Parabellum

TBH, I have no idea what it was called. This was 17-18 years ago. It was released through the VBS-1 forums. You may also be able to find the SF2 add on Seventh and I did.

I wasn't as impressed with Onward as I'd hoped. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun game, but I prefer Zero Caliber. This is probably due to the fact I can only play in 10-15 min bursts, and ZC is much more suited for short play sessions.

I finally picked up PF this week. I'd have gotten it sooner, but have been in and out of the hospital since November. I need a crew to play with!

75th Rangers was my addon. I still have the source files on CD, somewhere, but all my old modding/dev stuff is in storage.

Man, these were the days! How I miss the VBS crew!

Contact BI Simulations at BISimulations.com. You can't simply download VBS-x like you would a video game; The VBS-series titles require (or required, last I was aware) hardware dongles supplied by BI to decrypt the application's files.

I've been tinkering in UE5 for a number of months now, and it's an amazing tool for just about any gaming/video/compositing/educational application you can imagine. The fact that on current-gen Nvidia cards you can import cinema-quality assets right from Z-Brush, without regard for poly counts, is absurd. For anyone wondering why so many rocks are in this tech demo, the reason is those rocks are each composed of hundreds of thousands or even millions of polygons -- and running perfectly in a game engine. This tech is light years beyond anything else out there!

lol! That's an interesting visual and if it's what you see, then awesome! The story behind the song is set in 18th century London.

Yep! Any collaborations I’ve done have probably fallen off my page by now since my pro membership is expired, so all the stuff on my page is me, unless you hear rapping. In that case, I typically produced and attempted to mix it, but I can only do so much when there are pots and pans rattling behind someone’s vocal track.

ZJJ, how's it going? I haven't seen you in years!

Nobody seems to post in here anymore, so I guess I will. I'm a musician, and occasionally post my stuff on the 'net. This is a track I did, based on a short story. The drums are NI modern drums, played by me on a midi kit. The other instruments are all real instruments, also played by me. Recorded and mixed in Presonus Studio one. Can't recall what plugins I used. Probably some Slate Digital stuff, given the way the kick drum thumps. I know there's too much low end. I was on a huge low end kick (no pun intended) at that time. Life Begins If you feel like doing so, then leave comments. If not, then that's cool too.

If you mean bullet drop and wind affects on gameplay over realistic sniping distances, then I'd hope not. While I used to think this would be cool, I don't think so anymore. Why? Precision shooting is an exacting science which requires months and years of training and practice to hone to consistent accuracy under a variety of conditions. Do you want to spend hundreds of hours in-game creating a DOPE sheet for every weapon and optic combination you might use, while _hoping_ your team in MP actually employs a sniper properly? I didn't think so. You'd be better served learning to shoot and move as a team.

Alex, you just keep getting better and better. Great work!

It's not unusual for addons, or even BIS's own products, to spam the rpt file. The nature of the entry or entries should help identify the problem. As far as Tryk's uniforms, my group hasn't had any problems with them at all, even after Arma's latest update. So I'm inclined to believe the issue you're experiencing is due to a conflict between addons. Just looking over the Exile mod's information, it seems they're making a lot of deep changes to the game, so my thinking would be that there's some conflict between your addons. Have you tried running Tryk's uniforms without other mods, to see if your server still crashes? If so, then the problem may not be Tryk's uniform addon in itself, but a conflict between addons.

May you recover quickly!

I clearly remember this guy taking our weapons -- which myself, DonMiguel and El Oso had worked so hard to make as realistic as possible -- and crapping all over them. Without our permission. Do yourself a favor and just download the original mods instead.

Really? That sucks. I'm running Windows 7 and hate it. The wife is running Windows 8.1, and she hates that. We were hoping to upgrade soon.

I don't know about ZeroAlpha and Collin, but Hatchetforce, ZJJ, GordoViper and myself all visited RedStorm in '05 while they were working on GRAW. What we saw was pretty impressive, IMO, as were the attitudes of Red Storm's developers toward the community. Of course, no matter how passionate the individual developers themselves are about making a game that will truly satisfy players, it's not up to those devs how the game turns out. Ha, just takin' the Mick'. Remember, you know we've been here before, and unlike Ms Shrager's above quote about GR:FS, the only game a lot of GR fans have talked about and have continued to talk about for more than a decade, is GR and its two expansion packs, and nothing else. As I said, let's not get giddy about GR:W just yet, and instead wait to see what Ubi eventually releases. Like every other trailer since 2002, this trailer still looks as though the game won't be a better GR with better graphics. But if it's a game worth playing, then that's fine by me. DS Agreed, DS. Until I can run through a playable demo and actually try out the game mechanics and immersion for myself, I have to rely on Ubi's track record, which is less than stellar.

This is just awesome, Rocky! Just awesome!

Overall, this DLC has been one of the most underwhelming releases BIS has put out in some time. Aside from breaking a whole swathe of community content -- and let's be honest, BIS games are kept afloat by the modding community -- the content added is subpar and not at all worthy of the money asked by BIS. From the shoddy (and in some cases, broken) "features", to the weapons (A .338 LMG, really?) to the useless (firing drills, anyone?) the entire DLC makes me think the Good Idea Fairy must have taken up permanent residence at BIS's offices. There's no other explanation for a company taking a product that could be so great, and making it so ... laughable.

Try Arma 3. If you do, then I recommend finding a community to play with online; the game is okay in single-player, but multiplayer is where it really shines, if you can find a decent community where you feel like you fit in.

It's always sad news when a member of our community passes. My condolences to Bob's family.

Warning: Long read, but for anyone who wants to know a bit about Arma 3, please stick around. I've been modding for this game for 15 years, and worked as a developer for projects based on the RV engine, which the Arma series is based on. This is a discussion to which I would very much like to contribute. To begin, some of the comments I'm reading seem to be confusing AI with scripting; Ghost Recon's AI wasn't great, in fact, they were highly predictable, frustrating and in many ways, completely horrible. Ex: The AI's habit of turning 180 degrees and instantly shooting you in the head, from the hip, while you were lying prone over 200m away. Ex: Hordes of enemies running from across the map toward the sound of gunfire, while enemies closer remained standing on their street corner, smoking their cigarettes. Clearly, those are some monumental failings. What Ghost Recon did well, however, was to simulate basic small-unit tactics by using scripted sequences to control the AI units in certain situations. An excellent example would be the way Ghost Recon's AI teams would attempt to suppress you and then flank your position upon taking contact. That isn't AI at work; that's a script, written by the game's designers. The difference being that AI at work are largely autonomous and do more or less 'what they want', within the confines of their programming. Scripted sequences rely on, well, scripts which tell the AI what to do and/or where to go, while still allowing them some degree of autonomy, such as still allowing AI to communicate targets to one another, call for help and engage targets. Hence, the utter predictability of that particular maneuver. When Ghost Recon's AI had to actually fall back on their own routines, they'd do stupid things like walk out into the open and stand there. Or, somehow magically know exactly where you are, and walk right up to you, even though you're hiding in a bush. Or walk up to a pile of the bodies of their dead friends, and then look around, as if to ask "What happened here?" before being added to said pile. Conversely, if you look at Arma, particularly at Arma 3, the AI can be unpredictable on the battlefield, sometimes frustratingly so. When you want an AI squad to do one thing, even after you've given them waypoints and scripts, they still do what they want. Sure, you can predict in the macro sense what they'll do: If you fight a single squad, then they'll pretty much fight you head-on. If you inflict enough damage, then they'll retreat, regroup and counterattack until they're all dead or you're dead or you retreat. But, on the macro scale, they aren't predictable. This is because AI is actually doing the work, rather than scripts. Obviously, this isn't the case, if you're using Zeus AI, ASR AI, UPSMON (my personal favorite) or some other community-generated addon that claims to modify AI. They don't. None of them actually modify the game's AI. What they do is control and constrain the AI through the use of scripts and/or modified configuration files (we'll get to the latter in a moment -- it's of vital importance). Ghost Recon's developers simply used scripts to enhance the AI in-house, out of the gate. On a macro scale, however, if you were to sit back and watch Arma 3's AI battle it out over a large area of terrain, over a long period of time (via the Zeus game mode, for instance), then you'd see something different. You'd see that the AI in Arma 3 actually do use coordinated tactics such as bounding movements and flanking maneuvers, both at the squad level and at the higher level. Does it look clean, neat and precise? No. It looks sloppy and chaotic. As it should. But they do what they should be doing. Most of the time. They will also call for reinforcements or support, provided you have placed those support assets and given units the ability to do so. No scripting is needed for this any more. Simply place BIS's game modules down, synchronize them with the desired units, and go. As has been mentioned, Arma's AI does have some failings. They stink at driving, especially in convoys. Hot LZ's are another concern. (Note: This is a great reason to play with a gaming group that has competent pilots: You don't need to rely on AI to get you into and out of combat.) They're also nasty in close quarters, due to their habit of going prone upon enemy contact. Your team's awesome breach tactic, perfectly executed? Doesn't matter, because you weren't expecting a prone RPK gunner to be lying down at the end of the hall, just barely within view of the doorway, and he smoked your whole team. In some ways, that's maddening. In others, it simulates the behavior of other people pretty well. Yes, they also do silly things like turn in circles, stand/kneel/prone repeatedly and walk into walls on occasion. But on the large scale, it works. Also, there aren't any other games out there that offer an AI package capable of so much, especially one that is so easily complemented by community-created script packages. Lastly, on to config issues, one of the game's biggest failings. To put it plainly, Arma's AI issues have very little to do with the actual AI, and almost everything to do with some other aspect of the game. That 'other aspect' is usually one of the game's main configuration files, which may control vehicle-handling, weapons-handling, etc. In particular, the weapon config entries, vehicle entries and the CFGAISkill class have a profound effect on AI. For clarification, all people, whether human or AI-controlled, are vehicles in the Arma engine. BIS are notorious for using a sledge hammer when they should use a scalpel, when it comes to some of their config values. This is especially true for weapon-handling values, in particular those which constrain the ranges at which AI will engage you. Have you ever gotten up close to an enemy AI in Arma 3, say, within 10 meters or so, and just had him look at you, as if he really wanted to shoot you, but couldn't? That's because he couldn't. By default, Arma's carbines, rifles, machine guns and long rifles are coded so AI can't engage closer than 30 meters. Think about that for a moment, and then ask yourself why they panic in close quarters. It's because their AI routine is telling them to shoot you, but their equipped weapon won't let them do so. Hence, chaos ensues. This is quite easily solved, and there are some mods out there that make the game a lot more fun by doing nothing more than -- I kid you not -- changing the ranges at which AI can see you and engage you. I won't go into the problems with the vehicle values or CFGAISkill, because they're numerous and would likely bore most readers to tears. I will, however, say that, by simply redefining many of the variables in CFGVehicles (the class in which all people are found in Arma), CFGWeapons and CFGAISkill, my gaming group was able to provide for ourselves a much more enjoyable and much more realistic experience. This is partially because, by redefining these variables, we've basically allowed the AI to do what they were programmed to do in the first place. You just aren't seeing in the vanilla game what the AI were actually designed to do. PS: The Guard Waypoint was completely misrepresented in Burner's quoted piece above. It's one of the most powerful tools Arma can give a mission maker, provided the mission maker actually knows how to use it.

Great post, Apex. (Your posts always are.) There's no rational explanation -- beyond political explanations that we can't touch here -- for certain African borders not to have been closed immediately and for Western nations not to have closed our borders to anyone coming from those nations, until the virus has run its course. Ebola is nasty, nasty business. Ebola is killing nearly half of the medical professionals who are trying to help contain and fight the virus. If that doesn't stop and make one stop and consider the potential seriousness of the situation, then I'm not sure what would. Mobs of superstitious villagers aren't helping matters; they're blaming Ebola workers for the spread of the virus and slaughtering them. So, the hopes for a quick containment or development of a vaccine may be a bit light at this point. Add to this the unwillingness of governments to do the necessary and temporarily close borders to help prevent the spread of the virus.

Gordo linked this on Facebook a few days ago. It looks very good, indeed.