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  SITREP #00185 Official    

On January 24, 2017, Vojtěch Kovařič has reported a SITREP #00185 on the official Arma3 site.

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Armachinima Awards, Sensor Improvements, SECREPs
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION


The development team is now experiencing the freezing beauty of European winter. All the more reason for us to run away to the warmer regions of Altis and Tanoa! Over the past two weeks, we've introduced several platform improvements, released three security updates, and announced a new contest for our creative community. In parallel, our teams in various physical locations are also hard at work on the various deliverables of the 2017 roadmap. Let's take a look!

INTELLIGENCE


We've always enjoyed watching the splendid Arma 3 video content from our community, and thus we're very proud to announce the #Armachinima Awards contest. In cooperation with NVIDIA, we decided to start a competition to pick the ultimate machinima among Arma 3 content creators. The submission deadline is February 13th. Members of the community will be able to vote and select ten finalists. After that, the Arma 3 development team will choose the winners of several top-tier graphics cards provided by NVIDIA. With already more than 35 entries, there's already plenty to watch for everybody! If you're planning to submit a video, keep in mind that your entry should not include copyrighted music or (addon) content. Plus, make sure that Monetization on your YouTube video is disabled. Of course you're welcome to use music from the official Arma soundtracks. Click here for more information about the contest rules. Good luck to everyone!




The recent Dev Photo exposes our colleagues to Czech winter. With recent temperatures falling deep below 0° Celsius, even a lunchtime walk sends chills to the bones. Luckily, our Mike office is well-equipped with all necessary supplies and heating, and with the property guarded by our own Main Battle Tank, nothing stands in the way of delivering more improvements to the Arma 3 platform.








Project Argo's Creative Director Ivan Buchta and Art Director Petr Motejzík have selected the winners in the Create-Your-Own Billboard contest. Bringing an original vibe to the re-imagination of the first Arma title's terrain, the jury announced the best out of dozens of submissions. Ivan expands on the variety of entries: "There were many great ideas among the entries, often borrowing from the existing brands of Armaverse or promoting Tanoa (awesome to see how popular this terrain is!). We were particularly pleased by the advertisements promoting the local products." How is that relevant to Arma 3? The winning billboards will also be featured on the Malden terrain that will be released as a free Arma 3 DLC later this year.




Taunus, a new terrain made by the X-Cam team, has landed on the Armaholic website! Using the X-Cam tool, terrain creators were able to fill more than 400 square kilometers of land with highly detailed compositions, forests, towns and landmarks. Excellent work!



The Arma community demonstrates its creativity yet again in an unusual thread on the /r/Arma subreddit. Using in-game screenshots, players attempted to re-create real-life photos and other iconic imagery. Some of the results are really impressive. Be sure to check the gallery.

OPERATIONS


The last two weeks brought several improvements to Dev-Branch. Perhaps the most significant change is that there will only be a 64-bit version of the Diagnostics Executable going forward. Used mainly by community creators, we'd like to offer better stability and resource usage for this highly specialized tool and decided to abandon the obsolete 32-bit configuration. Scenario makers will surely welcome the changes to the Killed, MPKilled and EntityKilled Event Handlers. These were extended with a damage effect value, you can find the documentation on the Community Wiki.

A new mapOrientation parameter allows setting the rotation of the GPS screen either with player's direction, or with player weapon's direction. Again, this improvement is already documented on the Community Wiki and we believe it will bring improvements to the Arma 3 sandbox and scenarios.

The last honorable mention is part of the new platform features associated with the upcoming Jets DLC. Designer Ondřej Kužel explains the changes: "All vanilla tanks, anti-air platforms, helicopters and jets have been updated to the improved Sensor technology. We've added different IR and Radar signatures to individual vehicles. This makes the Blackfish VTOL appear on the Radars more than 2.5x further away than a Hummingbird for example."




LOGISTICS


In cooperation with BattlEye, we have updated the game with enhanced anti-cheat protection three times during the last two weeks. Feel free to inspect the reports (#00012, #00013, #00014), read BattlEye's FAQ and contact their support in case of any questions.





  January 25th, 2017 - 17:18 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

  SITREP #00184 Official    

On January 10, 2017, Vojtěch Kovařič has reported a SITREP #00184 on the official Arma3 site.

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Jets Platform Improvements, Dev-Branch Activity
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION


The development team is back from their winter holidays and is fully operational. The production of 2017's deliverables is in full swing and we're set for another year of support and another year of Arma 3.

INTELLIGENCE


The community redditors might have seen quite an original request on the Arma subreddit. DaCrazyJamez was looking for somebody to bring the face of his father to Arma 3 as a Christmas present. To the surprise of many, our Junior Artist Stefan Verbeek from Bohemia's Amsterdam office responded and offered his help. After receiving all needed reference files, he created and delivered the textures in his free time and even provided a simple tutorial for those who would like to bring their own custom faces to Arma 3. To match the Christmas spirit, DaCrazyJamez promised to donate to charity for Stan's work (who worked free of charge). Great gesture!



We're happy to see that the continuous updates for Arma 3 and its bustling community is paying off, with Arma 3 making it into the Steam Top Sellers of 2016. Also, the number of concurrent players climbed almost to its all time record in the past few weeks. We're very grateful for the enduring support even three years after the release. To all the new recruits who have joined the community: welcome!



The Arma Finland community group released a beautiful 'Year in Review' video on YouTube. Looking back at 2016, we're treated with some spectacular footage of their operations, various community terrains, Finnish comms (which we don't really understand), along with some extraordinary moments. As we all really enjoy such montages and machinimas, there will be an announcement connected to this kind of video content very soon™. Thanks to Arma Finland for the entertainment!



Red Hammer Studios, community modders and Make Arma Not War winners, have shared an interesting insight into the creation of a vehicle for their already extensive library. From a low-poly model to a highly detailed asset, viewers are taken through the development process of the RG33L 6X6 MRAP. RHS member Richards describes the struggles met along the way and shares interesting bits of this 6-month long journey. We'd also like to congratulate RHS on being in the top 10 best mods of 2016 according to the voters at ModDB. Splendid work!



Then to share something completely different with you. This morning, we received the sad news that Paul "Bushlurker" Pelosi has passed away after a battle with cancer. Paul has been a long-time custom Arma terrain maker, and we consider this a great loss for our community - but most importantly, we wish his family, friends, and everyone close to him a lot of strength in this difficult time!



OPERATIONS


In the last week of Dev-Branch updates before our holiday break, our Dev-Branch players were given some goodies to play with. The first part of the features connected to Arma 3's upcoming Jets DLC aims to add more depth to vehicle vs vehicle warfare. Let's take a look at these additions and what they bring to our players.

Sensor Overhaul is a series of improvements to the ways vehicles are detecting other assets operating in their radar reach. Introducing a new symbology, rules for specific vehicle types, and overhauling target detection in general, both vanilla and modded vehicles can benefit from the countless gameplay possibilities waiting to be discovered.



Extended Hitpoints for airplanes aim to bring the damage model of air assets on par with other vehicles. As a result, players have more possibilities to escape even with a severely damaged airplane while fighting some previously unseen difficulties, such as fuel leaks or a malfunctioning HUD. As with the previous feature, please share your feedback on the respective forums thread. It's much appreciated



Not all recent Dev-Branch additions are connected to the upcoming Jets DLC. We're constantly working on Arma 3 platform improvements in all possible areas. New Event Handlers (Deleted, Dragged3DEN) should ease the job of modders, the '-hugePages' startup parameter enables better memory handling for the default memory allocator, and the Vehicle in Vehicle Transport feature was extended to also work with certain non-vehicle objects. To follow Dev-Branchh changes on a daily basis, feel free to follow the Dev-Branch Changelog thread and provide your immediate feedback to the Dev-Branch Discussion thread.



LOGISTICS


Bohemia Interactive is looking for new colleagues to join its ranks. Be sure to visit the Careers page. There might be a position just for you. Some of those are directly connected to Arma 3's development (e.g. Gameplay Programmer or QA Assistant). Please do not hesitate to contact us for more details on the advertised positions via the forms on the page.


  January 21st, 2017 - 19:12 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

  CUPdate v1.8.1 is released! Addon release    

The Community Upgrade Project - CUP has announced CUP Units Pack 1.8.1, CUP Weapons Pack 1.8.1 and CUP Vehicles Pack 1.8.1 release on the BI Forums.

DOWNLOAD from updated CUP Website


  January 4th, 2017 - 23:25 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

  SITREP #00183 Official    

On December 21, 2016, Vojtěch Kovařič has reported a SITREP #00183 on the official Arma3 site.

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: 64-bit Executables, Combat Patrol, Ports Update 1.64, 2016 Recap
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

This year's last SITREP brings an overview of the latest changes both to the Main Branch and Dev-Branch, as well as a look back at the whole year. As the development team prepares for a brief winter break, let's conclude what was, in our view, an epic 2016!

INTELLIGENCE

As tradition would have it, ShackTac leader Dslyecxi treats us to a beautifully edited video of his community group's operations in 2016. It serves as a wonderful showcase of how playing as part of a Unit can truly unlock the potential of the Arma 3 platform. We love seeing all those intense, surprising, and sometimes hilarious gameplay moments. Here's to ShackTac, and to the many other great community units like it.



Over the past few years, we've been working together with Dslyecxi to produce the official Arma 3 Community Guide Series. We're happy to announce that these videos are now also available as Streaming Videos on Steam. Complementing the existing YouTube Playlist, we hope this will help improve the discoverability of these handy tutorial videos. Watch to learn more about the basics of Arma 3's military gameplay, such as how to work together as a team, conduct reconnaissance, set up a good defense, plan an air assault, and much much more.

The lush greens of the Tanoan jungle, the yellow flats of Altis, and the industrial grays of VR world; Arma 3 can be beautiful in a lot of ways. Winter is here for many communities and user Hololand decided to show the spectacle of snow in one of his "Beauty of Arma" videos. While snow doesn't exist on any of the vanilla terrains, a community winter version of Chernarus is a great stage for a heroic attack by remnants of NATO forces on a CSAT base.



OPERATIONS

We've unleashed several new additions and improvements straight to Dev-Branch as a Xmas present for you. To explain them fully, our developers took the time to write some rather splendid OPREPs. Let's take a look at the additions one by one.

Converting Arma 3's technology to a 64-bit architecture is certainly a big task. We're proud to have released the 64-bit client executables to Dev-Branch last week. To explain some of the difficulties and obstacles along the way, Programmer Richard Biely expands on the process and results in his OPREP. While there still are some limitations we're trying to solve (e.g. TrackIR still needs more time before we can enable it even for this version of the game), we're generally very happy with the results so far and the first reactions from the community.

To support this release, Senior Programmer Jiří Polášek adjusted both Publisher and Launcher. The former helps community modders, along with other improvements, to mark their mods with platform-specific tags. The latter enables players to select the game architecture and decides what extensions to use along with their mods. Jiří has also shared some important information for modders who don't use C++ for their extensions.

We've touched this next topic in the previous SITREP: Arma 3's development team switched their focus from creating new content and features for several weeks and invested their time solely into fixing bugs and improving the game. Project Lead Petr Kolář took the opportunity to explain the process in detail with his OPREP. The Clean Sweep was successful; hundreds of issues were crushed by the fix hammer. As a result Arma 3 is yet more stable and serving as the solid platform you all deserve.

Finally, as a side activity while creating Project Argo, playable content Senior Designer Josef Zemánek and Creative Mastermind Ivan Buchta prepared a simple yet effective multiplayer game mode focused on team cooperation: Combat Patrol. As there won't be any update to Dev-Branch during the holiday period, now is the best time to give it a go on some of the available servers. Enjoy this first slice of the mode's functionality. We cannot guarantee you anything yet, as the mode is just at the start of its development, but we would like to get your feedback (e.g. in the dedicated forums thread), so we may decide if we should continue down this road or choose a different path. To read about Combat Patrol in more detail, check out the OPREP written by Ivan. Have fun!

LOGISTICS

Arma 3 received a hotfix for Update 1.66 last week. Addressing some low-level engine issues causing struggles for large community groups and followed up by two consecutive BattlEye security updates, the Main Branch is now also prepared for our team's winter hibernation. Feel free to read through the detailed changes (SPOTREP #00063, SECREP #00010, SECREP #00011) and provide your feedback to the Feedback Tracker please.

Tools Commissar Julien Vida has been busy preparing updates for the Tools packages. While Binarize on the Main Branch can now be prevented from creating any logs, the Dev-Branch of the Samples now finally contains the first Apex vehicle livery templates for the community's talented reskin artist. This process is taking longer than we'd hoped, but we look forward to your creations now that the templates are becoming available!

The Bohemia Interactive Forums went offline for a couple of days to get fitted with a shiny new outfit. Along with a back-end update, the site should now be faster and safer to use. Due to the (automated) conversion and update processes, there might still be some issues present (e.g. post formatting). Please feel free to report those and your further notes to the dedicated forums thread.

Last but not least, the experimental client ports for Linux and Mac have been updated to version 1.64. This means they should be compatible with the current legacy branch of the primary Windows version of Arma 3. Enjoy the game, including for the first time the Apex expansion, on even more platforms! Just beware that Tanoa is even more demanding in these ports; make sure you have the right hardware to enjoy the green hell. We'd also like to draw your attention to the F.A.Q., where we've added an explanation of why the ports' VRAM is limited.

NARRATIVE

As we're slowly closing in to the end of the last SITREP of 2016, let's take a look at what this year meant for Arma 3. Our primary target was a release of the Apex expansion (#RoadToApex), and we decided to separate the platform improvements into several smaller chunks, which were easier to test and gave us a solid foundation for the release itself:

  • The first update of 2016 was 1.56, which brought the Eden Editor. Building scenarios in a native 3D in-game tool was one of the most requested features on the Feedback Tracker. We were happy to see all the highly detailed compositions appearing on Steam Workshop just days after Eden Editor hit the Dev-Branch. An Audio Engine Overhaul brought significant improvements to audio simulation; something even our future games will benefit from.
  • Update 1.58 introduced the Tasks Overhaul as its main feature. Visualization of the in-game tasks brought several benefits and certainly helped to improve even our existing content, not to mention content made by the community. Weapon switching on the move also came alive with this update, making movement across the battlefield and in stressful situations more fluid and intuitive.
  • Update 1.60 delivered the Visual Upgrade: significant visual improvements to all Arma 3 terrains. Aside from that, several important gameplay mechanics were introduced: Quick Play, Line Drawing, and Limping.
  • The Apex expansion came with a great amount of new assets, units, scenarios and vehicles. With its crown jewel Tanoa shining brightly, it soon became one of the top-rated expansions in the PC gaming industry. And again there were platform improvements for everybody in the associated Update 1.62: the Main Menu and the Revive feature were completely overhauled, we introduced some key game mechanics (e.g. Vehicle in Vehicle Transport), and iterated in many more areas.
  • With Update 1.64, we turned our attention to addressing some low-level issues and aimed to improve the performance of objects and behavior of the AI. Simple Objects integration helped with reducing the performance demands. As a result, bigger and more complex compositions now require less computing power and make the game run faster. AI drivers of wheeled vehicles should also behave much more reliably due to the changes to their path-following.
  • The latest addition, Update 1.66, was a result of long period of bug fixing. While there still are remaining issues, the development team managed to address a large number of long-standing issues and made the platform more solid for what's to come in the future.

And what does the future bring us all? We're not keeping it a secret, the plans for 2017 have been public for some time now. Those who have been with us for a while might already know that they can expect some little surprises here and there, but we will always aim to keep Arma 3 in its true vision. We are of course very grateful for all the support you've given us and we can't wait to start 2017 with the work on some new splendid additions to the already rich Arma 3 sandbox.

On behalf of the Arma 3 development team, we would like to wish you a splendid winter break. See you in 2017!



  January 2nd, 2017 - 18:45 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  



 
 
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