ArmA2 is a simulation game for the PC. Very rare games are developed in this genre. It will be released for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It is developed by Bohemia Interactive Studio and will be published by 505 Games. It is the next game in the series of Operation Flashpoint following the ArmA: Armed Assault. Officially the game was announced on August 22, 2007 at Games Convention in Leipzig. Release of the game is expected to be in 2009.

ArmA 2 is set in the year 2009 in a fictional post soviet country known as Chenarus. Literally the name Chenarus means Black Russia, opposite to Belarus which means white Russia. The developers Bohemia revealed at E3 that the game will have a “roleplaying feel to it” with in-game events affecting your character as well as the entire campaign. An example is like terrorizing noncombatants and losing their trust. They thus give away valuable information to enemy forces. In a recent interview by BI representative stated that a map of 240 square kilometer area has been developed.

ArmA 2 will feature a fictional post soviet country called Chenarus. The country is in political unrest with a western backed democratic government trying to hold onto power from pro Communist forces. After many months of civil war the Communist forces failed to over throw the current government and set up the Social Republic of Chenarus. The remaining democratic forces ask west for help and the United States of America send the United States Marine Corps and a carrier force to anchor off the Chenarus coast. The game starts when US Special forces team “Razor” lands in Chenarus to try and quell the civil war.

There are lots of new features included in the games. Many of them are announced by the developers are:

• The editor will have a 3D mode
• There will be a ‘micro’ AI which will be able to move more precisely through the environment.
• Over 50 weapon types.
• A New view called High Level command will allow the player to command his troops in an RTS style.
• There will be 50 vehicles, but different vehicle types (Humvee, Humvee M2, Humvee TOW, etc) In total there are 120 different types of vehicles.
• Six different factions.
• Every building will be destroyable in some way.
• Civilian units.
• The ability to interact with civilians and other units around you.
• Dual core optimised
• Ability to drag and carry wounded men
• The Chernarus landscape is based heavily on the Czech Republic, the home country of developer – Bohemia Interactive Studio

ArmA 2 will make use of many high standard technology. The game engine is also much powered then the previous game ArmA. Many new features of the game are Multicore support, Parallax occlusion mapping, Micro AI, Dynamic shadows. ArmA 2 uses a game engine that have been under development for nearly 10 years and used by many armies round the globe. ArmA 2 will support both DirectX9 and DirectX10 graphics cards. The Xbox 360 version may be release around 30^th June 2009.

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Any one all over the earth ever played any game on P.C or on gaming console like Xbox or ever got into any kind of media file on a Microsoft platform is surely aware of DirectX.Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interface (APIs) for handling tasks related multimedia. This includes mainly game programming and video on Microsoft platforms. Microsoft start naming its APIs all starting with Direct, for example-Direct3D, DirectDRaw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so on. Direct X then was the generic term for all of the Microsoft APIs and became the name of the collection. Microsoft also released a multiplatform game development APIs such as Xinput, which are designed to supplement or replace individual DirectX components, after the release of Xbox. The DirectX software development kit or SDK consist of runtime libraries in redistributable binary form, along with accompanying documentation and headers for use in coding. But in the start runtimes were only installed by games or explicitly by the user. Windows 95 was originally not launched with DirectX, but it was included with Windows 95 OEM service release 2. Windows 98 and NT 4.0 both was launched DirectX, and after that DirectX was part of every Window release after that. The SDK available as a free download. While the runtime are proprietary, closed source software.

Success of Microsoft in software is very much dedicated to DOS. DOS allowed direct access video cards and mouse, sound devices, and all other parts of the system.

Microsoft needed a way that could let programmers what they wanted, and they wanted it quickly; the operating system was only month away from being launched. Eiser, St John, and Engstorm worked together to fix this problem, with a solution that they eventually named DirectX. The first version of DirectX was released in September 1995 as the Windows Games SDK. It was Win32 replacement for the DCI and WinG APIs for Windows 3.1.

DirectX allows all versions of Microsoft Windows to incorporate high quality multimedia.

In console specific version, DirectX was used as a basic for Microsoft Xbox and Xbox 360 console API was developed jointly between Microsoft and Nvidia, who developed the custom hardware used in the original Xbox. The Xbox was code named DirectXbox, but this was shortened for it’s commercial name. In 2002 Microsoft released DirectX 9 with support for the use of much longer shader programs than before with pixel and vertex shader version 2.0. Since then Microsoft is updating DirectX suite. Although there are alternatives of the DirectX family of APIs, but with a combination of libraries –SDL, Allergo, OpenMAX, OpenML, FMOD, etc.—its hard to catch DirectX.

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