The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

What can I say? It happens even to Gigabyte. Glad the other stuff arrived okay and the SSD issue turned out to be a non-issue.

Samsung S32D850T 32" 1440p ordered and on the way. Be here in a week or so.

 

Yeah, I second Jeff's comments - good thing the SSD issue was NOT the issue.

But did that mean you DIDN'T need to RMA your voyager stuff, or you still DID?

CONGRATS JEFF!!
YOUR 32" SAMSUNG WILL BE AWESOME!!​

Sam, running the math, you're putting about $700 or just under into your gaming PC, and the rest into your server. So given that you had to dial back your prior overclock - what percentage increase in speed will you be picking up - and will that be with an overclocked cpu, or at stock?

By the way, it's funny when you talk about your REALLY OLD 9550, as I am still nursing along a 9450 at its 30% overclock.


ARKHAM KNIGHT UP AND RUNNING OKAY, LOW 30S, 1600P, NORMAL, NORMAL, HIGH
I am pleased to say that I DID get Arkham Knight working however.

I could barely get it to run at all after downloading it, but then the next day - this was a couple days ago - I upgraded to 15.7 catalyst.

This time, I let 15.7 catalyst load that AMD Gaming Evolved app from Raptr after reading about it on a few forums - one guy said it was helpful for optimizing a new game. I thought - "well, yeah, maybe it will help me run Arkham Knight." I looked at its recommendations, and I let it optimize the game, with low definition, low shadows, and low textures, but with 16x anisotropic filtering, up from the trilinear it would have used if I had the dial set on performance instead of quality, and with anti-aliasing turned on, versus off for performance.

So that gave me a little insight into the game settings, but that was the only game I let it optimize, and in-game I exit the app.

I am getting low 30 fps.

The game has a couple of nice features to help you tune it up. They show you your vram usage. That was helpful. They also have a benchmark you can run to show low, high and average fps. I didn't notice the benchmark until later, but in running it later I got from 22 to 44, average about 34.

Without the benchmark, I did my tuning during the car chase at the very beginning of the game, often losing the hummer I was chasing, and then re-starting the chase.

I had run this chase the night before, with the old 14.2 catalyst, and even with the default resolution of 1080p, my fps was in the low teens. I managed to snag the target vehicle anyway. I came back the next day, upgraded catalyst, and discovered that I was already past the car chase and couldn't go back so I started a new game.

First I tried regular 1600p. To my surprise, that was okay - upper 30 if not 40 fps. I remember that Sam says if you are cpu bound, not gpu bound, the cpu won't be affected by higher resolutions. So my gpu pair can handle 1600p for this game.

I then increased every Low item, 3 of them: definition, textures, and shadows, to Normal. That was okay also - pretty smooth driving still in mid-30s. Then I tried High definition, which is more about whether you can see things at a distance - and that didn't seem to affect fps at all. Again the 7950 crossfire can handle it.

But I then tried High Textures - that one didn't stick. The game shows you how much vram you are using, of what is available - in my case 3 gigs, and I was already at about 95% usage - so the High Textures put me over and they said I needed a 4 gig card to pull that off.

Similarly on the High shadows - they said it would max my vram, and I would experience stuttering. So I backed off that as well. I also turned off motion blur as it was making me kind of dizzy, and seeming to reduce fps.

So for those 3 I have: High definition, Normal shadows and Normal textures, and I AM running my native 2560x1600.


NIVIDIA OPTIONS A NO GO
Under the Nvidia heading, there were four more options, and two of them were not grayed out - enhanced rain, and enhanced light effects. I turned both of those on, but then I seemed to experience a distinct hit on fps, so I quickly turned them back off.


I assume per usual that I am cpu-bound, but I haven't tried to track that at all, or even to track gpu usage. I assume I am successfully running crossfire, but again, I have not verified that.


Visually, the game looks good. They do some interesting things when you are gliding around. If you briefly dive, for example, in order to pick up speed, your wing tips display a wind-shear effect - kind of a tiny jet trail which looks really cool, and the wings do that again when you come out of the dive. They have tinkered with some of the graphics effects to spruce things up a bit. Even the game map has been spruced up - you can rotate it around, and it is somewhat 3D - tall buildings extend up from the map at certain angles. Nice!!

Fire and smoke are very good
I was standing on a building watching a burning fire truck below - I may have taken a screenshot of it - the smoke was wonderful - big billowing black clouds - it had a lifelike affect that seemed unusual and was quite impressive - very compelling.


I have enjoyed about 6 hours of the game so far, and things are pretty smooth - never any lagging. Well, I said "never" but there may have been a few times when things were blowing up all around me that maybe I lagged - for example when the helicopter was launching missiles at me at the same time as the drone tanks. I was too busy trying to figure out what to do - which meant I should have done a better job of dodging and using the dodge thrusters - little rockets that kick in for 2 seconds if you hold the space bar - to help you rapidly move in any wsad direction. I repeated that segment a few times until I improved my dodging skills and until I finally noticed the hint suggesting vulcan gun (left mouse machine gun) on the helicopter instead of what I had thought - middle mouse missiles which is what you must use on the drone tanks.


BATMOBILE AGREES WITH ME
I disagree with the reviewer in PC Gamer - I liked his review which I read before I started playing - I read it to see if the bugs had been fixed - but I noticed that he definitely didn't appreciate the Batmobile. So I had very low expectations about it.

I was very pleasantly surprised. By contrast,


I LOVE THE BATMOBILE!
IT TOTALLY ROCKS!!!


Do you guys remember Carmack's Rage? Of course you do. Do you remember the impressive engine revving sounds - well you guys are all into racing games so Dirt probably outdoes that by now - anyway, the Batmobile sounds like that - it sounds very powerful if anything ever did. And it is a pleasure to drive - unlike what the PC Gamer reviewer wrote when he said the roads were too narrow and twisty to enjoy using it. He was wrong!

Did you know that the wheels, front and back, can be turned 90 degrees sideways, so you can sit in the middle of a street circle - right on the circle - and rotate around 360 degrees, just sit there spinning around. That is useful if you are keeping an eye out for enemy drones, or even just for thugs driving their fast getaway cars. They think they are fast - wait until you get behind them and hit the 3-second jet thruster (left mouse) which rockets you up to 130% velocity - tossing them up and to the side of the road, usually upside down and on fire. At that point I used to get out and beat them up as they stumbled out of the wreckage. Later when I learned about it, I just started shooting them with the car's non-lethal riot gun.

You cannot break it. You can chase villains around, crash into cars, buildings, bridge pillars, anything you want. Most of what you crash into spectacularly breaks into pieces all around you - occasionally it will not break and you will bounce back. You can roar around the streets, flinging pedestrians in all directions. This initially bothered me - until I realized that the city had been evacuated and only the criminals were out on the streets.

In fact, as I mentioned, you can shoot these criminals with the car's built in weapons - but it is a non-lethal shot of course. You have a machine gun on the left mouse, and a missile launcher in the middle mouse - but when you use left mouse for a pedestrian, it turns into riot control, and X vision tells me later that they are unconscious - not dead of course - that's how Batman rolls.

(It seemed to me that he DID kill Ra's, which shocked me, but that is the one and only kill I have witnessed in 3 Batman games. I have screenshots of Ra's hanging on the fence with his sword all the way through him, courtesy of Batman who caught him in his fall off the tall building. I tried to google that but nobody else seemed to comment. Apparently in the comics, he was Batman's main combat mentor.)​

The PC Gamer reviewer said this installment was the weakest of the series, but I am not so sure about that. For those who like to combine some car racing with their fisticuffs - and look at all of you Dirt fans - the introduction of the Batmobile may be a quite welcome addition to the franchise. I for one enjoy the car. I had to quickly get to a target about 1200 yards away - the chemical plant where the strange drug gas is being manufactured - I just called for the car and got there a lot faster than gliding - and I really enjoyed the drive.

Anyway, depending on sales and feedback, there actually may be more installments in the future - with the Batmobile. I will be glad to participate.


I vote yes so far. I'm only 7% into the game, but driving it up on roofs, having it help me pull down walls, etc - it's a blast.


Another welcome addition - they have pumped up the boost of the power grapple. You now have to hit space twice, then a third time and hold it - and you are rocketed up in the air. Very satisfying. There is a nice tutorial to help you learn that move.

They have several nice tutorials in the game to help you hone your skills on
1. using the power-grapple for launching, then gliding, as we just mentioned
2. using the batmobile to launch into a high-speed glide as you eject out of the car
3. using a push-counter which turns into a grab and throw the guy for a complete knockout - you have to do the counter successfully 5 times to get the upgrade point - I repeated that about 4 more times to really get the technique down but later I never used it in battle - maybe I'll try it some time
4. how to do a fear attack against 3 nearby armed enemies - you approach them stealthily, then when the nearest glows, and you see your fear strike light up on the left mouse icon, you attack him and turn to get another to light up, then hit left mouse, then get the last to light up - they are firing at you the whole time, but you have just upgraded to a heavily armored suit, and you are moving lightning fast - it is very cool - I still managed to get myself killed later in the game fighting about 8 guys - so on repeat - after taking out the first 3 with the fear attack move, I rolled back into my normal space space roll out of the way skills from prior games, plus middle mouse cape swing stun move - a lot of evasive action combined with a lot of left mouse attacking - more than right mouse countering - which seems to work better and keeps me alive - I also later bought a 25% armor upgrade - I need all the melee help I can get
5. how to be a predator - working with stealth against a random group of 3 armed enemies

This set of 5 tutorial opportunities, each of which earns you an upgrade point, appeared just after delivery of my upgraded armor.

I already had enjoyed a useful tutorial on using the batmobile's weapons against the drone tanks. I am going to have to repeat that again, however, because I forgot how you trigger the guided missiles which you can use after the missile capabilities charge up as you destroy the first few drone tanks. If both sides charge up fully, you can fire 4 missiles in a row. Is it the 1 key? Maybe? That might be it - you have to hit the 1 key 4 times rapidly, to get 4 missiles to launch - the targeting of the missiles is done for you.


I saw later in the game, at the chemical plant, that the missiles had charged up, but I forgot how to launch them. That tutorial is near a traffic circle in the Panessa studios district - so I'll go back and look for it in an hour - and try to better absorb that lesson.


SO FAR, A WORTHY ADDITION TO THE FRANCHISE
I recommend this game. I am running it at normal, and from the very get-go, they seem to have increased Batman's fighting skills - he goes into rapid movement from foe to foe - whereas in prior games you had to build up to that kind of flashy effective fighting style. (Perhaps they got some criticism that Batman really didn't seem to be a very skilled fighter.)

In this game, he kicks major butt right out of the box!

Rich

 

If the system in my server with the Q9550 was stable, I'd still be using it, it's more than capable enough for what that machine does. I somewhat doubt it's the CPU at fault as it's been running stock for over 3 years and stock CPUs very rarely fail. Which leaves me with the option of memory or the board. Given that the system usually falls over with a lot of network or disk activity and cites ntfs.sys or tcpip.sys I'm thinking motherboard is more likely (Else I'd expect to see page fault BSODs and similar).
I'm not spending fair money on a second-hand socket 775 board that'd be similarly old and have an unknown history. Even when that X48-DS4 was new, Socket 775 was in its last days, as 1366 was already released by then I think. It's a waste of certainly one of my better CPUs, but such is the life of PC hardware I suppose.

Damn at Arkham Knight, it's still dreadful isn't it. 30fps on your hardware at low settings - AF takes a bit of a performance hit, but usually nothing like as much as AA in my experience.
The reason why 'nvidia' settings tank your frame rate so hard is because of the anti-competitive code written into PhysX. After nvidia took over PhysX from AGEIA, the first thing they did was prevent it from running on AMD hardware (there is no technological reason why this is necessary, it is just revenue protection). The next thing they did was to offload PhysX processing to the CPU if that is occurring. Trouble is, given the nature of PhysX work, modern CPUs are actually pretty good at it, so they also had to artificially hobble it to ensure it degraded performance sufficiently that nobody would ever use it. Typically speaking CPU PhysX calculations are capped at around 50% of one core.
It's all a marketing ruse, your hardware could probably run those settings fine, but PhysX is coded in such a way to prevent that. That's just how nvidia roll and always have done.
As far as Batman is concerned, a non-lethal missile launcher? really?

The UD5 board is still being RMA'ed, the memory control on the board is definitely faulty. Thankfully as I'm using amazon I can advance a replacement with a 30 day return window, and return the faulty board to my local post office, so I may be able to collect the replacement Monday and have plenty of time to run diagnostics before I send the old one back.
What's more disconcerting is that I used the 6500 and HD3P board in the gaming PC for now, just to verify that at least that one works, but it also has a quirk in that if the PC has been switched off for some time, it will not boot first time, you need to power the machine off two or three times first. That's not as bad as the UD5 where you had to cycle the PSU's power switch on the back every time you power on the machine, but it's still not really 'correct' behaviour for a motherboard. Will have to keep an eye on that - it's not impossible that it's the new PSU causing that, but given that the system was stable through an hour's worth of Rocket League last night, I'm doubtful.

 

Confirmed that the second board is also DOA - a routine BIOS update has nuked it. Will be trying a different brand of RAM tomorrow (HyperX instead of Corsair LPX) in case that resurrects it, but both boards (possibly a third, depending on if the replacement UD5 coming tomorrow is any good) are likely to get RMA'ed for MSI replacements. Gigabyte + the Z170 chipset seems an extremely bad idea. Ye have been warned.

 

Ouch! Damnit Gigabyte! My Z97X-UD5H is one of the smoothest running, most stable, and most well behaved boards I've ever had. No quirks at all, not even the Usual Gigabyte ones. *knock on wood*. I wouldn't go for MSI though, out of all brands. I'd be more apt to go ASUS lately. When they work they work well.

Rich, Sam's new CPU will probably be a pretty significant upgrade. It's 3.4GHz stock on the i5 6600 vs 2.66GHz stock on the older i5 750. That plus architecture improvements means it will probably be equivalent to the old cpu overclocked to ~4GHz, in that ballpark. Considering Sam's old CPU is less power efficient, losing overclockability due to age, and needs an aggressive overclock to reach what the new one does at stock, the new one should be far better in several ways.

Sam, you can still overclock it a bit as well using the good old fashioned baseclock. Limited but possible to get great gains with a little effort.

 

The Z97N-WiFi build has been flawless, no issue with that at all but Z170 has been a disaster. If the replacement UD5 solves it then I'll probably keep it but given the issues with the HD3P I have my doubts...

As for the CPU, benchmark tests equated the 3.3Ghz 6600 to around a 5Ghz 750, well above what I was able to achieve with it. That said, 5 over 4.12 isn't a big upgrade for 6 years of progress I admit!

 

Wow, that's quite the tech leap since Bloomfield/Lynnfield! I didn't realize the gap was that large! The Skylake is stock speed remember. Considering the aging i5 750 being limited in speed, the upgrade is vast. Puts my Phenom II X6 longevity in perspective. Bloomfield/Lynnfield never really impressed me. Only later models did. SandyBridge gave me the itch to upgrade.

New pleather office chair ordered on Amazon for $120. From AmazonBasics but am familiar with the particular manufacturer and they're okay chairs. The paint chips and the pleather eventually cracks and peels a bit on the armrests but they are comfortable, sturdy, and structurally hold up well.

http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-GF-80293H-High-Back-Executive-Chair/dp/B00XBC3BF0/ref=pd_sbs_196_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=41gCWtyvWXL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR103,160_&refRID=1SV8HRJFA2KFB24MEQ0W

My old chair is like v1.0 vs this chair's v2.0. The manufacturer in question has upgraded their materials and engineering/design a little. The gas cylinder pushed out the bottom of my old one, and it was cracked and peeled to hell on the armrests, so I figured a slightly improved replacement would do okay. 4 years perfect comfort and function isn't bad for a $100 chair. I could easily replace the gas cylinder with a fatter one that won't push through the base, but the chair is too beat to care for the relative price. If a friend wants it he can fix it pretty cheaply. The seat and back are fine but the armrests need to be covered with something. Someone suggested black cloth gaffer tape or reupholstering them which is admittedly fairly simple with some material. I get better value though going for the updated model.

New chairmat ordered as well. My current one is beyond destroyed. New one is industrial grade thickness and guaranteed crack free. Rated for extra deep pile carpet but uses cleats instead of spikes which should be fine on my rather short carpet. Should be a vast improvement from the horrible one I have now.

New monitor, keyboard, mouse, chair, and chairmat(not to mention a much nicer, albeit used, desk late last year) to freshen up my interface a bit

 

I really don't think the Lynnfield chips were as bad as you think. The stock 750 would to my recollection in a lot of cases go against the late-generation Core 2 Quads around the 3.2Ghz mark, which in turn meant they could take on Phenom II X4s right at the end of their tolerance range around the 3.8Ghz mark. Add the fact that they took >50% overclocks in their stride on air cooling with all 4 memory slots populated using different sizes makes them enormously better than their predecessors which could only practically achieve around 30% when using lots of RAM and both PCIe slots due to limitations of the chipsets. At the 4.12Ghz I ran my 750 at for at least 3-4 years, it was roughly the equivalent of an AMD chip running at almost 6Ghz, and for of course the FX series that followed, an even higher speed than that.

The i5 6600 is almost double the performance of the 750 stock, which due to the lack of an overclock would make it only a 30% or so real-world improvement, but then that's going from a 200W chip on the stock cooler to a chip with a TDP of only 65W and a practical power consumption far less than that, below 50W in many tests. Raw performance certainly hasn't improved hugely over the years, but efficiency definitely has. At least for Intels

Not long ago I ditched my cruddy Razer Taipan for a far superior SteelSeries Sensei RAW, I changed my office chair in the summer for a relatively inexpensive one from an office chair supplier rather than from a local store and that's a lot better too, but I never use a chairmat. I have so little space in my room that I rarely move around on my chair much, the carpet is thick so it's hard work to move but I often find the level of friction with floormats so low that it's annoying for the opposite reason, plus they get caught on stuff etc. - quite content without one.

In other news, the previously busted HD3P board has booted straight into windows (with one reboot in the BIOS which may simply be from a hardware change, not sure yet) with the Kingston RAM fitted. Will keep an eye on it for a couple of days - I have the replacement UD5 here now but haven't tested it yet.

 

Since it'd be a pretty much war and peace effort to transcribe it, I may as well copy my post from [H] here verbatim, if anybody wants to keep up to date on my 'efforts' to gain a working Z170 system. The tl;dr version is that three motherboards, three sets of RAM and two processors hasn't yielded a single working upgrade to either machine yet.

Edit: Refund has come through for the Z170X-UD5s, so I've ordered an MSI Z170A Gaming Pro in their place, to see if that's any better. If that one works, then I'll order another MSI board to replace the HD3P. If it doesn't, time to take a step back to Z97.

 

Again due to its length I'm going to copy my post to [H] for the benefit of those following the posts above.

 

Are you kidding me, Sam - a mini-displayport cable???

If so, then perhaps that resurrects gigabyte's former sterling reputation. But I agree, utterly bizarre.

Your testing is very organized and methodical. That strange little bug must have been frustrating!


Jeff your new chair looks great! Very stylish and comfortable!


THREE MAJOR SINGLE-PLAYER GAMES - SCREENSHOTS WILL BE COMING
Wow, I've been buried for 3 weeks. I LOVED Arkham Knight, and then I sort of liked Black Ops 3 - the single-player campaign was good enough to warrant the purchase - I no longer play multiplayer as I am slowly edging back to the idea of selling houses and making some money! LOL I switched gender near the end of the campaign and I am really glad I did - it was very funny to finish off as a girl.

By the way - no crossfire on Arkham Knight. I had the charts running, and the second graphics card was idle. My cpu was loaded about 70% average - but I was not charting individual cores and sometimes there is one core that is pushing 100% - so the 70% may not have been accurate. I was not running Highest setting, but the game looked very good anyway. VERY GOOD! (I'll post the screens.)

Not only is the batmobile fantastic, but the gliding is better than ever, as they have a boost grapple that can be over-boosted, and then over-boosted again. That means you grapple, then hit space, space, space, then space once more holding the last one, and you are boosted wayyy up in the air - you can glide all over that way, and then come down on the enemy drones and plant explosive gel on them, then detonate after you jump off and land on a nearby roof.

And you can drop down on cars and reach in and throw the driver out - then the car always flips or crashes somehow! That is very funny! You have to get pretty close before the move comes up on the screen - so sometimes it is a challenge to keep up with a car, but the booster grapple helps - then you dive down and commandeer it - remember - only the thugs are driving around - all the decent people have been forceably evacuated from the city!

I also loved Assassins Creed Unity. I warmed up to it after a while, and I enjoyed learning more about french history than I had ever known. They had a lot of missions that you could play again and again - some of them meant to be coop missions - so the timing is very critical if you play as one person. There was only one that I could absolutely not play as one person - a sport thing with a very tight timing - you HAD to have two people at least. So I gave up on that one, but did all the others.

Also I got to climb the Eiffel Tower and machine-gun down a few fighter planes - doesn't sound like revolutionary France does it.

I have gobs of screenshots on all 3 titles that I will slowly start posting to give an idea of what I liked about those games.

I put them away - between the three that's several hundred hours of very enjoyable gaming. That's where I've been for 3 weeks.

For the last few nights I have gotten back on Arma3 - specifically on the combined arms showcase about which I have posted many times, where we have to defend our capture of the enemy outpost.

ARMA 3 GRENADE LAUNCHER IS WAYYY FUN!
I pull up the save where I have grabbed the enemy katiba 6.5 with a sort-of red-dot sight - it's actually a green inverted V sight - and most importantly it has a grenade launcher. Before the save - before the counter attack, I had gone to one of the enemy MRAP vehicles and loaded up 11 launchable grenades in the shape of small soft-drink cannisters with a rounded end - they look like a very fat bullet.

When I'm not using the launcher, I have the katiba on auto, using two-shot bursts - and while the sound of it seems weak, it's every bit as deadly as the 6.5 MX.

The grenade launcher has really grown on me - I jumped on for an hour last night and after warming up, I hit the first guy up on the hill to my left, almost dead-on, then there was a machine-gunner way up the hill - I raised the little red dot extra high, and no more mention of him. Lucky shot. Haha. Also up the hill to the right - just almost where the tree blocks my view, are often found 2-3 more guys heading down the hill that way - we have a machine-gunner trying to work on them, so they usually head out of my range of operation, maybe to end up down on the wall, threatening to come into the compound and take out our sergeant who is giving me red-boxed targets in my HUD. But lately I try a round or two on them, and I see that I have been fairly accurate - my team seems to be surviving better as my grenade skills have increased, funny how that works.


I ALWAYS USED TO BE THE LONE SURVIVOR
I remember almost two years ago on that same map, where I always had run to the entrance to the compound, behind a barrier, shooting up on that hill with the MX, trying to kill those guys before all the other guys heading up the valley to the right got close enough to start killing off my team-mates, leaving myself as the sole survivor trying to deal with the last 3 enemies.

Now I am using the rock that I earlier had discarded as too beset with machine gun fire to be useful - you just have to know when to withdraw, and when you can stick your head out again.

The guys coming down the hill above me on my left have full view of me - but as I have 11 grenades, and I can lob them about 5 seconds apart, and each explosion throws up quite a bit of dust even if I am off the mark, as long as I keep them coming and am halfway accurate, those 2-4 enemies are manageable.

Then when it seems as they are done, I go into inventory, ditch my rocket launcher that makes me far to easy to spot behind my rock, and concentrate on the enemies coming toward us through the valley below, making sure my steelseries mouse is set to the slow 300 setting, and my magnifier is set to max (I hold right-mouse to maximize it, open map, zoom map, then when I close the map my magnifier stays in that maxed position without requiring me to hold right mouse - a little trick that takes 3 seconds but much improves mouse control by leaving me free just to position it and hit left mouse for fire - no involvement at all anymore with right-mouse.)

I always make a note if any grenades are left. Occasionally, with 1 or 2 grenades left, an enemy will come in close then take cover behind a group of trees. They are actually closer than way up on the hill, so I don't lift the red dot so high, and sometimes I get them without firing another shot. Or, alternatively, if I have 5 or 6 grenades left, I might try to get them when they are way out there, and I have to lift the red dot about 3 inches above the little dot that is an enemy soldier. Occasionally I am accurate, and that is kind of fun. Again, that is about 150-200 yards, and I don't know if the launchers in real life can pop those pellets out that far.

I still have over 100 user-written scenarios to go through. I did replay that frenetic Operation Greenspan again, to find the sniper rifle, and I did find it, but I had to kill so many enemies that there weren't many left. I was wrong about that game. They don't keep spawning. You have about 100 enemies, maybe 120, and that is that - when they are all dead there's nothing left to shoot. Plus Operation Scotch Lass with the sniper scope that I stole from the barracks at the air-field gave me plenty of sniping action.

YOU CAN MOVE THE SCOPE FROM RIFLE TO RIFLE
And I learned a new thing about the game - you guys will probably laugh. I learned how to open my backpack, or chest pack, and how to take my scope off and put it in my pack, before changing weapons. So in the scenario Contact Person, at the very beginning, I outfitted my MX100 with the White Hot scope - the one that has two very high zoom magnifications, besides switching from natural to white hot, then black hot, then infra-red - and when we killed everybody at the first cabin, I saved that scope, and I put it on the enemy zephyr 7.6 150-round machine gun, and it fit!

This would not happen in real life!! At least I don't think so. And of course normally you would have to sight-in your scope - practice prone on a target until you got a very tight grouping - then adjust the scope until the grouping was right in the bullseye.

That high-powered scope on the zephyr of course changed Contact Person. I created a new save where I have to now kill off the tank, then shoot the squad accompanying the tank, then go down to my old position and start taking sniping shots at the enemies in the farm compound consisting of about 7 buildings and various roads - maybe 30 enemy soldiers. That became so easy with the scope, and my tactic of bringing the 4 guys in my squad from concealment about 300 yards away once the enemy was focused on getting me, so they could attack from the enemy's rear - that I started ditching the scope.

To bring back the old challenge, I put the scope back in my pack. I went back to using crosshairs and iron sights.

I have lots of screens on this also - I really should be posting as I blog. Probably next time.

Rich

 

Hi guys,


Well, I hope that everybody is enjoying preparing for the holidays.


FINE ART PRINTING - FROM THE SCREEN TO PAPER, AND WHAT PAPER!!!
I have been spending some fantastic fine-graphics time with the sister of the animator, taking one of my Canon pixma mx870 printers up to LA (I have 3 printers of which two, from ebay for $133 each, are in very good condition and accept the fine paper setting - the other is in the sunroom for all to use, and is a plain paper printer/scanner - and it does a nice job of it - but it won't accept fine paper without having to be reset due to a 5100 error - google canon 5100 error and you'll see what I mean.)


Do you guys remember this set of pictures she emailed to me, as examples of what she wanted us to work on. Well, that is the kind of stuff we did up in LA two weeks ago.


We try to find high-res images that give us enough pixels to print out at 150-200 dpi




I have learned some amazing things about printing - and about fine art paper which can cost up to $4 a page for a simple 8.5 x 11 letter size print. That is on the extreme end - a Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta 325 gsm runs closer to about $2 per sheet.

She pulled up a lot of artistic paintings and photos from the web, some of them at high resolution. Her intent, once I sent her some pictures that she had taken, printed out on my Kirkland glossy (12 cents per sheet), was to create some really nice prints to put into painting frames for her mom, and for other relatives, as holiday gifts.

We run them through the graphics program - we are alternating between Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and my favorite, PhotoImpact. PhotoImpact has the best print preview, allowing us to reduce the size of the printout to one-quarter page, and to put on a title that prints out with the proof. On the title we record our latest setting of 5 parameters that we fine-tune. With photoshop I can set up the quarter print, but I have not discovered a way to add a title - same deficiency with Elements.

We also looked at ICC profiles, and I just bought the latest version of PhotoImpact - mine is version 4.2 but they progressed up to version 13 resold by Corel, when they stopped marketing the product. The last, version 13, is ICC-aware, meaning that you can incorporate a printer profile into your final printout.

Using ICC-aware Photoshop, we tried the 7 printer profiles that came with the printer, meant to match different types of paper, but we didn't like any of the profiles.

So our parameters consist of setting the printer to match basic Driver settings, then we do a manual adjustment of 1. Cyan (takes off red) 2. Magenta (takes off green ), and 3. Yellow (takes off blue) leaving Brightness at Normal, and finally reducing 4. Intensity, and increasing 5. Contrast. The 5 numbers might look like 10, 0, 0, -15, 10 as perhaps a first cut on a new image, which usually starts out printing with too much red, too dark, and needing more contrast.

This page comes from PaperPort - I scanned in the final pictures at 600 dpi - the proofs at 300 dpi
.........

The image above was made as a cover sheet for our cheap proofing paper, at 5 cents per page, which is in the box, up front, with the fine art paper.

If you look at the second row, it says "one of the very best prints." Here it is a little larger.


We use proofing paper, like the 5 cents Canon High Resolution HR-101

.........

We fine-tuned that image in just two passes - others took 15 passes for example.

I didn't think much of the picture until final printout.

The image was pretty good after the first pass, and then I said "well, let's add some contrast." When we did that the picture was ready for final printout.

How it looked on the high resolution 5 cents a page picture, was nothing compared to printing it out at 8" x 10" size on the Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta 325 gsm.


Is the fine art paper worth $2/page - when you see the final image you will start to think so
.....


This particular model of Canon pixma uses dye ink - the dye ink soaks into the fine art paper. It doesn't spread out much because the droplet size is as small as one picoliter - you would need a magnifying glass to see one dot - and the resolution is nothing short of amazing.

But when you print on the fine art paper, something happens to the image that is hard to put into words - it acquires a depth that it didn't have before - the paper, besides being extra thick, is also textured, and the image moves from totally flat, like on this computer screen, to having some of the visual properties of an actual painting.

I always knew my "matte" paper was "pretty good" (now I call it high res paper, reserving matte for the really nice stuff) but not as good as my 12 cents Kirkland glossy, which I used for selling real estate. But I never had any experience at all with fine art paper. Wow!


OH YEAH, THIS IS A GAMING THREAD NOT A FINE ART THREAD, LOL
Okay, I thought that, although everybody is probably busy with holidays, I might be able to lure you guys back with some screenshots – I have a metric ton of them.

I want to talk about some recent titles in the weeks to come, but in glancing at my album of hundreds of screenshots, I recall that I never posted about my favorite Company of Heroes 2 Ardennes Assault battle.


This real time strategy game is fantastic, and especially so with a save system in place




I have one particular battle that I never really discussed in Company of Heroes Ardennes Assault, which I guess was my favorite part of that game. I played it about 50 times. I only have about 15 screens for that, and I’ll handle 7 of them in this post.



WE’RE SEEING THE GIRLS NOW JOINING US IN COMBAT

But after that I have 5 games to talk about – the four fabulous Batman games, and Assassins Creed Unity which turned out to be quite a bit of fun, and involved many missions where he teamed up with his girlfriend. I see that the new Assassins Creed Syndicate, taking place during the Industrial Revolution in England, involves the assassin and his sister – so that should be a lot of fun in a few months.



I also just finished Black Ops 3, and thank god for the beta catalyst, which made the game playable – it looked really good – and it was smooth at 40-50 fps, on medium textures – not high, not ultra. I cranked up textures to see a couple times, and yes, the smoke effects are better, more dust blowing around, etc. but medium still looked really good.



At first I couldn’t believe my ears – I was sure I heard women screaming as we killed off the attackers. Sure enough, I realized that there were plenty of women combatants, and several on our side. I ended up, as I said last time, changing my identity to a woman, and it made the finale of the game, I feel, much more interesting.


To hear her say these words, slowly, soothingly, as enemies attack and are killed:


“You are in a snowy forest, You are totally relaxed. Everything is fine. There is nothing to fear.”


And then as the minutes of fighting progress, each time she repeats those phrases, her voice becomes louder and more strident, eventually acquiring a shrill hysterical tone.


Inwardly, I was rolling on the floor laughing my ass off.



EVERYTHING IS FINE!!!!

YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR!!!


And she is literally screaming in anger and hysteria.


You had to be there. I wondered how the guy that I started off being, would have handled it. Maybe similar. But I doubt it would have been as striking. To hear those originally soothing words, from a woman, which gradually evolve from soothing, then into something more shrill, and then finally into strident Nazi commands – that was sheer brilliance!


Game making at its very best!!!


And these are the Treyarch guys. Never quite as good as Infinity Ward, they nonetheless did a fine job on World at War (COD5) in my opinion. Similarly, while maybe not quite as good as World at War, this title is pretty good. More about it later.



THE RIG IS HOLDING UP OKAY, WITH CERTAIN COMPROMISES

My rig is holding up. When the game supports crossfire, which the Batman games did not do, then my single 7950 card at 975 clock, runs at 99% load and I am gpu bound, the quad core 9450 cpu overclocked to 3.343 ghz running about 70-80% load on average.

When the game does support crossfire, then I am cpu bound.


However, regarding vram, I am often gpu bound in terms of 3 gigs of vram, where now 4 gigs is better, for example for Black Ops 3, and I would say, regarding future proofing, 6 gigs is probably best. The last Batman had a very clever vram guide, which showed you exactly what happened to your vram load on changing certain graphics settings. That was very helpful to getting the game to run smoothly.


Black Ops 3 has something similar. I tried different combinations of texture and resolution in one map inside an airplane hangar. The game wanted me to reduce my resolution. But I played with the various combinations of resolution and effects, and I deduced that I had the best looking game at native 2560x1600, with textures on medium, and all nvidia-specific effects turned off.


Ram-wise, my 8 gigs of ram is now the bare minimum for a lot of these newer games, so next time I’ll be picking up at least 16 gigs, if not 32, as long as DDR4 remains pretty cheap, unless I am forced to buy a DDR5 cpu.



COMPANY OF HEROES 2 ARDENNES ASSAULT WAS GREAT – WITH A SAVE SYSTEM

I have mentioned this before – the posts from angry players who stated that Company of Heroes 2 Ardennes Assault was unnecessarily difficult. I also linked to the video game playing where the guy changed difficulty from hard down to normal after getting his ass kicked!


The game was difficult, and it basically did not have a save system that was worth 2 cents. But when I started to do my own saves, kept in my own folders, then it became manageable, and best of all I was able to go back and re-play the very best parts.



You have to have your own save folders to take the frustration out of the game





Notice the bottom row of folders above. You will see that my score increases from left to right. The game allows you to control 3 armies, and if you just barely survive one engagement – your army is permanently damaged, and that will definitely affect you as you continue to engage the enemy in other battles.



”Yeah, sure, I’m going to play it their way, and experience all that frustration – I don’t think so.”


I put up with that for about 5 minutes, then I tracked down the save folder, and started storing those saves for myself. So the bottom row of folders shows my points increasing as I got better at handling Bastogne Oskt. When I had enough of that battle, I moved forward with the highest score, lol.



My favorite battle of Ardennes Assault



In this particular enemy encounter, we start out on the right, and the bridge, to the right in this picture, brings us across the Rheine into Germany. We have to hold the bridge capture point to the left in this picture. (There is another force that we are cooperating with which is taking the town nearby, but we never really interface with them.)



I played this mission probably 50 times, until I got really good at it. The mission starts with capturing a small enemy camp on the other side of the river. You have one Sherman tank, a half-track, and about 15 infantry. You wipe them out and you don’t really capture much of anything that is useful. You then can return to allied field command, and you can start building your attacking force by ordering anti-tank cannons, half-tracks, anti-tank combat troops, a captain, a major, etc.


The game allows you one save. I would take that save, put it in my own folder, and then delete it from the game folder, giving me the opportunity to save once more. But the game punishes me for saving the one time, by increasing my man points. You cannot increase your man points over 100. If you order a 10 point tank, and you want one more, but you have 92 points, you cannot order that second tank. You might save, and then come back in, to discover that you somehow now have 97 man points, but all you did was a save.


When I saw this happening, I decided that I would game the system my own way. How did I do that? I abandoned every tank I ordered.



My first strategy was to cross the river with one Sherman.



Notice my manpower in the above screen shot – it’s 118/100. How did I get to 118 when you can’t be over 100? When I got ready to start building my attacking force, I told the crew to get out of the Sherman. It has a crew of 3 guys, with little smg weapons. They aren’t very good fighters – and they are easily killed. But sometimes you get them out of the vehicle, in order to repair it. In COH2, the tank crew itself can repair the tank – you aren’t totally dependent on the engineers. But de-crewing a tank can be very dangerous, so the game reduces your manpower points when you do so. If you have 97 points and you can’t order anything, not even a 5-point engineering squad, just de-crew your Sherman, and now you only have 87 points. Order some more stuff and put the crew back in the tank when you are ready to attack.


This initial strategy of one Sherman was hit or miss. Often it was one dead Sherman. I could not see where the anti-tank cannon was – I had to keep the Sherman moving around and first kill the mortar guys before they destroyed the bridge, and then kill the anti-tank cannon crew before they killed me. Sometimes it worked, sometimes I got killed, or the bridge got destroyed.


There must be a better way.


The game had a 5 minute clock. At a certain point, I was told that I had 5 minutes before the first attack. I had stayed well away from the enemy force right at the bridge, hoping to build up my manpower and munitions points, in order to keep ordering more equipment. Yes, they had a small force with machine guns on our side of the bridge, and the clock started as soon as I attacked them. But if I stayed near our base, the clock eventually started anyway.


But now I had a new strategy, and I continued building up our forces until the clock got down to about 2 minutes to first attack.



On this successful but bloody battle, I put my guys right against the river



Once you cross over the river, if you turn left, you can follow a road down that is bordered by the river. When you get here you are out of range of the anti-tank cannon near the bridge. Hopefully you have taken out the mortar by then, or there will be no bridge, and you will have failed the mission.



In the above picture, I actually tried fighting the battle there. This time it worked. Another time, the enemies just came down and when they successfully re-captured the bridge capture point, I lost and they won – I failed the mission.


The enemy started doing that, and I realized that the river position was no good at all.



This is one way to prevent capture – just put everybody into the circle




I then moved to my new strategy, “circle the wagons.” I put everybody into the capture circle, and defended it to the death, and boy, was that a bloody disorganized mess, but it worked.


The problem was, it cost me a major loss of men and equipment.


This was not my last battle of the entire war, so I really could not afford to be damaged that badly by this battle.


So at this point I was still pretty clumsy, but the one good thing I had learned, was how to cross the bridge without getting my Sherman wiped out by the anti-tank cannon. How?


Simple. I stopped sending my Sherman across the bridge.


Using the mini-map, I instead sent my two mortar tanks – tanks converted to carrying a mortar – across the bridge and down to the river, where they were out of range of the anti-tank gun. They moved pretty fast, and maybe the cannon got off one round at one of them, but I could have the engineers repair that damage.


I sent the Sherman right into the middle of the little enemy encampment on our side of the bridge, where it blew up the machine gun emplacement and killed the soldiers that were there, allowing me to move troops to capture that position, so our supply lines extended to there.


But having the Sherman near the bridge, on the friendly side, still did not give me enough line of sight to be able to see where the anti-tank cannon and the mortar were located.


I needed to be able to kill the mortar to save the bridge, and I had to kill the anti-tank cannon to save the Sherman and my mortar tanks.


Fortunately I had ordered in a Major officer, during my build-up time. I put him as close to the bridge as possible, without putting him into rifle danger. When I sent the two mortar tanks across the river, I had the Major order a reconnaissance flight from an officer friend of his with another unit. The flight cut a wide circle through the “fog of battle” and clearly showed me where the anti-tank cannon and mortar were. That clear vision only lasted about 5 seconds. But that was enough time to take advantage of the longer-range artillery mode of each mortar tank. I directed one to launch a barrage at the anti-tank cannon position, the other barrage at the mortar crew position.


The “artillery barrages” continue for a while, as I recall, until I tell them to switch back to normal mortar mode, which is automatic – they target enemies wherever they see them, rotating around as needed. I regard them as the very best type of tank. So very soon, both crews are dead, freeing up those two weapons that we can capture, and eliminating the danger. With this strategy, no more lost Sherman tanks.


By this time, I had re-crewed all the other equipment, had grabbed all the bazookas I could, subject to the munitions points, as they cost 50 munitions points per bazooka, trying to get at least one bazooka if not two, into each engineering squad. Time was running out, so I grabbed my entire group and pointed them at the capture point, and they slowly made their way across the river getting there in time to deal with the first light counter-attack.



As I got better at this defense, my positioning improved greatly




My new save is just after re-crewing my tanks, including my one new tank, with a long-range artillery gun, which cost me 14 manpower points. It is built on a fairly heavily armored Sherman medium tank chassis, and includes a manned 50 caliber machine gun which is very handy. The tank can rotate around as necessary, just like the half-track, to enable its 50 caliber machine gun to bear down on enemy troops. The artillery is not automatic. I have off-map artillery that I can call in when needed, for example when an enemy mortar team starts lobbing at my position. Those mortars are very destructive, and that is why I stopped my earlier practice of concentrating my men inside the capture point circle. The mortars will quickly kill my anti-tank cannon crews.


My 3-prong defense against the mortars is 1. my own single mortar crew, from the enemy mortar we captured, which can see far enough, as all mortar crews can, to occasionally be able to lob mortars at the enemy mortar. My defense is also 2. off-map artillery. In this 2nd version of Company of Heroes, they show you the mortar team. So if my off-site artillery is not recharging, I can target and kill the mortar team. 3. If the off-site is re-charging, or if I lack the munitions points, I can use the artillery on my new expensive tank and kill the mortar that way. The second artillery option can come in handy when two mortar teams appear back to back.


Notice at the bottom right of the image that

my manpower points are 141/100.
​

WTF!! HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?

I am 41 points past the maximum allowed 100 manpower points. I had all tanks de-crewed until the last minute, ordering up engineering and combat troops. Once I put the crews back in I was for sure done ordering anything that cost manpower points. THAT is how to game the game that penalizes me for making a save.


Next time I am going to talk about, and show screenshots of, how I fine-tuned my defense, including better defense on the right side where tanks would come down from a narrow path in the woods. In the above image, the half-track, with its 50 caliber machine gun and rifle squad riding in the back, is all the way over on the right – I put a red arrow there because I thought it was a machine gun emplacement, but I see by the tank treads that it is a half-track, but other than the machine-gunner, I don’t see any troops riding in the back.


I built many machine gun emplacements, at a cost of 50 munitions points each, sweating the time it took to build them, deciding which one I should build first before the enemy charge, ordering as many as possible until my munitions points wouldn’t let me order any more.


The emplacements are also very handy to shelter infantry, or even engineer squads, which can be pulled out to repair damaged tanks during the battle. In the above image, looking at the tank icons, 2nd row upper right, you can see that the tank on the left, the Sherman tank facing left on the far left of the map, is badly damaged. It should be under repair right now – but I think this image was taken at the very end of the counter-attack. Or maybe it was only later on that I got better at keeping my vehicles repaired.


VEHICLE DAMAGE IS SHOWN ON THE HUD
Of the two mortar tanks, from left to right, one is lightly damaged, the other about 40% damage, the artillery tank is lightly damaged, and the half-track is not damaged at all. I’m surprised that this image shows the half-track all the way to the right – I didn't leave it there for long as my strategy improved.

When I learned to build up the right defenses I didn't need it there - I had the heavy machine gun we took from the enemy, a machine gun emplacement that I ordered, followed by a second one if there was time and munitions points for it, the mortar crew from the enemy, the enemy anti-tank cannon, and several infantry.


I DESTROYED THEM!!
I enjoyed this one battle, which lasted about 15 minutes from my save point, putting in a good 15-20 hours of gameplay, gradually perfecting my defense strategy. And with the custom save point, I didn’t have to restart the mission from the beginning. Boring!

When I finally had enough of this battle, I had a full-strength company, with extra experience points, all thanks to my save system. Take that, Nazis!!!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year
Rich

 

Whoops, sorry Rich, I'm a bit behind again

Merry christmas and happy new year - will update with a more detailed response when I have a little more time

Sam

 

Hahahaha - usually it's me a few weeks behind. Hope all are enjoying the holidays.

We went from record hot October, hottest month in California history - I didn't say in last 20 years, or last 100 years - I said


HOTTEST OCTOBER IN CALIFORNIA HISTORY!!!!


hahaha

Then November was a bit cooler - much cooler in fact - and in December IT SNOWED.


Not really but many frozen nights where people got up with ice on their windshields.


I went up to LA for a week, visited the animator, stayed over, then stayed over some more with the animator's sister, and we worked some more "magic" - her words - with the Canon color printer. Canon makes its print heads using silicone wafer technology - there are no laminations - it's a piece of silicone with microscopic nozzles - in the case of this printer there are about 3,000 nozzles.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GtPiQmaQ4k


Anyway, we have been creating some materpieces - it's a lot of fun!

There was about another hour's worth in this post, but after putting in a picture - the server deleted that last hour. I used to copy and paste into a word document to prevent similar occurrences, but in this newer web manager, I thought I was protected by the preview option. It's always been okay, but not just now.


The server may delete you - it just did to me. Grrrrrr!!!


I'll go back to my old tried and true Word Document on the side.


Okay, end of gripe - Happy holidays to all.
Rich

 

Well, I've started playing Arma 3 again - those 150 scenarios that I set up a year ago. I won't let steam update the game - that for sure would eliminate all of my saves and render many of these scenarios useless, unless their authors kept up with the updates, which usually is not the case.

I played Into the Fog again. I have some screenshots to post on that. Then I played the next one, last night, called

Pandora's box.

That was a very satisfying scenario,

• with scuba insertion including two sunken boats to explore, and a few large fish to shoot,
• very nice helicopter extraction, and in between,
• getting myself and the team geared up,
• investigating a burning helicopter for a missing black box,
• heading over to another site to find the black box in a meeting room,
• then another site - the command center - with the same kind of barracks as at the airport in the scenario Scottish Lass (with the large drone) where I rescued a bare-headed helicopter pilot with an smg weapon -
• using the heli pilot to bring two pickup trucks, each with a 50 caliber machine gun in the truck bed, way around the city over to pick up my 5-man team,
• then again skirting most of the trouble, using a route over dirt paths and roads, way around the city, to reach the extraction point.

Synopsis: The enemy has shot down a helicopter and we have to get out the black box which has sensitive information, and rescue anybody who is still alive. I'm in charge of a 5-man seal team. The enemy consist of two allied forces - one of them speak Farsi, the other speak English. So if you are in a building, and they start surrounding you, you may hear "All clear" or depending on who is nearby, you may hear the equivalent in Farsi. ​

Virtual ammo box - a steep learning curve
In between start and finish, I found it to be a huge challenge just to get myself and the AI geared up. I couldn't see where the virtual ammo box allowed me more than the one magazine of 100 rounds that came with the MX SW that I picked - the MX 6.5 variation that is the modern BAR equivalent, with stabilizing bipod in front, and 100 round belt magazines. The magazine is inside a large square belt. The rifle also takes 30 round standard mags - which is really nice when you run out of ammo - you can take ammo from a dead friendly which I have had to once or twice in the Hogs Cove scenario. So as I say, I couldn't find any choice for ammo. Finally I selected a carry-all vest, and then SUDDENLY THE AMMO choices popped up - they weren't shown before because I didn't have a way to carry them!!!

But no matter where I looked, I could not see any way to get more than the one health kit I already came in with.

But I did grab both a low level red dot sight, then put that into my backpack, and then the DMS 10-15 magnification sniper sight that I liked from Hogs Cove. I could have grabbed the TWS white-hot sight, but unlike Into the Fog, the day was bright and sunny. You can always use that one on normal setting, but also I find that the TWS very high magnification, 20-30, is a bit too much sometimes. (Actually I could have grabbed that one also, after picking a backpack and putting the DMS into the backpack - I didn't think of that. hahahah.) Then I saved my loadout.


Whoops - game glitch
I went back to where my guys were, by switching to one of them, and I found that two of them were under-water trapped under the model. I could not get them fully above surface. They were inside the model. So effectively I had lost two of my teammates.

So I went to an earlier save point. about 200 yards out at an underwater ship. Fortunately the loadout save stuck - it is a general setting that is stored in the steam folder, not the scenario folder, and it was there when I went back. This time I got all the team above water, and the former problem didn't resurface, no pun intended. One at a time I took them to the virtual ammo box, behind a nearby building, and I just picked the loadout, and instantly they changed from scuba and under-water rifle, to camouflage, assassin cap, backpack, carryall vest, and MX SW 100- bullet ammo, with 7 extra clips. Then I moved them to a nearby building with gun facing the window and door. That all took about an hour - but the repeat only cost an extra 10 minutes.


One health pack doesn't cut it
Now my only problem was - only one health pack. I worked the men upstairs in a nearby building, and as enemies began to converge, I killed 4 of them. I saved, then ran outside to get the health packs from the dead soldiers - each one should have been carrying at least one - and there were no dead bodies anywhere.


WTF! Where's all the Dead Bodies????
The scenario author had chosen to make the bodies disappear. (I watched it happen one time - they go down into the ground within about 15 seconds. Less work for the cpu and memory I guess. I never saw that before. On the Operation Greenstorm, there were dead bodies all over the place - I had to kill about 100 of them to complete the mission. Maybe that is why I had to keep reducing game quality as my fps dropped - as my cpu became bogged down.)


Quads to the Rescue
But I found some vehicles that had health packs. I was taking fire from way up the street, and switching to sniper scope, I killed that guy, then I ran up there trying to get to him before the game took away his body. As I got near, I took more fire, but by then I had discovered 3 quads parked at a gas station, each one with 4 health packs. Taking cover, prone on the ground, I bell-crawled over and took the 4 packs from one of them, then I finally saw the guy way over several buildings, on a balcony. Sometimes you can look for muzzle flash, but he was a marksman, and he might have had a muzzle flash reducer, or even a silencer on his rifle. I couldn't seem to spot him, but the ricochets kept me prone behind the quad. (The technique that finally helped me get him was one that I first used in the Scottish Lass drone scenario: finding his red circle on the map, using shift and left mouse to mark that position, then returning from the mouse and trying to spot the very faint position marker, and with the help of that, finally seeing his fire, then using sniper scope to nail him up on that balcony about 200 meters out.)


So I had figured out the loadout challenge. And I had found health packs.

There was one more main challenge: how to deal with two vehicles.

I had a hard time getting a driver to follow me. This was actually a coop mission, and you could have a real player on the team. That would have been cool.

But with AI you do the best you can.

So for vehicles, usually you can use REGROUP, and also FORMATION COLUMN, and they will then follow right behind - except when it comes to turning 90 degree corners. They want to cut across the corner. If it's level ground, no problem. But if there are rocks, they will get stuck on the rocks, and possibly ruin the tires - which happened one time and forced me to go back to an earlier save.


DO YOU SEE HOW HANDY THESE CUSTOM SAVES ARE!!

So we made it back to my guys, the regroup sort of working. But once I rescued my men from the second story of the building I had left them at, the regroup didn't work for some reason.


And as I type this - the reason may have been that I didn't have the helicopter pilot as the driver of the chase vehicle once I got all my 4 other teammates on board. I had the heli pilot in the passenger seat in my truck. In fact, last night,. when I chose ALL Team, and then Stop, the pilot got out of my truck. Why, I don't know. He never got out of his truck when he was driving behind me. Right after All Team, Stop, you can then do, All Team, Regroup. But I couldn't do that - I had to hit F6 and then Get In to get that pilot back on board. That got him in, but then the All Team Regroup option wasn't shown. Strange!
So that might have been the problem right there. Possibly having him be a gunner in any truck, or a driver of the second truck, might have made things work better, and then maybe the truck would have followed me with the regroup command, the way the heli pilot followed me when we drove from the enemy command, where he had been a prisoner, with both trucks, way around the city, to the beachside building where my guys were waiting.


But what did work - the workaround - was to drive the first truck about half a mile, then switch to the driver of the truck behind me, player #2 - just hitting F2 and dropping down to the choice "switch to player 2" and then driving that truck, as him, catching up, and then choosing "switch to leader" getting back into my body Meanwhile, my body, without me in it, had become the leader, in my absence, and had ordered #6, the heli pilot that we had resuced, to disembark. So when I returned to my body, before I could drive off, I had to get him back into the truck. That only took a few seconds.


Anyway, the mission was a complete success, now it's time to go tear it up!!!
So, now that I've completed that mission, rescuing all of my guys and the POW without a scratch on them, it's time to go back and sink my teeth into that scenario.

The Pyrgos countryside is picturesque and beautiful
Visually, as you will see when I post the screenshots, it's a very nice map of the town of Pyrgos, with surrounding farm land, beautiful coast and ocean, and nearby military base.


Plus, it offers two main things that could really be fun.

• 1. THERE ARE TONS OF ENEMY AI. Using the quad, which is fun to rife, I can do a lot of fun sniper shooting just driving around until I take fire, then shooting the assailants. I already did this a little bit when I backtracked to get good screenshots.
• 2. DID I MENTION THERE ARE TONS OF ENEMY AI. Instead of the quad, I can run the pickup truck, with and AI driver and me in gunner position, using the 50 caliber, with its magnification mode (not super high - probably about a 2x magnification) to take out the enemies.

Regarding option #2, I have never done that before. That mounted machine gun is powerful. I don't have a lot of cover in that pickup bed, but if I stay back a ways, the gun overpowers any enemy rifle. If one of them has a launcher, I will be in trouble, but otherwise, THEY are in trouble.

I already did this one time where I could not seem to get the guy with my sniper scope. He was too far out for one thing. I drove the truck to about 200 yards from the guy, turned it sideways, then hopped out and jumped into the truck bed taking the gunner position, and took him out instantly.

Those 50 caliber rounds - equivalent to 12.7 mm (versus 6.5 on my LMG, or 7.6 on the zephyr LMG that I used in Contact Person) tear right through an enemy soldier.


So I'll have to go back to Pandora's box, and see what I can do on the map, solo in the quad, or with a driver taking me around in the pickup, me in the gunner position dealing hot lead on anybody foolish enough to pick a fight.

PS. I don't know how many enemies there are on the map.
When they make a scenario, maybe it is a setting - "populate with 120 enemy AI" - like I think they did on Operation Greenstorm.

I used to think that on Greenstorm they kept re-spawning. But recently, when I re-completed that mission to get the Seal team that came in at the end, and take their marksman rifle (since my prior saves had disappeared after steam updated the game a year ago) I found that there were virtually no enemies left to kill. I had the sniper rifle, but nobody to snipe. I had also found the same thing on the scenario, Scotch Lass, the drone recapture. When I had killed the 50 guys that were in place, including the random patrols, there were absolutely no more guys left to kill. The map was completely free of enemies. I went all over it, and had the drone check, before I flew it off to safety. I could still drive the quad all over - there was another hour's worth of gas at least. If I wrecked it, there were two more good quads left. There were also a few pickups.

But nobody to shoot. ​

So, I'll be glad to post some screenshots, if this thread ever populates again. Sam - where'd you go? Jeff, are you and Sam hanging out on the Builder thread? Kevin, are you still practicing for your UPS driver position? DDP - did you decide to hide out, resigning yourself to my upcoming Finnian invasion to recapture our sovereign Yankee territory? "From sea to shining sea, and everything North of Buffalo NY."

Rich

 

Holy crap - irish, texan, english, and even part north american indian - why didn't you say so. Here I thought you were a blue-blooded Canuck!!

I was afraid you'd sic a moose on me, now I'll have to make sure to bring a shield to deflect your arrows!!!

By the way, how are those ship models coming. Did you ever finish even ONE! Your excuse 4 years ago for not posting any pictures was : "I'm still working on it." What's your excuse now. "My camera broke."

By the way, as the only one on the forum who was actually IN world war II, unlike the rest of us who only know it from video games, I keep looking for your picture in the 26-part BBC documentary that I'm watching, called World at War. (To be precise, not BBC - but another one similar - and it's narrated by Laurence Olivier before he was knighted.) My renegade brother wanted to see Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States, and in researching it, I found that Stone relied heavily on this TV series for a lot of his WWII material - it is supposed to be THE DEFINITIVE series on the war.

We just finished #6 of the 26 - very riveting.

The Germans are now in Russia, virtually at Moscow - only 20 km away - but very late in the season, and suddenly they are hitting 40 degrees below weather (40 degrees below is the same in C or in F.) The motor oil has thickened up in their cars and tanks - unlike the oil the Russians are using, it isn't light enough weight to allow the motors to turn over and start - so the vehicles are simply not working. Meanwhile Zhukov, having cut his teeth defending Leningrad, has been brought in by Stalin to lead the defense of Moscow. In secrecy Zhukov has pulled most of the divisions from the eastern Siberian front that were there to defend against a possible attack by Japan. (Stalin's spies had finally convinced him that the Japanese would not be coming into Siberia - they were preparing to attack the US and take the war to the Pacific to ensure supplies, since the US had implemented a general embargo protesting the Japanese invasion of China.)

So, as the Germans face non-cooperation of their mechanical equipment in light of this severe weather, not to mention insufficient winter clothing for the troops, Zhukov suddenly switches from defense to offense. The Siberians, fresh troops in white fur sliding along on snow skies, charge out of Moscow accompanied by heavy T-34 tanks. They clobber the Germans, take over 300,000 prisoners and send the rest packing back to Deutschland. For the first time in two years of warfare, the sterling German reputation for invincibility has been badly tarnished.

That would be good for you to watch DDP. It'll give you an idea of what me and the Finnians are about to come and do.

 

hahaha - thanks for the bodybags suggestion - that's mighty accommodating of you.



ARMA 3 USER-COMMUNITY SCENARIO - PANDORA'S BOX

-- full size screenshots below --

​

I just played the most delightful Arma 3 scenario - Pandora's Box.


I still have about 100 of these scenarios and I am slowly playing through them now. I had just finished one called Into the Darkness. That one was atmospheric - but ultimately not challenging enough - not enough enemies - it was not too hard to go around them. But it did offer several different missions, both at night, and then on into the next morning. Still it didn't rate a single star for good, much less a double star for great.

For double star I have about 6 in that group that I like to play from time to time. Contact person, where I first picked up the zephyr enemy machine gun, has gotten easy since I learned that I can put a sniper scope on that rifle - but it's still pretty good. The best is Assault on Hog's Cove - which is a fast-paced morning assault with rubber boats, of 6 squads attempting to clear out a city. Usually all the of the squads get wiped out and I am the last man standing. You can pick your choice of weapon and loadout, and that adds to the replay. When my squad is killed, I can change to any squad that still has a leader. The enemies are aggressive - often in patrols of their own looking to kill us - and they know how to shoot. ​

So anyway, the new one, Pandora's Box, was good enough to rate a single star – I have only 2 of those so far. Ultimately it is not challenging enough for the double star rating - the enemies fire at you from ridiculous distances where they have virtually no chance to kill you but they only alert you to their presence. Since I am walking around with a sniper rifle, all I need is to have a rough idea where the fire is coming from.


The scenario, overall, however is very well done. You start out underwater in scuba gear, and pass a couple of shipwrecks which are interesting, and you avoid an enemy patrol boat.

In fact for the first time I shot some large fish – they weren’t sharks as I thought – but I wanted to try out the underwater SDAR weapon.

Then we approached the beach, and scooted across a small road, to get behind a building where our equipment was. I got all the guys changed to combat gear with the same loadout – MX SW 100 round automatic variant of the MX 6.5mm weapon, single shot or full auto, with 15 health packs, and 3 different sets of scopes.

Then the first step was to head over to the burning helicopter, getting past about 8 guys that showed up ready to kill us.


MAKE SURE YOU EXPAND PICTURES - THEY ARE ALL 2560X1600!!


I am still nervous at getting shot at, but I have been able to scout around – no black box




Notice the nice coastal scenery. That burning helicopter smoke can be seen for miles. The black box is not here, and there don’t appear to be any survivors.



I left the rest of the team in the little building next to the ammo – they are all facing out toward window and door – any enemy that comes near will be massacred. (Like what me and the Finnians are going to do to DDP and his buddies.)



So since the black box was missing, I’m supposed to head over to another location and snoop around. On my way there, lots of enemies are just waiting to get a piece of me.



They aren’t always in the road, or on the street – sometimes they’re tricky and hiding on 2nd story balconies





I have jumped on a quad to speed up the process of moving around this map – and sometimes I have to gun it when I come under fire. That gunning it brought me to this field, where I jumped out to try to deal with where all the fire was coming from.



There’s the little pest, way over there – if I just sidestep I can probably avoid a bullet for now




I would prefer to go prone, but in the bushes it’s not always possible – you get below the grass and you can’t see anything. But I can reasonably steady the rifle by crouching down on one knee.


Hey you brat, you want to stand there ineffectively shooting at a guy with a sniper rifle?




Finally I get close to the building where I am supposed to scout around. I crash the quad into the building as I take a lot of fire – ejecting myself off and going prone. I don’t appear to be dead – not even wounded.



I never charge into an open door – I hit the door open button then stand back and sweep the room. I had to kill 4 guys to make it to the command center of their little operation.



On this map, the scenario author gets rid of the bodies, reducing cpu load – the dead guy is gone




So I grabbed the laptop from the desk next to those maps, and now I have the blackbox. What next? Oh, I have to go rescue a captured pilot.



I actually had a hard time getting out of this building, mounting the quad, and out on the road heading to the barracks where the prisoner was kept. I got killed several times. That part was hairy.



So here I am a few hundred yards from the barracks. Notice the two guys on the roof.




The sniper scope makes quick work of those guys.


Now I have the pilot, who has become my 5th teammate. I can order him around with function key 6. There are two trucks at the barracks. I know where my squad are – they are represented by the diamond on the HUD, as in the image above where the diamond was street level, to the left - just to the right of the smoke. I can also see them on the map.



I order the pilot into one truck, as the driver, and then I take the other truck. With some difficulty, I am finally able to get him to follow me as we take a circuitous route around the major roads, trying to avoid fire. We still pick up a little bit of fire, but we are largely successful.



This is not really a road, it’s more of a trail




I am often checking the map to make sure the helicopter pilot is still following me in his truck. Sometimes he doesn’t follow too well, other times he is practically on top of me.



He is doing a good job of keeping up on this particular section of road. Look where the major highway is.




Okay, I got all the team on board the two trucks. Now it’s time to backtrack, taking the scenic rural route again, around the major highways and down toward the coast to the extraction point.



The helicopter will be picking us up near the coast – we’re almost at the LZ.




Everybody is out of the trucks, and we fired off the blue smoke to let the bird know it’s time to come get us.



The smoke goes off automatically as soon as we get into the LZ.




There is a little bit of enemy fire coming from the distance, but it doesn’t seem too close – we can’t really hear any loud ricochets or snapping of close misses – so we are ignoring it.



I hear the whip of helicopter blades – there he is.




Okay, the distant gunfire hasn’t changed, so it’s time to get everybody into the chopper and we’ll get out of here.



“Get in you guys – I’ll stand cover for a minute, then I’ll be right behind you!”




Well, the missions pretty much over. Nice scenery below as we head out of town.



The guy on my right without a helmet is the pilot we rescued – the first reluctant driver of the chase truck




Job well done, mission accomplished.



Okay, everything is a success, now it’s time to go back and kick some real butt!




The strength of a scenario is in the replay factor. This one is rated good with one star, meaning I enjoyed going back in and getting some payback, as I practiced up for the Finnian invasion to end DDP’s criminal encroachment on US territory.


On replay, I no longer care about any of the mission goals. I already did that - now I’m sniping bandits!



The town of Pyrgos looks lovely, with the helicopter smoke sending up a huge flare in the distance




But I don’t just go out with one quad with a rider on back. For extra insurance I have another quad with me – just one – which is not as hard to manage as when I had three of us, each on separate quads. To get two quads to follow mine was just a little too frustrating.

By the way, you may wonder why my quad is code red - the answer is, it is all shot up. The hull is red - look at upper left - and everytime I get on it, I say under my breath "code red."

But it drives fine. Sometimes a quad will suffer wheel damage, like if you crash into a rock, and it will be hard to steer. This quad is about ready to not function any more, apparently, but it is still perfectly easy to handle. If worse comes to worse, there are two more quads parked back at the gas station.



There’s my other quad kicking up some dust on top of this hill, before we descend to shoot some more bad guys.




This scenario has some surprises.

You can switch to another character.

That’s not a surprise – most of the scenarios let you do that. But that is extremely helpful when you are trying to maneuver your squad.

And when we rescued the team and started up the two-truck convoy to the extraction, I had to drive a half mile, then switch to the driver of the chase vehicle, no longer the rescued pilot, then drive and catch up, then repeat that until we got to the LZ.

That turned out to be pretty easy to do, but I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get the guy to follow me like the helicopter pilot did.


But the surprise I was referring to, was that I could revive a fallen teammate. I had not encountered that before. Another surprise was that I could drag a body out of harm’s way before I tried to revive him.



In the next situation, w are taking fire, and the one who is down, is none other than myself.

The two guys with me are on function key 4, and function key 5. Those are easy to find because of the keyboard separation of F4 from F5.

The guys represented by function keys 2 and 3 are waiting at the gas station with the two trucks and the other two quads. They are prone inside the building facing out to the street in case a patrol comes along.

By having them at the gas station, if we want to head back there, say to get a quad that is not as badly damaged as the one I am driving, I can easily find it by following the diamonds on my HUD – the game makes sure you don’t have any trouble knowing who is a friendly teammate – so you don’t shoot them by accident.


It’s still possible to kill with friendly fire by shooting a different squad member, as I found out on Hogs Cove where there are 5 squads, but you will never make that mistake with your own squad.



So anyway, knowing that F5 is the guy driving the chase quad, and finding myself going down, but still able to give commands, such as “switch to” I immediately switched to F4, the guy I was walking around with. He is behind me, still on his feet. We are taking fire but, as F4, I am able to grab myself, the sergeant, and pull backwards.



I have to get this guy – myself actually – out of the line of fire so I can revive him before he bleeds out




When we are far enough out of the direct line of fire, I can revive my “teammate” and return to my own body.



Okay, I think this is good enough cover – that didn’t take long – I’ve still got two minutes before bleedout




There is plenty of time to get help. The guys at the gas station are close enough actually, to make it to us on the truck or on the quad, before we bleed out, if all 3 of us are down. There is not much need to have to go back to a prior save point with this kind of reviving backup.



So, with this kind of dual quad setup, 2 teammates with me in case I get shot and start to bleed out, I already went all over the map killing almost everybody this way. It was fun for two times, and then it was too easy - I kind of knew where everybody was by then.


However, what I wasn’t able to do as successfully is take the gunner position in the truck.



It is fun and scary to be in the truck gunner position – the 50 caliber is far more powerful than any rifle


The truck has to be positioned so that you can shoot from the side or out the back – you can’t really shoot over the front of the truck, as the cabin of the truck blocks the machine gun.

To command the truck driver to move forward, I can command through my HUD, or I can use the map.



Here’s one joker who thinks it’s a good idea to take shots at me and this mighty 50 I’m banging.




The truck mounted fifty does have a zoom, but it’s only about a two-to-one zoom. Better than nothing. The bullets are so powerful, 12.52 mm compared to the 6.5 mm ammo in my rifle, that they cut through bushes and fences, and even some concrete walls.


I plan to go back into the game, one last time, loading up this time with a lot of smoke, and not so many health packs. I will start out going to the gas station and taking one truck and one quad back to my guys near the ammo.

I want the smoke so I can take those vehicles without having to kill everybody guarding them. Then I will have the quad as a chase vehicle, in a loose column formation so the quad usually hangs back about 30 feet, and I will move the truck slowly, 20 feet at a time, to try to get the gunner, myself, into position to take out all these enemies.

If it works out as well as I think it will, next step is to employ that in the DDP Finnian attack!

Rich