FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Winter Break, Scripted Function Optimizations, Animal Enhancements, Server Stability
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

As the end of the year draws near, Bohemia Interactive is preparing for its winter hibernation. We will pause our regular operations from December 21 until January 4. This means there will not be daily Dev-Branch updates or further Dev Hub reports during that time. We will however continue to work on addressing the remaining version 1.54 issues as best we can before the holidays (more on that later in this report). It goes without saying that our intention is for the game to work well for everyone, so this has our full attention.

2016 is going to be a great year for Arma 3. The Eden Update and Apex will expand the sandbox in interesting ways and give you new tools to play with. We wish everyone the happiest of holidays and a fantastic new year!

INTELLIGENCE

If you're looking for a place to try End Game multiplayer, join one of our official servers. This small group of servers has been up since Zeus was launched, but now offers both that mode and the three instances of End Game: Zaros, Feres and Kavala.




Dslyecxi of community group ShackTac has posted his glorious 2015 year in review video. Enjoy close to 30 minutes of varied Arma 3 (and some Arma 2) gameplay highlights from this well-known unit, also celebrating their 10-year anniversary. From infantry assaults to helicopter Close Air Support, this montage does a great job of showing the serious fun that can be had in the authentic and open military sandbox.



There was a major release in the modding scene this week: the Unsung Vietnam Mod (3.0 Alpha). It brings a first version of their custom terrain, vehicles, weapons and characters to all Arma 3 players. To the dev team we say: congratulations on the release and good luck with your journey to Beta and beyond!




And it would only seem fitting that Blue Harvest Interactive have updated their unofficial Star Wars Imperial Assault mod this week, adding Stormtroopers and thermal detonators to the fun sci-fi package.

OPERATIONS

There is one server crash in particular that we're trying to resolve with priority. It appears to affect the Altis Life community most of all, but we know it's not exclusive to that mod(e). Various server administrators and player communities, like Altis Life UK, have been helping us directly by providing logs, data and testing special builds. Like we have seen with similar crashes in the past, we again have not been able to reproduce these in the debugger environment at all. We're still isolating the cause, be it data, the engine or any number of external factors. We do know that the hotfix we have in RC testing does not seem to fix this yet. Even so, we may release it soon as an interim improvement (it does fix various other issues and make tweaks to weapon sway for example). Meanwhile you can consider using the 1.52 Legacy Build branch on Steam using access code Arma3Legacy152. That is in no way a long-term solution, and we will continue to be on the hunt for a fix.

For some time now, External Designer Killzone Kid, has been working on optimizing the official scripted function library. This means he has identified common operations which could be much faster in native engine code, requested useful new script commands and looked at general improvements. The first results have now reached Dev-Branch. The goal of this work is to achieve full backwards compatibility, while making content using these functions run faster. Please report potential issues, broken compatibility, or your suggested optimizations to us and we'll take a look!

We also have Animation Encoder Martin Kašpar looking into improving scripted control over animal behavior. Currently the animals are running simplified and optimized engine-controlled behavior only. They do not react to script commands such as doMove reliably. Changing this is not a big priority for us, but it will help various mod(e)s to do various interesting things with animals, starting with dogs. Take a look at Martin's guide on the Community Wiki, as well as this quick demonstration video. Further animal animation configurations should be getting the same treatment over time.

LOGISTICS

There was a small update on main branch last week that contained only updates to the (BattlEye) anti-cheat service. It should prevent the use of more undesired cheats and contribute to an enjoyable multiplayer environment for everyone.

I’m releasing an updated version of PLA forces which update armor and headgear with new armor system. It adds also new backpacks and uniform.
Hope you’ll enjoy this new version !

Changelog.

v 1.1 date 05/DEC/2015
- Fixed: Updated with new armor system for vest and headgear
- added officer uniform
- added 2 new russian backpacks to replace alice pack


CREDITS !!!
YetMC: QBZ-95
Kiory: thank you very much for letting me use and modify your great balaclavas and berets models for the units!
AlexF1 http://arma.at.ua/ : basic model russian VDV paratrooper and berets that I used for officer uniforms
Thanks a lot to BI for their great Arma 3 and for the public MLODs !
Thanks to all Arma community for great support !

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Tournament Champions, Personal Protective Equipment Configuration
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

We've been working hard to process your feedback tickets after last week's 1.54 release. Some of the results have reached main branch swiftly, some topics are discussed later in this report, and some are otherwise in progress. We're also looking ahead to Eden Update in the first months of the new year by slowly wrapping up Eden Editor implementation and prioritizing other components of that promising release. Dev-Branch is set to be an interesting place over the next few months. Besides that and on-going Tanoa production, December is typically also a month during which we're busy with activities not directly connected to development of our games. We evaluate the past year and prepare the company and teams for a great and productive 2016.

INTELLIGENCE

Check out the release trailer for Nexus Update to get a quick visual overview of what it has brought to the game and platform!



We're honored to congratulate the Arma 3 Ambassadors on winning the End Game Tournament and becoming the reigning End Game Champions! Last weekend's match-up between the Ambassadors and RG Task Force was decided in a first-to-three series of matches. With the momentum going back and forth between the teams, the finals were very exciting to see unfold. The organizers needed to do one round restart due to external factors, but things went smoothly from there. After four matches, the teams were tied 2-2 and everything came down to a final win for either side. Ultimately the Ambassadors proved they were able to form a cohesive unit from strong individual players who had little prior experience playing together. It has also been interesting seeing various tactics develop during the tournament. Kudos to all competing teams and players for participating and giving us all a series of entertaining events!




It's been a great experience for us to host this first official tournament. There are many things we've learned and will take to future events of this type. Lessons cover topics like doing this over the open Internet, End Game mechanics, nailing down the rules, and practical aspects like streaming itself. We'd like to also thank Greg Becksted and Korneel van 't Land for being the primary organizers and all Bohemians behind the scenes for their support. A massive thank you also to our awesome shout-casters, Mic One and Stardog, who brought us to the edge of our seats many times over. Looking forward to cooperating with you again some time!




If you liked what you saw, jump into a server running End Game yourself. We host a few, but there are community servers as well. Nexus Update brought two new instances of End Game to everyone, each catering to slightly different playstyles. The system itself is modular and can be used by community designers to deploy on unofficial terrains for example. Educate yourself with the Community Wiki documentation.




Looking for something different? PHANTOM has published a powerful showcase of what you can achieve in the sandbox using scripting and modding. Inspired by the films, "The Thing CLASSIFIED SPECIMEN" is a horror scenario that's ideal to scare you silly during these dark winter days.

OPERATIONS

The improvements to Personal Protective Equipment required various asset configuration changes. While the feature itself was announced and discussed at various points during development, and staged on Dev-Branch a long time ago, we did not adequately document the specifics for mods to work with. We were very happy to see some mods use the three weeks of Community Wiki. This stub will be further expanded soon, and we'll also update the relevant Arma 3 Samples. Mod creators with further technical questions are recommended to visit this forums thread. Players, please give your favorite modders some time to adjust fully and then we're sure you'll be able to play their content including the improved hit detection.

LOGISTICS

Hot on the heels of the 1.54 update itself, we published a hotfix. We clearly needed to address a few priority issues as soon as possible. One of these required a work-around to avoid a Launcher crash that was unfortunately caused by incorrectly configured Windows libraries on user systems. A future update to the OS should fix this, but we could not wait for that. Some of the other errors fixed were really our mistake and should have been caught during Release Candidate testing. Thanks for your quick reports; they led to quick fixes as seen in this SPOTREP. Our main attention now is on reported (server) crashes. Keep sharing your logs, reports and specifics please!

One of the useful additions in the Nexus Update is the Launcher's ability to process Workshop mod dependencies for you. The Launcher team has updated the public documentation to explain how this works and what your options are when (un)loading mods.

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Nexus Update Released, Units Live, Tournament Update
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

The last major update of 2015 has gone live on main branch; welcome to Nexus Update! Visit the improved Arma 3 website for Creative Director Jay Crowe's blog on all the highlights. We'd like to thank all participants of the RC tests for your assistance. Together with the players and mod teams we were able to catch a few things and address them ahead of release. Please allow some time for all server administrators and mods to update and adjust to the latest version of the game. We'll of course be monitoring Feedback Tracker and other channels for potential issues that may have slipped through. Your patience while we get the game running great with all improvements and mods is appreciated. An update of our client port betas is also in progress with our Virtual Programming partners. We hope to push that update out as soon as it's ready and tested.

INTELLIGENCE

Last Saturday's End Game Tournament Semi-Finals certainly had their fair share of excitement! We began with the E-bracket match between the Bohemia Dev Squad and Arma 3 Ambassadors (who were reinforced by Tangodown's NyteMyre). Pre-match voting indicated even odds, but ultimately the Ambassadors were victorious in a 2-0 win. Viewers were treated to many interesting combat tactics by both teams, and a vehicle destruction derby was especially entertaining to see. If you do watch the whole recording, be sure to look out for the part where all members of the Dev Squad chase an enemy Ifrit on foot! The last round did have to be restarted because of an unfortunate glitch causing the schematics to disappear. This should since have been fixed for the finals. We obviously praise the great effort by our team's top players, but our congratulations go to the Ambassadors who managed to form a cohesive team of individual players and secure their place in the finals.




For the second half of the semis, we witnessed a battle between Armalusa and RG Task Force. The first round was hotly debated, because it resulted in a tie with an advantage for phase II winner Armalusa. This was partly possible because of the mechanic governing the availability of the schematics in phase III. We do have plans to change this in some way, such as allowing both teams to pick them up at any time or another method, but it was decided to not change the mode's rules during the tournament. For now, if you want to secure the win, you'll just have to be decisively better and RG took on that challenge in the following rounds. The second round was won by RG after a phase II blitz and clever Ifrit park at the upload location. This result allowed the final round to be one of the most entertaining of the tournament. Armalusa knew they had to win and gave it their best. There was a lot of intense on-foot combat leading up to a spectacular finale. Armalusa was very close to completing the final upload, when RG's Cpl.Tristan stole the schematics in the nick of time! RG 1, Armalusa 0. Thanks for the show teams!




The finals of this first official tournament will be played coming Saturday at 18:00 UTC. We're planning for it to be a best of 5 match-up between Arma 3 Ambassadors and RG Task Force. We're psyched and can't wait for what promises to be a very exciting conclusion.

OPERATIONS

The Arma 3 Units 'Foundation Release' revealed in the recent OPREP has now gone live for everybody. At the same time we've published an iteration of the entire website, which tweaks the design and gets things ready for Units and further planned extensions. Kudos to Brand & PR Manager Korneel van 't Land for the coordination, Web Developer Jervant Malakjan for the bulk of the implementation, and the rest of the Publishing team for their great support. Well over 100 units have registered their community groups already; now it's your turn.




One random example of such unit is the Boonie Crew, who have also shared a very nice year-in-review video of their operations. Find more units to your liking by filtering on a range of criteria, such as attitude, gameplay, region, language and more. Feedback and issues are welcome in this forums thread and on the Feedback Tracker (Category: Units).

LOGISTICS

As tradition would have it, we've also updated the main branches of Arma 3 Tools and Arma 3 Samples. Go over Tools Commissar Julien Vida's new TECHREP for the details. Similarly, get your scroll bars ready and dive into all of the game's changes in its 1.54 SPOTREP.

Designer Radko Voda has submitted the technical documentation for Stamina on the Community Wiki. It explains how the mechanics work behind-the-scenes, its connections to other mechanics, and lists the script commands that can control it.

Third-party mod sync service withSIX has announced they have gone open-source. Their platform can now be collaborated on by anybody via GitHub and their various feedback channels. Best of luck to them with this new approach.

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users<
INFO: Arma 3 Units, Tournament Update, Stamina
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Our planned release for Nexus Update (1.54) was meant to be today, but last Friday we uncovered a few issues in large-scale multiplayer testing. Those should since have been fixed. We're going to confirm the fixes in follow-up tests this week to determine when we can publish to main branch. Please keep trying the Release Candidate and reporting any issues, especially new ones. We'll keep you apprised of further RC updates and the actual release timing via our usual channels.

INTELLIGENCE

The second round of the End Game Tournament was played and streamed last Saturday. If you missed the broadcast, and have a spare four hours, check out this recording. You could also visit Mic One's channel for edited highlights in the weeks after matches are played. One of its organizers, Community Developer Greg Becksted, drops by to give us the results:"First up were the Quarter-Finals C where Armalusa of Portugal met OFCRA of France. Armalusa took the first game and OFCRA took the second game, in two quite evenly matched games. With the scores tied, anticipation grew to see who could take the win in game 3. In that game Armalusa secured the 'retrieve' task in Phase II of End Game, effectively netting them the win in the event the game would end in a draw. With this advantage under their belt, Armalusa took their time choosing to hold off on picking up the schematics till it was clear they would have a safe and secure path to their upload point. With only a few minutes remaining in the game, Armalusa picked up the schematics and started to make their way there. Being extra cautious, they kept the schematics secure and on-the-move, out of potential threat of them being taken away. The game ultimately did end in a draw, so Armalusa will be moving on the Semi-Finals.
Between the regularly scheduled C and D match-ups, we saw the exciting sudden death rematch between Tangodown and the Arma 3 Ambassadors team (read up on what prompted this in a SITREP #00131). The first game in the rematch was very close with tremendous efforts by both teams that ended in a draw. Needing a win to make it to the Semi-Finals, both teams played in a second game without a dull moment, which ended with a back-and-forth struggle to gain control of the schematics. In the end and by a narrow margin, the Arma 3 Ambassadors team pulled off the win in game 2.



The final match-up of the evening, Quarter-Finals D, commenced with RG Task Force meeting Liberated Gaming. Both teams played with great determination. The teams reported, and we witnessed ourselves, some bad desync occurring, especially in the final game. The development team has since took on this issue with high priority and we feel that the main cause has been tracked down and the fix is currently being tested. In the end, RG Task Force was able to secure two back-to-back wins. A third game was played in keeping with the spirits of this tournament and was just for fun. RG Task Force advances to the Semi-Finals."

Stay tuned for the next round scheduled for Saturday November 28th, where we will see BI Dev Squad meet Arma 3 Ambassadors and RG Task Force versus Armalusa. These teams will now be competing to determine who will participate in the final match-up on Saturday December 5th and their chance to be the ultimate winner of the Arma 3 End Game Tournament!

This Friday and Saturday, Prague will host its annual indie Game Developer Session. Our very own Vojtech Kovaric will be speaking on the topic of Quality Assurance, going over the maddeningly difficult task of testing an open and moddable platform and game. Three other Bohemia Interactive devs will host sessions on a range of topics, so if you have an interest in development, consider popping by!

OPERATIONS

We can finally get more specific about Arma 3 Units, our web service developed to connect Arma 3 players and groups. Explore the newest OPREP by the fine gentlemen behind this effort for details on the concept. You'll also read about the planned 'Foundation Release' surrounding the Nexus Update, closed beta participation and some hints of future plans. Greg a.k.a. BohemiaBeck has posted a thread on the forums with even more information and details on how to join the party early. If you're interested, take the time to read some of the replies, which reveal our hopes to bring features like a developer API and basic web chat in the longer term. Your feedback and suggestions are welcome as always!




The Stamina and Fatigue systems have received further tuning by their Task Force, with balances to timings across the board. Stamina recuperation and exhaustion rates have been improved, to keep the game decisive, yet fluid, while the availability of sprinting after reaching an exhausted state has been further restricted. To manage combat effectiveness when fatigued or injured, players can no longer hold their breath indefinitely, and will now need to learn and master the best times to steady their aim, to compensate for weapon sway. Hold breath timings have changed, while improvements to the system itself add new sounds and reward players for conserving oxygen. A subtle animation slowdown has been added to terrain gradients, bringing a deeper level of connection and encouraging players to make more tactical decisions about their environment. Finally, a pesky bug that allowed for players to recuperate stamina very quickly has been squashed.

We're also preparing to publish a Legacy Fatigue Mod as example modification with sources in Arma 3 Samples. Senior Designer Josef Zemánek will also upload an unofficial functional mod version on Workshop soon. This mod both provides a starting point to players and modders who wish to replicate the previous behavior, but also showcases the enhanced (scripted) control you can have over these systems. In addition, we hope to still better explain our motivations for these changes both on the forums and in a future OPREP.

LOGISTICS

Tools Commissar Julien Vida reminds us that the last step in a plan to reorganize our samples and connected data is about to be taken. We'll soon remove the licensed data packages branch from Arma 3 Tools on Steam. If you're still subscribed to this branch, you'll be automatically switched back to main branch. The data packages themselves are still available via our website.

We've received some questions about the release of Eden Editor. It's been on Dev-Branch for some time, so when will it come to everyone? The new 3D Editor will be part of the free Eden Update that is planned for early 2016 according to our roadmap. This is a pretty big tool within the game, so we always planned for a considerable public beta. Development is going very well, but there are still a few features that we'd like to incorporate in the primary release.

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Development Update, Community Art, Stacked Event Handlers
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

We felt now might be a good time to deliver a small status report on plans beyond Nexus Update (1.54 is undergoing public RC testing). For Eden Update we are obviously chiefly focused on Eden Editor, although several other platform features are in the pipes. The Audio team hopes to stage a first set of improved weapon firing configurations, which use the new functionality to deliver much nicer distance-based sounds for example. Work on the Visual Update package has continued as well. Staging its tweaked lighting, water reflections, improved underwater fog and fixed up parallax maps to Dev-Branch is set for a while after 1.54. The primary Apex release is greedily devouring all of our Art capacity. The artists in various offices are building Tanoa's unique structures, decorative objects, vegetation, rocks, clutter, surfaces and more. Some of them are modeling the new Light Strike Vehicles, VTOLs and other assets. It will be a while before any of this sees the light of day, but it's all shaping up very nicely.

INTELLIGENCE

Bohemia Dev Squad's MVP, Endstar, is seen training for an upcoming End Game Tournament match at his Research & Development desk in the latest weekly dev photo. There are many other things going on in this picture, but we'll just point out that the sidearm is a decommissioned weapon (movie prop) that we use as reference material.




Plenty of fantastic looking community artworks and screenshots have reached us over the years. We often share these via @Arma3Official and you might also follow Senior Designer Bořivoj Hlava, who has a finely-tuned radar for talent. If you enjoy seeing these productions, visit the Arma 3 Photography thread on our forums, where you will also find special projects like unofficial comics. Another source of media is the Steam Community Hub. Keep sharing everyone!

OPERATIONS

We had already hinted at description.ext integration into Eden Editor, and now this functionality has arrived on Dev-Branch. As with more components of the new editor, this too can be extended by modders. You can set it up for custom sections and open up other scenario configuration parameters for your mod(e)s. Script command getMissionConfigValue is needed to access this new type of data. It can also be used for old-fashioned parameters, so this command will slowly deprecate missionConfigFile. As a fortunate byproduct of this work, Programmer Filip Sádovský has found a way to make errors in the EXT file no longer crash the engine, but instead just throw an error.




On Saturday we announced that the planned End Game Tournament sessions for that day would be postponed after the horrible events in Paris. We felt it would not be appropriate, especially given one of the competing teams for that round is French (OFCRA). We've discussed with the teams how to best continue, and it's likely all sessions will simply move back one week. Keep an eye on our usual channels for the latest information. In the mean time, Mic One has published his awesome overview video in which you can learn about the three stages of End Game matches.

LOGISTICS

We have finally introduced limited support for stacked config-based event handlers into the engine. By using nested classes in CfgVehicles >> (MyVehicle) >> EventHandlers, you can define multiple handlers of the same type (e.g. init). Previously, mods could only overwrite existing handlers, and so they had to resort to more convoluted solutions.

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: 1.54 RC Started, Tournament Update
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

The public Release Candidate branch for Nexus Update (1.54) has opened to anyone who'd like to participate in testing or who wants to start preparing their scenarios and mods. Its Steam branch access code is Arma3Update154RC, which is available for the game and its server package. Please post specific issues to the Feedback Tracker. Since this update is quite large, we expect the RC period to last a good two weeks. Several of its components are even now undergoing carefully monitored tweaking. A high-level list of changes can be found on the forums, where the build can also be generally discussed. We do however recommend using specific threads for large topics such as audio, Launcher mod dependencies, personal protective equipment, stamina, spectator, FFV, etc.

INTELLIGENCE

When the time came to select the next Community Guide topic, we quickly landed on "Defense". It covers a useful collection of skills for Arma in general, but also applies very well to End Game, a central component of Nexus Update and the on-going tournament. Andrew "Dslyecxi" Gluck was approached once again to apply his excellent Arma videography skills. The guide goes over planning your defense, consideration of terrain features, usage of Intel gathering assets, force multipliers, practical tips, and more.

OPERATIONS

The A & B bracket quarter-finals for the End Game Tournament were played last Saturday, with plenty of excitement and controversy! In the first match-up, the brave Italian BDR Clan faced the Bohemia Dev Squad. The match was decided after 2 developer victories, advancing the Dev Squad to the semi-finals. Our compliments to BDR for some impressive counters to the vehicle tactics used against them.

Next up were the Arma 3 Ambassadors versus Dutch community Tangodown. After a first round draw, and a win by the Ambassadors, the last round was won by Tangodown in a thrilling hilltop finale. Much confusion ensued, which was our mistake. The rules did not explicitly cover this scenario well, and so the officials ruled a Tangodown victory based on their interpretation of the rules (since updated and clarified). In the days following the event, we've discussed this with both teams and are happy to find them willing to go for a sudden-death rematch! Massive respect especially to the members of Tangodown, who are putting their semi-final place on the line in the interest of fair play. This tournament was always meant to be "friendly-competitive" in nature and we're very glad to see this attitude reflected by the competitors. We'll obviously do our best to avoid these situations in future events - together we learn.

We've already extracted some useful lessons from this first foray into an official event of this type. This really is a trial run for us. If it's well-received as a whole, we may take it further, and explore different game modes and play styles. Some spectator mode tweaks will already be applied for the next matches (and Nexus Update itself), such as the ability to highlight every player and not just unit leaders. We also observed that it can be unclear what the first-person camera actually shows: this is not exactly what the player is seeing, so you'll not see them using sights. Seeing third-person view in the Spectator also does not need to mean the player uses that function, although in this tournament it is available. Shoutcasters Mic One and Stardog did an awesome job commentating on the proceedings, and they brought in some nice interviews and other videos. The stream team has discussed feedback and improvements going forward, hopefully resulting in an even more entertaining event. Join us next Saturday from 17:00 UTC for the C & D bracket quarter-finals as well as the special rematch!

LOGISTICS

During the tournament live stream, we noticed several people pleasantly surprised by some of the music played during the intermissions. Most of what you heard is actually part of the official Arma 3 soundtrack. Owners of the (Digital) Deluxe Edition can find MP3 and FLAC versions of all tracks (including DLC) in their installation Bonus\Soundtrack folder. You can also use Steam client to play these tracks. Go to View and then Music Details (or filter your library on MUSIC) to see a listing of the tracks available to you. Or you might want to use these tracks in the game (regardless of DLC ownership): take a look at this Community Wiki overview and the related documentation. We can also confirm that the many remixes of the main theme have driven Audio Lead Jan Dušek slightly mad - "TÝ-DA-DU-DÜ".

While we have you listening to music, we highly recommend the soundtrack for singleplayer Make Arma Not War winner: Resist. Just like the campaign itself, it's a fitting contribution to the vanilla game. Our compliments to community composer Valtteri Harju!

Prague, Czech Republic, November 4th 2015

Bohemia Interactive today deployed a brand new video guide for their tactical military shooter Arma 3. While previous episodes in the official Community Guide series focused on the attack, this new episode explores the basic principles of mounting an effective and efficient defense - making it a must-watch for everyone with an interest in tactical gameplay.

In the video, Andrew Gluck (better known as Dslyecxi, leader of the Arma community group Shack Tactical) examines the most essential planning considerations for a solid defense, such as understanding the terrain, defining areas of responsibility, and identifying potential force multipliers. In addition, the video describes what vehicles and weapons are most suitable for defending a location. To increase your odds of surviving in battle, Dslyecxi concludes the video by discussing individual actions, such as positioning and communications, and knowing when it's time to retreat.

Previous episodes in the Arma 3 Community Guide video series covered topics such as infantry combat, multiplayer teamwork, helicopters, sniper- and launcher teams, combined arms warfare, air assaults, guerrilla warfare, ground vehicle crew, machine gun teams, and the Arma 3 Zeus DLC. The complete Community Guide playlist is available on Arma 3’s YouTube Channel.

Arma 3 - Community Guide: DefenseTrailer

DOWNLOAD VIDEO (MP4)

To enlist for Arma 3 service, the regular edition of Arma 3 (44.99 EUR/39.99 GBP/59.99 USD) and the Arma 3 Digital Deluxe Edition (49.99 EUR/42.99 GBP/64.99 USD) - which includes the Arma 3 soundtrack, tactical maps of Altis and Stratis, a tactical guide of more than 350 pages, and Bohemia Interactive’s debut game Arma: Cold War Assault – are available for purchase on Steam and the Bohemia Interactive Store.

Those who are new to Arma 3, but are looking for the most complete experience, can also pick up the Arma 3 Extended Edition. The Extended Edition includes the Arma 3 Digital Deluxe Edition plus the Arma 3 DLC Bundle, and saves people 9.99 EUR/11.99 GBP/14.99 USD over buying the vanilla game and DLC bundle separately.

For the true Arma fans and collectors, Bohemia Interactive now also offers the physical Arma 3 Special Edition (179 EUR/129 GBP/199 USD), which is exclusively available on the Bohemia Interactive Store. The Special Edition includes the boxed Arma 3 base game, Karts/Helicopters/Marksmen DLC, various digital extras such as the Arma 3 soundtrack and Tactical Guide, plus a range of physical collector's items: a laser-cut 3D glass cube, limited edition silver medal, printed map of Altis & Stratis, Task Force Aegis t-shirt, 32GB USB flash drive, key strap, and notepad and pen.

For more information, please visit http://www.arma3.com and/or follow Arma 3 on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Project Leadership, End Game Tournament
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Breaking with tradition, this opening section will be written from my own perspective. After well over a hundred reports and therefore weeks, the time has come for me to hand the Arma 3 project to someone else. As of this week, the game will be in the capable hands of someone most of you know: former Encoding Lead, Lord of the Bounce, Petr Kolář. He will lead the awesome team on the road to Apex and beyond.

It has been a huge honor to re-shape the game and team as we went through Early Access graduation and over two years of post-release support so far. Considering there were times when we believed the game might never be released, it’s a great joy to see the unique Arma series in a stronger position than ever before now. Sure, not everything went smoothly and some things we wish we’d handled differently. It will make for an interesting post-mortem eventually, but Arma 3 is far from dead. I’m incredibly proud of everyone involved with the project, including the community of modders, server admins and players

This change was planned for a while, but now we’re close to the first milestone on the expansion roadmap, the time is right. I’ll continue to work on the game as Producer for some time, most likely even writing up more of these reports, as I slowly prepare for a new challenge within Bohemia Interactive. Thank you for your support and cheers to a splendid future in the Armaverse!

-Joris-Jan van ‘t Land, Project Lead (ret.)

INTELLIGENCE

Your Saturday entertainment should be sorted for the next couple of weeks. We've announced an official End Game Tournament. Eight teams (community groups, Bohemia Interactive devs and special guests) will go head to head in a fun invitational knock-out tournament. What are they fighting for? Eternal glory and the coveted title of Arma 3 End Game Champion of course! All of the matches will be live streamed and hosted by shoutcasters Mic One and Stardog. Things are kicking off this Saturday, November 7, at 17:00 UTC with the A and B bracket quarter-finals. You can watch the live events on our Twitch channel, but there will be many other streams from the various competitors for example. Visit the tournament page for the full schedule, team overviews, rules and a F.A.Q. Best of luck to all teams, especially our devs, who'll probably need it most!




Rock Paper Shotgun has published a refreshing account of their experiences in vanilla Arma 3 with community group Folks APRS. The author has joined for several PvE operations, and describes the challenges and excitement of dealing with perma-death and communication. You too can join their public sessions, so head over to their site for the details.





Community member Leshrack has released his first mod, one which allows you to tow vehicles with other vehicles. It support all vanilla (wheeled) aircraft, and can be configured for mod vehicles as well. More information is available this forum thread.



Closing our brief look at the community this week, is this nice combined arms combat montage by Rifling Matters

OPERATIONS

Tweaking of Stamina continues on Dev-Branch, and our goal is to reach a stable state by Friday. The dedicated group of devs involved in this work will want to post a more detailed update on the forums soon, but here are some of the bigger tweaks as described by Sandbox Lead Miloslav Cinko: "The UI bar was adjusted to not steal too much of the player's attention, but still provide players with information about their status (if enabled). Some special actions, like rolling sideways, have a negative impact on stamina now and the weight of equipment was tweaked so that undesired load-outs should not be achievable. We're also experimenting with jogging draining stamina. A number of noticeable issues snuck into the weapon sway mechanic that were not intended, so the most recent focus has been on this mechanic. We'll continue to process your feedback and see what can still contribute to reach our goals for this iteration."

Megagoth , one of the community's audio aficionados, has contributed to the recent update on Audio progress with a lovely video overview . He explains how the sample reorganization can help to reduce update sizes, which even considering delta-patching is applied, definitely was one of the motivations. More interestingly, he explains in a very audiovisual manner (epic Paint skills confirmed) what the changes and new configuration methods allow sound designers to do. He does also share a valid warning: with great power comes great responsibility. Modders will have such detailed control over certain aspects of the sound engine, that breaking the entire soundscape becomes very easy when applying low-level values that were not considered carefully. Overall though, the things that will be possible to achieve are very exciting for us and modders alike.

LOGISTICS

There have been several cool scripting additions and changes in recent months. External Designer Killzone Kid has written up a great overview of them on the forums. From general syntactical commands and constructs, to Stamina and UI commands, there's bound to be some useful tools for scripters. And if you weren't sure what the recently staged Upload Terminal object can do besides being used in End Game, also check out this nifty use of it!



Now that the Eden Editor beta supports custom layers, the team has moved on to another big feature: description.ext integration. Since the first Arma games, this file could be used to configure several advanced scenario parameters and even define entire config hierarchies local to the scenario (e.g. to build User Interfaces). The time has finally come to expose most of the common parameters in the editor itself, without needing to create a manual file. Don't worry, this is approached in such a way that existing scenarios with description.ext files will continue to function and their parameters will take priority. More advanced uses of reading the missionConfigFile may need to be re-considered using techniques we'll document clearly when the time comes.

FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: End Game Additions, Spectator, Audio Progress, Terrain Processor SDK
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Almost all aspects of Nexus Update (1.54) have been staged on Dev-Branch. That does not mean they are considered final; some furious tweaking is on-going. Since the update contains a lot of moving parts, we'll use a fairly lengthy Release Candidate period. Internally, we'll probably apply our data lock next week. For those of you new to our development processes, data lock means we make a snapshot of the build (engine and data) and strictly control every change that is made and allowed in. This does slow down the creative processes, but also stabilizes the game and lets us focus on the most important tasks. Not long after this lock is applied, we'll prepare the RC branch for public testing. We've also published a page to better explain how RC testing works, what our goals for it are and how you can help.

INTELLIGENCE

Our weekly dev photographer was able to snap a moment from a rather French rendezvous between Game Capture Artist Arthur Walter (known for the still-magnifique "Somewhere") and Tools Commissar Julien Vida. They were discussing a special live streaming setup, about which we'll have an announcement to share soon. Arthur has joined our company a few months ago, and he helps us with a lot of different media production tasks for our games. One day he might be taking cool screenshots, the next day he provides technical support for a live stream, and today he's begun work on a Nexus Update trailer.




The collaboration of people behind the Community Upgrade Project have delivered another major milestone of their mod. The first release of the Vehicles Pack (in addition to the Weapons and Units Packs), brings a dazzling amount of assets to the game. These are mostly assets from Arma 2, Operation Arrowhead and DLC, enhanced with Arma 3 technologies and features. Should you encounter problems, please report them on their own tracker. The release is also a great showcase of the new Launcher mod dependencies on Dev-Branch, making the installation process super smooth. The amount of content produced for the community for free by these dedicated people is truly inspiring. Thanks!




Another mod sharing their progress with us this week is Air Cav Vietnam. Take a look at their most recent trailer here. They are developing two components: a mod containing assets and a server package revolving around a coop experience. All of this will be taking place on the already-released Nam terrain by Variable. You can track the work via their Steam community group. We're excited to go on a virtual tour of duty once their first release drops.



Finally, we cannot ignore this new video from Real Virtuality Jedi Master McRuppertle. Release that dueling mode, you will?

OPERATIONS

The Playable Content additions for Nexus Update have been pushed to Dev-Branch. There are two brand-new instances of End Game, each catering to a different scale and pace. You'll also find a first version of a new Spectator mode. For now you'll be able to access this mode by using one of the 4 available virtual roles per End Game instance. The Spectator mode was designed to be modular and extensible. Scenario designers can show custom (meta) information and set up relevant key locations for example. We'll be iterating on this for some more time, and then publish documentation to the Community Wiki. Please leave us your feedback in this thread by Design Lead Jaroslav Kašný. For another in-depth look at the content and the status of several multiplayer systems, do read Creative Director Jay Crowe's post on the topic.




Next, let's take stock of movement along the Audio roadmap. Senior Programmer František Novák has committed a low-level overhaul of the audio engine, which lays a foundation for the planned features. Noticeable right now is the Stereo Emitter. This allows us to finally properly play stereo samples based on the observer's distance, boosting the richness of the soundscape. This new approach will be much less hard-coded and better configurable (also for mods). Jay has jumped onto the forums once again to explain a little more. We've also begun a clean-up of the sound samples. Read the full details in Audio Lead Jan Dušek's forums post, but in summary:

• SFX: we're splitting bigger addons into smaller ones, but preserving the internal addressing via PBO prefixes. We're also deprecating obsolete samples, which we intend to delete with Eden Update (but can make available for use in Arma 3 Samples e.g.).


• Radio Protocol: we're also splitting these addons, but cannot preserve the paths in this case. One of the reasons for doing this is to allow small tweaks to be made without massive data patching.

It is now possible to manipulate Under-Barrel Grenade Launcher rounds directly in a dedicated inventory slot, thanks to a cooperation between Senior Designer Vladimír Hynek and Senior Programmer Jan Mareček. This makes it easier to identify the currently loaded type of round and swap it out from the menu. Modders can utilize this enhancement for other secondary muzzle types as well. The addition goes hand-in-hand with the improved reloading animations for UGL weapons. Those now also actually show a (generic) round being manipulated for improved immersion.

LOGISTICS

The Environment department has found a few moments to address smaller issues and glitches reported for Stratis and Altis over the past many months. Doing the fixes will result in some of the object IDs changing once again. A long time ago we've attempted to change this technology and use static IDs instead, but that has failed and has not been attempted again since. We still recommend to avoid referencing these IDs directly and to try to find alternative methods (feel free to request as such via Feedback Tracker). This should have become more feasible with new script commands such as nearestTerrainObjects.

Advanced terrain creators can now leverage the Terrain Processor SDK. A sample project has been provided in the Arma 3 Samples Dev-Branch, and the accompanying manual can be found here. Using the SDK, the tool can be expanded with custom tasks and plug-ins.

FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Roadmap Blog, Nexus Feature Iterations
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

By now you'll have likely familiarized yourself with Creative Director Jay Crowe's blog concerning the roadmap. Its key bits of information were the names and themes of our two primary free platform updates: Nexus Update (1.54) and Eden Update. There will be more regular updates along the way, but these are the significant milestones on the road to the main Apex expansion. Just as we've done in the past with our Early Access packages, campaign episodes and DLC, this approach lets focus our work and bring the results to players sooner. One of the revelations that seemed to garner quite some interest, was the Arma 3 Units service (more on that next month). Another observation is the Visual Update package having been moved to Eden Update. This work needs a bit more time to tweak within the team, before we unleash it on Dev-Branch. We hope the roadmap gave you a good impression of our ambitions. Many more specifics will be shared as we continue our journey together.

INTELLIGENCE

REPregulars know we recently acquired a decommissioned T-72 and got to drive around in it during a team event. Last Friday Bohemia Interactive posted a blog containing some interesting trivia about our Edita, but especially a glorious video of her in action. Admittedly, we were holding our breath when the audio designers and camera operators were struggling to hold onto their equipment as the tank was racing through the muddy puddles!



The community also keeps generating plenty cool videos. Take a look at "Aerial Warfare - Operation Goldmine" by Ch11rcH. It's shot from the perspective of a Close Air Support pilot, and features some fancy editing effects. You'll see him flying Little Birds to escort Chinooks carrying infantry elements, but later he also jumps into an Apache for long-range gunnery support (mod aircraft). It shows a good example of dynamic events during player-based combined arms warfare, such as when they try to rescue a downed fellow pilot who is quickly swarmed by the enemy.



We were also impressed by a winner line-up screenshot taken after a community Team-versus-Team event: Arma Tactical Combat #6 Campaign 2015. Around 20 units (110 players) battled for control over Altis during the course of 12 weeks.

OPERATIONS

Having recently transitioned from being QA Lead to Sandbox Design Lead, Miloslav Cinko has published an OPREP to describe the core mechanic iterations for Nexus Update. Firstly, this means the improvements to Personal Protective Equipment we've mentioned several times. These relate also to slightly better hit reactions, by using (still optional) blood effects more prominently instead of the twitchy animations. Secondly, he explains our new approach to Fatigue and Stamina, which has already been heavily discussed on the forums among other places. We invite you to start by reading the OPREP, in order to get a sense of our goals with these changes. Then you might follow up with a forum post by Jay, in which he offers a bit more context and insight into our motivations.




Stamina is live on Dev-Branch, and receiving quick iterations based on our own and your feedback. There certainly is room for discussion and tweaks. Our goal is to bring the interesting gameplay of having to consider your movement, load-out and their effects on your character's state to more Arma players (who frequently replace the vanilla system or disable it all-together now). One part of this is improved communication to the player via the optional Stamina Bar for example. We do not intend to make movement unrestricted, nor to have fully equipped soldiers sprinting everywhere. It's possible that even after the next weeks of iterations, you still feel the mechanic does not fit with your vision of Arma. To cater to this, we're creating a sample mod that demonstrates how to set up the game close to what it is in main branch now, but also enables you to tweak it further to your liking.




We've also done some small tweaks to character movement to make Close Quarter Combat movement a tiny bit smoother. Animation Encoder Martin Kašpar explains: "A new character collision model (slightly smaller) for turning around has been created to avoid problems when turning around in interiors, doorways, etc. In addition to that, the rotation axis of the rotation collision model has been set exactly to the center axis of the soldier to avoid unwanted movement when turning around. This only affects animation states for rifle, pistol and launcher with suffix _TurnX (where X stands for L and R)."

LOGISTICS

We are planning to update the experimental client port betas shortly after Nexus Update 1.54, so that players on Linux and Mac can benefit from all additions, fixes and tweaks as well. This will not be a simultaneous release, but we'll try to get it out reasonably soon after the Windows primary version.
Some time ago, Steam changed the way in which free applications are distributed. Such tools are no longer automatically assigned to every Steam user, but require you to 'subscribe' to them (still for free). We encountered this when we introduced our separated Arma 3 Samples app, and we also converted Arma 3 Tools. At the time we were not entirely sure how these changes would affect existing users, and that is why we didn't convert Arma 3 Server. We would however like to do so now, but are interested in your opinion, especially if you are a server operator. The apps would still be free, would still require any valid Steam account, would still allow use of SteamCMD, but would require a one-time manual action via the store page. It should also be said that while we're currently not forced by Steam to adopt the new method, we cannot guarantee that we'll eventually have to switch (or the old way becomes deprecated). Share your thoughts with Tools Commissar Julien Vida, who is on stand-by to answer any further questions!

Senior Designer Bořivoj Hlava has dropped by Community Wiki to document the current state of our Launcher's handling of mod dependencies. Inspect the relevant features, User Interface controls, status messages and more. The Launcher team can be reached for feedback in this forums thread.

Sometimes you just need to chill out and quietly do some introspection. Getting into the right mood could already be achieved by watching calming videos of fireplaces, rain forests and fish tanks, but a true Armaholic naturally prefers a parked Main Battle Tank. Having achieved complete Zen, you may find the focus required to spot all the little easter eggs.

Bohemia Interactive presents 2015-2016 roadmap for Arma 3
Two major platform updates plus 'Arma 3 Apex' expansion
Prague, Czech Republic, Wednesday October 14th 2015


With over two million copies sold to date, Bohemia Interactive today presented its plans for their tactical military shooter Arma 3 in the next year. The 2015-2016 roadmap, which was shared via a blog post written by the game's Creative Director Jay Crowe, features two free platform updates that pave the way for the Arma 3 expansion in the second quarter of 2016.

First up will be the 'Nexus Update', which is scheduled for release in November this year, and focuses upon the refinement of core features and multiplayer systems. This includes significant improvements to Arma 3 gameplay features such as stamina/fatigue, personal protective equipment, and more. Furthermore, the Nexus Update will deliver a revamped version of the End Game multiplayer mode, that was introduced earlier this year. The renewed End Game multiplayer will be paired with various improvements to general multiplayer systems, which can also be used in other official and unofficial Arma 3 multiplayer scenarios. Last but not least, alongside the Nexus Update, Bohemia Interactive plans to deploy a foundation build of 'Arma 3 Units' – a web-based service that aims to connect players with community groups.



The second platform update for Arma 3, codenamed 'Eden Update', is penciled in for the beginning of next year (2016). The highlight of this update will be the official introduction of the brand new Eden 3D Editor. Designed as the logical evolution of the classic 2D Scenario Editor, which has been a core component of the Arma series since its debut in 2001, the new Eden Editor will give players far more control over their creations than ever before by enabling them to place and edit entities directly within the 3D game environment. Besides the new editor, the Eden Update will be complemented by several Arma 3 usability tweaks, and an overhaul of how players discover and join multiplayer sessions.



The Nexus and Eden platform updates lead up to the roadmap's focal point: a major Arma 3 expansion in Q2 2016. Titled 'Arma 3 Apex', this expansion will feature the 100 km2 South Pacific destination of Tanoa, which was first shown during the PC Gaming Show at E3 this year, plus a co-op campaign, new vehicles, weapons, and characters. One of the central themes of the expansion is near-future combat, which players will be able to recognize by the introduction of new vehicle classes such as VTOL aircraft and other new gameplay elements. As with previous Arma 3 DLC, the expansion will be accompanied by a major free platform update that seeks to address important 'legacy' issues related to Arma 3's multiplayer, interaction mechanics, and discoverability of official and custom content. More information about the Arma 3 Apex expansion, including specifics on pricing, purchasing options, and early access availability, will be communicated next year.



“We're optimistic and excited about our roadmap. Having recently hit the 2 million copies mark, we're keen to grow even further! We've set out to refine our core gameplay, experiment with some fantastic new content, and deliver an unrivalled, open, diverse platform: truly, the apex of the Arma 3 experience”, concludes Arma 3's Creative Director Jay Crowe in the full blog post.

For more information about Arma 3, please visit www.arma3.com and/or follow Arma 3 on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Firing From Vehicles Enhancements, Eden Editor Layers
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

It's been a long time coming, but later this week we'll finally be ready to share our roadmap for the rest of 2015 and 2016. We'll be discussing how we've divided our work on the Expansion and Arma 3 platform across several themed updates, meaning you'll not have to wait for all improvements. You can also look forward to the Expansion's name and more Intel on the contents besides Tanoa. In unison, we're going to publish an in-depth OPREP about the refinements to core mechanics that are due in the next big platform update. And Bohemia Interactive will hopefully have a cool little bonus to close out the week!

INTELLIGENCE

In Zeus-curated multiplayer scenarios, you can attract the Game Master's attention by pinging. The Y-key is used for this by default. It will sound a subtle audio cue for Zeus and highlight your name. Pinging is useful to alert Zeus to problems with the scenario, or for opportunities the GM may wish to do something with. Basically, use pinging when something is or isn't happening, but don't overdo it. Pings are only sent once per second, and Zeus may not take kindly to spam. A bit of divine trivia: when you ping, you hear a slightly different tone for the audio cue each time. Zeus hears a different tone per specific player (with some limitations), so He or She may actually recognize players by their sound alone. Ping once and you'll unlock the "Worshiper" achievement like 9.1% of global players so far.




Perhaps you're not quite sure what to expect from Zeus, or you haven't yet experienced a good curated scenario. Luetin has uploaded a lengthy but entertaining recording of an advanced Zeus multiplayer session. He acts as the Game Master in a custom Invade & Annex scenario that is already running. There are three distinct phases (see the time codes in the video description). Firstly the GM actually uses the Zeus interface, extended by the Ares mod, to build prop compositions, garrison troops, lay out patrols, place map markers and finally assign an objective. What follows are two stages of the actual real-time scenario as the players assault the enemy bases. It's interesting to see and hear Leutin theorize what the theoretical enemy commanders might see and how they should react with fire missions and reinforcements. He makes a point of not directly killing players, instead scaring and guiding them with indirect fire and by role-playing NPCs. Who are your favorite curators? Share you experiences on Reddit!



This summer saw its fair share of after-work grill parties for our various dev teams to enjoy. Last week's Brno event most likely concluded this year's season, but it offered attendees a special dish. Witness Senior Programmer Jirí Dockal, Senior Designer Josef Zemánek and Bohemia Interactive Creative Director Ivan Buchta prepare a traditional grandma recipe for Czech Guláš.

OPERATIONS

Still confident that Firing From Vehicles technology can be further improved, Senior Programmer Krzysztof Bielawski has staged an iteration to Dev Branch recently. The current state uses new limits for a few vehicles (Offroad, Huron, Mohawk, Pawnee and Hellcat):

• These limits allow for more flexible shapes within which you can aim your weapon, rather than the rectangular boxes used until now.
• Forward passengers in the back of Offroads can now 'turn out' and engage enemies up front.


• When they stand up, they can use secondary and shoulder weapons, like RPGs and MANPADS.


• Go over the updated documentation on our Community Wiki. Note that the old method of defining limits is available in parallel and is therefore backward-compatible.

Several more tweaks are planned in the near future:

• You can currently aim through other passengers, but a new solution to tackle this issue is incoming.


• The new limits are a bit more complicated than before. We will provide a recording tool, usable in the special diagnostics executable only, so modders can define limits faster.

LOGISTICS

The Eden Editor crew has begun implementing a much sought-after functionality: custom layers. Just like in many image processing applications, you'll be able to assign entities to layers. These layers (and their entities) can be locked, hidden, manipulated, nested, named, etc. While some of the interface work is yet to be done, an early version of the technical groundwork will soon be live in the experimental build. Let us know what you think and how you'd expect to use these layers.

FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 User
INFO: Launcher Mod Dependencies, Scripted System Optimizations
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

We've said it a few times over the past weeks, but Dev-Branch really is where our attention is placed as we move towards to next big update. We're already processing feedback on several live changes and iterating via the daily experimental updates. Other major improvements, such as for the Launcher, are detailed in another section of this report. Please keep sharing your findings in the dedicated forum threads, or via the general discussion thread. Specific issues are best filed in the Feedback Tracker.

INTELLIGENCE

In weekly dev photo #28 you may have been exposed to somewhat of an internal running gag. We've asked one of the culprits, QA Assistant Vojtech Kovaric, to try to explain what's going on. Read at your own risk: "We showed a cardboard Commander Shepard enjoying a break with Greg and Julien. This Shepard belongs to our Prague QA team and serves as their mascot. Our QA colleagues were trying to guard him very carefully but, while they weren't looking, Shepard was taken on a ride to our Mnisek Arma 3 studio. He experienced the best month ever. Took a ride in our tank, joined a BBQ party, had a lunch with the Project Lead and met the one and only cardboard 'Flashpoint man'. All of this was of course documented and the photographs sent to Prague QA for them to see what a great a time Shepard was having. While they were not very happy and talked about kidnapping and other major felonies, Shepard had the time of his life. However, everything that is good must come to an end. After a month of a splendid internship, Commander Shepard returned to his home base among his QA colleagues and is enjoying their company instead. Needless to say, we are now heavily guarding our Flashpoint man."




ArmaHosts published a useful video tutorial on setting up a Windows Dedicated Server on a clean PC using SteamCMD (a free command-line utility) and the free Arma 3 Server app on Steam. They include a series of suggested command-line parameters and go over the server.cfg file briefly. Finally, they also recommend which ports to configure in your firewall to allow the game to communicate over the Internet effectively. We also liked seeing their default scenario being the official ZGM 4+1 Bootcamp training grounds. Excellent choice!

OPERATIONS

The Launcher has received a significant iteration on Dev-Branch. Launcher Programmer Jirí Polášek has kindly shared the details with us: "Our Launcher has received a major update with new features and a lot of improvements. The important ones include support for dependencies between mods: Launcher automatically detects other Workshop mods you need and it can enable them if you load the mod or get them for you in case don’t have them. This said, mod authors might be interested in updating the Required Items for their Workshop items. You can do this directly from the Workshop page. Since there are a lot of large mods, another nice feature is the ability to change the folder where the downloaded mods are stored (the folder can be changed in Options > tab Mod Options > section Mods Storage)." Your discussion of these changes is very welcome in this forums thread.

For weeks now, Senior Designer Jirí Wainar has been eagerly waiting to publish his optimizations of various scripted multiplayer systems. We were quite careful to roll them out, first awaiting the engine-supported remote execution to be solid. Now the time is ripe and his changes have reached Dev-Branch. Specifically this means the frameworks for Tasks, Remote Execution and Shared Objectives should now function in a much leaner way. In our measurements this has led to a drastic reduction of the traffic generated by these systems, ranging from 30% to even as low as 3% of the original traffic. If your (multiplayer) scenarios already use (parts of) these underlying frameworks, you should see improvements to network performance. We'd recommend studying the linked documentation to consider whether your creations can benefit from similar optimizations. We do have plans for tweaking similar systems in this way, and Jirí hopes to share his observations as general scripting guidelines over time.

There also is less optimistic news to share. Making improvements to the mid-range terrain textures has been a hot topic for a long time. We have investigated various solutions and looked at the problem it with our programmers and environment team. Our conclusion is that it's unfortunately not realistic to expect big improvements for Arma 3. Existing community solutions can work great under certain circumstances, but in our opinion based on tests, make things worse in others. We thank you for thinking with us and for proposing some pretty advanced workarounds! The basic and short explanation from Arma 3's engine's point of view is that we're limited by our terrain shader and hard limits of the amount of textures we can store in materials. The overhaul required is too complex at this stage. If we do find a way forward, we'll re-open this decision, but it's not likely during Arma 3's life time.

LOGISTICS

For the latest on Eden Editor, we defer to the in-game Updates Log. By pressing its icon in the top-right of the menu (new posts are indicated by a red !), you can read a weekly digest of changes, fixes and tweaks. Of course not everybody has access to that log, but you'll be able to track all changes in the primary Dev-Branch change log. The highlights this week revolved around the rotation widget, automatic grouping and a flashlight for night-time editing.

FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Eden Editor, UGL Reloading, Update 1.52 Released
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Welcome to all new recruits who have joined the growing community after the recent sales on Bohemia Interactive Store and Steam! You've arrived at the front lines during exciting times. We've just released maintenance update 1.52, which, allowing some time for servers and mods to adopt it, should help a little with stability and performance. The next update promises to be rather significant. As discussed last week, plenty of things are starting to appear on Dev-Branch, and await your evaluation. Some things will make it into 1.54 in November, other things may require more time in the incubator. Enjoy your time with Arma 3!

INTELLIGENCE

We were humbled by Southpaw's nice and visual explanation of our DLC strategy. In the interest of transparency, a few tiny corrections: the unrestricted free use of premium content is available in VR Garage / Arsenal (not the Editor), and only the passenger positions aren't locked (gunners are). We know the strategy can sometimes be a little confusing to explain. Thank you Zach for sharing the message in this effective way. For more background you can read our OPREP on Content Licensing.

OPERATIONS

Sandbox Designer Radko Voda has visited the forums to explain the improvements to Personal Protective Equipment now live on Dev-Branch. In the most basic terms, there is added precision when detecting what parts of a character are protected by armor or not. If you get a chance to try the changes and feel something still needs tweaking, now is the time to share your thoughts.

Using the new reloadMagazine2 animation source, Encoder David Sláma has worked together with Artist Martin Valášek and Animator Pawel Smolewski to finally get Under-barrel Grenade Launcher reloading animations in the game (Mk20, Katiba and TRG-21 for now, MX coming up). This seems like a simple change that could have happened much sooner, but due to the way the special muzzle and magazines for grenade launchers are simulated, it required some creative implementation. We would also like to animate an actual grenade, but this faces yet more technical obstacles. We're prototyping a solution, but cannot yet guarantee it will be feasible.




The Eden Editor Public Beta has experienced a very productive first week. We're receiving a lot of positive feedback and valuable constructive criticism. Plenty fixes, tweaks and additions have dripped into the build on a daily basis. For a more in-depth look at Eden and its road map, we invite you to read the latest OPREP by Programmer Filip Sádovský and Designer Karel Morický (follow them on Twitter for bite-sized updates throughout development). Our Prague QA team and embedded QA Assistant Vojtech Kovaric also deserve kudos for their hard work to get the very initial Beta release in good shape.




Let's also highlight a few extra notes on Eden Editor:

• Scripters and modders may find the new type of UI menu controls and connected script commands very powerful to build their own interfaces. The same applies to miscellaneous UI features being implemented to support Eden (like multi-line tool tips). Find an initial dump of commands here, but we'll also update Community Wiki soon.


• Some selected improvements may be back-ported to Zeus, but we don't yet know which ones. Eden and Zeus share the same foundation and developers, but it's not a simple matter of copying the tech.


• As discussed in the OPREP, ultimately this editor will fully replace the current 2D editor. There will be a transition phase between the release in early 2016 and the main Expansion, during which both will be available. Some people were worried they would lose 2D editing, but you can of course switch to 2D mode using M by default (we also want to make it possible to set this as default view). It's our goal for the new editor to be everything the old one is, but much more productive and useful.


• There exists a function to export to Terrain Builder, but this editor is not meant for terrain editing itself (it is for scenario editing).


• One of the more powerful aspects of Eden is the ability to mod the editor itself and write custom plugins. Some mods have already started to experiment with this!

LOGISTICS

Bohemia Interactive's various offices and teams are on the look out for great new comrades. Available roles range from (Tools) Programmers to Artists and more. If you're interested, or know someone who might be, please visit the careers page for more details.


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