A few things about America’s Army:
It may (I am 90%, but not 100% sure of this) have been the first PC, online, FPS to feature ragdoll physics for dead players.
It employed a… rather baffling way of doing team conflicts:
You are always on Team America, and the opposing team is always Team Generic Terrorists. (With 80s/90s movie era costumes for the bad guys, dependent on map location)
What this results in is… you have your M4. You are shooting at bad guys with AK74su’s. But… from the opposing team’s POV, its the same.
So, if you kill someone… you can now pick up an AK74su. Even though from their POV they dropped an M4.
And so on, with rough equivalents as an SVD and an M110, an RPK and an M249.
These ‘picked up’ weapons would basically morph into having the ballistics of the Eastern Bloc weapon at the point they were picked up.
Very weird, I’ve never seen another game do that.
The game also had a good number of training courses, many of which were initially bugged as all hell.
I remember the SERE course failing me consistently, showing that I had been detected by guards who are apparently able to see through boulders or 30 feet of a hill (the camera would show you how you were spotted like a ‘deathcam’ and it was quite obvious it was often total bs).
Also, in certain training missions it was possible to shoot your instructor.
This would result in you being sent to the brig: Log in to your account, and for a week, all you get is a view from inside a prison cell, no game menus or options at all, rofl.
Oh, final thing: I am pretty sure this was the first online PC FPS that modelled that M203 projectiles must travel a certain distance before the explosive charge will detonate, so taking out someone with an M203 round to the face, non explosively, became a way to humiliate people, as you either had to be pretty skilled to do it , or your opponent had to have very poor situational awareness.
Also, in certain training missions it was possible to shoot your instructor.
This would result in you being sent to the brig: Log in to your account, and for a week, all you get is a view from inside a prison cell, no game menus or options at all, rofl.
Hilarious! I guess adding permadeath to the game would’nt’ve helped with the recruiting mission, but this feels like it’s in the same spirit.
The game had a whole system of ranks and qualifications based off actual Army ranks and skills.
You had to do pretty comprehensive medical training before you could be a field medic, you had to qualify as a marksman to be able to use a DMR, you had to pass the SERE school before I think night time missions and NVGs could be used, had to complete parachute training before levels you’d paradrop into, etc, and these would become available as you reached a certain number of kills or successful missions or what not.
Basically, it had a persistent progression system, and it was quite in depth…
… And if you did things like tons of team killing, or killing the instructor, not only would you end up in the brig… you’d have basically all of your progress reset.
Its about as close as you can get to permadeath in a round based, pvp shooter.
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RoE RoE RoE your boat, gently down the stream
How extensive was the medical training really?
I recall it being fully simulated. You had to walk into a class room and sit down and watch a like 45min (maybe? Idk this was over a decade ago) presentation on an overhead where an instructor went over a combat life saver course. You’d have a test to answer with multiple choice questions that you had to pass at the end lol
You are always on Team America, and the opposing team is always Team Generic Terrorists. (With 80s/90s movie era costumes for the bad guys, dependent on map location)
The enemy is dumb, they think we’re the enemy but they are the enemy!
Theres a metaphor there somewhere…
Oh, final thing: I am pretty sure this was the first online PC FPS that modelled that M203 projectiles must travel a certain distance before the explosive charge will detonate, so taking out someone with an M203 round to the face, non explosively, became a way to humiliate people, as you either had to be pretty skilled to do it , or your opponent had to have very poor situational awareness.
Oh wow, it is maybe a first. I remember doing that in Modern Warfare 2 quite a bit, but didn’t realize how much this game pre-dates it.
Another fun fact about the game is it has a surprisingly robust audio system built in. I had a clan member who could pinpoint exactly where an enemy was on certain maps (pipeline I think?) just by the sound their footsteps were making and the direction/proximity to his location.
Also, shout-out to all the boys out there that did the precision m203 artillery bombing on bridge! I remember getting good enough to hit each of the individual cover posts. I spent so much time playing this game.
Oh, final thing: I am pretty sure this was the first online PC FPS that modelled that M203 projectiles must travel a certain distance before the explosive charge will detonate
In SOI this was referred to as the fuck zone, because it was 14-34 meters (this is 15 years ago, memory’s hazy). Crude joke, but effective mnemonoic device. Was related to the number of rotations for the round.
In my civilian life, handled a case before the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals related to mortar rounds, and his contracted had been terminated because the paint thickness had an effect on the arming distance.
This would result in you being sent to the brig: Log in to your account, and for a week, all you get is a view from inside a prison cell, no game menus or options at all, rofl.
shooting at dead bodies also put you in jail but I think it was only for 15 or 30 minutes or something certainly not a full week
So, I worked on this. I built their in game support system (irc backed!), wrote a bunch of the web auth code, and accidentally once deleted the production user database from the secondary site (whew, disabled and re-replicated from primary).
It was a lot of fun and got me a trip to E3 back when it was the big thing.
It was an interesting concept because no matter what, you would play the american side and fight the terrorists. (you would look like a terrorist to the other team)
They parked a few vehicles outside the E3 convention center:
I recall they lowered guys out of a helicopter on ropes one year, too. It was hilarious to walk around the floor at E3 and see CoD or whatever guys in their fakey-looking booth bro costumes pass real army guys wearing real uniforms passing out enlistment info and ads for America’s Army. Why pay booth bros when you can just assign some soldiers you’re already paying?
Holy shit, I was there that year! I remember that!
Any idea what those pads they are parked on are made out of?
pad
(why does it look like carpeting?!)
Concrete is too hot in the sun, melts the tracks. Grass is too ticklish, the tanks get all giggly if left on it.
Carpet is a good middle ground.
I was thinking it looks like cork board
I just want to say, your work on that game absolutely would’ve contributed to making my high-school years better. Me and my social group played this game constantly, spent tons of hours playing SF Refinery 😂 From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much!!
It was a legitimately good completely free multiplayer FPS game. I was into it for a while ages ago, and it was quite fun.
I genuinely doubt it actually inspired a remotely meaningful number of people to actually join the army, though.
Probably the opposite. Who wants to do a job where you die the first hour on the job?
lol yeah the learning curve was pretty steep, because for a very long time there were no heal mechanics, so if someone winged you decently without outright killing you, you were gonna have serious trouble contributing to the round.
It was actually pretty good. I remember having to pass an ingame training course to use the medic class. I still vaguely remember how to apply a tourniquet lol
I still vaguely remember how to apply a tourniquet lol
Do blood sweep on individual. On the affect limb place tourniquet high and tight into the groin/armpit as possible. Velcro firmly. Twist stick until you think the stick will break (ignore screams of person you’re applying it to). Write the time on the tourniquet so the medics know what to do about it later.
I think when it first released in 2002 they would have taught two inches above the wound. High and tight for all purposes came later as the default trained procedure.
It’s slightly above the wound (2 inch) not highest up. Also never on a joint. One tourniquet might not stop the bleed, then you need to place another one higher than the previous one.
It’s slightly above the wound (2 inch) not highest up.
It used to be that… it was revised a few years later. The idea being that you don’t know if that limb has other trauma as well, internal bleeding and such… No point in only stopping the visible bleed if you missed another one that was higher on the limb. In combat, expending the energy to identify the little details isn’t worth it when the real answer is to get the person back to medics and you need to focus on your job of shooting the enemy.
Of course this all depends on how your unit is structured anyway. I got much different training in the pathfinder unit I was in, who are a forward unit that may not have ANY medical personnel available. Our unit had embedded medics who taught us what they specifically expect from us since we would have limited resources when air-dropped in… Much different SOP. But the above is what I remember the last basic tourniquet training to be.
The last 2 points seem to be extra important, especially ignoring the screams
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I remember from my own time in recruit training they taught us to kneel on the affected artery while we were applying the tourniquet
This was in the original training! A step in the original classes that kind of vanished in the later trainings (from my memory at least). I think most people missed the artery when they slammed their knees into people anyway. I dunno, I didn’t ask so I don’t recall why that step kind of vanished. Probably no longer trained because it got in the way of people getting it high enough as well. I bet it would still help if performed correctly though.
That was such a pain in the ass, 10mins in I finally think to myself “wait, this is supposed to be fun, why am I watching class in a game?” dropped the game and nvr came back
I also remember playing the ingame training but not the actual game. I don’t remember intentionally quitting like you did, but I don’t think I finished it either.
Yeah the game was shockingly good for what it was
It was extremely popular. I played it a lot. Many players were international because, you know, it was free.
It was great anti-miliarty propaganda. I mean I died several times per hour.
It was extremely popular.
It was free to play. But it didn’t hold a candle to Team Fortress, Call of Duty, or even Tribes in terms of overall player count. The project was eventually abandoned when Pentagon officials realized they could just send kick-backs to EA executives in order to inject their propaganda into a more popular franchise.
Now US Army and Navy sponsorship of tournaments is routine, streamers regularly get promoted based on their military affiliations, and native advertising has ramped up substantially.
But it didn’t hold a candle to Team Fortress, Call of Duty, or even Tribes in terms of overall player count.
In terms of player count, no. But mechanics and graphics? They were pretty freaking good.
Although one pretty ridiculous thing was that one would never play as “the enemy.” You’re always on the side of the US Army, obviously, and the enemies are vaguely mid-eastern people dressed very stereotypically, yelling. But if your friend was on that enemy team, they’d see themselves as a US soldier and you as a somewhat racist terrorist stereotype. And the guns work like that too; you start of with an M16 or whatever your role might be, but when the enemy kills you, they’ll pick up an AK with a drum magazine. Weirdly the guns had different mechanics, so which ones was the game using at what times?
Anyways, thought to mention. I played Tactical Ops mostly at that time (having had stopped CS when the annoying 1.6 steam update came), but with one friend we did AA. Always on American servers, playing with like 190 ping. (And yes, if it’s a steady ping, you can actually get used to it and hit things. Well even.)
I never played any of those because they’re not free
It was pretty easy to find lists of half-life CD keys to play team fortress and counter strike for free.
Quake world & the quake fortress addon were fun and predates any CD key system so they could be easily found for free too.
Tribes is my all-time favourite shooter. I esp loved Tribes 2… unpopular opinion maybe but wow was that an amazing game to me.
The gameplay balance was something else. Not quite as intricate as TF, but the intricate maps and exotic weapons made up for it.
One reason I fell in love with Halo so quickly was the way it derived a lot of its aesthetic from Tribes.
I played this at the same time I played Tribes (renegades always) and this game was a novelty, Tribes was the fun.
I saw a new Tribes is coming out/just came out, but I’m wayyyy too old to keep up now haha.
Ha, very much the same. The number of games I own is far greater than the number of games I’ve played. And like our universe, those two numbers will continue to grow apart in perpetuity.
I was one of those international players, it was pretty good and a nice change when you needed a break from Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, which was very popular around the same time.
I was one of those international players, it was pretty good and a nice change when you needed a break from Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, which was very popular around the same time.
Ahh shit I remember ET. That was my jam.
I recall playing the tutorial. Never went online. Dial up sucked. Interesting tidbit, if you shoot your drill instructor at the range you’re dropped into a prison cell at Fort Leavenworth. All you can do from that point is listen to somebody whistling and drag a tin cup across your cell bars.
Wait…can you quit to main menu?
No, no, they come to your home and take you to the prison. That’s not part of the game.
Ooooooh. Like the real game is escaping Guantanamo
Didn’t expect so much hate for this game… In terms of simulations, in 2002, the original game was light years ahead of its time. They did a lot of things right that it took the more popular mil sims years to get correct. I’d go as far as to argue it is one of the most realistic squad-based tactical shooters of all time.
It being that realistic made it a terrible choice for me.
So I did all of the medical training that had on there, which I did learn stuff from but also found out that I should never actually work in the medical field.
But because it didn’t easily identify friend from foe, I kept killing my own team. Not on purpose I was just really bad at identifying friend from foe and if I saw it moved I killed it.
Otherwise it was a solid game. All the issues I had with it were with me.
I’ll suggest that there hasn’t been anything like it. I’ve tried a couple that were supposed to be more realistic mil-sim and not just FPS run-‘n-gun, but they don’t hold a candle to AA.
Painfully realistic. To the point of not really being fun. Which I think was kind of the goal – they Army was trying to show the kiddies a little bit of what reality was like, while also trying to rope them in.
Closest comparison is probably ARMA 3, IMO
The special forces test was hard.
For the written test. there’s parts where you would be shown a helicopter for 100 milliseconds then have to remember the configuration, number of rotors, ordinance… Or you see a tank for a split second and have to correctly identify the barrel measurements and other little details.
The stealth mission was difficult too. I managed to be a medic and a ranger but not special forces.
The special forces test was nuts, was playing on a friend’s account at the time but it boiled down to just crawling through the lowest point along the entire path. Literally the entire mission you’re in a drainage or small creek just crawling and going stealth. I can’t remember if you eventually fight or do anything, I just remember the two hours of crawling on the ground to go undetected.
After I got the SF certification you could play this map called Hospital where you’re extracting a VIP while an insurgent team is trying to kill him. So much fucking fun. I loved this game. Yvan eht nioj
That’s when I stopped playing. I think I was an hour in before I got spotted and then wasn’t going to spend another 2 hours literally crawling.
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I remember playing this one too
I heard on a podcast a long time ago that the Army considered it one of their most successful recruiting tools. Not because it brought in more recruits, but because fewer recruits dropped out, apparently because playing the game led to fewer surprises after joining.
Til
There was a guy who saved someone in a car crash and he said he learned what to do medically in the moment from this game.
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Nawww it was way harder than that!! If you wanted to play as the medic class in a game online you had to do the offline training. The training made you sit through like a 45 minute long combat life saver class. No shit had to like walk into the classroom and sit near the projector and look down to answer questions lol
If you wanted to do the Special Forces maps (basically night mode maps) you had to pass this skull dragging class where you had to avoid being spotted and slowly move into an area. I remember trying for like 3 days just to pass that friggin class!
Had to take a class to drive the humvee, and use the jav. Probably more but it’s been a hot minute. I was amazed you had a button for the transfer case and one for your seatbelt. You could do 4lo and 4hi, wild.
Hold the ‘m’ button on his laptop?!?
This was legit very popular for a while. It was even common in e-sports.
Oh man, was it version 2.1 or 2.4 that was the best? I think it was the one where urban assault was released. So many hrs playing until 3.0. There was a test to be able to play medic in the game. It taught basic first aid.
I think this one is the one where a player used the first aid knowledge learnt in game to save someone’s life irl?
I remember a story making the rounds about that as well, waaay back.
Its not implausible. The medic training was pretty thorough compared basically any other video game ever, and if all you’re really trying to do is stop massive bloodloss ASAP, knowing how to dress a wound and apply a tourniquet absolutely can be the difference between dying before the ambulance arrives and not.
Wasn’t it a guy responding to a vehicle accident and he credited America’s Army for teaching him about triaging patients? I think it stuck in my mind for the egregious click-baity headline.
I played it for a while. It was ok for the time, when there weren’t many pseudorealistic tactical FPS games.
