FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Alpha anniversary, Zeus intel
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Tomorrow will have been a year since the release of the Arma 3 Alpha. Thanks to your enduring support and the hard work of the development team, Arma 3 has evolved into a cool military package. And it continues to grow and mature. As a small bonus for this mini-anniversary, we're including a new variant of the Slammer MBT in tomorrow's update. The Urban Purpose variant features a commander machine gun turret, a smaller caliber cannon, shorter barrel, and enhanced armor.

The update will also sport improved optics for armored vehicles - giving them more unique and authentic styles. Alongside the game update, we'll of course be bringing the Server packages to the same version. The Arma 3 Tools suite is to receive more samples for various vehicle types, as well as a tool to extract PBO data.

INTELLIGENCE

Petr Kolár reports: you may have already noticed that new holders for various objects appeared in the Editor together with the Zeus Beta release to development branch. These are meant to improve mission making by adding a possibility to place weapons on specific spots, and not only for Zeus. It is easier for example to make your own firing drills with a wide variety of weapons on the ground around shooting positions. We have even added an empty one on popular demand, in order to fill it with stuff using initialization scripts. All weapons, inventory items, headgear, vests and uniforms should be available to use (and loaded with respective magazines in case of weapons).

Let's continue last week's look at some of the cool aspects of Zeus:

• There is a strong potential for training. Team up with an experienced player and let him or her be a cooperative Zeus who runs you through improvised combat drills, navigation training, tactics, or anything else you can think of. This form of multiplayer training can be very intuitive and powerful.


• It is very easy to create custom scenarios which use Zeus technology in some way. Many things are possible, but it starts by simply dropping in a player character and a Game Master module (F7). Check out the documentation to learn more about setting up resource / unlock schemes, using custom add-ons, defining editable objects and areas, and more.


• The Zeus tech, especially when broken down to its smaller components and modules, can be used for other projects. Think of other game modes or features like spectating for example.

OPERATIONS

As we get closer to the release of the 'Win' campaign episode, the work on the new vehicles comes to its end. We are primarily tweaking the jets' flight models and getting the final sounds in place. A few new sound triggers in the engine will be usable for community aircraft as well: landing gear and flap SFX. Ideally we'll be staging the assets on devbranch next week.

Another small Task Force has been mopping up work on drones, based on player feedback and a few internal requests for upcoming scenarios. This forums post sums up what has been fixed / changed over the past few weeks.

LOGISTICS

Need some new wallpapers for your PC? Grab the new ones for the Make Arma Not War contest, or the splendid Arma 3 ones!