of course, the respons is, why should modders do it then put up with all the hassel that comes along with it, when game developers can do it??

akdavis is right, in that this did start out as a mod. Some of us will remember the same team's excellent OFP release some years back, and the considerable improvements that they introduced. That they are releasing a full, professional product is no real problem; in return for our money, we have a right to expect a complete, uniformly high quality game about an interesting subject for which there are no mods, free or not, being produced. I cannot really see a down side.

Hmmm... If this was a BIS product I would buy it day one.

Not being a BIS product... What is to stop ACE from getting a license and becoming DLC? Or I44? or PR. How far outside the abilities of modding do you have to be to warrant license? I mean counterstrike was purchased from modders...

Here's where it would be win. If they have generic maps that they call "Kursk", well that wouldn't be worth it. But if they painstainkenly recreated Europe/Road to Moscow... well, that might be worth some bucks.

If those painstakenly made Europe/Asia maps worked with Arma 2...

Well.. now. No more "Takistan" or "Chenrussia" so as "not to offend", but real places? Interesting.

More shots:

http://arma.at.ua/SMERSH/News/01/Iron_Front_3.jpg
http://arma.at.ua/SMERSH/News/01/Iron_Front_2.jpg
http://arma.at.ua/SMERSH/News/01/Iron_Front_1.jpg

To be honest, I would pay for mods which are made in such a professional manner as ACE for example.

Jens

Honestly, if mods wanna go pro, I'd absolutely encourage them. I think in the long run it helps more 'serious' combat gaming.

I think the biggest reason you haven't seen BIS license their engine for another commercial game so far is because they tend to hire anyone who could work on it. The vast - vast - majority of modders I know/knew ended up working for BIS, usually on VBS.

the character models resemble the ones from ro2. which is it say they are really great.

The real question is how far beyond the point where they should warrant licence have mods evolved without becoming payware ? Some of the modders produce professional quality addons that take a lot of time and effort to produce and that would deserve to be released as payware. As games evolve, modding becomes a lot more complex and time consuming task and require ever more advanced skills. At some point people won't be able to do it for free anymore.

IIRC BIS gives free licence to modders to develop any non-commercial mod they want regarding any aspect of the games, and provide the required tools, but in return, anything produced by the mods is owned by BIS, which means if a modding team wanted to sell their work, they'd have to purchase a licence from BIS to do so. When you're shooting at such a complete conversion, you might as well buy a licence to use the engine, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case with this new game.

Cheers

Nico

This looks cool,i hope CTI is avalible in this addon

For me this is great news! I would prefer much more that this game would be based in the Western Front instead of the Eastern one but that's also fine.
Like I said this is great news for me since finally we have a modern realistic WWII FPS/Tactical game (the only realistic WWII FPS/Tactical games ever made until today was Hidden and Dangerous and Hidden and Dangerous 2)!

And for the ones that say this is "based in an old engine" I have the following questions:
- Which engine allows you to model realistically infantry, control various types of vehicles such as tanks, aircraft, boats, etc... will all their crew positions? What engine allows you to model all of this in maps as big as 200 or 400 square kilometers with complete degree of freedom of movements even in multiplayer enviourment and of course allows you to have the same level of experience either in single player or in multiplayer? And this of course playable with current mid-level PCs!
Before someone calls this engine (ArmA2/OA) OLD, I would like that these same people have a thought about what I posted above...