America's Army: Special Forces (Overmatch) v2.8.5
Posted: 24 APR 2009 - by Phoenix
We are proud to present another America’s Army release. This release includes ES2 updates to four classic maps: SF Courtyard, SF Hospital, Urban Assault and Bridge Crossing. The maps have been updated with additional ES2 objects to discover and report. ES2 Bridge is an updated version of the popular Bridge Crossing map with new gameplay elements added such as ES2 objects with enhanced intelligence functionality. Players will be able to unlock access to a new path under the bridge and supply intelligence on enemy positions. We’ve also added improvements to the civilian AI within ES2 Border to have the AI react in a more realistic manner. Lock and load, it’s time to go to work!

America's Army: Special Forces (Overmatch)
Release Notes (Version 2.8.5)

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What's new
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This release includes ES2 updates to three maps, SF Courtyard, SF Hospital, Urban Assault. The maps have been updated with additional ES2 objects to discover and report. ES2 Bridge is a revised version of the classic Bridge Crossing map with new elements added such as ES2 objects with a new types of intelligence functionality. The new functionality includes unlocking access to a new path under the bridge, and supplying intelligence on enemy positions.

SF Courtyard
"Intelligence reports that an illegal arms dealer is planning to transfer stolen top secret material to an agent of a known terrorist organization. Location of sensitive material is only known to be located in vicinity C94M98A04. Reports confirm that there are willing informants who know the exact whereabouts of the sensitive material."

SF Hospital
"Following an ambush by enemy forces, a wounded Resistance leader escaped to a neutral hospital for treatment of his wounds. The leader is a critical member of the Resistance government within Unconventional Warfare Area of Operations (UWAO) JAZZ."

Urban Assault
"A coalition convoy was raided and the cargo was stolen. It has been confirmed that the insurgents and the cargo are based in a residential area of the city. Due to the dense urban nature of the area it will be necessary to do a house by house assault on foot."

ES2 Bridge
"Enemy forces masquerading as refugees have ambushed the US forces defending bridge at grid WS663429. Your force returning from patrol is now on the hostile side of bridge, and must link up with your company headquarters to pass along time-sensitive information."

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System Requirements (have not changed):
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The current Minimum System Requirements for AA:SF (Overmatch) are as follows:

- 3-D graphics card with 128 MB memory and support for hardware transformation and lighting
- 2.4 GHz processor or equivalent
- English version of Windows(r) 2000/XP Operating System with latest updates
- 512 MB RAM
- 3.5GB of uncompressed hard disk space for game files
- 4X DVD-ROM (not required for downloaded installations)
- Windows 2000/XP compatible system (including compatible 32-bit drivers for CD-ROM drive, video card, sound card,
mouse and keyboard)
- DirectX(r)9.0
- 100% Compatible DirectX 9.0 soundcard
- 56kbps Modem or other network connection
- *Nvidia® nForce™ or other motherboard/soundcards containing Dolby Digital® Content Encoder required for
Dolby Digital® audio.

The current Recommended System Requirements for AA:SF (Overmatch) are as follows:

- 3-D graphics card with 256 MB memory and support for hardware transformation and lighting
- 3.0 GHz processor or equivalent
- English version of Windows(r) 2000/XP Operating System with all updates
- 1 GB RAM
- 3.5GB of uncompressed hard disk space for game files
- 4X DVD-ROM (not required for downloaded installation)
- Windows 2000/XP compatible system (including compatible 32-bit drivers for CD-ROM drive, video card,
sound card, mouse and keyboard)
- DirectX(r) 9.0
- 100% Compatible DirectX 9.0 soundcard
- Broadband Network Connection
- NVIDIA(r) nForce(tm) or other motherboards/soundcards containing the Dolby(r) Digital Interactive
Content Encoder required for Dolby Digital audio

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Technical Notes
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** IMPORTANT NOTE FOR SERVER HOSTS/ADMINS **
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NOTE: The cooperative missions will take significantly more CPU resources to run during normal gameplay
due to the additional AI processing load (shared between the server & client). Server hosts planning to run
Co-Op servers should plan accordingly. In addition, players running a Co-Op server and client on the same
machine will experience heavy CPU demand.

It is recommended that server rotations switch only from Co-Op level to Co-Op level, or MP to MP level for
best performance.

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GAME PORTS:
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The internet ports currently required to be open for America's Army v2.8.5 are listed below:

UDP - 1716, 1717, 1718, 8777, 27900
TCP - 14200, 20025-45, 20046, 20047, 20048, 28910

UDP ports explained:
1716 for the Game,
1717 for the GameQuery,
1718 for the Master Server Query,
8777 for the Standard UT Query, and 27900 for GameSpy.

TCP ports explained:
28910 for GameSpy
20025-45 for MBS Game Server,
20046 for the Auth server,
20047 for MBS, 20048 for DCDS, and 14200 for LAN.

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What's Fixed
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NOTE: This list only includes bugs present in v2.8.4 that have been fixed.
Bugs fixed related to new v2.8.5 features and certain security/exploit fixes have been removed from this list.

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Map Specific
- ES2Border: Rebuilt map to re-add lighting to interiors.
- ES2Border: Adjusted Civilian AI logic to reduce the chances of civialians running into the line of fire
- ES2Border: ES2 Points are now more evenly awarded to the reporting player as well as live team members
- ES2Border: Scoring for ES2 objects has been re-evaluated and is now the same for all maps. Points are
now reflected by the value of the reported object
- ES2Border: Fixed terrain and player sticking issues
- ES2Border: Fixed various building anomolies
- ES2Border: Changed all Triggers and Objectives to be hidden while viewing in single player.
- ES2Border: Fixed issue with IED exploding even when not visible
- ES2Border: Fixed ES2 objects that did not spawn flags when reported
- ES2McKenna: Fixed AAR Instructor's face and hands

Miscellaneous
- Fixed issues with Friendlies showing up as Op-For when spectating in a co-op mission.
- Fixed a problem with ES2 objects not showing up after the game round is restarted.
- Fixed issue with the camera sinking through the ground while ragdolling in first-person. It was caused
by a counter not being incremented unless the ragdoll was being rendered. Bumped the eye position up a
few units when the player is dead just to ensure the camera doesn't even partially look through the ground.
- ES2: Added capability to damage ES2 objects. Added several damageable ES2 objects to the ES2 maps.
- ES2: Added objectives to the list of grenade damagable objects
- ES2: Tweaked spawning probabilities of certain ES2 objects

Improvements
- AI: ES2Border civilians should now take appropriate cover when approached by US Forces or fired upon. Civilian
will be capable of wandering, hiding/running from grenades, bullets and players.

Well that concludes this SITREP, folks. Grab the latest release of the America's Army game and join in the action! Also, be sure to stay tuned for the next release of America's Army: Special Forces coming soon...