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14 Years - Printable Version

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14 Years - Varanon - 06-23-2015

As you might or might not know, yesterday, the 22 of June, marked the 14th anniversary of Operation Flashpoint's release.

I know a lot of people here have not been around at that time and never even knew Operation Flashpoint, but I would like to invite everyone to share their experiences with Arma/OFP in general: What was your first experience with the series. What was your most memorable one ?


Re: 14 Years - Alwarren - 06-23-2015

I remember playing the demo version of Flashpoint. The first time I felt completely lost, utterly overwhelmed by the game and what was going on around me. It made me feel like I was in a real war scenario, thrown in with a handful of dudes that I had no idea about (who's that weirdo with "shoot, communicate, move, a-ha"?) which made it feel so real...


Re: 14 Years - Varanon - 06-23-2015

Somewhere in 2001, a german computer games magazine had an Operation Flashpoint demo on it's coverdisk. I didn't have internet at that time, so I've never heard of it, but it looked interesting.

After installing the demo, I played the one available SP mission: Ambush. And replayed it... and replayed it... I must have played it at least 20 or 30 times. I was thrilled, the mission developed differently every time I played it. It was stunning.

At the end of the Demo, you get extracted by helicopter, and the helo got shot down in a cutscene... it told you you survived the crash, but will you able to make it ? Find out in the playable conclusion... still waiting for that one  Wink

I once nicked the car that you get in the beginning and drove off... The sergeant called me on radio, asking me to return and calling me an insubordinate fuck, but hell, I wanted to explore the landscape... sadly, the demo had only a limited version of the island, you could drive for a few kilometers, but then, the landscape went on without any objects on it. But I was thrilled again, because the landscape did go on even outside the playing area... I sensed something big with this game. I was right Wink


Re: 14 Years - alias - 06-23-2015

Believe it or not i don't like shooters Smile Many years i stood away from games, they were far from compelling for me.
And i tried a lot of them but played so few. For me to enjoy a game had to be nonlinear and opened. There are few exceptions but this is another topic.


My appetite for OFP kind of game was opened by some old games from a series called Delta Force (), which allowed freedom in some degree and featured relatively big maps or at last they seemed like it.


I was blown by OFP. The scale and complexity was unmatched at the time, directional sound, bullet drop, different guns each one with its perks, big terrain, forests, ambiental sounds, lot of things going on, hard challenging missions, interesting crosshair Smile... what is more to say?... THANK YOU BIS!


Re: 14 Years - Variable - 06-23-2015

My OFP/Arma story begins in Nepal.

I met an Israeli travel companion there who, like me, just left the military. When I asked him where did he serve he said he was a Tanker. I asked him what was his role in the tank and he said that he was a gunner. That struck me as odd since that kind fellow had a significant eye squint. After we traveled together some more I felt comfortable asking him how did he manage to become a Merkava gunner with a squint, and he said that it took him a lot of struggle with the armored core medical board but his consistency prevailed and he was allowed to take the gunners course acceptance exams. He was determined to pass and wanted to get prepared. He consulted an officer and asked him what can he do in order to pass, he knew that given his squint he will have to do really good in the exams that involved tests of hitting a moving target in a simulator. That officer told him that he can practice, in a computer game, which he labeled as very realistic, and one that has a tank gunnery system very close to real life. That game was Operation Flashpoint.

The officer told him that the game comes with an editor, and instructed him what kind of scenario he should set up and practice on. My squinted friend got the game, and during one of his weekend leaves practiced on tank gunnery in OFP's editor. When the time has come, he completed the exam in flying colours, enough to overcome his eye deficiency, and got to be a tank gunner.

That story fascinated me, and I carried it with me until I returned from my trip. I still have the notebook I wrote the name of the game in. It was before I started my studies, my schedule consisted from gaming and jim, so I had a lot of free time on my hands. That was already three years after the release of the game so I had troubles finding a retail store that had it around where I lived with my parents. I found one store that had a copy of the game (the Game of the Year edition) and I sent my sister to get it for me since it was close to where she lived.

When I first installed the game and started to play the CWC campaign, I liked how the weapon handling felt, the fact that you need to take aim and use single fire mode or else you won't hit shit. But I was yet to grasp the depth of the game until I reached the mission "After Montignac". For those who don't know it, it's the mission that have you stranded on Everon after your unit was scattered and killed. It has no objective other than "reach friendly forces" or something of that sort. I expected some instructions, guidance by HQ, anything, but the mission gave nothing to help me. When I understand that I am alone in this, I was immersed like I never was in any game at the past. I remember grabbing an M203 from one of my dead comrades' corpses and evading the Russian patrols. I was as scared as a game could get you scared. I had only one save and I struggled to keep myself from using it. It took several attempts for me to realize that I won't be able to shoot my way through this mission. I felt a sweet despair as I was struggling to get unnoticed to a trabant car in a distant hamlet that I wanted to use in my escape. It was thrilling, it felt alive, it was shockingly exciting. The understanding that this is something that I was never experienced before crushed down on me. I was immediately hooked like a worm.

Shock number two was when I was recruited by the resistance forces and was asked to spot targets before an assault on a town where the Russians held civilian captives. I right clicked the targets and something about the way my character called them out told me that this was no script. Not that I knew what scripts were back then, but the mechanical way the numbers were read told me that it's a robust mechanism that is ALWAYS active and not sawn solely for that particular scenario.

That mesmerizing feeling carried on to the resistance campaign and to Red Hammer. In the mission that has you raid an American airbase at night and refuel a stolen Mi-17 helicopter I thought - "Damn, if only I could play this with human players... How awesome would that be?" I had zero knowledge that OFP already had a vibrant coop community, nor did I know what "coop" was. I think only a month after completing all the SP missions and the campaigns I explored the game's interface (because it was hard for me to just let go of it) and came across the gamespy interface. I had an an old GS account for the only game I played online before - Mechwarrior, so I logged in and joined one of the OFP "rooms". After a while I was ingame with real people!!! Except a few moments in my service, I as hyped as I never was before while sitting in front of a computer screen. I still remember the view; I was sitting with a bunch of other Spetsnaz operators in the back of a civilian truck. I was so confused and I didn't know what should I do. The awe I was in caused me to delay jumping out of the truck with the others and the driver pulled back and ran me over, but I didn't care, I knew I've found my home. Afterwards, It took me two full frustrating years of searching the right coop experience, and I was part of two failed clans, until I found CiA, but that is a story for another time.


Don't miss this OFP screenshot gallery guys, these images bring me back...


Re: 14 Years - Jeza - 06-23-2015

Great stories.


I grabbed OFP gold edition in 2003 from GAME in the uk after playing through games like rainbow six 1 and hidden and dangerous. In 2003 I was 13 and into all war stuff particularly the cold war and the install music ect was when I first though....this could be interesting!


Went straight into the campaign cold war crisis, and immediately got my ass handed to me. Then I realized you could literally go 5km out of your way to get at your objective, it felt kind of like hidden and dangerous but on a giant modern scale.


I must of spent 100's of hours in the editor and trying to complete the campaign which I didn't manage for 2 years  :Smile  . But the best complement I can pay it is that I didn't get the internet to 2006, when I got ArmA, so for 3 years I played it offline all on my own, I didn't get bored once.


Re: 14 Years - Outlawz7 - 06-23-2015

I think I played the ArmA1 demo around 2009 when ArmA2 came out, I joined a multiplayer game of Warfare, bought myself some AI and helicopter and had AI fly me to an objective where we all got killed. It was immense, but somehow too big for me, so I left it.

I tried the ArmA2 demo twice and hated it, the preprocess blur and head bobbing gave me a headache and vertigo and I thought this was built into the game and could not be changed so I didn't bother with ArmA2 until I asked Deadfast (now a BI dev) about A2 and he directed me to ArmA2 Free (so this was back in 2011) and a thing called Video Options in the menu.

It was in the middle of an Evolution game, I was stuck north of Chernogorsk with an AK and spent RPG18, fighting off mechanized USMC when I realized this could be a game for me. I bought A2 and OA on Steam and spent the next year playing Domination, for a while barely exploring any other game types or missions.

I did Google "arma sp missions" once, first finding wolle's ArmA2 ports of OFP missions where one called "Battlefields" became my favourite for being a total meat grinder. One other mission I did take a look at was hyperlinked in the signature of this BI forum user called Variable who kept replying in mission threads made by sander whose mission packs crowded my mission list as well. I took a closer look at that signature and here I am.


Re: 14 Years - Variable - 06-23-2015

Nice story Outlawz! That was a good read Smile


Re: 14 Years - Alwarren - 06-23-2015

As I said, Flashpoint for me was a confusing mess of a game, which was exactly what it needed to be to convey the feeling of being in a real-life combat situation. Once I started to play it, I grew into it just like Armstrong did on screen, getting better at it just as Armstrong did, which made it an unforgettable experience for me. Since I only had a measly dial-up internet, I never played it online.

After a few years, I saw the demo of Arma, but the demo did very little to convince me that this was a major step up from OFP, so I didn't get it at first. I only got it somewhere in 2007/2008, when rumors started about Arma 2 and Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. While trying to find out about these games, I came across a video called "Armed Assault Zero":



I was a bit stunned TBH. THAT was Arma? I had played the demo and didn't really see it as that great a graphical improvement over OFP, but heck, that video made it look sweet. So I went ahead and bought it.

Arma 2, I pretty much got when it was at patch 1.01.The original Arma 2 trailer made me want it, and I saw a video on Youtube of a night fight with tracers. Since I had been in a night exercise during my army time, where we shot with tracers, I immediately though "Wow". And my, was it a mess in the beginning. I heard that the Arma 2 OA KSK faction was an apology of by BIS for their German fans since the game originally came out in Germany first and was horrendously buggy.

Arma 2 managed, more than Arma 1, to draw me in. I loved the scenario, loved the realistic graphics (realistic, not prettified like most games), loved every aspect of the game. I was hooked. MOre than Arma, more than Flashpoint, Arma 2 was THE game for me. I can't really say how much time I spend in it; seeing that I have around 2000 hours of Arma 3 now, I guess it was at least 4000 in Arma 2.

It still took me a long time before I started to actually release missions. I had made a whole campaign that I never released (I am remaking it for Arma 3 in the meantime), but I had never released anything until FHQ Coop Pack #1, which caused some guy named "Variable" to invite Varanon and me to join their coop nights Smile


Re: 14 Years - Varanon - 06-23-2015

(06-23-2015, 04:24 PM)Variable link Wrote: Nice story Outlawz! That was a good read Smile

Indeed, and I was thrilled reading your story, Variable!


Re: 14 Years - Misha - 06-23-2015

Back in 2003 when piracy was still barely prohibited, I used to go to a local CD club to "rent" new releases. The club had a shelf full of boxed legal copies, however, behind the desk were boxes full of new titles on CD-R's. As I was a student back then I had a lot of time for gaming, so I was coming there frequently to get my dosage of new titles.  Every time I would come there I would notice a box on the shelf of OFP GOTY edition and the guy on the cover starring at me. The name Operation Flashpoint didn't appeal to me, so initially I wasn't interested. However, newer titles were too much for my old PC and so I started to explore alternatives. I examined the box and I saw that it is sort of a military game where you can do a lot of stuff. Fly chopper or a plane, drive a tank or just be foot soldier. But I haven't yet realized that it is simulation game and not just another shooter.

And so I got it, went home, installed it, and naturally went straight into campaign. I didn't know in what order I should play so I went straight to Resistance campaign. I think the waiting for the bus moment in the first mission bought me, but I remember giving up on this game because it was too hard when I was at the mission where you had to ambush the convoy and friendly AI was rather useless. Also, graphics were already dated, human faces looked like they are in vacuumed plastic bag, everything was too unpredictable, buggy, or just strange, which led to having multiple paranoias whilst playing the game. So quickly I went back to flying my Il-2 and I have forgotten OFP.

Here comes summer of 2004, I just finished my studies and had few free months till my civil service (alternative to conscription for conscience objectors). I decided to dedicate that summer to gaming, music making and partying hard, which I did. But my computer was also one year older and could barely run any new titles. Lacking ideas what to play I decided to have another go at OFP, after all I avoided military service, so maybe I can do my virtual service. I went back to Resistance campaign, with a promise to beat that convoy with or without AI's help. I don't remember how I finally managed it but I this great feeling of accomplishment that I felt kept me going to the end. I finished the Resistance campaign and learned that it was hardest of all and that I made a mistake not starting with much more easy CWC campaign, which (wink, wink) started with a tutorial! I was hooked, I played game for months every day, in SP only because I only had expensive dial-up, so MP was out of the question. After beating all official missions and campaigns and fooling around, I again returned to Il-2 which just had Pacific Fighters update.

But, 4-5 months after, I was transfered to do civil service in University library, in it's internet center. I had no idea how active is the community and how much user content this game had till then. Actually, user made content was new concept for me so I was little reserved. But I took advantage of fast internet in the library to download bunch of user made missions and campaigns. Yet again I played everything I could get. Civil service ended and so the source of new content, and when I was done beating all missions and campaigns, guess what, I returned to Il-2.

It's 2007, broadband internet has even begun to reach suburbs of my city. Nothing changed my life so much as broadband internet. It's was like my spiritual horizon has suddenly shifted to infinity. Quickly I was overflowed with content that for years I wanted to grab off the internet but my dial-up would not allow it. I went to OFP info for the first time and saw that OFP now has a tons of addons and mods that made game look even better than in vanilla version. Frantically I downloaded and played in one long stretch CSLA, FDF, Tonal island campaigns and missions, Vietnam mods, even Japanese army mod, and more content that I could remember. By then I was still using my old PC which I bought back in 2001 so it was becoming more and more useless. Finally I bough new PC and had to make up for the missed games over the years so once again OFP was forgotten.

Now it's spring of 2009, me and my girlfriend (now wife) are in the bookstore which also sells computer games. She wants to buy me something for our anniversary. I saw OFP goty edition for could be 8 eur standing on the shelf. I asked "can I chose a game?", knowing that she thinks that I spend too much time playing games. She hesitated but ultimately bought me the game which was one huge mistake for her.

I installed the game which finally ran super smooth on my PC, installed my favorite mods and addons, played a bit, feeling that the game will stay on my hard drive purely for nostalgia. After all I played everything beside MP. MP? Well, I was always a bit shy and I was still traumatized with my Il-2 online experience. After years of playing SP only I was not a match for guys who played online for years and I was afraid that OFP would be the same case. Besides, who are that people playing on the other side, kids? Military fanatics with whom I had nothing in common? What kind of personalities?

I don't know how but I decided to take a risk and join online game. There were only about 20-30 servers up still. Obviously this game was dying. I went to public servers only and had very mixed experience. Most of the games were PvP where I was easy pray for anyone. There was one server with some sort of zombie mod and larger group of players which was ok, but it didn't provde experience I was looking for. Finally there was a public server which had some real organized coop game. I remember it was defend mission, we had to stop convoy of many, many tanks and some infantry. We played it for 5-6 times unsuccessfully, even with organization the mission was too hard. But it was the thing I was looking for! I felt that this could grow into addiction very quickly.   

Tomorrow I went back looking for that server but either it was locked or it was missing from the server list. I didn't want to go back to PvP and zombies so I tried server after server randomly looking for the coop. I don't know exactly when but this is how I discovered CiA after which I looked further no more.


Re: 14 Years - Varanon - 06-23-2015

Nice read, Misha!

My initial experiences with OFP were strictly single player as well. In fact, in the beginning, I only had a dialup, and later, when I got broadband, I was not able to play online due to my social phobia.

I tried OFP exactly once, was shot immediately and sailed around as a bird for ages, watching the battle. Back then, I thought there was some metaphorical or philosophical reason for the bird as a symbol of a free soul or something like that. I still wonder sometimes, if that was the reason for the bird as a death cam instead of a more traditional camera.

Anyway, moved on from OFP to Arma 1 (same experience as Alwarren, to be honest), and then Arma 2. I remember that first trailer, especially the moment when the play steps over the fence, that really got me (yeah, honestly, it felt so real).

My early year(s) with Arma 2 was dominated by playing Coop with Alwarren. We got this one or two randomized missions from Armaholic, one being Cypher, the other Operation Lojack, and replayed those many times (they were random, so it was possible to replay them). I think we must have played Cypher at least 100 times. That was Arma for me.

We then had the idea of making our own missions. I am a programmer, so getting into scripting was not much of a hassle for me. My first mission was "Fuel", set on Proving Grounds, and part of our first coop pack. I also made a randomized mission for this pack, "Needle in a Haystack", which we also played quite a lot, Alwarren and me.

In any case, the coop pack got Variable's attention, and he invited us to join the coop night. That was the first time I overcame my social phobia and dared to play online with team speak and voice comms (something I couldn't do before).  Well, needless to say, I was hooked by CiA's play style and exactly one year later, Alwarren and me were offered membership. So, for me, CiA was also a big help in overcoming some of my fears in addition to being an awesome experience!


Re: 14 Years - Misha - 06-23-2015

(06-23-2015, 02:24 PM)alias link Wrote: My appetite for OFP kind of game was opened by some old games from a series called Delta Force

Yeah, I liked Delta Force Black Hawk Down. The first military shooter I played. It even had firing from vehicles  [img alt=Tongue]http://ciahome.net/forum/Smileys/default/tongue.gif[/img]
Quote:

Maybe I wouldn't play OFP if I hadn't played Delta Force before, and I wouldn't play Delta if there was no movie Black Hawk Down. Ok, I will not follow causal trail further.


Re: 14 Years - Outlawz7 - 06-23-2015

Damn, I thought I should keep it strictly OFP/Arma, but my first online game was also DF:BHD, I mainly played coop as well and even made missions. In fact I just went to look them up, holy crap, May 2006. And yeah, ridiculous nickname.  Tongue

http://www.dfbarracks.com/mapdb/index.php?action=lm&gv=bhd&gmt=d&s=d&st=SAS+private+LoL&si=2&lf=2&p=0




Re: 14 Years - Varanon - 06-23-2015

(06-23-2015, 02:24 PM)alias link Wrote: Believe it or not i don't like shooters Smile

Now, that's a surprise, I have to admit!