Yeah. I play it. Right now, I'm away from my PC for another week.
To be honest, I spend more time scripting for it than actually playing it.
OFP:R has a bunch of impovements over the original, and part of that is in the online code. Nevertheless, it does have its issues. Part of this is the sheer scope of the thing. When you get an online engagement involving 100 human and AI infantry units, with artillery, armor and air support all blasting away, and you're using a standard MP structure (= not MMP), you will experience problems on a 56k connection.
And yeah, commanding AI tank units can be a bit of a pain in the ass. Come to think of it, the AI command system could be a helluva lot better if it followed some simple rules about military behavior.
The community has put out some pretty impressive mods and missions.
My favorites:
SEB Nam Pack 2. This includes the Ia Trang Valley "Island", complete sets of US, NVA and VC infantry units and weapons, and some helicopters (Various types of UH-1 slicks and gunships, cobra and chinook skins).
Oh yeah, and its bundled with our AP mines
soon, rumor has it, the "Nam Pack Air Module" will come out, featuring a bunch of fixed-wing aircraft, some new effects (we traded napalm for a M101), a few fixes on the island, and other goodies.
BAS Deltas/Rangers/Blackhawks/Chinooks/LittleBirds/SOAR pilots
(
http://www.ballistic-studios.com/)
Bas Tonal/Tango pack
Here you get a bunch of fancy SF gear (units and helos) and with Tonal/Tango, a huge island representing some dismal spot off of Rhodesia and a bunch of stuff to shoot at. Plus cool paint jobs on crappy russian-built equipment.
I'm also partial to my group, of course:
http://www.thechainofcommand.com/We do all kinds of goofy stuff. The "Big Project" is the "Command Engine". I try to keep myself distant from this thing, but effectively, it allows the player to command in theory up to a battalion (assuming your computeris fast enough to handle it, which it probably isn't). Think of an FPS version of Combat Mission (uhhh... without the CM squad AI and cool grognard realism stuff). The current project involves adapting this to dialogs and multiplayer.
My little project is Unified Artillery (UA). We hobbled together a bunch of hacks to bring pretty decent artillery into OFP. I'd rattle on, but I'll save that until later. The release has four units: a m252 81mm mortar, m101 105mm howitzer, m109 paladin (155mm), and the M270 MLRS. Other units can "plug in", so I'm now working with other addon groups to bring in stuff, such as a bunch of WW2 stuff, a soviet M46 122 mm howitzer, some swedish carrier that mounts the twin-120mm advanced mortar system (AMOS). The latter, incidentally can fire in MRIS (Multiple Round Simultaneous Impact), firing up to 14 rounds at different velocities and trajectories so they all arrive on target at the same time. It's pretty impressive to get a platoon of four of them on the task. You call fire; shortly thereafter they call "SHOT" on the radio, and you hear constant rumbling in the distance. Then there's a slight pause as they switch to lob the last ones at low angle, and then "ROUNDS COMPLETE" followed by the last few reports. Then there's this singular incoming sound of the doppler on nearly sixty shells at different trajectories and velocities. Then the target area erupts in flames. Okay, I like to watch stuff blow up.
There are other projects:
Combat Divers: a rebreather system.
Network Services: a lot of backroom stuff to add MP functionality for sophisticated mission applications.
As for sophisticated mission applications: now we're seeing all kinds of weird stuff in MP. In addition to co-op missions (which I prefer), and the usual "capture the flag" and other variations on that, there are several permutations of first-person RTS missions out there. And some just weird stuff. I've seen deathmatches involving tractors and hillbillies, and a whole slew of missions involving flesh-eating zombies.
Oh, and Estes-- download the 1.94 beta patch. It doesn't need the CD to run.
