By Jim Rossignol on February 15th, 2010 at 8:59 am.
Ooh, I completely meant to post this last week, and never clicked the button. Bohemia Interactive Studios have announced the winners of their Community Awards 2009, in which they flag up all the sterling efforts of their busy community. This is awesome for all kinds of reasons, but mostly because it’s good to see a company that relies so heavily on its community making all efforts to thank them for what they’re doing. The full shortlist for the awards can be seen here, and the winners (including that winning machinima video) are posted below. Congratulations to all involved, obviously.
Best Mod / Addon:
A.C.E Advanced Combat Environment for ARMA / ARMA 2
Best Mission / Campaign:
Campaign СВОБОДА (Svoboda) by SARMAT Studio for ARMA 2 (SP)
Best User Created Movie:
Arma 2: Black Hawk Down by Richiepeed13
Best Community Website:
Best Community Member:
Sickboy
Quite a redundant contest, really. ACE2 was going to win no matter what. That said, it really does deserve it – it’s an amazing piece of work that rejigs pretty much everything.
Also, this time I’m totally preempting the inevitable grumpy posts about how nobody ever liked ARMA/ARMA2, they’re completely unplayable, and that anyone who enjoys them is deluded or was bought off by the deveopers.
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You don’t play soldier sims because it’s run-and-gun, switch-your-brain-off fun; you play soldier sims because you want a game that challenges you to remain alert and pay attention.
Anyone who doesn’t like OpFlash/ArmA/ArmAII/other soldier sims just doesn’t like soldier sims. It’s not exactly a crime, but they don’t have much business complaining that ArmAII is too much like a soldier sim and not enough like Modern Warfare 2.
(Anyone who dislikes ArmAII because it’s not like OpFlash/ArmA/some other soldier sim enough probably has a valid opinion, though.)
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I’ll admit to wanting to play the ‘soldier sim’ game you describe and finding out if I like it, but I didn’t get to find that out in the demo. It bugged out repeatedly and I never actually got to do anything other than tutorial stuff. The kind of exciting experience they describe in the RPS Wot I Think? I gotta put up some serious coin and even then that soldier sim synthesis was only achieved by ‘rising above the bugs,’ if you will, which I find difficult at the best of times.
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Yeah, there was no way that ACE2 could possibly lose, haven’t played the BHD mission though, I guess I’ll try it.
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Did the mod sort out the horrible vehicle handeling specifically helicopters. When i mentioned that at release everyone jumped on my back and said “its focus is on infantry” so, not “because they couldn’t make a helicopter which doesn’t fly like its main propellant is helium” I would reply.
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Helicopters seemed fine once I switched to using my 360 controller on my PC. And by fine, I mean “really able to control them to a fine level while still being able to do major maneouvering and dreaming of following those wacky youtube videos of hotdrops in battlezones”
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I misread that as “a company that relies too heavily on its users”. But that would be GSC.
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ACE2 was pretty much a given for best mod. Still glad this got it some coverage, though.
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Arma 2 has a very rich community, being honest this vote doesn’t show that. Some of the best missions / addons didn’t enter to this contest, so people couldn’t vote them.
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Maaaan, everytime I read “BIS”, I think you are talking about Black Isle Studios. And that brings so many good memories back.
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ACE is awesome… My ArmA feels naked without it.
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Wow, I totally didn’t realise that wars happened in slow motion.
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Now you know!
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ACE2 is a superlative mod. ArmA II has an amazing modding community. Credit to the developers though who have provided a fully scriptable and programmable environment to sandbox in.
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All that BHD video does, aside from thinking it is more emotive that it actually is, is highlight how ropey some of the animation is. Everyone stands as stiff as boards at all times.
I still love me a bit of ArmA2 now and then though.
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They shot him in the bum! That’s very emotive!
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It also highlighted how absolutely brilliant some of it is. Watch the final sequence of the running feet, and then think about every game that ever used a running animation that was independent of the character’s actual movement (hint: that would be almost all of them).
Those running feet just about brought a tear to my eye, because it shows that some people are actually doing it right.
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mmmmmm….war porn……
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That video kind of stings. Not intentionally as such, I don’t think — it’s hella ham-handed — but because it highlights a contradiction in my character (and maybe some of yours).
I’m a pacifist. A dove. When soldiers tell me that war is hell, that it is cruelty, that it’s a racket, I believe them. When I hear about the kind of blind, arrogant, disconnected politics, or meat-headed roaring mob fury, that gives rise to wars, I despair for humanity. When I hear about soldiers hewing to their natures and their training and the environment they’re placed into, and gleefully throwing away their humanity for the chance to experience the thrill of indiscriminate massacre and burning hate for their enemies and people who look like their enemies, I want to visit their violence back on them tenfold.
But war… well, it’s cool. It’s beautiful and it’s beautifully ugly. It’s impressive and abhorent. It’s badass and absurd. It’s a stage on which humans sometimes achieve extremely difficult things and push the limits of human bravery, selflessness, competence, cleverness, and even mercy… or push the limits of human cowardice, selfishness, incompetence, stupidity and viciousness. or both, at the same time. It gives rise to awesome sights, especially when it destroys. It’s singularly entertaining to play at war as a game, despite being one of the least enjoyable activities of the modern age. I enjoy military realism for the sake of it and because it gives rise to interesting gameplay, even as I’m aware of it normalising and glorifying and, in some subtle subconscious way, even going some way to justifying war within some part of me.
So, you know… that’s weird and shit.
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I tend to look at it in terms of the Iliad – pretty much the most tangible start of Western culture.
And it’s all about stabbing people in the nipple; the consequences and conversations that result of it is there, but ultimately, it’s about stabbing people in the nipple. Humanity is utterly fascinated with mortality. As gamers we’re probably more infatuated than anyone – it’s a release, and a place to explore killing, without the horrific implications of real-life mortality.
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These two comments sum up why I love RPS.
Thank you all.
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I’d like to install ACE2 but nothing anywhere through those links will give me a download :/
Also that video is pants!
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http://ace.wikkii.com/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions_about_ACE2#How_do_I_install_ACE2_and_related_mods.3F
install this patcher: http://dev-heaven.net/projects/list_files/six-arma-updater
start it with the “Six Updater – GUI” desktop shortcut
on the browser page that opens select ace mod vanilla and click execute
shortcut to start the game is something like steam\steamapps\common\arma 2\arma2.exe” -noSplash -noFilePatching -mod=@CBA;@ACE;@ACEX;@ACEX_SM;@ACEX_PLA
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thanks, got it running now, going to go look for missions that make use of the ACE kit :)
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Info from Arma 2 Operation Arrowhead, btw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDr-PqMSRd4&fmt=22
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probably the most iconic image of soldiering in the 21st century is the black hawk landing and soldiers running out, which is the only thing arma 2 nails. the campagain could have been great with realistic recon marine stuff, but instead it was all dodgy scripting and 4 blokes against whole enemy companies. what a waste.
glad to hear ace is good, will give it a try on of these days
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That video appears to have been made by a student of the Zack Snyder school of movie making.
It’s 2 and a half minutes of glorified violence played at half speed.
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Man, installing ACE 2 requires a few hurdles. As a unix geek I’m not new to rsync, but it feels like a very hamfisted installation method for a Windows system. I was looking at the mod for an upcoming LAN, but it’s not exactly something that everyone there can easily install.
Also, you got spammers in your comments.
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“Relies so heavily on it’s community” being a euphemism for stealing the work of community mods and using them to sell VBS2 to military customers?
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Woo 5 minutes of slow motion. Horrible.
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