Rooster90

I know this is a tad off-topic, but do either of you know how to (or where i should look) to have "capture" objectives? Kind of like in Dom when you capture bunkers? There's a few places I want to have timed captures around certain objects to complete an objective on the mission I'm making. And don't just say "Armaholic". That site is an absolute mess, I can never find anything I search for there.

Think Terraria, only more strategic and competitive. Currently in a free beta state. http://kagdev.tumblr.com/

2-4 million online at any given time is pretty damn impressive if you ask me. It's not like its the same 2-4 million every hour of the day, or every day for that matter. I would guess that there's at least 10-15 million unique users that log in throughout any given 24 hour time period, if not more. Steam is a fact of life for PC gaming and wont be going away any time soon. I quite honestly don't know a single PC gamer that doesn't own and use a Steam account. To deny that it is a cornerstone of modern PC gaming is really beyond me. That's like saying buying/downloading mp3's online isn't more popular than buying vinyl LP's. XD

On top of what Fatal has already mentioned, you can also backup your entire Steam library onto a HD. And Steam/Valve backs up all of their users' content onto local HD's and multiple servers throughout the world (Cloud computing). You do have a fair point that having all your eggs in one basket can be dangerous. The question of "what if Valve/Steam were to one day disappear?" is something I've thought of myself. And if the common everyday user thinks of it, I guarantee Valve has thought of a contingency plan if they were ever to be compromised or shutdown as a company. Either they would enable a way for Steam to continue operating long enough for people to download their libraries to their computers and be able to play them without Steam, or maybe they'd hand-off Steam to another company. Who knows whta would happen, and maybe it would be the PC apocalypse where gamers everywhere lose access to their vast libraries. Only time will tell... (or Gabe will if he's pressured enough.)

Seems you have a problem with the iTunes store. I don't even use it, so I can't really comment on that. I just use iTunes to organize my music, I keep them in .aiff, .wav. or high (320) bit-rate .mp3's for the highest quality audio. The only thing I use the iTunes store for is for it's Genius recommendations. Found a lot of cool music that way. I thought it was common knowledge that Apple doesn't use crappy .mp3's, they use their own proprietary file format (AAC). Way better sounding file compression algorithm than mp3, less destructive.

Somebody is a little paranoid, eh? I've had an account on Steam for about 7-8 years with 0 issues. Unless you're a reported cheater in a public game, your account will probably never be suddenly taken away from Valve. I've yet to hear of anybody complaining about their Steam games being taken away from them. The most they'll do if you get caught hacking is they'll ban your STEAM ID from that game or make your key invalid, forcing you to buy the game again. Idk where this totalitarian view of Valve is coming from. They're probably the most user-friendly, PC gamer loving developer in the world. Before Steam, the same "power" you complain about Valve having over your software was the same power developers/publishers had over their own games over their own online elements. In fact, I'd say the vast majority of software that is sold isn't really sold for people to "own", but licensed to the user under a Terms and Conditions agreement. It's everywhere, it's unavoidable, and doesn't affect me in the least. Not really sure what to say about your iPod complaint. Idk how else you planned to put music on your iPod, lol. I don't have any problem using iTunes. It happens to be one of the best ways to organize my large catalog of music. I don't buy music from iTunes though, I still buy them the old fashioned way. CD's baby! Burn them to my computer, files are automatically put into iTunes and synced to my iPod. Not really sure how one could complain about a brand of software that works (nearly) flawlessly. I can understand your concerns with facebook though. I'm very careful with who I have as friends and what info people outside of my personal network can see of me. Every month or two I go through my friends list and delete people I don't talk to or know very well. After having it for about 4 or 5 years I still only have about 150 friends. It's getting to be about that time to whittle that list down though. I have a kid on the way and I wont let him be exposed and open online until I feel he's smart and mature enough to maintain personal safety. Likely not until he's at least 13 or 14. And none of this 5 yr olds having cell phones either. Thats messed up. Go outside and play and be a kid. Get hurt doing something stupid on a bike, haha.

Yeah, I've had my eye on Infinity for about 3 years now. There's basically only 1 person developing it. He's made a very impressive universe generator and a solid engine for the game to run on. However, this project will likely never see the light of day unless he's willing to expand and grow his development team and let others into his project. EVE at least has a chance of becoming cool with such a well funded and dedicated developer.

Definitely not MN. It's gotta be from Joplin or another town down south. The Minneapolis damage was laughable compared to what was hit down in MO (I live in Minneapolis btw). A handful of damaged homes, but nothing was completely obliterated.

Not sure why anybody is complaining. At least it's not like the new Flashpoint games where they advertised themselves as "realistic", "authentic" and "tactical" yet they couldn't be further from it. Ubisoft owns a license and they can do with it what they will. I'm still gonna give it a shot. Yeah, its not classic GR, but it still looks like a fun GAME, and they advertise it as such. That and this title has nothing to do with the main franchise. It's a totally separate game that started development 2 years ago. F2P games are slowly becoming a lot better, give it some slack and try it out before you damn it, lol. You cant hold the same expectations for a F2P game as a AAA title. Who cares whats in the name. Give it a shot as a free GAME and not as a GR title/tac sim. Also, @Durka: Love applying that image to every single CoD campaign for the last 4 years, lol.

Main glitch that we've spotted is that all users in TS3 are invisible unless you're in the same channel. Idk if this is a server option that accidentally got checked or a glitch though.

Well, as a F2P game it has to be slightly arcade-ish to establish a wide market audience. It all depends on how they run the paid portion of the game. WoT and LotRO have probably the best F2P systems on the market right now. However, I'm willing to look passed those non-sim/tactical elements to see if there is actually a good, fun team game underneath. The abilities sound kinda weird/silly, but if its fun and geared towards clan play it could be a nice game to play on the side.

With well over a year before launch and absolutely no clue how optimized (or not) ArmA3 is, I honestly would just start saving now. This, along with BF3, will be one of those games that is worth the full PC upgrade on. Time is on your side and there is no rush to upgrade your PC yet. I'd wait until the full released product is out or if a demo is released (they had demo's for ArmA2 pretty early on) to make a final judgement. That being said, I'm very happy with my current rig. I'm confident I'll be able to play both BF3 and ArmA3 to a reasonable degree. The only thing I'll be upgrading this year is my GPU and my monitor with it. Next year maybe RAM if I feel like I need it, but it's more than capable atm. CPU: Intel i7 2600k 3.4GHz (OC-ed to 4.0 atm) Mobo: MSi P67A-GD65 RAM: G.Skill Ripjaw X 8GB DDR3 @ 1300MHz GPU: Nvidia GeForce 560 Ti 1GB Plus some wicked good liquid cooling and a well ventilated case. I could OC my CPU to 4.8 easily, but I have no need. Idk how to OC my RAM or GPU yet, but again, I've yet to have the need.

Bought the WiC Complete package. I liked it when I played the demo a couple years back, but didn't have any friends who played it nor a computer to run it well. Playing the campaign atm, fairly entertaining as far as RTS's go. If you like DoW2's tactical, no-base building style of RTS but want it in a slightly more contemporary setting, this game is great. A lot more balanced too, though not quite as flashy. Lots of great teamplay involved in MP. Should be good for the days when we're all worn out on our "regular" games.

Here's a written preview and trailer from PCG. http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/05/24/ghost-recon-online-preview-hands-on-with-ubis-free-shooter Thoughts?

Who knows, maybe this engine will actually be optimized rather well compared to ArmA 2. /pipedream

Thanks Zeno. Got the pw from Gunthar.

Yeah, 10 bucks on Steam.

Went to that TS3 server and it was just a huge public servers with lots of Europeans on it. Surely that cant be it.... Didn't recognize anybody.

Well, I'm back. Need some catching up to do with the goings-on at Sparta. Things I already know: -Brink release, hit or miss game -ARMA 3 announced -All Sparta servers (including TS3?) are down indefinitely -Gunthar quit WoT after patch (Jeff or Gunthar will have to explain to me what happened in the patch and if the game is dead yet) -Total War: Shogun 2 got its DX11 patch, still buggy though Update me on anything else I may have missed! Good to be back.

Looks like it could be another great addition. Had a quick run-through with Gunthar before leaving. I can see this as another regular rotation map for sure.

On Monday morning I'll be leaving for two weeks for my Annual Training with the National Guard. I'll return on the 23rd. You can all rejoice in that you won't have me disturbing the peace on the forums for a while. XD Have a good one guys, and if anybody gets Brink, tell me how it is when I get back! Later! -Rooster

Just went through that crap not 2 months ago. I hope you had some good last memories with her. I know my brother and I were lucky enough to go out for breakfast one last time and had a really cheerful and fun morning the day before she passed. It really was a blessing and I will always remember her that way. I wish you the best man, stay strong. I'd say that you can talk to me about it, but I'm leaving for two weeks on Monday. I hope you and your family can provide a wonderful funeral for her. Dwell on the good memories and remember all the great times you had with her. It's not worth dwelling on how effed up the situation may seem right now. God bless.

Cy- So as not to break the rules of the forums I will keep this brief and neutral. To them (Al Qaeda, Taliban) it's about religion, yes. We all know and understand this. But our purposes are not religiously driven at all. Our purpose is to drive out terrorism (of all kinds) as a political and military force in the Middle East, and to demolish and disrupt their networks throughout the globe. We fight for the citizens of those nations who are defenseless against them, so that they may one day raise their children in a home ruled without fear, intolerance, hate, and violence. We also fight for our own safety, so that the terrorists will never have the means to carry out violence in the West on the scale of 9/11 or 7/7 ever again. Acknowledging that we're fighting an extremely twisted, perverted, radical form of Islam makes no difference in my eyes. It could be any other religion or external motivation, in any other part of the world, and it would still be terrorism. If there was no Islam in the Middle East it likely wouldn't make a difference to these people. They'd find (or create) some other equally hateful (but attractive) motivation to drive their endeavors. Ultimately, it comes down to power, money, and control through unrelenting fear and violence. They may fight under the guise of religion (and many do take these beliefs seriously), so as to lull and attract the vast number Muslims in the Middle East, but I think the motives of these organizations is rather clear to me by the actions and way of life of the upper echelons. You don't see these leaders doing anything radical other than orchestrating the violence for their own personal gain. Thats all I will say about that and I will discuss no further. Just laying out what I think and no more.

Great response Medic, definitely cleared some things up for me. I think at one point or another we each lost the contexts in which we were speaking, I was lead to assume you were talking about one thing and vice versa and poor assumptions were made. I think custard put it fairly well enough about what I meant about the moral highground. I certainly didn't mean it from a religious standpoint. Now, one could argue that we are invaders and what right do we have to say what is moral and what isn't? We've become the world's police that everybody loves to hate. I agree, we meddle far too much in foreign affairs. And these two particular cases (Iraq, Afghanistan) we brought upon ourselves (in that we were the ones who initiated military action). We have the moral high ground because at least we try to treat the people of their country as equals and as human beings. Not meatshields that we can parade and defile after their death.

I respect Zeno's decision to drop out. He does what I simply cannot, lol. I guess I'll point out as many of the things that I saw disagreement with instead. "You cannot have a decent conversation with a person who wants nothing more than to cut your head off and show it on the internet to get their message across." - harsh generalization (some would say incredibly bigoted/racist) of all Muslim people. The people who actually want to do this are such a small minority that if they didn't have the means/support to carry out violence and spread their message of hate, they couldn't. Thats like saying there's neo-Nazi's in rural America that have a history of causing violence, so that must mean all of rural America hate Jews and want to overthrow our government. "EVERY mother fLucker in that city set out to kill any American they could" - I'm sure most of us are all very familiar with the story. But again, you generalize and say everyone was involved. That is simply not the case at all. Most Somalians were very grateful for our help. We were carrying out this particular operation in a part of the city that was known for it's heavy concentration of militia. If you read the book (I'm assuming you have), even the Imam local to that part of town was actually disgusted and surprised by the treatment of those bodies. It's not really something they have history of doing at all (at least not the locals. Can't say much for the pirates or other terrorist/criminal organizations). "Their religion does not allow for who they deem to be an infidel to be on their land or fight for their causes regardless of whether or not we believe it to be in the right." -Only a radical interpretation of the Quran guides this particular theology. The Quran and Islam is not an inherently violent religion. While "infidels" are still not allowed to enter sacred places such as Mosques, that doesn't mean they don't know the difference between right and wrong and who is fighting for what. "For us to simply 'take the high road' and do nothing because it would be the equivalent to letting the enemy win or get the better of us is ridiculous." -this statement and the following paragraph is probably what I disagree with the most. It's a two-faced statement. On one hand you firmly believe we have the moral high ground (which I'd agree with for the most part). But you're also saying that we need to throw that away and become barbarians just like them in order to win. Now that I can't stand for. I'm not saying that war doesn't come at a high cost. We have our military to carry out swift and just violence. They are men who are killing other men, it's not a pretty thing. But just because the enemy is willing to do anything, including sacrificing themselves and their children for their cause in the most violent, sickening ways, that doesn't mean we have to too. If anything, the more women and children that fall victim to their cause, it works to our favor by not doing so and fighting with honor, dignity, and respect. We win the population over by being the better man and treating human life and freedom with the utmost importance. We're there not to show them what they've known for thousands of years, we're there to show them a better world, a better way of life. The majority of people very likely do want to help us, but they've only known fear and distrust in their lives. Their families and livelihood are at stake when they share information with us. So I can understand why so many give misleading information or are afraid of telling the truth. There's a gun pointed at their family's face when we're not looking. Now, despite all these points that I disagree with you on, there's one shining paragraph in your post that I have nothing but agreement with. And it bears repeating I like it so much. "The only solution to this inherent problem, though, is to not participate. We need to be constantly vigilant in our own intelligence and defense. If ever the time were to arise where we needed to fight, then I say we meet those mother fuckers at the gates of Hell itself, settle that shit right then and there and then go home." EDIT: Of course, the original post is gone. :/ I thought we were all having a rather nice, mature discussion here. I harbor no animosity towards those I disagree with. I just love debating with people, if you couldn't tell. I saw no signs of things getting heated or personal, but then again, maybe it's best to drop it now. DOUBLE EDIT: It's not that your opinion isn't welcome, Medic. Like you, I wholly welcome the discussion and debate of any subject as long as it stays civil and non-personal. It's not so much the content of an idea that can be offensive/confrontational, but the way in which we word our opinions is what really makes the difference.