T2K Arma II Mod Planning

[StainlessSteelCynic]

ARMA III definitely has more available for it in terms of special mods e.g. the canteen mod but also things like weapon sight swaying (something that annoys the hell out of me in most FPS games because it's usually vastly out of proportion to reality), weapon sight zoom (something else I find particularly annoying in FPS games is the crappy way that they implement using iron sights, the sights are typically too damned big for the sight picture and obscure the target, ARMA has usually been far better for this but the iron sights are often so small you can't see if you're actually on target!)

Plus they have all the other bits & pieces like firing from vehicles, towing vehicles and so on. That and the modding community is probably more active for ARMA III than it is for II, just look at the workshop on Steam, new mods are still being posted even as I type this!

[Silent Hunter UK]

Definitely some of the Cold War mods will be needed. I already have ARMA II but would have to buy ARMA III, so I'd prefer the former.

[vihkr]

Originally Posted by Silent Hunter UK

Definitely some of the Cold War mods will be needed. I already have ARMA II but would have to buy ARMA III, so I'd prefer the former.

I've done a thorough look at the mods available for ARMA 3 and ARMA II. The thing is that ARMA 3 was designed specifically to move away from the usual NATO vs. Russia story and portray a war in the future, circa 2030. There are few, if any mods for Cold War. Sure you can re-purpose the ARMA II content from Cold War to ARMA 3 (the CUP series of mods), but then you get a newer engine with 7 year-old models and textures and it ends up looking like ARMA II, anyway. Creating custom mods with skins and the like is SUPER time consuming.

The newer RHS http://www.rhsmods.org/ mods for ARMA 3 bring some of the Cold War equipment in high-res and concentrate on Modern Russian and American forces, but leave out a lot of the interesting things, like bandits and the like. There are also no complete mod packs for all the other nationalities likely to be fighting, like Cold War Polish, West Germans, etc.

These guys finally released the magnum opus of Cold War mods, but it was for ARMA II: http://cwr2.arma2.fr/ They state quite clearly that they will never port to ARMA 3. However, it's really wild, the detail they put into. Every imaginable vehicle, unit and weapon, minus a few that no-one's really going to miss.

There is also a differential in the types of gameplay mods for both systems. I've tested a bunch and the ARMA 3 mods for the types of features we'd need for post-apoc gaming, and it's generally superior to ARMA II.

Porting bits of DayZ is not an option, really, due to the hive system.

So, go with ARMA II and concentrate on the story and enjoy a full suite of units for Cold War already in place? But suffer the older gameplay and graphics?

Or, go with ARMA 3 and try to cobble together the skins and units, but enjoy superior graphics, gameplay and mods?

I thought I had made a decision, but with more research, I've reached an impasse.