Author Topic: Arma2 FPS Video Game Weapons, Equipment and Vehicles  (Read 6957 times)

Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Arma2 FPS Video Game Weapons, Equipment and Vehicles
« on: February 01, 2013, 06:48:49 AM »
A couple of months ago I discovered Arma2 and was very impressed with the game play and the incredible attention to detail which up till now I had not seen or for that matter experienced in any of the FPS type games that I had played on my computer.  To say that I was intrigued is an understatement, I was getting sweaty palms and elevated heart beat just watching the live stream and YouTube game play. 

Then I stumbled on the DayZ game mod for ARMA2.  I found this mod to the game to be even more interesting since you are now forced to survive in a post apocalypse environment with zombies and other players that may or may not be friendly.  From the various videos and live streaming I have watched of the game play it seems that almost everyone is a dick when it comes to surviving even in a digital world. 

I was not sure if my computer would support the game but found that was not an issue after installing the free version of Arma2 and running it successfully.  I then leveled up and purchased the download for both Arma2 and Arma2 Operation Arrowhead.  Arma2 OA is necessary if you are to play the DayZ mod and I went one step further and picked up the Private Military Company and British Armed Forces packages to make sure I had access to all of the weapons and equipment found in DayZ, all this by going to GameStop here in Silverdale to physically purchase the download content activation codes.  Then it was back to the house, go on-line to the GameStop page and download the games.   

Once I had the installation all sorted out I was ready to test my mettle against the zombie hordes.  Well that was a very painful first time experience.  My first foray into DayZ was disastrous, I think I was active as a survivor for all of a few seconds before getting the life kicked out of me by a group of very angry zombies.  The second or third attempts had me surviving for a little while longer but complications brought on by time lag between the controls and actual events on screen had me falling off of buildings or actually passing through walls to fall to the street below.  This was definitely not the gaming experience I was hoping for.  Add to that the failure to actually realize that the server I had joined was not supporting certain settings that enhance your ability to survive such as the third person view that are really necessary if you are to get an edge over the opposition and help you survive.  Without this feature you are forced into tunnel vision and can only see what is directly in front of you.  Peripheral vision is not an option so you have to actually turn your head to see in another direction.  That really limits your combat and survivor effectiveness and makes you a statistic much quicker

I had to take a look at what I was doing wrong and got the server settings sorted out so that I was not joining a server with all of the restrictions that I had experienced.  It was by accident that I found a private hive that actually loaded you up with night vision, L85 AWS (fitted with thermal sight), M9 Beretta with silencer, and a few other odds and ends so that you could go forth, survive, forage, and defend yourself right from the start.  I thought this was a great situation until I had to use the L85 AWS the first time and found that your sight picture was not ideal, you had to have the thing pointed in the right direction in order to get you field of view to even show you a warm body and when that body was moving at short range it just as quickly disappeared from your field of view.  Frustrating?  You bet!  Especially when it comes to warding off angry zombies at close range.  I also discovered that applying a double tap to a zombie does nothing for their disposition.  You just anger them more and the end result is blunt force trauma and you end up getting killed.  So shooting zombies at close range can be a bit of a problem since it will take five or six rounds to drop them and you only have sixty rounds of 9mm available in four magazines.  Best bet is to just avoid them if possible. 

The learning process is a bit of a struggle since you never actually enter the game at the same location so you could end up in the extremes where nothing exists or near a town with plenty of resources to harvest as you try to avoid the zombie hordes.  So after learning a bit more, I have actually managed to survive a bit longer but have lost a bit of blood and can not see quite fully in color any longer.  I have yet to find another survivor that is necessary if you are to regain your blood levels by transfusion so for now I am laying low and venturing only short distances from my hide to forage in a group of apartment buildings and a hospital for pain killers and food. 

I thought that by going in during the early morning hours that there would be an advantage to using the night vision device but I am starting to think that zombies have night vision or worse, they can actually smell me.  Some times I can hide by going prone and they walk right by and at other times that just allows them to stomp on me that much faster.  It is a crap shoot and you learn that it is best to not pick a fight with a zombie as it just invites more of his buddies to join in the fun and you become a statistic that much faster. 

Strangely enough, there are no female zombies in the game, not that I would really want to encounter a female zombie but it is odd that they are not included since there is an option for a female survivor player. 

When Trumpeter came out with the PMC figure sets I was stumped at what could be done with them.  The player avatars in the DayZ mod remind me a lot of the Trumpeter PMC figures and the executive figure in the one set could have been used as a model for one of the zombies that strolls around in an MIB styled suit.  All of the player avatars are wearing pretty much the same type of clothing and you have options to upgrade to different types of rucksacks to increase your on-person carry capacity of necessary things like food, water, camping accessories, and ammunition for the weapons you are using. 

I am still hoping to venture further inland to some of the other locations that have a lot of military equipment to loot and possibly some vehicles that you can actually drive around in the game like the Ural 4320 series cargo truck (you can carry a lot of stuff in the back of that truck), there are also UAZ series utility vehicles, Toyota Hi-Lux 4Pax 4X4 trucks, and some unique little European vehicles that I am not very familiar with but I suspect that in the former East Block these were quite common.  The largest weapon so far available in the DayZ mod is a .50 anti-material rifle called the AS50 or the Barrett M107/M82.  There are M16/AR-15 weapons with the M203 40mm grenade launcher but sourcing ammunition for the GL will compete for space on your player so for every round of M203 ammuntion you lose a magazine of ammunition for your weapon.  Tough choice but that could be less of a problem if you find a vehicle to carry all of your battle rattle with you. 

There is another mod for Arma 2 called Wasteland that has no zombie threat but instead you have Blue Forces, Red Forces, and Independent Forces as your choices when you join the fight.  This mod has a lot of vehicles including the Stryker MGS and M113 that I have seen in addition to the M923 series 5t truck and the other vehicles I already mentioned.  There are also aircraft in the game that can be flown such as the Mi-8/Mi-17 Hip, UH-1, An-2, C-130, and one other helicopter gunship that I do not recall the name of.  Certainly a lot of interesting things in one game that requires you to join up and become part of a team in order to succeed. 

Links:

Wikipedia - Arma2

Armaholic (all things related to Arma2)

Arma2 Free

Arma2

[Arma2] DayZ Mod

DayZDB - DayZ Mod Data Base

DayZ Wiki

Wikipedia - DayZ

***edit to make spelling corrections
« Last Edit: March 04, 2013, 05:34:18 AM by Jeffry Fontaine »
"Every day we hear about new studies 'revealing' what should have been obvious to sentient beings for generations; 'Research shows wolverines don't like to be teased" -- Jonah Goldberg

Offline Frank3k

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Re: Arma2 FPS Video Game Weapons, Equipment and Vehicles
« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2013, 08:16:36 AM »
So now I know why Arma 2 looks so familiar - it's based on Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. That is my favorite FPS.

Arma 2 may just be too addicting;  I still play Operation Flashpoint through my XP emulator. With an i7 processor, I can have 10 - 20 tanks and about 200 soldiers or more on the battlefield at one time.

Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: Arma2 FPS Video Game Weapons, Equipment and Vehicles
« Reply #2 on: February 02, 2013, 10:06:38 AM »
So now I know why Arma 2 looks so familiar - it's based on Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. That is my favorite FPS.

Arma 2 may just be too addicting;  I still play Operation Flashpoint through my XP emulator. With an i7 processor, I can have 10 - 20 tanks and about 200 soldiers or more on the battlefield at one time.

No idea how much capability is left to do command and control of larger groups in Arma 2 as I really had no intention of being part of a larger organization which is why I am liking the DayZ Mod so much.  Freedom of action that is not dependent on others and having to deal with the AI Zombies is a lot of fun.  Started stockpiling stuff that I have foraged now into one location to build up a cache and hopefully gain a second ALICE pack to move some of the stuff to another location further inland.  If I was doing this on a regular game server I would be a casualty by now and starting over with nothing.  The night vision goggles do give you some advantage in avoiding confrontation with the zombies but that is never guarantee that you will not be detected at night since they can still hear you if you are moving.  At least the option of running away allows you to gain some distance before cutting left or right around an obstacle to lose them. 
« Last Edit: February 14, 2013, 02:37:00 AM by Jeffry Fontaine »
"Every day we hear about new studies 'revealing' what should have been obvious to sentient beings for generations; 'Research shows wolverines don't like to be teased" -- Jonah Goldberg

Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: Arma2 FPS Video Game Weapons, Equipment and Vehicles
« Reply #3 on: March 04, 2013, 05:31:52 AM »
After a recent update to DayZ Commander (the portal through which I access the game servers) I lost the IP address for the game server where I had built my little tent cache and gear empire.  It was a bit of a disappointment so I moved on to other game servers and discovered some nice folks that are interested in the PVE experience instead of the brutality of PVP though my attempts to interact were a bit off and resulted in one guy I was trying to help shooting me which was a bit of a buzz kill we later got it sorted out as I had been trying to communicate with him in the wrong chat channel and he is okay now as an ally.  There was one guy I helped out recently in-game with extreme blood loss and I got him back to health only to have him stand up and proceed to shoot me dead as I sat there on the ground unarmed.  To say that I was angry is to put it lightly.  He claims it was a "glitch" and his gun just went off which is pure BS as I have had some experience now with the controls to know full well that aimed fire takes some mouse action.  Needless to say this individual can bleed to death before I ever help him again.  I will not shoot him as I have no desire to incur a body count and zombies are the only thing I do dispatch if the situation permits a positive outcome for me otherwise it is "feet don't fail me now" as I run away from the potential conflict. 

While playing on other servers I continued to look for my lost game server IP address and finally found it yesterday.  I was quite happy to be back to the little empire I had created and all of my tents were still there spawning loot for me too so it was great to load up with the DMR (M-14/M21) and go to the top of the building and proceed to plink zombies at long range.  Nothing like seeing a zombie drop with a center of mass body shot with each pull of the trigger.  DMR barks and bites unlike some of the other weapons that require expending five or six rounds to each zombie unless you can get a decent head shot. 

The only real disappointment with this particular game server is the lack of vehicles to get you around so you do a lot of walking/running/stalking to and from your destinations.  This is good in a way as you can really appreciate the terrain features of the game and it has a lot of detail that still impresses me though there is some uniformity in the trees and their placement in the ground it can be easily ignored if you focus on being in the game and with zombies now aggrivating/alerting on you from further away if you make any kind of noise the challenge bar has been raised to make it more difficult to loot the locations that spawn stuff you need.  Still wish I had a vehicle to put stuff in but that means it would be susceptible to someone else stealing it from me if it was not hidden well enough. 

My tent caches are for the most part visible save for a select trio that are still under my control and these are hidden away in a stand of trees near one of the towns called "Cherno" where I can access them without too much in transit time.  The others in-town are for the most part in plain view as I wanted to help other gamers with acquiring gear early on to give them an edge against the zombies and to my surprise these tents while no longer under my control since player death negates ownership the tents continue to spawn necessary items which was a very pleasant surprise.  :)

I chose the game name "lordoftheflies" as a recognition of the buzzing flies noise that surrounds every dead player in the game after they are killed which was also my fate on far too many occasions as I learned to play the game.  It was also in recognition of the damned gnat infestation that is currently overwhelming me here at the house.  I had a similar experience with these little blighters right after the house was built (actually a manufactured home) so I thought it was just something that occurred due to the two halves being open to the environment as they gnats did not return for several years but they are now back again and it is quite aggravating but I am combating them as best I can and keeping their numbers down through the use of a spray bottle filled with soap and wet sponge which seems to work better than an open hand in killing them outright on the first strike.   
« Last Edit: March 04, 2013, 05:41:04 AM by Jeffry Fontaine »
"Every day we hear about new studies 'revealing' what should have been obvious to sentient beings for generations; 'Research shows wolverines don't like to be teased" -- Jonah Goldberg

Offline scorchio

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Re: Arma2 FPS Video Game Weapons, Equipment and Vehicles
« Reply #4 on: April 30, 2013, 07:00:34 AM »
Came across these whiffed Typhoons being made for Arma 2:





The Canadian one is rather attractive

Several more in the link below:

http://forums.rkslstudios.info/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=265

Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: Arma2 FPS Video Game Weapons, Equipment and Vehicles
« Reply #5 on: April 30, 2013, 07:22:25 AM »
Nice looking Typhoons.  I think my one and only real experience with ARMA2 ended with me crashing an Apache into a stand of trees as I attempted to gain altitude while trying to clear a hill top.  It ended with a fiery crash.   

My little tent empire that I had on the DayZ server recently disappeared when the server was shut down.  C'est la DayZ....
"Every day we hear about new studies 'revealing' what should have been obvious to sentient beings for generations; 'Research shows wolverines don't like to be teased" -- Jonah Goldberg

Offline scorchio

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Re: Arma2 FPS Video Game Weapons, Equipment and Vehicles
« Reply #6 on: April 30, 2013, 10:00:09 PM »
I've played the Arma series on and off since Operation Flashpoint, and I can say flying was never one of my talents in the game; particularly when it came to helicopters. Vehicles have never really been one of the strengths of the games though and only really seem to be there to support the infantry aspects of the game in providing heavy fire support and transport, rather than being simulated to great detail. They're still a lot of fun though and add to the game's longevity.

I tried DayZ and enjoyed it for a couple of weeks but it wasn't really my cup of tea in the long run. However it shows off the strengths that the game has as an infantry simulator pretty well with regard to using cover and concealment, land navigation, recce, marksmanship, conserving ammunition.

I'm thinking of giving the alpha of Arma 3 a go but I'm not sure how it'll run on this computer. By the looks of it they've gone all-out on whif vehicles: mashing together Merkava tanks with NLOS-C and Marksman inspired turrets, and the child of Mi-28, Ka-50/52 and Mi-24

Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: Arma2 FPS Video Game Weapons, Equipment and Vehicles
« Reply #7 on: April 30, 2013, 10:57:44 PM »
I was certainly doing a lot of walking and running in DayZ.  The vehicles are a nice feature but that means you have to keep them repaired and fueled which takes away from your plaver experience.  There is also the unwanted attraction of other players trying to take your vehicle or stuff stored in the vehicle so you are more vulnerable.  A trade off can be had if you are able to find and set up a tent to store your supplies in a location that is not traveled.  I managed to set up several tents in a warehouse in town that was seldom searched so it worked out.  Others were not so clever and suffered for it.  My biggest issue with the ARMA2 and the DayZ mod is the server connection.  It became so bad at times that I found my player desynching through walls of buildings while in the upper levels and falling to a sudden death on the ground below or getting knocked out to become the main course for the zombies.  Firing weapons or driving vehicles with the desynch issues was also fatal if you were in any situation that required quick action and close combat.  I soon learned that it was best to avoid contact and conflict to survive.  I am looking forward to seeing the DayZ stand alone game release this summer (hopefully) which might resolve some of the problems and introduce a completely new set of problems to deal with. 

In the DayZ Origins mod I managed to fly several helicopters without crashing but it was always a challenge with the desynch issue looming over me.  Riding as a passenger was also fatal at times as I discovered on several occasions.  I must say that flying in third person is a wonderful thing to experience at low level and high speed when you are the passenger and not the pilot.  Some of the incidents involving my player falling out of the aircraft may well have been actual glitches with the game.  I think the only vehicle that did not try to kill me was the boats. 

Getting inspiration for a model project from DayZ or ARMA2 is pert of the reason I become interested in the game. 
« Last Edit: April 30, 2013, 11:00:07 PM by Jeffry Fontaine »
"Every day we hear about new studies 'revealing' what should have been obvious to sentient beings for generations; 'Research shows wolverines don't like to be teased" -- Jonah Goldberg