Realistic military sim ARMA 2 has been updated to version 1.60 by developers Bohemia. The patch covers Operation Arrowhead, the British Armed Forces and Private Military Contractors DLC, the original Arma 2 and Arma 2: Free. Among the whopping 158 changes are a new anti-aliasing mode, new scripting commands, smoother multiplayer, netcode fixes and improved AI. More important fixes include, “AI no longer considering a car horn as a threat,” and “Dead body temperature was not saved.”

The Bohemians have also created a Christmas message for all their fans, which is so incredibly festive we’re about to explode in a shower of tinsel and fake snow.

Changelog highlights after the break.


New features: FXAA Anti-Aliasing mode, user-definable memory allocators, new scripting commands, new commandline options
Multiplayer is much smoother, no more warping, includes number of fixes, optimizations and improvements
Netcode, VON and dedicated server fixes plus configuration additions in place
Singleplayer received visual states smoothing and prediction (notable e.g. on distant units)
AI is improved, especially (but not only) in combat, AI has received numerous bug fixes
Aircraft & Helicopters simulation received slight improvements
ARMA 2, ARMA 2: OA, ARMA 2: EW campaigns and stand-alone missions received special treatment to get rid of most from really annoying bugs
official expansions & product combinations unified in way to allow easier operation of all distributions (separated installs/Steam/Desura) for build-in expansions manager
Documentation to accompany these changes is available on our community wiki BIKI: http://community.bistudio.com/ and our BIForum http://forums.bistudio.com/
ARMA 2: BAF and ARMA 2: PMC got their share of fixes too

DRM is among the worst things ever to happen to gaming. In many cases it's intrusive, infuriating, and the worst DRM can even stop your legitimately purchased game dead in its tracks. But hey, at least DRM finally made piracy walk the plank and cackled maniacally as our team of trained sharks devoured it forever, right? Oh wait - piracy's still alive and kicking, and pirates can now rationalize their actions by saying "I want to get the version that works." So what's the gaming industry to do?

Many developers and publishers are stumped, and some flailing wildly by locking down games even harder. All hope, however, isn't lost: a few studios have begun to experiment with copy protection, and results have run the gamut from hilariously amusing to, well... mostly that first thing, so far. But are they really cutting down on piracy? That in mind, I decided to quiz Bohemia Interactive CEO Marek Španěl about all things DRM. His company, of course, has been turning heads with its DEGRADE (often erroneously referred to as "FADE") tech, which slowly renders pirated copies of games like Take on Helicopters unplayable. Check out the full interview for his thoughts on just how bad piracy really is, ending the trend of intrusive DRM, "always on" schemes like Battle.net and UbiDRM, and much, much more.



PC Gamer: What prompted you to battle piracy with FADE? What's the general philosophy behind it?

Marek Španěl: Please note that we do not call it FADE, but rather DEGRADE, as the term FADE was initially used by a previous publisher and we don't feel it's our trademark to use. We've used DEGRADE for all our releases since our PC debut, Arma: Cold War Assault, in 2001 (originally released as Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis). The philosophy is not to try to prevent counterfeit and pirated games from running, but instead (or in addition) to degrade the end user experience of such copies.

The motto is: Pirated games are not worth playing, original games do not degrade. Some of the symptoms are funny, usually annoying. In the Arma series, players with pirated copies have lower accuracy with automatic weapons in both single player and multiplayer, and occasionally turn into a bird with the words "Good birds do not fly away from this game, you have only yourself to blame." While we know we will never stop piracy, we use this as a way to make our stand that piracy is not right, that it has a serious negative impact on PC games developers.

PCG: DEGRADE's a very unique, outside-the-box method of mitigating piracy. Do you think that's the key to staying afloat in a PC world full of pirates?

MS: Maybe. But I'm afraid there isn't much that can be done to mitigate piracy as far as we talk about the offline single-player experience. But we need more people to realize that there is value in owning the original game. By buying the game they support us, and we can support them in exchange.

PCG: Does DEGRADE actually deliver results? Are your piracy rates significantly lower than they would be without it? Can you provide any numbers?

MS: It's not possible to provide any numbers. However, our statistics from multiplayer show that for every three legitimate buyers playing their game in multiplayer, there are 100 (failed) attempts to play with a pirated version. This indicates that piracy is an extremely widespread problem on PC, and it's also really worrying for us as a mid-sized, independent, PC-oriented developer. We do not have any such data for single-player, but I'm afraid there the ratio of pirates to legitimate gamers is undoubtedly much worse.

PCG: That's absolutely terrifying, to be honest. Do you happen to know how DEGRADE stacks up to more traditional means of copy protection - say, Ubisoft's much-maligned online system or Steam copy protection?

MS: We don't consider it a substitute to conventional copy protection, but rather as a supplement to it.

PCG: Why do you think so many developers and publishers are stuck on using DRM that inconveniences paying customers just as much as pirates? Their most vocal and loyal customers are shouting, "No! This is terrible!" at the top of their lungs. So why is it taking so long for them to listen?

MS: It's very difficult. Companies and teams invest a lot into game development, and with such widespread piracy, it's extremely tough to get the investment back. Our approach is to remove conventional DRM not too long after the initial game's release to ensure as smooth an experience as possible for our legitimate users and still appeal to our distribution and publishing channels. We're trying to cut off this vicious circle where piracy hurts owners of legitimate copies "protected" with annoying copy protection DRM systems, which may lead to more piracy. That is why, for example, nearly all games on Sprocket, our online store, are DRM-free. Arma 1 and 2 are already copy-protection-free everywhere, and have been for a long time.





PCG: What about always-online platforms, a la Blizzard's StarCraft II and Diablo III? Do you think those fall under the umbrella of "punishing legitimate customers for hackers/cheaters/pirates' crimes"?

MS: I don't see it this way. However, I still prefer a game to run without any type of Internet connection requirement, as it's really worrying that games may stop functioning at all just because running the central service is no longer viable commercially, or even because your Internet went down in a thunderstorm, etc. People still play and mod our 10-year-old game, and hopefully some will even continue to do so 10 years into the future. While systems and companies may fail over time, great games should last forever.

PCG: A few companies have actually claimed that, nowadays, developers' best bet is to work with piracy - not against it. Torchlight, for instance, got most of its recognition in China thanks to pirates. It seems like, to some extent, DEGRADE does that too. Players get a small taste of the full game before it turns to goopy mush. Is there any way of knowing how many sales you've gotten from players who tried a pirated version of a game, said, "Wow, that was fun," and then paid to keep playing?

MS: It's very rare to find people admitting to using pirated versions, so I'm unable really to share any figures here. But recognition is not too important, unless you see conventional PC games as a marketing tool for other commercial ventures and not commercially viable businesses on their own. We're trying to make users of pirated copies experience some limitation, make their version closer to a real trial version. As they often claim to be pirating games for trialling purposes only, we try to make sure it works that way.

PCG: Some developers and pundits, however, claim that pirates simply aren't legitimate customers. That is to say, if all piracy were eliminated forever, those people would opt to simply not play games instead of buying them. Do you think that's true, or is it just an excuse to avoid confronting a larger issue head-on?

MS: Certainly, not all users of pirated copies would turn into customers. However, if only five percent of these would buy the game instead, the legitimate user base may double or even triple. From this perspective, finding ways to have games pirated less is probably more important than the quality of the game itself.

PCG: So there's tons of doom and gloom, and then there's CD Projekt. The Witcher 2's digital version apparently sold quite well, and here's the kicker: The GOG.com version didn't have any DRM whatsoever. As a result, CD Projekt's claiming that copy protection's not necessary. What do you think, though? Are they onto something, or is this the exception - not the rule?

MS: It's all relative. They sold the majority of their copies through Steam, where the title is still protected by Steam's own protection system. Plus, I would say their comment is overreaching. Of course their own store sells more copies than other independent online portals. It's the place where they directed their hardcore audience, as there was no real advantage for non-Steam users in choosing another digital portal of a similar nature. It would be surprising if the numbers are much different. We see similar trends with our own releases and DRM presence or absence seems to have little impact. So in a sense I agree with their point that conventional, copy-protection-based DRM is becoming a useless tool in addressing the piracy problem.

PCG: Thanks to issues like innumerable potential hardware configurations and piracy, many developers have made consoles their primary focus. That in mind, what makes PC so attractive to Bohemia? Why is it worth all the fuss?

MS: We consider the PC superior to other platforms, always on the cutting edge. But for us, an even more important aspect is a complete freedom of development and publishing on this platform. We're not very compatible with the corporate structure and processes required in the console or smart phone worlds. We prefer more agile methods with our users in the loop. Certification and approval by platform owner for a patch? Beg your pardon? We prefer if we can iterate together with our user base, and that may sometimes result in several patches released in one day, in the most extreme of cases. We like the dialog and interaction with our users that can be achieved only on PC. On the other hand, piracy is for sure more widespread on PC for the very same reasons, and that puts us into a very difficult position in sticking with conventional games on PC for the time being. We have to be extremely cost-cautious and developmentally effective to make it work.

http://youtu.be/Gf4kbuOhwgM

Helicopters are brilliant. Unlike boring old planes, they're not confined to just going forwards and tilting a bit. That makes them perfect for plopping SWAT teams on rooftops, sneaking through thick jungles, rescuing people from listing boats and all that other exciting stuff that planes miss out on because they're going too damn fast.

Complete all the tasks mentioned above and more in Bohemia Interactive's Take On Helicopters, out today. The launch trailer not only shows off the wide variety of missions, but also the enormous cityscapes Bohemia's excellent Arma tech generates so well. Find out more in our Take On Helicopters interview with Bohemia Interactive creative lead, Jay Crowe. You'll find a list of physical and digital retailers at which to purchase Take On Helicopters on the Take On Helicopters site.

Episode 3 of PC Gamer Digital is now downloadable on Steam, and it comes with a lot of good news: not only is it half-price for a week, all PC Gamer Digital episodes are now available worldwide. YAY! If you're new to Digital, it's a totally unique environment for interactive, completely-original games coverage and strategy guides. You've really got to experience it to know what it is, so grab the free base application (which also includes Episode 0 free), and discover Digital for yourself.

Update: Sorry for the trouble our international fans had launching PC Gamer Digital. We patched it up with Valve's help and everything is good to go now, so you can jump in whenever you're ready! If you have any other technical issues, please contact support at pcgdigitalsupport@pcgamer.com. We'd also love to hear what you think about Digital in general, and you can tell us by e-mailing pcgdfeedback@pcgamer.com. Thank you for your patience and enthusiasm!



In this episode, you'll explore the brilliant L4D2 map Helm's Deep Reborn in an interactive 360-degree strategy guide, join us on a daring Warsong Gulch flag run in our World of Warcraft Three-Way, learn how to shoot down a helicopter in Arma 2 (seriously, helicopters are jerks), and more. Read on for all the details...

L4D2: Helm's Deep Reborn - Interactive GameView Strategy Guide
Explore our annotated virtual guide to Helm's Deep Reborn, Team Chivalry and SeriouS Samurai's epic LOTR-based survival map for Left 4 Dead 2.



World of Warcraft - Three-Way!
Josh, Chris, and Tyler form an almost-cohesive unit as they play a nailbiting round of capture-the-flag in Warsong Gulch.



Arma 2 Protip - How to Shoot Down a Helicopter
In this week's Protip, Senior Editor Evan Lahti walks us through his elegant method of dealing with pesky helicopters in Arma 2.



PCG Plays: Dungeons of Dredmor
This week, PC Gamer editors Evan Lahti and Chris Comiskey play indie roguelike Dungeons of Dredmor. See why this $5 RPG has devoured so many hours of their precious, precious gaming time.



Then vs. Now - Comparison Gallery
Oh, how things have changed! In this slider gallery, originals go head-to-head with their modern counterparts.

Remember the ITV documentary that claimed ARMA 2 footage to be a secret IRA film? The Guardian report that the slip is getting the broadcaster into trouble with the british media regulator, Ofcom, who today announced that they will be launching an investigation into the incident to see if the mis-labelling of the documentary footage constitutes a breach of its broadcasting codes.

The scene showed a helicopter being shot down by a soldier taking cover near an armoured vehicle, and was instantly recognised by Arma fans on the Bohemia Interactive forums. The documentary was the first in ITV's new Exposure series, which hoped to expose links between Muammar Gadaffi and arms supplied to the IRA. ITV ended up issuing an apology instead.

Bohemia Interactive’s CEO, Marek Spanel was understandably surprised by the incident. “Sometimes creativity and realism in our games lead into crazy results and this is one of such example. I just briefly watched the entire documentary and I still can not believe it as it is overall very serious and lenghtly feature,” he told us.

“We are surprised our games apparently may look real enough to some users already that they can not tell it is not real life footage,” he added.

Arma is not like other shooters. You’re playing soldiers in a game that begat a military training simulator. You can move your head independently to your body. You can see for kilometres. You have to worry about bullet drop, squad positioning, light conditions and goats.

Arma has been like this for ten years. Its developers, Bohemia, have always resisted the urge to smooth out the experience, instead adding more layers of complexity.

If you want easy, simple or even a fully working game, look elsewhere. Arma X: Anniversary Edition is every game in Bohemia Interactive’s Armary (they cruelly didn’t take the opportunity to call it that). They’ve rescued 2001’s Operation: Flashpoint and its Resistance expansion pack from the original publishers, Codemasters, and rebranded it as Arma: Cold War Assault. It joins the current platoon of Arma games: Arma: Armed Assault and its expansion Queens Gambit, and Arma II and its various add-ons, Operation: Arrowhead, Private Military Company and British Armed Forces.



It’s a huge package. The biggest game has 400km2 of island to explore. The most recent games have a huge number of real-world military weapons and vehicles, civilians and even animals. The islands vary in setting – dense Eastern European forests, cities, crumbling villages and foggy deserts are all there to patrol. It’s a complete military toybox, using real places as the backdrop for fictional wars, in an ever-growing world the developers and fans refer to as the ‘Armaverse’.

Dropping back into the first game is like slipping into a pair of wellworn army-surplus boots: the newer games are still built on some of the tech that powered OpFlash, hence the familiarity, even if the spectacle is somewhat muted.

I can still remember my first attempt to play OpFlash: the comforting muscle memory of every other shooter suffered a severe cramp when attempting the ridiculous finger contortions asked of me. Coming back to it now it’s still tough: beyond the simple movement controls there are a series of nested menus – the calls and responses of military manoeuvres – right where you expect weapon selection to be. It’s Bohemia’s clumsy solution to their ambition: they want you to have lots of control over your soldier and his subordinates, to be able to order them around with a huge degree of freedom. They want you to be able to split squads into teams and individuals and send them all over the battlefield. But their game is also a shooter. Reconciling those two extremes has always been the series’ biggest challenge, and it’s still an uneasy balance.



Soon I was running in the early morning sunlight, to my left and right a platoon of soldiers dashing across the undulating landscape. The world is a huge landmass of rolling hills in which Bohemia place missions: there’s a day and night cycle, villages, roads. It allows for astonishingly open-ended action. Over the horizon, a full two minute’s run away, is the enemy. I hear the warnings of chattering friendly soldiers before I’m able to make out the opposing force: miniscule, camouflaged figures against a brown background. Then a puff of smoke explodes from behind a tree and I realise they’ve got a tank.

We split up. One set of soldiers runs down the hill, using a treeline to keep separated from the enemy. My squad simply stays where it is, holding back from the fight, engaging from the high ground. It’s my favourite bit of any Arma game: while the battle unfolds I get to watch all the systems interact from a cosy vantage point.

Another puff of smoke from the tank as the enemy notice my nearby soldiers. A tree collapses under its tracks as it heads towards them. Tiny flashes of gunfire from the supporting soldiers hundreds of metres away. It’s all unscripted, generated according to the AI rules. I can’t fathom how this could even have existed a decade ago. Even when the AI breaks, and I watch the tank grinding over the fallen tee, nose up, barely any forward movement, it’s something to behold.



There are battles like this across all three games. Brutal, buggy slogs that put you in position, give you orders and tell you to get on with it. They range from single-man assaults on tank bases, and belly-down crawlfests where you lie yards away from patrols, holding your breath, to ground-jarring, PTA-inducing hell fights. You’re dumped in tanks, planes and helicopters, or given a tank platoon to order about, in single- and multiplayer. The simulation scales to the challenge.

Given that it’s a dynamic simulation, which creates its own outcomes – and that it’s not playercentric, so an AI teammate could complete the objective – it’s odd that Bohemia insist on providing us with a story. They funnel you through the world they’ve created, sometime giving you optional vignettes to take part in. The increasingly sophisticated way they do this, from Cold War Assault’s fairly straightforward yomp to Arma 2’s branching epic with its different paths and multiple outcomes, provides the clearest sense of the progression of the series.

There’s also Arma 2’s Armory: a multiplayer lobby set up like a tradeshow for military hardware. The players wander the grounds, inspect the hardware, then select items they like and vote on the scenario – attack or defend, etc. The game then takes all these elements, shuffles them like a deck of cards, and – tadaa, you have a mission incorporating them all.



In the past I’ve been dropped into a fight against a tooled-up military helicopter armed with only a quadbike and a handgun. I’ve chased through the hot desert sun with a giggling Welshman on my tail. I’ve never known fear like it, and never been more amazed at a game’s ability to accommodate player choice.

The Armory system will be used to generate missions that form part of the main story of Arma 3, the game building the story around you, but right now it’s the easiest way of getting into the game for a quick tank vs sniper battle with friends.

It’s a good starting point. Arma is best when played with other people, but finding an unmodded server and a place where newbies are gently walked through their tottering baby steps is getting harder by the day. You should persevere. Find your flavour of Arma and hunt down a group of players who will accept your clumsy attempt at playing soldiers, because you’ll have moments where that inherent clumsiness won’t matter. You’ll be hooked up to Teamspeak, hiding behind a bush while a teammate, miles away, is watching you advance through binoculars reporting on enemy positions. You’ll freeze, pinching your bladder as he shouts a panicked warning to stop, wait. As you lie there in the dirt, a tank will rumble by, and the pair of you will take deep, deep breaths. When it passes and you’re free to move, you’ll know why Arma is worth all the trouble.



Is every game in the package worth playing? Arma 2 is certainly the best: the AI is generally smarter, making possible larger open battles than the original was capable of. They’ve also worked on the engine since launch: it ran at close to 20fps on the machine I originally reviewed it on, that same PC can now get 60fps.

Just that and the expansions justify the price. The basics remain the same, but each game in the series has its quirks and community. Arma is as much a platform for vehicle designing, world-building, soldier tweaking modders as it is a game. Buying the full package gives you access to ten year’s worth of that community’s work. A clunky as the original might seem, as middle-childish as Armed Assault feels, there are reams of mods, technical upgrades, new weapons and vehicles and more missions, for all the games.

There’s a reason why Arma stands alone in what it does; it’s because what it does is so ridiculous, so impossible and so clunky that copying it would be the road to ruin for anyone else. Codemasters tried and failed, and instead turned OpFlash into a linear shooter.

Arma is a soldier simulator that takes you from the lowliest grunt to a commander or a sky-troubling pilot. Is it tough to get into? More than any other game that has hooked me, and it has a habit of breaking quite spectacularly. But Arma is only complex because it does so much without compromise. It asks a lot of its players, but you’ll get so much out of it in return.

Here's an upload of a video from a recent ITV documentary into Colonel Gaddhafi's support of the IRA. It contains shocking footage of a helicopter being shot down using weapons allegedly supplied by that baddie.

Except. Umm. It's actually ArmA 2.

Words. Fail. What. How. For goodness sake. UK media, can you stop being shit please.

If you're looking for the footage in the documentary in the ITV player - it's online here. The footage is in place from 28 minutes, 20 seconds.

Update: Here's a youtube video that appears to be the same footage. I think we can start to understand how this happened.

(via the Bohemia forums)

Update 2:
We've been in touch with Bohemia Interactive's CEO, Marek Spanel. He tells us that Bohemia weren't approached by ITV for permission to use the footage, and had no idea that Arma 2 was appearing in a war documentary on British TV. Understandably, they're quite surprised. "We are going to try to get some explanation from ITV how this could have happenned," says Spanel.

"Sometimes creativity and realism in our games lead into crazy results and this is one of such example. I just briefly watched the entire documentary and I still can not believe it as it is overall very serious and lenghtly feature," he adds.

"We are surprised our games apparently may look real enough to some users already that they can not tell it is not real life footage."

We've reached out to ITV for comment. Check out the videos of ArmA below for a sense of exactly how realistic the military shooter really is.


 

One week ago I got a press release telling me that in one week's time, ARMA 3 would get a brand new website. Excited, I set my WAR CLOCK OF DOOM to T-minus 7 days, turned all the lights off and lay in wait. Now, that time has come. The Arma 3 site is live, with eight new videos of the Gamescom presentation. You don't even have to go to the new Arma 3 website to watch them, because I've nabbed them and hidden them under the camo net below. Don't tell anyone.

Four new Arma 3 screenshots have appeared on the Bohemia Interactive forums, spotted by VG247. They show some more of Arma 3's vehicles, including a column of tanks and a jet flying so high we swear it's possible to spot PC Gamer towers somewhere below.

For more Arma 3, check out the E3 screenshots, the recent tech demo video showing the improved physics engine, and make a note of the system requirements. The new Arma will need a beast of a machine to run when it comes out next year.

Game trailers these days sometimes offer too much of what we don't care about. Live action sequences, pre-rendered cut-scenes and developer hype that doesn't help us at all get a real feel for the game we're looking at. That's not the case with this twelve minute trailer for Batman: Arkham City. It's over ten minutes of pure gameplay footage, starring Catwoman and Bats himself in a daring attack on ex-DA Harvey "Two-Face" Dent. If you want to experience the game clean then perhaps you may wan't to skip this one, but Rocksteady have garbled any dialogue that spoils the major plot-lines, so it's fairly safe to view.

We all love Minecraft for various reasons, but it wasn't until I watched some Minecraft machima this week that I realised that it's actually the perfect tool for animators. The sandbox means you can practically build any set you want (after you've slammed your pick-axe into enough rock), and whilst the blocky nature of the game means you'll hardly be producing the next Godfather, you can create a wonderfully stylised short. Take a look at Mans Best Friend, a tear-worthy little film about a miner and his dog exploring Notch's perfect world. Not recommended for those who are too macho to say 'Awwwww'.

We all have that one memory of a game that truly frightened us. For some it'll be an atmospheric moment from Silent Hill 2, for others it's being shocked by the sudden attack of a mutant in System Shock. Today I've gained a new one, and I wasn't even playing. It's actually from a video from back in 2009 that resurfaced on Reddit (thanks greyishpowerranger!), showing off an ARMA 2 battle featuring a mind-shattering 1,500 AI troopers. Set at night, you can barley see the armies, but in the dim light of explosions and tracer, the player stumbles through a harrowing virtual recreation of war. No scripted mission from any game - be it Medal of Honor, Call of Duty or Operation Flashpoint - has ever come close to simulating the overwhelming fear of being stuck in the middle of battle in the way this video does. You may want to turn your speakers down a bit for this one.

Should ARMA 2 be a little too old-hat for you though, we do of course have seven whole minutes from ARMA 3. Don't thank us all at once.

If scarily realistic military sim shooters are a bit outside your comfort zone, then perhaps The Baconing is more your kind of bag. The follow-up to Ron Gilbert's DeathSpank, it looks just as humorous as the previous offerings, although more emphasis on pork-based products. Its comedy value is, of course, positively restrained compared to that of Saints Row: The Third. In this commentary of the game's Steelport area, we're shown how to dive through car windows, punch people until they combust, cause as much destruction as possibly using a tank and burn things with a VTOL plane-mounted microwave laser. Best sandbox ever?



To finish up, relax and take a look at the world we can expect to live in come 2027. Sarif Industries is going to make life better, easier and orange-er. Thankfully we only have to wait mere months rather than sixteen years to see the world, when we all play Deus Ex: Human Revolution on August 23.