America's Army: Special Forces (Overmatch)
Release Notes (Version 2.8.4)

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What's new
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New ES2 Training & Co-op missions
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ES2 MOUT McKenna (Training)

"Every Soldier a Sensor (ES2) is a potential information collector and an essential component to help reach situational
understanding. Every Soldier develops a special level of situational awareness simply due to exposure to events occurring
in their Area of Operations (AO) and has the opportunity to collect information by observation and interaction with the
environment and the population. The increased situational awareness that soldiers develop through personal contact and
observation is a critical element of the Brigade and Battalion's ability to more fully understand, react to, and control
the operational environment.

On today's battlefield, information dominance is crucial and the soldier is the Commander's most valuable weapon. By
diligently observing the environment the soldier will be able to identify and report objects, people and events which
contribute to Command's full understanding of the AO. Things worth reporting include objects which are dangerous or seem
out of place, people who are behaving in a suspicious manner, and things which are obviously related to enemy activity
(such as weapons, explosives and uniforms). As information is being reported by all soldiers, Command may then be able to
put together seemingly disparate information to attain a more complete view of the AO and will be better able to direct
soldiers in the field."

The McKenna MOUT site is the location where training in the concept of Every Soldier a Sensor will occur.
Players must use key clues to find an IED cache while engaging enemy targets in a timed environment. A Go or No-Go will
be given based on number of suspicious objects observed and reported, time of completion, and number of enemy targets engaged.
Successful completion of the ES2 training will allow players to accrue points for observing and reporting suspicious objects
within the ES2 Border Co-operative Multiplayer level. read more >>

ES2 Border (Multiplayer Co-Op)

"Intelligence has identified this small border village as a hotbed for hostile activity and the likely source of IEDs used
in recent attacks. The local population is a mix of insurgents, sympathizers and pro-democracy civilians. The sprawling
village borders a highway which will be used increasingly in the coming months for friendly troop and supply transport.
It is imperative that the insurgency here is addressed with as little negative impact as possible on civilian infrastructure
and that any IED related activity be eliminated."

This version of the Border level hosts a co-operative mission where a small village area with low hills is home to an armed
group of insurgents. Teams are encouraged while on patrol to be on the lookout for suspicious objects which may lead to clues
about current activity within the village. read more >>

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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® nForceTM 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 v2.8.1 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 v2.8.3.1 that have been fixed.
Bugs fixed related to new v2.8.4 features and certain security/exploit fixes have been removed from this list.

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Map Specific

- SF Floodgate: Fixed a bug that causes players to spawn in amidst the wrong team.
- SF Floodgate: Added several blocking volumes around AC units on upper level to keep players from accessing exploit
areas and to remove areas where player may become stuck.
- River Village: Fixed player blocking volumes so that players can no longer get on top of the AC units.

Miscellaneous

- Fixed a bug that prevents Weapon from coming back from the low ready position after sprinting
- Fixed a bug that showed incorrect Weapon FOV after weapon swap
- Fixed a bug that caused player to be unable to sprint after throwing a grenade while in scoped view.
- Fixed a bug that allowed a player to be able to select a grenade while firing
- Fixed a bug that causes an M4 with reflex sight to have a brief frame pop when player goes into zoom mode
- Fixed a bug that prevents M4 from coming back up after left-clicking while going up a ladder
- Fixed a bug that allowed players to jump higher than allowed aka 'superjump'
- Fixed a bug that was preventing a death message from being seen when killed by the Medevac Chopper's Rotor Blades
- Fixed Ingame Ban System

UI/HUD

- Fixed a bug that prevented carriable objectives from showing on the HUD when a weapon is shouldered.
- Fixed a bug that caused all text to disappear in dead chat after using Commo binds.
- Fixed an AA MBS filter bug causing bullets to not stick
- Fixed a bug showing incorrect points on player scoreboard on Forceclassed servers.
- Fixed a typo in forceclass disabled notification message. Also fixes demorectogglesound (and muzzle flash) so displayed
console message matches true state.
- Fixed a bug on AA MBS Filter for Minimum Honor that does not return desired result

Improvement

- AI improvements for hearing and improvements to network and CPU usage for non-relevant AI
- Improved distance calculations used in hearing to reduce # of calculations necessary.
- Disabled the delayed start on coop maps.
- Improvements to AI grenade throwing logic - much more accurate distance calculation, new logic that considers new
calculation when deciding to throw, reduced min distance to just outside of frag damage radius, and adjusted aiming
logic so AI should be better at grenades but still far from perfect (have /- 5m max distance for distances less than
max throw distance).
- Adjusted AI cover seeking logic to better handle selecting from multiple available cover locations