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Apple Businesses Entertainment Games

America's Army Comes to the Mac 180

Posted by pudge from the mmm-aggots dept.
mrpuffypants writes "Not to leave all of the Mac community out in the rain the U.S. Army has released a Mac version of America's Army. Now get out there and train for Iraq, maggots!"
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America's Army Comes to the Mac More

America's Army Comes to the Mac

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  • Now that the Macintosh has joined the ranks, "don't ask, don't tell" is in full force. (it is just a joke macaddicts...I support macs as part of my job...)

  • Why.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ae0nflx ( 679000 ) <`bjberg' `at' `pacbell.net'> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @07:36PM (#6466977)
    This seems like a rather bad idea on the army's part, in my opinion. I would think that since Apple has such a small slice of the market share that they would not even bother with a release, and more importantly, I wouldn't expect as many Mac users would be potential conscripts. I don't have any hard evidence for that, but considering myself (a long time mac user) and most of the other appleholics that i know, the mac user/pacifist overlap is pretty large...

    I bet the fed is finally trying to convert us sunflower-loving hippies using a really cool game. So. Tempting. Must. Resist. Cool. FPS.

    • Re:Why.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by rmohr02 ( 208447 ) <mohr DOT 42 AT osu DOT edu> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @08:03PM (#6467125)
      Well, there's a Linux version of America's Army [gentoogames.com], so why not a Mac version? Ok, you have to boot from the CD for it, but it still runs off of Linux.

      • Re:Why.... (Score:3, Informative)

        by The Analog Kid ( 565327 )
        Actually you don't need a CD, you can type

        emerge americas-army or whatever it is.

      • Re:Why.... (Score:3, Informative)

        by MrResistor ( 120588 )
        Ok, you have to boot from the CD for it, but it still runs off of Linux.

        Or you could just download it from icculus.org and install it like any other professionally produced Linux game.

        • Well, I don't like the game, so I've never looked into it. I just remember seeing that Gentoo made a booting version of it.

    • Re:Why.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by dbrutus ( 71639 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @08:15PM (#6467186) Homepage
      Gee, the US hasn't had conscripts since the '70s so maybe you have no idea what you're talking about.

      Btw: unless you want to categorize Rush Limbaugh as a sunflower-loving hippie, mac users are a bit more diverse than the stereotype.

      1 left liberal, 1 post, 2 wrong stereotypes. Bleah

    • Re:Why.... (Score:1, Funny)

      by suss ( 158993 )
      I wouldn't expect as many Mac users would be potential conscripts

      Considering you have already voluntarily joined the army of Steve Jobs and even paid (a lot!) for it, i don't think it's that far-fetched...

      Steve Jobs: You will buy this new expensive Apple Gizmo and you will like it!
      Mac Users: Yes,Sir! We will buy the cheese grater look-a-like, Sir! Have our life savings, Sir!
    • even if the start up screen does say "YMRA EHT NOIJ"

    • AA uses SDL (Score:4, Informative)

      by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @11:58PM (#6468394) Journal
      America's Army (at least on Linux) uses SDL and OpenGL.

      Probably didn't take much more than a recompile on a Mac to create this "port".

      This is a GOOD THING and the sort of thing we need to see more of. Develop cross-platform games with cross-platform APIs. Give "Linux gaming" and "Mac gaming" both a shot in the arm with the same code.

      • I'd love to see more of this. unfortunately, there's a demon called "Direct X" that haunts the games, keeping them away from the other platforms until they become so old that no one cares any more (NWN? Max Payne?)
    • Ironically, Mac users are more likely to be republicans, as they have higher incomes. Whether this is because you need a higher income to own a Mac or because using a Mac leads to a higher income, is undetermined.
      • Whether this is because you need a higher income to own a Mac or because using a Mac leads to a higher income, is undetermined.
        This implies that it would have to be one of these options, which is wrong. Don't mix up coincidence with causality. Anyway, how did you arrive at the conclusion that
        "
        Mac users are more likely to be republicans"
        in the first place? Any facts to back that up, or just trolling?
      • I see a few problems with this theory, starting off with Mac users that "think different", something anathema to conservatives. GAMUG, the Gateway Area Macintosh Users Group, has a large number of educators and retirees, some of the latter retired teachers. While the subject of politics doesn't come up there much, I've not met any Bush supporters in the group.

    • I have to agree. Mac users are not soldiers. Our place is to make the propaganda!

      (disclaimer: I'm a mac user.)
      Sten

    • America's army uses the Unreal Engine, which has already been ported to the Mac platform... why not release a mac version?

      Also, I use a Mac not for the 'hippie' aspects, or fsck M$ reasons, but simply because I like them better... I am not a gun toting liberal, but I play paintball and first person shooters on my consoles (and Mac when I can)..
    • In the end of the trailer: http://www.apple.com/games/trailers/americasarmy/ there is one old guys running the show that have a Powerbook. Maybe this guy felt left out of the group? Anyway, if they didn't clutter the original source with unportable stuff the port should be fairly easy. Quake II was ported by a guy in Germany for no pay after the source was released, a couple of pros should be able to do a port in a few weeks.
    • [shrug] I'm a veteran, and a Mac user. I know at least two others. Take that FWIW.

  • I think I speak for all of us when I say... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 17, 2003 @07:37PM (#6466983)
    ... KABOOM!!

    Blam blam!

    Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

    Nyyyyyyyyooooooooooooo BOOM!

  • First impressions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wyvern5 ( 565676 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @07:37PM (#6466985)
    While the performance is understandably poor on my dual 800 (1.5 gb, GF3... I get around 20 fps) the game has real potential. Unfortunately its close quarters combat is quite flawed. Strafe jumping junkies who somehow manage to squeeze full-auto fire out of their M16A2 abound. Disappointing, to say the least. Looks like the devs kind of gave up on polishing the gameplay about 5/6ths of the way to completion. All that would be required to fix this is a simple realistically correct adjustment: You can't strafe jump while holding a full-auto assault rifle. Or, at least, my knowledge of the human body doesn't state that it's true. Who knows what genetically engineered super soldiers the Army is cooking up these days, though ;) I think perhaps some chained-jumping handicaps like those in RtCW, I think it was, would be appropriate. But, there are a handful of weapons to use, and sniping is appropriately difficult (though I haven't had a chance to try out it outside of the training field... yes I am an Exper Marksman :) ). So, to sum up... A game with strong potential, but it needs polish. And more FPS.

    • Re:First impressions (Score:5, Informative)

      by setzman ( 541053 ) <stzman AT stzman ... removeit DOT org> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @08:07PM (#6467140) Journal
      The M16A2 is NOT a full-auto assault rifle. It can only fire in semi (1-round) and burst (3-round) modes. You must be thinking of the M16A1, which can fire full automatic.
      • In Soviet Russia, gun's name simple! KALASHNIKOV!!
    • In response to those who can't read very well, I know very well that the M16A2 cannot fire full auto. If you re-read my post, you will see that this is what I implied. People (perhaps with a script) manage to make it fire full auto, presumably using burst mode.

    • Re:First impressions (Score:5, Informative)

      by MrResistor ( 120588 ) <(peterahoff) (at) (gmail.com)> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @09:05PM (#6467403) Homepage
      Tip on sniping: Breathing matters!

      Squeeze off your shot during the pauses between inhaling and exhaling. Oh, and I mean your character's breathing, not you physically breathing.

      • B.R.A.S. =
        Breathe
        Relax
        Aim
        Squeeze

        At least that was the mantra for basic rifle marksmanship when I went thru Army Basic Training almost 11 yrs ago. The way you practice this is by dry-firing the M16A2 (I actually had an A1 issued by accident but the bastards caught me on my first day out in the range, dammit!). You put a dime on top of the deflector and you try to squeeze the trigger without dropping the penny.
        • "You put a dime on top of the deflector and you try to squeeze the trigger without dropping the penny."

          Glad to see that the US Army is still the natural home of the kind of idiot who can't tell the difference between a dime and a penny.
        • Funny, I learned it as BRASS -- Breathe, Relax, Aim, Slack, Squeeze. The "Slack" step is taking up the slack in the trigger, which is pretty significant on those crappy old M16's they give you in Basic ...
          • When and where did you do yours? I noticed that the game's qualification range for the M16A2 is missing "Fast Freddie" targets. At least that's what we called the shoulders-up pop-up that is usually placed less than 100 meters from the firing position. The game is set in Ft. Benning but my basic was in Ft. Jackson so I don't know if this is just a location issue or if it was dropped altogether from the design of the firing range.
            • I was at Ft. Benning. I don't remember calling those close-in targets "Fast Freddie," but we definitely had them on the range. If the game is missing them, that's a major omission. I suppose it's possible that they don't have them any more (Basic was longer ago for me than I like to think about) but if so, I think that's a mistake. Learning how to snap-shoot at close-in targets is an important skill, especially for urban guerilla warfare ... gee, I wonder when that situation might come up ...

    • wow a game review from a non-gamer? fps tweak too. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Numeric ( 22250 ) * on Friday July 18, 2003 @12:15AM (#6468465) Homepage Journal
      obviously you are new to gaming since "strafe jumping" is actually called "bunny hopping". also you cannot fire while jumping. you can fire while strafing back and forth. i assume that you started today, you probably havent played many of the maps and maybe still in the MILES (laser tag) maps like MOUT and Tunnels. Those maps are intro maps you will see how the game can excel when you are on a large outdoor map like Radio Tower or a FPS killer map like Bridge.

      When AA was first released, I thought of it as Counter Strike 2 with all the cheats removed which is one of the reasons I stopped playing CS. But I discovered that AA was team orientated. If you can find your nitch on a squad, you can really dominate.

      Some things that you missed that I think should be noted:
      - you can shoot through doors now and bullets can ricochett and kill you
      - TK (that is "team killing) is a huge no-no
      - You will need to learn the Rules of Engagement (ROE) which have a negative effect on gaining honor.
      - You get bonus honor for being squad and fire team leaders.
      - You need to know your CEM (Combat Effectiveness Meter), the higher it is, the more accurate your shot is.
      - To forgive ppl, when you are TKed accidently. Apologize when you TK someone.
      - There's many different qualifications such as Airborne School, Sniper School, Mtn Range division, etc... by passing those schools, new maps open to you.
      - The higher your honor the better your chances are of getting the weapon you requested.
      - Game weapons (depending on map and team size): M16, Saw, m16 w/ 203 grenade launcher, regular sniper rifle, .50 caliber sniper rifle, m4 with laser sight,grenades, flash bangs, smoke nades plus the enemies counter weapons.

      Coming in AA 1.9, two new classes: Medic and Special Forces. I am looking forward to becoming a medic (although its not like a true medic, but a combat medic with a gun -- read americasarmy.com). Rumors are that you need to have a 35+ honor to be a medic and 50+ for Special Forces.

      I've logged 70+ hours into this game, playing for a few days then stopping for a week or so (depending on work and life duties). So I feel qualifed to review the game.

      overall for a free game, its pretty damn good. the FPS are quite good if you have a good video card. a gf3 is okay. i dont think my 600mhz iBook with its ATI 16mb video card could handle it, but maybe it will be okay as a dedicated server.

      "hooah"

      fps tweak

      http://75thrangers.us/portal/modules.php?name=Fo ru ms&file=viewtopic&t=1142

      a quote from the post...
      " Ok I was gettin like 23 fps on bridge SE, and i new
      i could do better. I have a radeon 9200 128mb. So a
      Dev told me that i could tweak the Cache size in the
      armyops.ini file and it would help alot. The default
      is 32. If you haev a 128 mb card set it to 128 mbs, 64
      card =64 cache. I went from 23 fps to 60! "

      i have an ati 9000 128 pro...i made the changes and it didnt seem to do much. i had my friend make changes to and he has a gf4 ti 4200 128 and he didnt notice any changes.

      • A good post, and more thorough than my own. But no, I didn't mean bunnyhopping, I meant strafe jumping. I am a fps gamer and have been for past, oh, 8 years or so. It's not strafejumping like in q1-3 but strafejumping it is indeed. Bunnyhopping is, IMHO, something different than the behavior I mentioned. Thanks for the vid card tip... My GF3 is 64 mb so I'll give it a shot.
      • obviously you are new to gaming since "strafe jumping" is actually called "bunny hopping".

        To put it in a less flamy manner than the AC below, its obvious that *you* are the one who is new to gaming. Bunny-hopping was a term that got popular after Half-Life was released, especially the Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike mods came out, but the technique was called strafe-jumping long before that, mostly in Quake 2.
    • In AA you CAN NOT shoot whilst jumping. There are, however, some hacks that have allowed people to turn this on.

      Likewise, you can't bunny-hop forever: there is some measure of "stamina" that prevents you from just jumping around like a rabbit on uppers.

      Third, the M16 in AA is not full-auto. There are full-auto M4s, and you can also pick up AKs off of dead opfor that will be full auto for you (because you see it as an AK, not an M16).

  • Has to be said... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Llywelyn ( 531070 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @07:49PM (#6467042) Homepage
    Come on, you apes! You wanta live forever?

  • High scores? (Score:4, Funny)

    by psyconaut ( 228947 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @08:47PM (#6467328)
    If you get really high scores, do you get a knock-on-the-door in the middle of the night and whisked away to a secret CIA training camp? ;-)

    -psy

  • :P (Score:1)

    by pmsyyz ( 23514 )
    Why are there "quotes" around "License:" and "System Requirements" ?

    http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/games_demo up dates/americasarmyoperations.html
  • Can someone post a bittorrent link? The only thing they are charging for is a broadband link ($5.95). The other links are slow as crud. So I think it'd be just peachy if bittorrent helped us all out a bit.

  • Here's a .torrent (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jamie ( 78724 ) * <jamie@slashdot.org> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @09:57PM (#6467766) Journal
    Found this in a comment [insidemacgames.com] to the story on insidemacgames.com:

    http://www.bigfatonline.com/armyops-mac-170.tar.bz 2.torrent [bigfatonline.com]

    I had grabbed the first half of it from an official mirror before I gave up and went to the torrent, so I can guarantee that if it's trojaned, it's trojaned in the second half :)

  • ArmyOps Tracker [4players.de]

    You can track you all sorts of stats with the game. I love using it to track how many points I need to gain honor and seeing my frag rate. I didnt discover this online tool for almost a few months. If you are curious, you can see mine...My AA stats [4players.de]. Another cool feature is the signature file which is like a banner ad of your stats.

    I can wait til I turn my 600mhz iBook into a server!

  • Foreign players = demagogue's dream (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Durindana ( 442090 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @05:54AM (#6469359)
    Just played for a bit (I'm not saying what time zone I'm in!) and my first impression was surprise at the languages being used in chat.

    I know non-English-speakers are not unusual in FPS games, of course. But something about the in-your-face stridence of American military machismo in the game made it an odd cognitive dissonance.

    I can see a Huey Long (or Joe McCarthy) figure showing a screenshot of dudes blasting people with their m1a4 or whatever, talking in Czech... and then McCarthy lambasting the Army for training the next generation of terrorists.

    Or do I just need my morning coffee?

  • The Last Starfighter (Score:5, Funny)

    by amichalo ( 132545 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @07:26AM (#6469663)
    Does this remind anyone else of the 80's movie The Last Starfighter [amazon.com] where the goofy kid living in a California trailer park gets the high score on a video game and gets recruited by the "Star Leauge" to save the Earth or Universe or Star Leauge or something like that?

    This really could become some next generation of recruitment.

    I mean, think of the possibilities for NASCAR to recruit top scorers for Gran Turismo, or the National Football Leauge to recruit top scorers of Madden 2004. Heck, if you can wiggle your fingers fast you must be able to do the real thing too. I'd hate to get in a kick boxing competition with the high scorer of Dynasty Wariors 4. I bet that overweight 12 year old would use the old A-B-A-B-B on my ass and the next thing I know he'd be holding my beating heart in his hand!

    All of a sudden I miss the 80's

    • Re:The Last Starfighter (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I dunno. We have a TV series here in the UK called "Faking It' where someone goes from their real job to something else, with a bit of training, and then tries to fool a panel of experts into thinking they're the real deal. For example, a house painter becomes an artist and tries to fool the critics.

      Anyhow, one episode had a bloke who tests video games (as a job!!), particularly racing games, being trained up as a proper racing driver in one of the UK's top racing schools. To cut a long story short, he wa

    • Y'know I really think there might be something to that. The whole set up *is* a lot like the Last Starfighter. And I think it's more than a coincidence. After all that movie is what inspired George W. Bush to enter politics [theonion.com]. I see larger things at work here.
    • I'd love to see a team full of cheese-puff eating mountain dew drinking gamers go against a nfl team. I'd pay to see the carnage.
      • XFL 2.0, anyone? People compete for the chance to play in a game by playing Madden, then get decimated by real football players (it would probably have to be NFL Europe guys, for safety). Guarantee that would make more money than crappy teams full of crappy players duking it out for a meaningless title in February.
    • Hi! Can't remember URL, but some time ago here in Moscow was a challenge painboll between Q2 team and FSB team, as I remember. Quakers wiped out federal sequrity team. Of coarse, that was not real bullets...
  • Now get out there and train for Iraq, maggots!

    The army really is always fighting the last war...

  • Apropos... (Score:3, Funny)

    by 11223 ( 201561 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @10:30AM (#6470983)
    Join the Army, they said.

    See the world, they said.

    I'd rather be sailing.

  • Kill Different (Score:3, Funny)

    by druske ( 550305 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @11:36AM (#6471682)
    "...then I took a dozen rounds in the chest. It was... a bummer..."
  • This release isn't training the kiddies to kill Iraqis, it's training kiddies to kill Syrians, Irianians and North Koreans. And if the French show some spine and stand up to them, then it'll be France next. Educate yourself on the "NeoConservative" agenda.
  • Download is damn slow (12kb/s) Anyone have a mirror?
  • To make this game perfect it needs a few things:

    First, when you try and log off, you should stand a good chance of being told you'll have to wait another month or six before you can stop playing and attempt to log off again.

    The reasons given for your missions should bear little to no relation to reality.

    Massive extra point bonuses for securing oil wells.

    And most importantly, if you die you never, ever get to play again.

  • I'm tempted to download this . . (Score:3, Funny)

    by bedouin ( 248624 ) on Friday July 18, 2003 @02:51PM (#6473557)
    . . . but only if I can fight against America.

    Otherwise it's kind of boring.
  • Thanks to this game the US Government will never be able to ban violent video games! To do so would be an admission of hipocrisy. (Of course hipocrisy itself will continue as usual.)

    The US Army has realized that video games enhance reflexes, improve perception of peripheral visual information, and teach tactical skills. So it's ostensibly about killing other humans (just like Vice City). Details, details. The point is the skills it imbues, after all.
  • Why the army would create a murder simulator and distribute it to kids is a question we ought to be asking as a democracy.

    The answer might seem obvious - i.e., you can't have cannons without fodder for them - but recruitment isn't the only reason.

    Recruitment may not even be the primary reason. The ranks of Walmart America are very deep; there are plenty of the working poor who can be drawn upon to fight our imperial wars without recourse to a draft that would be politically unpopular with the chattering

  • So how does this game measure up to reality? Does it come with a "forged intelligence random generator" i.e. "We have intelligence that has tried to purchase from " How about a virtual snub to the UN "We don't need your approval to go to war, but we sure as hell need your help cleaning up the mess we made" Or does 1 random recruit die every day from a guerilla attack, just to spice things up. I want a game where i can put dubya in the targets!

  • Ymra eht nioj! (Score:2, Funny)

    by TCQuad ( 537187 )
    "America's Army", now 99% subliminal message free!
  • Just a word to the wise. I purchased this game last week when it got announced and they charged me 3 times for it: $17.85 for this crappy game! I wrote to their customer service and after 2 days was told that there is nothing they will do about it. This is a total scam.

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