AVA - Alliance of Valiant Arms - Part 3

Now that you've familiarized yourself with the menu system, let's actually dive into a game. The game type I usually play is escort. Escort takes place on one of two maps. The first map is built around a gas station type area, the second one is built in a general rubble area sans gas station. They're fairly similar. Gameplay revolves around escorting a tank through 3 check points before time is up. Each team takes a turn. The first team sets the benchmark. Do it before time is up and the other team will only have that much time to win. Fail and the second team only has to beat your progress to win. In the left-hand image you can see the unique weapon for this map. It is the rocket launcher. Rocket launchers are available in several positions around each map. A player can run up to the case, press "E" and after a short time the case will open and you can take a rocket launcher. They come with 3 rockets. 2 rockets are enough to stop a tank. If a tank becomes stopped you can run up to it and hold "E" again to try and repair it. 2 people can repair it at once speeding up the repair time. Usually your enemies will be filling you full of holes while you do this. It can be really easy for a team to get bogged down if a tank gets jammed up in an area that makes it hard to get a safe position to try and repair the tank in. Other things to note in the screenshot are the position of the tank on the map, the progress bar (exclamation points are checkpoints) and the time remaining on the bottom. Checkpoints are also spawn points. As the offensive team passes a checkpoint the defensive team's spawn is pushed back one and the offensive team's spawn is moved up.Hiding behind the tank might seem like an ideal spot to be, but the rockets provide explosive damage and usually the opposing team will be shooting the ground beside the tank. Someone needs to be near the tank to cause it to move, but once you've repaired it, its a good idea to get out of there. Life expectancy of someone near a tank is around 4.2 seconds. I've included some footage I shot during a team deathmatch map. I was going to shoot escort footage, but had a sound screw up with fraps so I had to reshoot it. This type of map is two teams on a small map with a tight engagement zone. Its usually about 5 seconds or less before you engage an enemy, so you have to be fast. If you can get more than 2 or 3 kills before you go down, good on you. Anyway you can watch me take a couple down and get taken out a couple times myself. I noticed today that when I leveled up I got money. I think this is the only time you get money. So if you want to buy more weapons and armor play a lot to increase your experience so you can get more money.

AVA - Alliance of Valiant Arms - Part 2

Now that you have the game up and running let's have a deeper look at the menu system and where each option can take you. On the left you'll find a fully annotated image of the main menu. A couple of important things here. First the general channel is where you will play your games. It is selected by default. The ranked channel is usually almost empty, and I don't have any info on clans. I've never played an event. The help is completely in Korean so not much help to us. The money in this case refers to in game money. Earning it seems to be completely random. I have no idea how exactly it works. Just after some games I'm given some money. It has occurred on all maps at one point or another. The orange bars illustrate how full a particular channel is. Each channel can handle around 2000 people. At the time this screenshot was taken (10 am on a weekday morning) there were around 2700 people in game. You will pretty much always be able to find people to have a game with. I am told "보급" means supply, but I have no idea what that statistic's relation to the game is. Let's select the beginner channel and move to the next menu area.

This is where you'll spend most of your time looking for a game. First thing you'll want to do is choose a class on the left. You can pick between Scout, Rifleman and Sniper. The Scout can later buy the P90. This gun is basically easy mode. The inventory screen will allow you to manage your inventory and the store screen will allow you to spend the in-game cash you earn. Buying armor, weapons, etc. On the right you'll see a variety of rooms, maps, game types and with various levels of players. The escort missions usually involve escorting a tank through 3 check points. The demolition maps involve placing a bomb at a certain point in the map and the deathmatch maps are fairly standard. The demolition maps have the distinction of only allowing 1 death. While the rest allow multiple deaths. The training map is 4 players against a wave of bots. You can practice your tactics. There are two play types which don't seem that popular and didn't make it on my screen shot. The first is 수송. The word means convey or transportation. The game appears to be a map designed in such a way that one team is attempting to reach an extraction point. The other team is tasked with stopping them from reaching the goal. The second is 점령. I couldn't get access to a game of this type. The word means "occupation" and it may be a game type revolving around capturing an area and holding it. If I can find a game running of it, I'll post on it. For now let's move to the store screen and have a look at what our options are here.

Once you get some money from playing a few rounds you'll be able to get better guns and armor. The repair all button will generate a pop-up that will indicate an amount of money used to repair your equipment. Not all of it can be repaired and you should check on your armor and what not from time to time. You can select the three classes and out fit them entirely differently in terms of weapons. Outfits and backpack items are shared between the classes. The outfits allow you to pick helmets, body armor and other clothing items. The backpack item lets you choose some things like the ability to carry more grenades or extend your radar ability slightly. Switching to the inventory screen will allow you to select your load-out from what you've purchased. Cash items are for those who want to pay real money to get some bonuses. These are usually in the form of experience point bonuses, aesthetic helmets, extra clips, etc. These rarely impact the actual gameplay. Most times you're going to be dead long before you run out of bullets or grenades.

On the right you'll see a sample inventory screen with a couple labeled items. You can add magazines to both weapon types, extra grenade slots, choose weapons and improve the quality of your armor and radar. Just double click what you want to switch in and out.

As for the game launch screen, it is fairly simple. If it is a team match there is a button to switch teams, otherwise hit the start button to indicate you're ready and after everyone is ready you'll hear a countdown. If you need to, you can make a last minute change at the store or inventory screen. This should give you all the information you need to get started playing. Up next, in-game screens and gameplay.

AVA - Alliance of Valiant Arms - Part 1

Now that you've gotten yourself signed up for a game portal its time to start actually playing a game. I'm going to make this multi-part. The part is going to deal with installing the game. One of the benefits of the Korean PC game business model is the website integration. They want to encourage people to go to the website to see specials, buy things for the game, get information upcoming events, and other advertising.

For foreigners we're really only concerned with one thing. The big giant start button. In this case its a big giant read button labeled "게임시작" This is a mix of Konglish and actual Korean which means "Game start". If you have the game installed it will launch the splash screen and the game will start. No fuss no muss. I'm going to assume you're logged in at this point, if not, make sure to find the login box and type in your credentials. Now as soon as you're reading push the button. If you don't have the game its going to launch a couple things to download the game. To get the screenshots and refresh the procedure I uninstalled the game. Apologies to anyone who gets lost if there is a step I may have done 14 months ago that was part of the site setup and not the game setup that shows up for you at any point during this. Possibily in the form of an activeX control that might be the download manager. If so, you know the words for confirm, and how to install an activeX control so let it do its thing.

The first thing I saw was the AVA downloader window. Important things to note here: You can change the download location of the main file, click the black box with the folder picture. Then press 시작. A new word to write down here is "닫기" this seems to be an all purpose window that means cancel or close. You will often see this word on the bottom of pop-ups on websites and other places. The Korean internet being what it is, you should have this downloaded pretty quick. When the download finishes the 시작 button will have changed to 실행. This means execute or install. Pushing it moves us forward.

On this screen you'll notice it gets a little easier. They're nice enough to label the next button with an N. "다음" means next. The next window will be standard TOS stuff. Choose the top radio button and press "다음" again. It is going to ask you where you want to install. It will create a top level directory for all games from the site. The parent company of Pmang is Neowiz. You can let it do the default and keep all pmang games in one directory or move it wherever you want. I always take the default. No sense in tempting fate. Now you will find yourself on the final screen with a prompt (I) and the word "설치". I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out the meaning of this word. Press it and wait several minutes. It will conclude with a couple check boxes asking if you want to create desktop icons. Leave them checked and you can decide what to do with them later. You will notice there has been no program group entry installed in your windows menu for this game. You can use either the desktop icon that was created or go to the website and press "게임시작" again to start the game.

At this point you will be treated with standard game intro screens, movies, etc and then find yourself at the lovely main menu. Important things to do first. Your resolution is probably messed up. Look for "환경설정" this is the settings menu. The first screen that comes up will allow you to pick your aspect ratio and resolution (conveniently in english). The rest of the settings are in Korean and I haven't messed with them too much. Eventually I'll post a translation. Back out of that and have a look around. Some of the items you'll be able to figure out what they are, but for now the other important word to note is the upper right hand corner. "게임종료" means "end game" or "quit". If you get lost in some menus, keep pressing escape to get yourself back to the beginning. In part 2 I will cover how to join a game, important words, play modes, how to buy weapons, and other necessary things.