’s possible to play a multiplayer battle or customize some of the available mission templates.
To start the template-based multiplayer, select “<
>” and select from the list of available templates. Note that templates are customizable, and you may prepare many variations of existing setups. Death Valley – Multiplayer version of the scenario. Up to 16 players may take part in this battle. In “Create game”,
Multiplayer Mission Template: Deathmatch – Free-for-all fight for up to 16 players.
Multiplayer Mission Template: Team Deathmatch – Two teams fight in a small area. Up to 16 players may play in this scenario.
Multiplayer Mission Template: Seize The Area – Cooperative scenario for up to 6 players, whose task is to eliminate all hostile units in a designated area.Mission editor:
—————
Limited version of Mission Editor is present in the demo. Note that it’s not possible to either save or load a custom mission in the demo.Check http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/ArmA:_Mission_Editor to learn more about the basic features of the editor.
And those system specs:
Minimal PC System Requirements
• Dual Core CPU (Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, Intel Core 2.0 GHz, AMD Athlon 3200+ or faster)
• 1 GB RAM
• GPU (NVIDIA GeForce 7800 / ATI Radeon 1800 or faster) with Shader Model 3 and 256 MB VRAM
• Windows XPRecommended PC System Requirements
• Quad Core CPU or fast Dual Core CPU (Intel Core 2.8 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or faster)
• 2 GB RAM
• Fast GPU (NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT or ATI Radeon 4850 or faster) with Shader Model 3 and 512 or more MB VRAM
• Windows XP or Vista
Related Stories:
Hmm, maybe, as the devs have been saying this would eventually be fixed. Also, I mis-spoke earlier, I shouldn’t have said that all shadows get disabled with AA, rather, most do but not all. You might want to try to turning AA off and turning shadows up to max, to verify that you’re not losing any shadowing effects, because for me it was a pretty big difference.
1920*1200, everything very high including AA, 2KM, 30fps stable in the first mission.Prettiest game on the market, reality-wise.
I downloaded the demo and installed it then Michael Palin burst into my room dressed like a Catholic cardinal and started throwing marshmellows at me until I uninstalled it. Otherwise I would have enjoyed it I’m sure.
1920 x 1280, “Very High” settings. Beautiful. Smoove.
I do have one question.
I was playing the training missions when I went to the anti-tank range when suddenly gunfire rang out, my CO leapt to the ground, and I was shot dead.
…why?
A lot of fun, and I will probably buy. Couldn’t land a chopper for toffee though, even with my new snazzy joystick.
P.
Champion Hyena ) something very similiar happened to me when I was playing Arm-A’s bootcamp. I was doing the M16 shooting range and had an almost perfect score (good enough for getting to try the sniper rifle) and then suddenly my CO freaked out and I was arrested O.o No idea why.
Maybe you carried a weapon you shouldn’t have beyond where it was suposed to be or accidently fired near someone I dunno.
Paul it can be a B trying to land a chopper by hovering slowly down onto the ground. Can be a bit easier if you fly forward , then lower your power until you’re falling and at the last second flare and pull back so that your chopper lands gentle on the back first then the nose lands a few seconds later. Really useful for choppers with wheels , and semi useful for black hawks and the like.
When I try to hover land I always end up sliding side ways and knocking over a truck or something.
@Champion Hyena, Railick
AFAIK, the shots fired were by the lads “dressed as insurgents” (as the CO says, it’s the option 2) who are in the village down the road, if you take too long they wander towards you and shoot at you. The CO drops automatically. Bless Dynamic Gameplay! Or that’s what happened in mine.
Also, in the nearby crate, there are a few weapons for which the models were not provided in the demo, leading to a hideous aiming experience for me, when I tried to use the optics. =( I thought it was funny up until that point. =)
I get A AUDIO ERROR WHEN TRYING TO START ANYBODY ESE?!
@FGF maybe it is because your capslock key is on
@ Pavel & ChampionHyena
What are your system specs for reference?
@Ed
Sorry but if your card does not have SM3.0 it was FAR from “decent a year ago”. SM3.0 has been standard since GeForce 6 times and that it, what, 4 years ago? Maybe 5?
Your card would have to be of GeForce FX age and that is just decrepit.
@Howard so if I got a Geforce 7300 GT it should have SM3.0?
@Railick
Well obviously not. That is not how GFX card ranges work, as well you know I think =P
Point is that a mid to high card from the last 4 generations of cards would be SM3.0 compliant. Citing ridiculously low level stuff that is not designed for 3D work is unhelpful.
Hmm, so a couple of hours downloading later I install the game but launching it pops up an error message about a DX sound dll not being found. Looks like Bohemia decided to make it dependent on a specific version but couldn’t be arsed to include the redistributable in the demo. This is the good thing about demos, if the developer can’t be bothered to make sure they work properly it’s a fairly good clue about the game as a whole. Another £25 saved.
FFS it runs like a crippled donkey on my machine, what is with releasing demos after the game is out nowdays?!?! now im going to have to SLI it up or some shit, gah… well at least its fecking mighty eh? and i can get it to work on ultra low without massive FPS spasms. My main problem is with the armoury mode. Console style unlocks make baby jkittens masturbate a jebus (thats sooo 2006 sorry) i want to practice in a gunship not the helicopter equivalent of the number 1 on a hot day (aka the dreadfull skybus)
p.s dwarf fortress is the best game ever made by man, PLAY IT!
Don, as posted earlier in the thread you just need to download the latest version of Direct X.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3
Runs fine for me, am I lucky? Q6600/Radeon 4870/4GBs/XP; at 1280×960 with most normal, some high, settings, I get around 55 to 75 FPS.
P.
I hate to be… that guy… but does anyone know for certain if the retail version has 5 activations? I read it somewhere unofficial and can’t find anything other than the fact that there’s *no* securom on the steam release.
One word… WANT.
I find it mildly disquieting that the MOUT course in the boot camp involves live ammo and blood and dieing. I kept waiting for a “Oh look! The MOUT course has been overrun with real enemies, time to put your training to good use!” But, instead… I just kept getting the sinking feeling that I was a soldier on a FF rampage.
too late… I just ordered it from cdwow haha
how much better does this game look compared to the first? I’m on vaca and won’t be able to grab it until next week..
Shawn, there is a good amount of videos in youtube.
Am I the only one who is finding the mouse “floaty” in this game. It seems to carry on moving in a direction after I stop the mouse. Very annoying.
Pink: have a play with the mouse settings, there’s probably something not configured quite right.
Re general performance issues: it’s running fine at 1440, on a 2ghz dual core with an 8800 GTS, but I did put simple shadows on, which is fairly ugly.
@Nafe: Just a CD key.
Also, I love the mouse dead zone option, so you can aim a little without moving your whole view. More games should use it.
Oh wow. That was an experience. Just spent an hour playing with this demo and I am utterly bewildered. Are you guys playing a different game to me or is this rampant fanboy-ism running amok? This game is all over the show. Just playing the demo and you are treated to a list of bugs as long as your arm and the performance is considerably worse than I ever could have imagined it to be. So to put it is context, here are my system specs:
C2D @3.1 gig
3 GIG of stupidly fast memory
GeForce 260GTX OC” (i.e. it runs at 280 GTX speeds)
400 gig RAID 0 SATA 2 array.
Not the fastest rig in the world by a long chalk, but no slow poke either.
First up I selected my resolution (1600×1200 – optimal for my monitor) and the game selected “Very High” from the main drop down. Fine; let’s try that. Played the boot camp and it is immediately clear what a mess the engine is. HUGE, epic, world-ending mouse lag, ridiculous pop-up, horrible redraw levels for retexturing, aliasing that veritable “buzzes” it is so bad and the most over-used depth-of-field effect I have ever experienced. Here’s a hint lads: DOF is supposed to imitate the way a human eyes works, focussing on one part of the screen and blurring the rest. Bohemia, on the other hand, have used it to blur out everything beyond about 10 metres in front of me. Apparently my character is myopic and his focal point is somewhere south of his own navel. All that aside the performance did not seem *too* bad. Then you realise why: there is nothing on screen. As soon as you get to a situation where anything happens your happy 30-40 FPS turns into a less impressive 10-15 and there by becomes unplayable.
So, after toiling about, struggling to find any way point I was given (another hint: if you have to give me markers on the landscape to signify objectives, don’t make then TINY yellow marker on a mostly green background, particularly if you are going to have an engine that is so over saturated and blurred. They are simply invisible), I completed the boot-camp (another hint: if I am stationary, crouched, holding my breath, aiming down the sights of a gun at a target less than 10 metres away while remaining utterly stationary, I HIT the damned thing. Another hint: bullets travel fast. Very fast. It does NOT take a full second for a bullet to travel 3 metres. Ever. Not once. Really.) and head off to a proper mission. (Last point about the Boot camp – Yes, the soldiers who are “on exercise in the nearby village” DO start to shoot the shit out of you for absolutely no reason. Apparently my hummer offended them…nice…)
Marching out into your first battlefield you get to see exactly how crippled the engine is. 10 FPS is order of the day so I go to the options menu to turn stuff down. First thing I notice, with some amusement, is that selecting “Very High” from the drop down means no such thing. The global setting Very High apparently means “Mostly High With a Lot of Stuff on Normal”. Interesting. Anyway, I knock the global setting down to high and gain…5 fps. Humph. Okay, let’s knock it down to Normal… another 5 fps. Wow, 25 FPS: we’re cooking now! Okay then, time to fiddle with individual settings. After much fiddling it becomes apparent that shadows need to be on normal for anything to have a hope of functioning, and that if you set the over-render thingie to anything below 100% the game looks terrifyingly bad. Fine. AF and AA seem to have, startlingly, limited impact and while knocking the texture detail down brings SOME FPS gains, it is not worth the sacrifice. Post Processing seems to be the most FPS damaging setting which regrettably makes the least amount of sense. Turning it off offers a huge performance boost but then you are also treated to a step behind the magician’s curtain. With PP turned off the actual quality of the renderer becomes apparent and everything starts to look very familiar. Is that you under there, Operation Flashpoint? I see you’ve stuck grass, trees and bits of crap all over yourself (very poorly rendered ones too), and you’ve gone and gotten yourself some better rendered humans but beneath it all beats the heart of a truly, diabolically, ugly game.
So, settings fiddled with and a mind-numbing FPS of 25 settled on, I head of into battle. Or rather I don’t. What I do do is stand about silently for 5 minutes while the AI whispers odd announcements to each other and huge hills of dirt magically appear, then disappear only to, again magically, be replaced by a military base. Fun stuff. We are then told to head to a check point. A checkpoint that is a bloody kilometre away! Can I get in on of the 5 APCs? Oh no. How about the tanks or jeeps? Sod right off! This is the Army: we walk everywhere! So, winded, disorientated and generally confused I arrive at the waypoint just in time to see my AI buddies clean out the entire village we are supposed to be assaulting. Apparently I was superfluous to requirements. But wait! They have given me another way point. Of course it comes with no instructions or information but hey, it’s something.
Off I trot. Arriving at said indicated spot I find a tiny and completely empty structure festooned with camo-netting. Upon approaching it a huge progress bar appears on my screen. Fun, what’s that for? Well, after watching it for 5 minutes, apparently nothing. It slowly ticked down but once it had disappeared there were zero visible results. Well at least it seems I did something…? But lawks! A new checkpoint for little old me, and by Jove if it isn’t another kilometre away! My heart all aflutter I jog out of the mini-base and, miracle of miracles, see my first enemy! An enemy APC has been spotted, apparently by a satellite ‘cos the bleeder was MILES away, and I am told to attack it. So, remembering that this convenient zooming device I have been carting round also doubles as some kind of fire-arm, I leap heroically behind a defensive sand-bag wall and wait for the APC to approach. It, however, has other plans. Although it is over 500 metres away, down hill utterly unable to see me, although there are at least 5 of my sides vehicles dotted about much closer along with 10 infantry and one stationary support gunner, he aims directly at me, right through the sand-bags and kills me in one shot.
An hour of paddling about looking at horrible graphics with nausea inducing camera bob and migraine inducing mouse-lag all to fire precisely zero shots, see no enemies and die thanks to shonky AI. Yep, this is the perfect sequel to ArmA…absolutely perfect…
“Also, I love the mouse dead zone option, so you can aim a little without moving your whole view. More games should use it.”
Is that why Mr Pink is finding it “floaty”?
P.
If your point is that it’s not a gamey enough for just anyone.. Well, you’ve got me convinced.
Other than that, your mini-review was nothing like my own experience, but I am of the sort to turn off post processing right away in any game.
@Paul Moloney
No, the mouse dead zone option is off by default and all it does is give the kind of aiming you got in OFP.
The floaty mouse thing is mouse-lag, which ARMA II has in spades and I can find no way to get rid of.
My previous post obviously a reply to Howard :)
–
No the deadzone is off by default, I think the floatyness comes from simple mouse lag. Getting a good amount of fps first will help to mitigate, and after that I personally didn’t find it disturbing, it just requires more active aiming. I’m wondering if its even intended, altho it seems stupid.
@D
I gathered it was for me but what did you mean exactly?
Well my own time was not a perfect experience either, but I had a lot more fun with the demo than with the entirety of ARMA 1, years back.
It’s more of the same, so if you’re not the sort to like OPF/ARMA1 then it should be a given that you didn’t like ARMA2.
@D
But that is just it. I adored OPF and played it to death. I was waiting outside HMV, nose pressed to teh glass on launch day for both its expansions and I played them to death too!
Now I grant that OFP was damned buggy as well but it was at least fully playable very quickly after release. Also we have to consider how much that game was pushing the boundaries of what we though games could do so it got away with a lot more.
All these year on and all Bohemia seem interested in is adding more and more graphical bells and whistles to their engine while utterly breaking their own games.
Howard,
“(another hint: if I am stationary, crouched, holding my breath, aiming down the sights of a gun at a target less than 10 metres away while remaining utterly stationary, I HIT the damned thing. Another hint: bullets travel fast. Very fast. It does NOT take a full second for a bullet to travel 3 metres. Ever. Not once. Really.)”
Firstly, you can’t hold your breath forever. Just hold it when you want to shoot. You should not be missing much on that range.
Secondly, a full second? There’s something seriously wrong there – the bullet mechanics are top notch.
@Jim
Yup, a full second.
I was crouched, during said mission, in a gateway. I stuck my back against the right hand wooden post and fired at the left hand wooden post. it took one, whole, English second for the impact to show up.
And I didn’t miss “that much”, but it was enough to annoy me. Think I missed 4 targets and not one of them was my fault.
that last comment was “@JM”
Gah! We need edit back!
Do you still have “hold breath” bound to the RMB along with zoom? I decoupled them so I wouldn’t end up out of breath all the time.
In the full game I have no problems with the bullet mechanics – close range stuff is instant, long range stuff as you’d expect. Not sure why you’re seeing what you’re seeing.
I see your point. I’m still on the fence myself. And to be honest, I’d wished it would be more accessible than it is. We’re more demanding of streamlined gameplay these days and Bohemia hasen’t been keeping up with it.
But when I hear complaining (not from you so much :) ) about confusion and inability to spot enemies – I just think “well, find a better suited game” because it simply isn’t for everyone.
It’ll be interesting to see if OPF2 is going to grab this presumably huge casual-military-sim-fan.
Oh man am I slow huh. That was for Howard again :)
@JM
yeah, I separated them – stupid design them being together, tbh.
I imagine it is a result of the engine running so badly. I am likely getting lag as I would online as the engine is flapping about trying to render everything (badly).
Interestingly I’ve just been messing about with the benchmark (didn’t spot it at first). If I put everything to max details (actual max, not global settings max) at 1600×1200 I get an average of 16 FPS in the benchmark.
If I change this down to global Very High, I get 18. Global high 22.
If I drop the res to 1280×1024 (another thing the engine cannot handle as you cannot set refresh rates manually…sigh…) at Very high I get 20FPS and High I get 24. Gaining 2 FPS per resolution drop or full details downgrade: yeah, great engine…
Also I understand that there must be something horribly wrong with your installation, and that will ofcourse insta-ruin any game. You should consider trying it again after a patch or two, I found the demo quite “fun”!
@D
Oh yeah, I have no complaints about the difficulty. Anyone who has soldiered through the ioriginal OFP campaigns will have no issue there. My complaint is functionality. As far as I can see they have done nothing to fix the issues of ARMA 1 (AI is still a shambles) and while I am not demanding that the game should run flat out on my rig, I am demanding that it should be playable at a REASONABLE amount of detail. However the only way to get a playable framerate is to turn the detail down so far that I cannot actually see what the hell I am shooting at or being shot by.
“Are you guys playing a different game to me”
Wow, it does seem like it alright. I was very impressed on how smoothly it ran and how slick it was. I wasn’t at all impressed with the Arma I demo and, hearing about the issues surrounding the sequel, I definitely wanted to check out the demo of II before I even thought about buying it, especially since I’ve never really played soldier sims before. I was impressed with the performance, the tutorials, the interface and even the fact that it automatically picked up all my joysticks settings (something Flight Sim X couldn’t do). Go figure. I wonder are the wildly different performance issues related to video drivers?
P.
@Paul M
Well I’ve got the lastest drivers and updates as I always do so I doubt it. Odd you should say that it picked up your joystick perfectly. Even though I have a Sidewinder, probably the most popular joystick ever, I had to teach ARMA all about it before it would talk to it properly and even then it still thinks the throttle control is not an analogue slider.
Regarding tutorials and whatnot: sure they are reasonably clear, but with the issues around the objective markers being barely visible and your own men in boot camp thinking you are part of the target practice the experience is more than a little lessened.
Since posting I have continued to try and make this work smoothly but I simply cannot. The only way to get even CLOSE to smooth is to take most of the details to normal or below and that is simply not gonna fly with me.
If you have issues with the game, let the devs know directly:
Full game feedback: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=75537
Demo feedback: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=76187
Actually, just for the sake of honesty, I have to admit I checked nvidia’s site just now and realised that I am a release behind on drivers! Oh noes! lol They are just the WHQL release of what I am using anyway, but, like a good sport, I downloaded them and installed them.
And man! what a difference! That 1 frame per second extra has changed my world. =) Sorry, will stop with the sarcasm now
Anyway, I am now able to get a whole 25 FPS average (dipping to 17 (eek!)) and going as high as 29. Still utter rubbish
@SlipperyJim
You are probably right but you will have to forgive my cynicism. As far as I can see ARMA 1 barely got any better after hundreds f hours of feedback so I cannot really see my voice changing anything at all…
More benchmark fun:
1280×1024, Very High Details – 25FPS
1280×1024, High Details – 25FPS
1280×1024, High Details & shadows *disabled* – 26FPS!
This engine is borked beyond my ability to insult it…
It’s an odd one, I played it on my mate’s old Socket 939 dual core athlon with a 4850. I really expecting it to run like a dog due to the 4 year old CPU but it was super smooth at 1920×1200 normal detail and fillrate at 100%.
I’m on 2-gen old Catalyst drivers (9.4), but that’s because 9.5 and 9.6 have caused frequent freezing on my system when playing videos or games; seems to be a common problem.
P.