BF2S Forums Operation Flashpoint 2

henno13 wrote:

bump

new video and interview released:
Video - http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/9 … 50509.html
Interview - http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/980/980018p1.html

RELEASE DATE HAS BEEN PUSHED BACK TO AUTUMN

It better be worth it.
I will be buying ArmA II to pass the time, if it comes out on PS3 that is

Last edited by henno13 (2009-06-03 08:46:12)

Rohirm wrote:

Gameplay from a cam at E3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGBcEJRpXPA

The running animations are a little clunky imo
And player took a couple of rounds and didn't die...

icecold2510 wrote:

will the buildings be destructible like BFBC?

-TL- wrote:

henno13 wrote:

icecold2510 wrote:

will the buildings be destructible like BFBC?

Yeah, the devs say that it will be permanent

IIRC, it's actually just a series of damaged states for each building, not really dynamic destruction.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising has been a long time coming, but later this year Codemasters' tactical shooter will be arriving on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. The super-realistic shooter has been designed from the ground up to play as well on consoles as it does on the PC, and during a recent visit to the Codemasters area of Warner Bros Interactive's E3 booth we had an opportunity to spend some time with the Xbox 360 version.

Taking the controls in Dragon Rising feels a lot like taking the controls in most first-person shooters, but we discovered early on in the demo that this game requires a very different approach. Moving up a large hill at the start of the demo there were no enemies in sight, but the Codemasters representative who was talking us through the game made it clear that we should still move between areas of cover rather than run around out in the open--with good reason. About halfway up the hill, we noticed that two red triangles had appeared on the compass at the top of the screen, indicating the last known position of enemies spotted by a friendly helicopter. They were still too far away for us to actually see, but there was no obvious way for us to reach our objective (an enemy radar station) on the other side of the hill without moving past them.

Using the context-sensitive radial menu, we ordered all three of our squadmates to take cover a few hundred meters from the enemy and lay down a suppressing fire. At this point the enemy soldiers became so preoccupied that they didn't notice us flanking them. Clicking the left analog stick to move into a prone position, we crawled into a wooded area where, after crouching close to a large tree that afforded us some cover, we were able to pick the enemies off with relative ease. We then ordered our squadmates to follow us as we moved to the top of the hill.

From there, we were afforded a great view of the radar station that we needed to destroy, and noticed that there were a handful of enemies defending it. Pulling out our binoculars to get an even better view--which took as long as it would in real-life, and was animated accordingly--we spotted a red barrel at the station and, since red barrels in games invariably explode when you shoot them, decided that it was the first thing we were going to shoot at. There are very few "gamey" features like red barrels in Dragon Rising, but on this occasion the barrel did exactly what we figured it would. Unfortunately, the explosion didn't kill anyone and, even though there's a morale system in Dragon Rising that can cause enemies to flee when they're afraid of something, all we actually managed to do was alert them to our presence.

As the enemies opened fire, we hurriedly took cover behind some rocks and foliage, but not before we were shot in the arm and started to lose blood. You don't have a health bar in Dragon Rising, and you certainly don't have any magical medical supplies that can instantly heal you when you take a bullet. Rather, you have eight pints of blood that you'll start losing from open wounds, and a supply of field dressings that can be used to stop the bleeding. Any bullet that hits you has the potential to kill you, but what's more likely to happen is that you'll sustain wounds that impair your ability to fight. Leg wounds can slow you down, arm wounds will affect your aim, and headshots can mess with your vision, for example. You'll regenerate health at the checkpoints that are scattered throughout mission areas, but these are few and far between.

One of our squad also sustained an injury during the fight that ensued, which we were alerted to when the icon representing him in the top left corner of the screen changed color. We all survived to see the radar station get blown up though, and were then told that our next objective was to assault a nearby coastal village. There were quite a lot of enemies in the village below, so before we moved in we decided to put the sole artillery strike that we'd been given for the mission to good use. Targeting a building that some of the enemy soldiers appeared to be congregating around, we used the radial menu to order the strike and were impressed that we had a few different patterns of fire to choose from. Scattering shells across a large area definitely afforded us a great opportunity to see Dragon Rising's explosions, which unlike the giant fireballs of Hollywood, result in impressive clouds of black smoke and dirt being thrown up into the air. It was also interesting to see the game's morale system at work, as some enemies set their sights on us while others tried to flee.

It was at this point, as we discussed how impressive and believable Dragon Rising's AI is with a member of the development team, that we were killed without warning. Had one of the enemies scored a lucky headshot? Had one of them managed to flank us while we were focusing intently on the village below? No. What actually happened was that the anti-tank guy in our squad, armed with a bazooka and presumably trying to target an enemy jeep that was moving around below, had shot us squarely in the back. Like its real-life counterpart, the bazooka in question is equipped with a sensor that prevents it firing at targets that are too close, but apparently we were far enough away from our squadmate that he was able to take the shot. This freak friendly-fire incident brought our mission to an abrupt end, but we weren't about to let a bug in a work-in-progress demo stop us playing, so we restarted the mission from the beginning.

Without going into too much detail, it was interesting to see how things played out differently the second time. For example, our squad managed to take down one of the enemies themselves when we used the suppress order--the sort of thing that can happen in a game where bullets are physical objects that fall when gravity kicks in and can ricochet off certain surfaces. As it turned out, assaulting the town was supposed to be the end of the E3 demo, so when the enemies were routed and a friendly force moved in to mop up we were told to head toward and secure an evacuation point.

There were no enemies in sight when we got there, but when we heard a vehicle approaching we took cover and waited to see what it was. What showed up was a Chinese jeep with a couple of soldiers in it, and while letting them drive by seemed like a feasible option we instead chose to open fire. After we killed the passenger, the driver attempted to retreat, but one of the many bullets that we fired toward the vehicle must have found its target because moments later the jeep rolled over and the driver was killed.

In the finished game, you'll be able to repair and commandeer over 30 different vehicles, including the Chinese jeep. You can do it in the E3 demo too, but unfortunately the ability to roll vehicles back onto their wheels hasn't been implemented yet. That's unfortunate, not only because we'd have loved to see how the vehicle handled, but also because the secondary objective to destroy some SAM sites that we were determined to complete was almost two kilometers away.

We walked. Actually, we sprinted a lot of the way, though with regular pauses to check for enemy activity. Three enemies approached us at one point, and we were a little surprised to see two of them get back up after we'd shot them and seen them fall. Apparently their wounds weren't fatal, but they stayed down the second time, and the third guy ended up getting shot in the back because, having seen both of his colleagues killed, he decided to run away. When we went to check the bodies we found that we were able to take ammo and supplies from them, and were excited to discover that one of them had been carrying an MK 17 rifle with a sniper scope on it. There were only 20 rounds of ammunition for it, but it made our assault on the SAM site a lot easier because it's power and range were noticeably better than those of the MK 16 that we'd been using up to that point.

After destroying the SAM site, we finally decided that it was time to let someone else play. Needless to say, we came away from Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising pretty impressed. This isn't a game that's likely to win any beauty contests, but given the sheer scale of the environment that you're in (225 square kilometers, with a draw distance of around 30 kilometers), that's understandable. We look forward to bringing you more information on Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising just as soon as we can get our hands on a copy.

Mugen wrote:

...headshots can mess with your vision

bad choice of words or OFP2 will suck horribly.

Hi all, I thought it might be time for another update on Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

Now the dust has settled from E3 (and the jetlag) its back to business as usual, we’re all very pleased at how Operation Flashpoint was received at the show and nominations for best shooter from IGN and Gamespot gave us a tremendous sense of achievement.

Today I thought I’d take the opportunity to write a few words about the hardcore mode in our game. We have 3 levels of gameplay; Assisted, Normal and Hardcore. I like to think of Hardcore as turning the game up to 11, we’ve had to add the number 11 as a result of the feedback from you guys on our initial hardcore screenshots released back in May.




You lot are a bunch of masochists but, you’ve got it; the hardcore mode in Operation Flashpoint will contain no HUD/UI elements at all other than radio chatter subtitles. That’s right, no crosshair, no compass, no gun or ammo displays…Nothing…

There will be no objective markers, no bleed meter, no direction of fire indicator, no enemy location highlights and no damage indicators. Nothing!

To show you what we mean, here's an example for you all taken with the new hardcore settings.



All navigation will have to be done via the map; calling up your QCR (quick command radial) will show you your fireteam status only while the button is held, and pressing weapons select will bring up the weapon/ammo selection menu, again only visible whilst the button is pressed. In addition there are no checkpoints, no soft saves and no hard saves, there’s only one word for it, HARDCORE!!!

I hope that satisfies your ravenous appetite for pain and misery  ive gotta say after playing it for the last few days im already loving it!

Time to sign off now, games don’t make themselves.

Thanks again for all your support, there’s been some fascinating discussions on the forum over the last few weeks and im pleased my feedback on the E3 demo allayed some of your concerns

So, until the next time, I’m look forward to popping a cap in your head online, nothing to serious, but enough to make you bleed, badly.

"First of all, Kudos to the Dev Team for a lot of hard work putting this build together, the reaction from the show floor was consistently positive and the queues were long.

I guess its one thing to play a game and be immersed in it and another thing to watch a recording off the screen of some “dumb COD player” (that would be me thank you very much!) playing this level for the benefit of the many press who came to see it.

Please remember we are now in an intense period of balancing and polish.


As you all correctly surmised this is a modified version of the intro/tutorial level running on XB360. The thinking behind this was to make something users could pick up and play, we generally had only 10 minutes to demo the game and so needed something more compact. It is not representative of the main campaign missions which are much longer and more atmospheric/tense/dramatically paced

This mission also has a number of secondary objectives which (if they choose to) the player can attempt, you hear them called out at the beginning

The demo is absolutely definitely on Assisted (Easy) mode

We were next to the Lego Rock band stall, nuff said! After day 2 it did begin to grate a little, however by day 3 we’d lost our marbles and were happily dancing and singing along

These videos do not do our game justice; they are filmed from cameras pointed at a wall-mounted screen, positioned above the screen we were playing on, so the angle wasn;t great. Our game looks beautiful!

The ‘Russian’ fireteam leader is supposed to be Hispanic! I don’t like his voice either, we are re-recording him!

Artillery will make a noise as it falls thru the air (if you’re close enough)

Alex Vestin’s estimates to run the island do not take into account recovery times from sprinting

Sprinting and jogging animations have been addressed; focal point is now more static whilst still retaining the ‘handheld’ impact of footfalls

We are still optimising particle effects, smoke grenades and smoke mortars already last much longer (minutes instead of seconds) this would have been easily observed if I had set one off

Time of day/lighting/colouration/balancing etc. Call it what you will is under constant review

Reload animations; not final speed

I enjoy the occasional banana, but I’m more of an apple man

Darth Eclipse, I recall meeting your dad, he must have been the guy who ‘Had to play this game and report back’

Artillery times were faster for the demo

Bottom right of the map = Time of Day

Everyone has exploding red barrels, and I mean ‘everyone’. (I checked )

Last comment on the barrels, they are not one shot explosions, often in the demo I would need to fire a couple of bursts to get it to explode

There is definitely distanced based sound delay, im surprised you didn’t notice it! (must have been the Jackson 5)

Weapon sway is in, but wasn’t in E3 build

The build did not lag, I refer you the filming methods

The guns sound like the real thing, I’ve compared both, trust me. The sound in OF: DR is fantastic, youtube does not do our awesome audio dept justice. The recent sound team updates give you a glimpse at the amazing work they are doing on the game

Muzzle flash differs for every weapon

The command radial is 3 layers deep, you only see a fraction of it in the video and it is context sensitive

If you want to know what hardcore really looks like, look out for an upcoming video dedicated to the hardcore mode

The USMC turned up and enjoyed seeing the game in action and so did the Army (obviously they thought they should have their own game as well )

My personal highlight of E3? Watching half a dozen infinity ward devs queuing to play OF: DR 
I hope this info is of use to you, we most certainly do read and discuss the forums (when we have time) please bear that in mind next time your about to press submit  I’d like to thank you all for your comments. We try to take as much on board as we can however we are approaching the end of development so time and resource is very precious.

It seems the reaction on the whole has been very positive and this is a real shot in the arm for the whole dev team.

Oh, one more thing, I’ve just been informed we have been nominated for best PC shooter of E3.

Sweet!