2 ARMA ARTICLES!

Edition #8

2 COMICS!

2 SPREADS!

and more!

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EditorialHere we are again, you sipping whatever it is you’re drinking

and reading this with one hand on the mouse and the other down your trousers. That’s right I’m psychic. This months been highly eventful behind the scenes for us at RC, with forum changes and Cyberzomby deciding to pick the perfect moment to go to curacao, and then troll us by bragging about it on our work forum. Yep, tricky month.

We’ve got a few new faces for next months issue, who shall be putting in some great new content I’m sure. I’m also glad to say we’ve got a new subeditor! My personal slave is called Realplay and is actually a trainee journalist, so he’s probably more experienced than me (Don’t tell him that though, I like the power). Real shall hopefully be staying with us for a while to come and has been all I could ask for.

Back to the PR world, I was really really hyped for the release of PRAA and I found myself dissapointed for a very different reason to other people. I actually loved the gameplay changes, and it makes up for the lack of new toys to play with. My problem is that my internet still doesn’t allow me to play online, so even after spending 16 hours downloading I was annoyed when I realised I still wouldn’t be truly experiencing PR for some time.

On that sombre and short note I leave you once again, we’ll be working on getting Reality Contact more widely known in the future and we’d really appreciate you putting a word in about us when you’re trudging along the hills of kashan or waiting for that heli trans on Mutt. Cya next month lads, have a good one. -Hobbnob

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Table of Contents:Arma 2 VS Project Reality the sound of engines roaring and the endless discussions on how this operation was to be executed echo in your mind. page 4

COMIC! Pilots.... page 6

Black Sand blue was never truly happy being the bomb disposal guy, but with storm by his side he felt as safe as can be when you’re walking towards a device designed to kill you. page 7

ADVERT! skirmish tournament page 8

The importance of the CO We’ve all seen it, 9 squads running around the map, doing a whole lot of bugger all. page 9

COMIC! Wicca... page 10

The perfect game of PR some weeks ago i had this dry period of Pr; i think we have all had it once or twice. page 11

First Impressions 22nd of February 2009, the day i joined one of the most passionate gaming communities i have ever known. page 12

ADVERT! artists! page 14

the new kid in town

Arma 2 VS Project Reality

The first contact message you hear over the net you inadvertently push your legs together and take another sip of your drink. The first gunshots are audible in the distance and the tension increases... As you exit the vehicle with your unit following, the sudden bright light of the sun makes you blink your eyes for a second. Gradually you get used to the light, noise and dust while you’re rushing your unit into position, your squad members running beside you. The squad leader reminds everyone to keep their spacing and, when you reach your destination, orders the fire teams into position.

The large village below you comes increasingly

closer as you move to the end of the ridge. You aim down your sights and see tiny soldiers moving on your screen. The squads commence firing. The sound of radio chatter increases as CAS is called in and the wounded are impatiently awaiting treatment.

You hear the imposing noise of large calibre rounds breaking through the sound barrier over your head, either outgoing or incoming. The sounds of radio coms, gunshots and nearby and distant explosions fill your headset. It’s fearful but exciting, as if you’re in a war movie, not only viewing the action but sitting right in the middle of it. And you’re having the time of your life.

Back to reality

This might be a round played on a public PR server, or it might be an event organized by one of many ArmA2 communities. It might be a clan battle using ACE mod, or a Co-0P style public game on a milsim group server.

We’ve all felt that feeling, having the right weapon in your hands; you’re in the right position. The tingling sensation that this is bloody awesome! All these games, where teamwork and communication are enforced, where realism is strived for... They ever so often turn out to far exceed your highest expectations. It’s in those games that you just can’t stop wishing for that moment, that feeling, to return, one more time, to be completely immersed again.

This is why people play ArmA. The challenge of successfully organizing people is one of the main and greatest challenges there is, and doing so takes hard

The sound of engines roaring and the endless discussions on how this operation was to be executed echo in your mind. As several APCs and other armoured vehicles start to group up in a loose formation. Approaching what are their designated deployment zones.

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work and is time consuming. Often what you give up for it turns out not even being worth the trouble in the end.

All that trouble for this?

But most of the time, all those failed attempts and failed evenings or nights spent in half-hearted attempts at true organisation and teamwork are worth that one night, that one epic experience that you will never forget.

This is what a lot of the PR community may have gotten used to, and sure, there are loads of crap rounds for every good one. But we play this game because we wanted something above what most other team-based shooters offer. It’s not all about the kills; it’s not enough to play around on a battlefield the size of a handkerchief with only sixteen per side, let alone less than that. We want epic battles and we want them on an epic scale. And PR delivers that, more so than most other games, in a relatively simple and stupid form. But it is us, the players, together with the developers, who define and refine the experience, to make what is the gameplay of PR.

Its up to us

As with ArmA 2, you cannot simply walk into a server and expect a good game. It requires you to have a microphone, it requires mumble... But above all, it requires the right attitude, the right mind set and a lot of patience.

Waiting for that map you love, getting into a good squad, avoiding getting shot. It’s all part of the experience. And it’s very much up to the players how they want the game to turn out. I mean, you can rage all you want at the engine mechanics, the net code, the lag, the FPS. You can blame the developers for adding or changing stuff that breaks the game for you and you can blame your team for not doing their best. At the end of the day however, it’s the players who decide what game they play. And with any game or mod you play, be it for ArmA 2 or Battlefield 2, it ultimately comes down to the guy next to you

// Wicca out

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Picture by: r-DeV sPush

Picture by: r-DeV sPush

“as with arma 2, you cannot simply walk into a server and expect a good game.”

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riter WICCA

Is head of PRTA. Some people call him crazy

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COMIC!Pilots....

Made

by:

Made

by: Wh33LMAn

Jack of all trades, master of none

Black SandBlue was never truly happy being the bomb disposal guy, but with Storm by his side he felt as safe as can be when you’re walking towards a device designed to kill you. Blue was given a specialised bomb disposal suit in when he arrived in Kandahar from Cyprus, but like everyone else he never used it because of the baking heat. He was halfway to the possible IED now, and could hear only the engines of the Grizzlys and the panting of storm as he finally completed his journey.

On the side of the road was a post. This was not unusual, they’d driven past it hundreds of times before. The problem was that it had been knocked over. This indicated that someone might have buried something under or around it, which wasn’t good news. Blue slowly walked towards the post, looking out for tripwires. He hadn’t bothered bringing a metal detector since most devices were now made from plastic petrol containers, but they could still be found by Storm with his incredible sense of smell. The pair were quiet as they got within 5 meters of the post and stopped. From then Storm was trained to slowly walk towards whatever his partner pointed to. Blue made one last check for tripwires and was just about to point when something glinted in the light. The tripwire.

The two top covers looked on as Blue worked patiently to make the device safe whilst Storm sat silently next to him. A few minutes later Blue’s cold voice uttered a single ‘Clear’ through the radio. He calmly walked back to his Grizzly APC and continued their patrol. As they drove along the AO1 they saw various wrecks and other signs of Taliban activity, including a huge crater the size of their vehicles that was caused by another IED. They’d been on the road for a couple of hours now and were getting tired as they reached the VCP as the sun fell into the mountains.

As expected the British Army Corporal walked towards Network in the lead Grizzly, but before he

could speak a word someone inside the Sangar screamed an all too familiar warning as a 107mm rocket streaked into the top of the HESCO barrier protecting the VCP. As it detonated the checkpoint was filled with dust and the shouts of the soldiers desperately trying to find out if everyone was alright.

Network couldn’t see anything through the thick windows of his Grizzly APC, so stayed put and told Blue in the second vehicle to do the same. The team were in awe as they heard the frantic shouting die down and disciplined communication develop, even though everyone in the VCP were still completely blinded by the dust. People were identified via roll call, and slowly information started to emerge. Everyone was unharmed, and the HESCO would hold up until they could get the Royal engineers in to fix it up properly. As the dust started to clear the team could see the hive of activity that the blast had created. None of the soldiers were wearing goggles at the time, so many had dust and dirt all over their faces as they queued up to the sinks to wash up, whilst people on duty did their best to clean themselves up where they were.

Network opened the door on the Grizzly to reveal the dusty corporal.

“Who are you then?” He said as he wiped his eyes clean.

“Royal Marines, staying here for the night then moving up to Lashkar”

“Marines my arse. Does Boss know you’re here”“Yeah we’ve got everything sorted”The corporal let them through and they set up

for the night after checking in with the commanding officer, nicknamed ‘Boss’. Tomorrow they’d be setting off into Lashkar on foot, it would be a long and hard day.

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r hOBBnOBHobbnob is head of RC, he usually plays transport roles..

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ADVERT!The Blackwater Tournament Committee (BTC) are in the final stages of

putting together the

“PROJECT REALITY SKIRMISh ChAMPIOnShIP 2011”which includes for the first time ever in the PR community

CASh PRIZESfor 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place.

This is an all day event on October the 22nd. Any BF2 Project Reality Clan from around the world can send a 6 man team to compete in a

double elimination bracketed Skirmish Championship.

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The importance of the CO

But there are many reasons why a commander spot could be the perfect one for you, not least is the personal gratification you get from being at the top of the scoreboard regardless of what happens in the game. It’s a position requiring patience, tactics and the ability to take 100 nuggets of information, compress them into one block of knowledge and distribute that too the 9 men below you that need to keep them and their squad alive.

TALK!

A commander has many tools available to do the their job, but the single most important one is voice communication, having 9 squad leaders squawking at you might sound like it’s going to confuse the hell out of you but the key to a commander is the ability to pick key information out from the middle of a monologue from one of those 9 men. Someone could be talking for a minute about a contact, but the only information a commander should be listening for is where they are,

what they are and how likely they are to cause him some bother, then

he needs to mark it, tell the other squads about it and make sure its dealt with safely with minimum casualties, a good commander won’t have to think about what he’s going to do with the information he has been given, they’ll just take it, deal with it and act on it.

Use your new toy

Another newer addition to the commander arsenal, the UAV; a vehicle designed to fly over an objective and gather as much intelligence as possible before anyone attacks it. Information from a UAV can have many uses; it can be used to point out enemy vehicles or structures

to CAS squads, it can be used to tell infantry about enemies in their area and it can be used to explore the next objective before a troop even touches the ground. An invaluable piece of kit for any commander to take full advantage of, it can mean the difference between taking a flag and losing the round.

Commanders also have use of the area attack, a fearsome bombardment of sustained artillery fire or a huge 1000lb JDAM, a truly feared asset. I’ve seen many uses of an area attack, most of them however come from a single squad who send a guy into the commander hot seat for 5 minutes to drop the bomb then he leaves again. However an area attack can be much more useful if it’s being used to the advantage of an entire team, a commander who has been in that spot for a long time knows the battlefield, where the choke points are, where the most enemy are, so instead of using it for a single squad he has the ability to use it for the entire team, clearing out an area with a forward outpost in it or supressing a group of enemy long enough for the team to move in, eliminate them and take the position.

Game changer

Combine all of these assets, and the commander could truly be a force to be reckoned with, with additional battlefield awareness from markers and a top down view on the fight from the UAV movement of assets and infantry is smoother, people know what they are expecting when they move up. Having trouble even with the markers, call in an area attack on a strategic location, and push through while the enemy is dealing with the aftermath. The commander is invaluable, and is a sorely under estimated and under used spot. Man up and give it a go… what’s the worst that could happen?

“MoVe out, attacK here!”

We’ve all seen it, 9 squads running around the map, doing a whole lot of bugger all. We’ve all seen what it does to a game of PR as well. There’s only one position in the game that can unify a broken team and that’s the commander; that rarely explored spot that seems to go unnoticed and unloved.

“tell the other squads about it.”

Write

r REALPLAYResident Reality Contact slave, will edit for cash.

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COMIC!Wicca...

Made

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Made

by: Wh33LMAn

Jack of all trades, master of none

Wicca’s Words of Wisdom

The perfect game of PR

It seems it is as I’ve heard; PORN actually makes you harder to turn on. And with PR, the things I’ve seen in PR, the stuff I’ve been part of, and what I’ve accomplished with some people. It’s just mind blowing, thus because I have such high expectations, I ultimately get let down almost every time. And my dry period began after some frustrating games on mumble full servers, with people I’ve seen a hundred times before.

As you all know, being able to be in the ZONE, is essential to having a good game. And having those around you to be in the same mind set, is what makes or breaks games... Or is it?

After this dry period, where I repeatedly lost tanks, APCs, infantry squads, to smarter and more accurate enemies. Where I saw flag after flag lost, and could not count the seconds I saw pass by as I gave up time after time. The black screen of death, the screams around you, or generic laughs some people make when they die.

I got myself on a server, and instead of taking it upon myself to shape the battle, I took the approach I had always enjoyed. Laughs and giggles, the relentless fun that sometimes strikes people with too much time on their hands. Never getting into contact, always walking around, with a slight sense of strategic position and correctness. But tactical awareness was nil. I had fun again. And so, with PR and only PR, you make it what you want it to be. If you want to be a gut fighting grunt, rushing the enemy in close quarter fire fights or the wise and almighty squad leader who shows no mercy and is a deity in his group PR will allow it. The needs of the field, and those of your own, sometimes coincide so well. So a perfect game of PR? It’s what you make it to be. Have fun!

Some weeks ago i had this dry period of PR; I think we have all had it once or twice. It was not that I did not like PR. But getting through another couple of games having that massive hunger for the great satisfaction a good game of PR gives. I reached an anti-climax, the 128 server was up, mumble was being used well, people knew what they were doing but I just couldn’t get myself in to PR, I had lost my hard on.

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r WICCAIs head of PRTA. Some people call him crazy

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First Impressions

Half an hour after its release the 5 official servers where full to capacity with 500 eager gamers from every continent on earth, all wanting a slice of the action in the first ever branch of the already insanely popular PR:BF2 tree. No new release goes without its hiccups and this one was no different, it was an evening of the dreaded “desync” plague that hits every ArmA 2 server at one point in its life, a little bit of server optimisation and a journey into the world of population control brought a final sense of calm to the release night, my first full round of PR:ArmA 2 came from the Alpha Networks server.

A rough start

Disorganisation and confusion, that’s what I thought, beginners wrangling with ArmA 2 and its large set of

controls and trying to figure out how the game of ArmA 2 plays and the best way to play it, some of the more experienced ArmA 2 players trying to work out how the logistic systems works and flying people into areas only hours of trawling around the map in Vanilla ArmA 2 can reveal. Not a whole lot of teamwork was happening if I’m honest, in fact the blue blobs running around on the map reminded me of a chicken pen I saw once, but then almost like a lightning bolt it seemed to snap, I turn around to see a Merlin dropping a Forward Outpost crate onto a streak of red smoke, I see a convoy coming down the main road, two Jackals with a Warrior in support and I see two squad leaders come together to plan their next move.

Project Reality gameplay had arrived, communication became the number one priority, reporting and eliminating enemy became a team wide task rather than a squad based adventure, logistics combined with men on the ground to keep the FO up and the ammo in full supply, air support was used to check compounds before friendlies advanced, squads worked together on an objective and took the joint spoils of endless satisfaction at a job well done. A group of complete strangers brought together in one place, thrown into a virtual world of whizzing bullets and critical decisions, all working as one, it’s a demonstration of community at its best, and on that night I saw for myself what is capable when you just give something a go, in this case, we got PR:ArmA 2

Pr:arma 2:

22nd of February 2009, the day I joined one of the most passionate gaming communities I have ever known. In this time I have seen the hype grow around each new release of PR, often to the point where people watch the forums all day just to get that new release the second it’s available. In those two and a half years the peak of passion, excitement and impatience came from a single news post, the one with the declaration that PR:ArmA 2 version 0.1 BETA was available to the public.

Official DEV support

The Project Reality team prove their collective skill with each release they crank out and PR:ArmA 2 is no different. The team have made a huge impact on the world of modding as well as the world of gaming in general, the scale of this impact can be seen in the resources they have been allowed to use for PR:ArmA 2. Bohemia Interactive, a well-established game developer, has allowed the team to take an expansion pack they usually charge £10 for, edit it to change some things to the way PR likes it and then distribute it, for no charge.

For a first release of a BETA version of a game PR:ArmA 2 is nothing short of brilliant, there are some gameplay issues, some things are bugged, and stuff needs tweaking to get the best from it but its playable, it has a group of dedicated players and it captures everything PR is about in one neat little package.

Once again redefined

The mod is a success, the PR vision has been brought to ArmA 2 in a big way, and it’s made it’s first baby footprint on a game with so much potential. Two ideals brought together to make one “pick up and play” game, a milsim game with an arcade edge. Disagree with that statement as you wish, PR may have a steep learning curve, one only made that much steeper by ArmA 2 and its many complexities, but despite its realistic direction anyone with patience and a passion for a good game can play it, it is by its own admission “Realistic Gaming Redefined” and it has once again redefined its self by growing, evolving and, if you like, diving in head first without a clue what might be below the water and coming to the surface screaming to the world that’s its fine, now come on in!

Picture by: r0DeX

Picture by: r0DeX

Picture by: r0DeX

Picture by: r0DeX

Write

r REALPLAYResident Reality Contact slave, will edit for cash.

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ADVERT!

Made

by:

Made

by: Wh33LMAn

Jack of all trades, master of none