FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: RC Official Servers, Top 10 Eden Editor, Report In! Project
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

We've been getting a lot of good feedback and issue reports from the Eden Update (1.56) Release Candidate branch. A number of fixes were deployed and some are close to being committed. This week we'll continue testing and you can still help out. There are a number of official servers online that run the build. Find them by going to the new Launcher Server Browser and filtering for official servers. You can also favorite them for quick access later. These servers may be offline for updates occasionally, but we'll try to keep them up to provide a place to play-test. Thankfully, there are also a number of unofficial servers being hosted by community admins and mod(e) teams. Did you also know that you can use our Game Updater tool to install multiple branches at the same time? Keep your reports to Feedback Tracker coming. We're as excited as you to get the update to everyone's PC once it feels solid!

INTELLIGENCE

The best way to experience why the new Eden Editor is such a leap forward for scenario design and sandbox fun is to start digging into it yourself. However, to give you a quick overview, head over to our blog on the top 10 most exciting features. One of the items on the list is moddability, which is evident from certain modders having begun integration of their projects already! Documentation on this topic and the whole editor is growing on the Community Wiki. We also happened upon a nice unofficial tutorial video of the editor's basics courtesy of Cydrann.






Wishing you a Happy Lunar New Year, we're running sales of our games both on the Bohemia Interactive Store and Steam. This could be another great opportunity to recruit your friends just in time for Eden Update. They may want to consider the Apex Edition as the best and most complete option to get into combat.




Go behind the scenes of Arma 3's development and join former Project Lead Joris-Jan van 't Land for a trip down memory lane. In the first Report In! developer interview of 2016, we discuss his history with the company, the Arma 3 project, and offer a few glimpses of what's on the horizon.




One of those things is the Tanoa terrain. On this week's dev photo you can see members of the tireless Environment department discussing one of the key locations: the Blue Pearl Industrial Port. The team has been playing quite a number of multiplayer sessions on Tanoa recently, and it's very cool to see more and more final art assets helping to bring the fresh atmosphere to reality. Combat in this green hell is tense and already feels very different to Altis and Stratis. We'll have more to share later in the year.

OPERATIONS

Our Playable Content ranks were reinforced not long ago by Designer Jan Čepera. You may know his name as a member of the team behind Deliverance, bronze winner in the Singleplayer category of Make Arma Not War. In order to get embedded with our team, one of his first goals was to evaluate the official The East Wind campaign. He especially looked at how the many recent sandbox changes affected the campaign and where we might do small tweaks. Some of this gameplay balancing and extra context-sensitive hints will be part of Eden Update. With other major improvements, such as the combat sound effects, we can definitely recommend replaying the campaign. And give the Deliverance campaign a go as well!

Speaking of The East Wind, do watch the unofficial "Opération Bellérophon" prologue machinima by the GSRI unit. It ties in with events in the Armaverse and is a great start to what will hopefully be an on-going series.

LOGISTICS

The battle against hacks and cheats in multiplayer continues with another anti-cheat update via BattlEye. Please visit their Frequently Asked Questions page if you encounter issues connected directly to this service. By reacting to new threats quickly, we hope to keep the game more playable for everyone.

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Eden Release Candidate, Ongoing Investigations, Simple Objects
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Release Candidate testing for the 1.56 Eden Update has now kicked off in earnest. If you'd like to participate, the Steam branch access code is: Arma3Update156RC. The actual release date will be determined based on test results, but it should be somewhere in the middle of this month. Please visit the Dev Hub overview page with details and some cautions. One particular warning this time around is one-way compatibility of campaign save games. You will not be able to load 1.56 saves in the older 1.54 version due to fixes to inventory serialization. Campaign saves do carry over from 1.54 to the newer 1.56 (overall progress, not mid-scenario). Please keep this in mind and consider backing up your saves before switching branches. Alternatively you could use a new user profile to carry out RC tests. Thank you all in advance for helping us move towards a solid release!

INTELLIGENCE

The Arma 3 subreddit has welcomed a new mascot, designed by Bohemia Interactive Artist Ziying Shao. We'd like to also recognize the awesome volunteer work done by the subreddit command staff. They are doing a great job moderating, informing and styling this community. Snoo salutes you!




Because the Internet was in need of more puppies, the latest dev photo features Flyn, the new Bravo team guard dog. Background details include Senior Designer Vladimír Hynek, who has been working on preparing the new fonts for Eden Update. An extra benefit of this work is that the game will also support more Asian language characters. Even though no official Chinese translation exists, the game will be able to display the most relevant text characters, as requested.




The Electronic Sports Masters organization held the finals for their A-Series global Capture The Flag league. Our friend MicOne shoutcasted the event, during which Russian KND.Squad battled Spanish 88th Co. "Walking Death" for first place. You can view the entire session in this recording, and be sure to keep an eye on ESM channels for future events.



You may also like the short "ARMA Noir" machinima made by Ed Vyse. Its style and choice of music are different to what we're used to seeing for Arma videos - keep it going!

OPERATIONS

We've been asked about the status of various on-going issue hunts. First of all, there are undefined circumstances under which uniforms disappear in multiplayer. So far a specific and clean repro method is missing and that makes it harder to track the source problem. If you have an isolated repro, please do share it in the relevant ticket. This appears to mostly happen in modes which use a lot of inventory scripting. One angle of attack for us is to work on low-level multiplayer inventory optimizations. These should result in a set of script commands that can fetch and apply load-outs in a much more network-friendly manner, and therefore help to avoid many kinds of inventory glitches. Parts of this code are already in use in Eden Editor's Arsenal integration, but it's not quite ready yet for more widespread usage. We'll be trialing this ourselves in the Revive system.

The Altis Life server crashes are even harder to solve. It's not possible for us to host this kind of server in the full debugging environment. The required mods are too complex and unfortunately suffer from data errors in many places, resulting in vast amounts of log warnings that complicate finding any pertinent information. Note that these log errors don't even necessarily show during normal gameplay, but they spam the debuggers. We're also not ruling out there is indeed an issue in the engine that might be causing these crashes, but all we've been able to do is add more and more diagnostics to the special profiling builds, and ask administrators to test these. One such build was published today, so we've not given up.

Meanwhile, Lead Programmer Vojtěch Hladík has begun work on a suite of script commands that allow the creation of simple objects (decorative). This type of object is not simulated like a full object (or vehicle) and therefore costs fewer computing resources. They also do not need to be synchronized over the network as frequently. That does mean they miss a lot of functionality, like interaction and destruction. The main goal for these simple objects is to build cool object compositions in critical scenario / mode areas. It's also being considered how to integrate creation of these objects into Eden Editor post-release.

LOGISTICS

Another small anti-cheat update was deployed to main branch via BattlEye last week.




We're closing this week's report with a follow-up to the new animations mentioned Martin Kašpar has published a quick video to show the difference more clearly, and he's posted a script snippet to show how you can trigger the old variants in specific custom cutscenes. For reference: the new animation classes are "AmovPercMwlkSlowWrflDf_ver2" (walk) and "AmovPercMtacSlowWrflDf_ver2" (tactical), versus the old "AmovPercMwlkSlowWrflDf" (walk) and "AmovPercMtacSlowWrflDf" (tactical).

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Eden Update Consolidation, Audio Fidelity, Weapon Switching
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

We now have a pretty good picture of the consolidated Eden Update package. It is shaping up to be an awesome free update to Arma 3, made possible by your support for the game. We have created our data snapshot and applied the usual development locks, so that we can begin to focus on testing and tweaking the update as a whole. This also means that we'll open the Steam Release Candidate testing branch this or next week.

We'll do our best to stress test the update ourselves and to ensure that no new issues are introduced. We do however really need your help, especially when it comes to custom mods and other variables we can't directly control. Please focus on truly new issues and report them to Feedback Tracker with a clear indication that they were tested in the RC build. If an issue looks like it may be in custom content, kindly forward the details to the authors of that content as well. There are a number of complex platform changes that may affect compatibility even though we've striven to guard back-compat throughout. The powerful new Eden Editor affects code in the engine that is shared by both editors, the low-level audio engine was overhauled, many scripted functions were optimized and replaced by script command calls, etc. All of these will bring the platform forward in huge ways, but there is an element of risk. Together we can minimize problems, and should they occur, we'll work hard to solve them as quickly as possible. Ultimately the game will be much better for it!

INTELLIGENCE

Audio Designer Kryštof Havel has taken on new duties, as witnessed on a recent dev photo. He can be seen applying a coat of anti-gloss make-up to Programmer Filip Sádovský, one of the stars of an upcoming new dev diary about the Eden Editor.




Take a look at how pretty Clocktacular makes our game and your mods look in his gallery of screenshots covering a year of operations! Another gallery worth sharing was uploaded by Btodan. Looking great folks, keep them coming!

OPERATIONS

The Arma 3 soundscape is in for a real treat in Eden Update. Parts of the audio engine foundation work was included with the previous update, but in 1.56 we're going to really make use of the new possibilities. Audio Lead Jan Dušek has more:

"As part of our effort to refactor the audio engine and our plan to unify sound configuration, we are introducing a new sound object architecture. This new configuration replaces the old inconsistent approach, which was the result of many years of adding specific features (like sample arrays) to specific sound categories. Now, you will be able to use all low-level sound features everywhere the new configuration is applied. Currently, this new system is only used for shooting and explosions but, in future, it will cover most significant sound categories.

So, on Dev-Branch you can already hear two of the most significant features: 'distant samples' and the 'multi-channel panner' (a smoother transition between ambient and positional sound, which is used mainly for reflection tails). The actual state is a work in progress, and we're still processing feedback and resolving issues / making optimizations. Apart from this, it's worth mentioning that there is also a new class CfgSoundGlobals, which contains default / global sound settings. More detailed information is coming soon!"

In the past, we've hinted at an overhaul of our approach to weapon switching, which we'd targeted for Eden Update. To make good on that, version 1.56 will introduce new control options to quickly switch weapon types in vehicles, like it is for infantry. For now, you will need to bind these manually and experiment with convenient buttons, but later we plan on integrating these actions into our presets, once potential conflicts have been resolved.

If you'd like to play around with this on Dev-Branch, go to the Configure > Controls > Weapons tab and map the switching controls you want. As a character, you can switch to your primary weapon, secondary weapon or sidearm via dedicated controls. Pressing the same control again will start cycling firing modes for that weapon, if more are available. In vehicles, we have divided the weapons over four abstract groups. Going from group 1 to 4, these typically are: cannons or machine guns, machine guns or rockets, guided missiles, bombs or laser designators - dependent on the vehicle (there is config control over this categorization). We look forward to the feedback on this new technology, and can't wait to roll it out fully on the road to Apex.

LOGISTICS

Programmer Krzysztof Bielawski has made several scenario designers unreasonably happy with increased control over AI entities. Using script commands disableAI and enableAI, you can now toggle two additional sections: "AUTOCOMBAT" and "COVER". The former controls the autonomous switching to combat behavior when the entity detects danger. Having this disabled lets you be the one who commands their behavior, but that also means you become responsible for those poor souls. The second section toggles the AI's usage of cover positions around them in the environment. Let us know how you feel about these options in this forums thread.

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Scanning the Horizon, Apex Pre-Orders, Visual Update Status
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

For this week's overview of the situation, we'll join Creative Brit Jay Crowe for his annual scanning of the horizon (~ > 3 > 7). In both text and video form, he has reflected on 10 outstanding bits of progress and looked ahead to just 10 of the splendid things to look forward to in 2016. If you pay close attention, you'll see glimpses of work-in-progress concepts for the new NATO VTOL aircraft and both NATO's and CSAT's Light Strike Vehicles. The latter are going to be a blast to drive across Tanoa, with mounted weapon variants and lots of Firing From Vehicles possibilities. We've also not yet confirmed all vehicles, let alone weapons, for Apex. The same is true for features. We do have more things in the pipeline, but will confirm and share those once we're confident we can finish them properly. Keep your attention locked to the Dev Hub over the next few months!

INTELLIGENCE

We have opened pre-orders for the Apex expansion via our own store with a 20% discount. Let's clear up a few confusions:

• We effectively sell Steam versions, and Arma 3 remains exclusively distributed via Steam. That means you can order it from us even if you've purchased directly from Steam before.


• If you own the limited Supporter Edition (no longer available), you already own Apex (because it's not a stand-alone expansion). Thank you for having faith in us from the start and being a long-term contributor to the game's continued development!


• If you own the physical Special Edition, you already own Apex (because you're special!).


• No other previously released editions or bundles contain Apex (it was not part of the Digital Deluxe Edition, Extended Edition, nor the DLC Bundle).


• The Extended Edition has been retired in our store and replaced by the new Apex Edition for the same price. This is the best deal for new players, containing Arma 3, Digital Deluxe content, the DLC Bundle (Karts / Helicopters / Marksmen) and Apex itself.


• Visit this page for another overview of all editions.

If you do already own Apex, you'll be among the first to experience its content ahead of release. We don't yet have precise dates, but we do intend to stage Apex in chunks on Content Licensing, so you can even try those for free with some limitations. Tanoa itself however, will require ownership to visit.

Also new in our store is new (Arma 3) merchandise, which many of you have requested for some time. Check out our regular T-shirts as well as special Tanoa designs! We even plan to offer new designs on a monthly basis, so keep checking back.




Last week's random dev photo is a snapshot of Team Mike's Playable Content pin board. On it we see some important project mantras, inspiring quotes and cartoons, the awesome custom Resist calendar, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" IT instructions, balanced meal options and finally the corks that were popped to celebrate various major releases.

OPERATIONS

In our video update we also mention that the Visual Update, previously planned for Eden Update, has now slipped to Apex. Only the parallax ground surfaces will go out with 1.56, but the rest of the changes still need more work to leave a good first impression. What makes up the rest of this package? There is the overhauled lighting configuration itself, for all terrains, times of day and weather (contrast, saturation, etc.). Then there is multi-component fog simulation, a better shore shader and the optional Screen Space Reflections (these can be too demanding for some systems). It's possible you'll see them appear on Dev-Branch.

LOGISTICS

Arma 3 launched with a very distinctive animation for walking and for moving in tactical pace with your weapon lowered. In some cases it looked good, but especially when seeing groups on patrol, it came across a bit too 'cool' and unnatural. We've added a new version in the game on Dev-Branch, which has characters holding their weapon with both hands. The original animation set remains available in the game and is accessible using the original class names. It is however not triggered in the default movement set.

In follow-up to last week's information about analytics, we've posted a Community Wiki article with some extra information. Yes, server administrators can indeed elect to opt out. We did already see some early data on Dev-Branch users. To be clear, those numbers are really only from that branch in recent days and not the much larger general player population. We hope to share more interesting information later.

Bohemia Interactive presents 2016 plans for Arma 3
Arma 3 Apex now available for pre-order on the Bohemia Store

Prague, Czech Republic, Thursday January 14th 2016

Entering its third year since official release, Bohemia Interactive today revealed some of their plans for Arma 3 in 2016. Via a new video blog, Creative Director Jay Crowe provides an overview of the ten most significant highlights of 2015, and a list of the ten most important things to look forward to in the upcoming year. Among the most anticipated items will be the release of the Arma 3 Apex expansion, which will bring players to the 100 km² South Pacific island archipelago of Tanoa. The Apex expansion will be supported by new vehicles and weapons, a co-op campaign - and a free platform update that will improve Arma 3's graphics, audio, usability, and more.

In terms of updates, the year will be kicked of by the release of the free Arma 3 Eden Update in February. This update will introduce the Eden 3D Editor – a brand scenario editor which will enable users to place and edit objects, define waypoints, set mission objectives, and more, directly within the 3D game environment. This represents a massive leap forward from the classic scenario editor, which has been a staple of the Arma series since its conception. Another welcome addition will be the new Launcher-based Server Browser, which will make it much easier for players to search and join a multiplayer server of their liking. Another highlight of the Eden Update will be the audio improvements, which come in the form of new audio configurations and samples. The update will be further complemented by a variety of usability improvements. Among the changes will be the replacement of the in-game font, which should make in-game text better legible.

Next up in line is 2016's Apex. Similar to previous Arma 3 DLC, the Arma 3 Apex expansion will deliver new premium content, and a free platform update available to everyone who owns Arma 3. In terms of premium content, Arma 3 Apex' crown jewel is Tanoa – the new terrain which was first revealed at E3 last year. In addition, the expansion will include new vehicles and weapons, and a co-op campaign. While more specific details will be unveiled at a later date, new vehicle classes, namely Light Strike Vehicles and VTOL aircraft, have been confirmed to be among the Apex arsenal. To make the new content shine, the free platform update will provide a graphics upgrade that will apply to the entire game. The upgrade includes an overhaul of the game lighting configuration, and introduction of new Sea Shader and Screen-space Reflections technology.

Bohemia Interactive also plans to build upon their new (web-based) service, Arma 3 Units. Launched in basic form at the end of last year, Arma 3 Units aims to connect players and Arma community groups. In the near future, Bohemia Interactive will increase the functionality by enabling users to join units with their Bohemia Account, manage unit roles, schedule events, post announcements, and more. Further down the line, the studio intends to integrate parts of the service into the game itself.

Arma 3 - Scanning The Horizon 2016


The Arma 3 Apex expansion, and the supporting free platform update, is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2016. As of today, enthusiasts will be able to pre-order the Arma 3 Apex expansion on the Bohemia Store (regular price: 29.99 EUR / 24.99 GBP / 34.99 USD – pre-order price (20% discount): 23.99 EUR / 19.99 GBP / 27.99 USD). Those who are new to Arma 3, but want the most complete experience, can choose to pick up the Arma 3 Apex Edition (price: 59.99 EUR / 44.99 GBP / 69.99 USD), which includes the Arma 3 Digital Deluxe Edition, all Arma 3 DLC released so far (Karts/Helicopters/Marksmen), and the Arma 3 Apex expansion.

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Analytics, Dev-Branch Activity, Geometric Occluders, Parallax Improvements, Font Changes
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

As we eluded to last week, Dev-Branch is seeing interesting changes on an almost daily basis now. Creative Director Jay Crowe has been offering some highlights from the forums change logs via Twitter #DevBranchThisWeek, and we will elaborate on several more in this report. All components of the Eden Update are coming together and soon the whole package will be available for testing. Your feedback on this daily experimental Steam branch is very useful to the game's development. We would however like to remind you that this version of the game is not intended for regular play. If you're brave enough to storm the front lines of development, please let us know about specific issues on the Feedback Tracker or general thoughts via the forums.

INTELLIGENCE

In the most recent weekly dev (live) photo, some of the Mike team were a little too excited to bombard yours truly with snowballs. They claim to have been defending Edita while she's hibernating, but we all know better!




Associate Producer and Localization Champion Vojtěch Schubert reminds us that Bohemia Interactive is always on the look-out for talented new team members for its various projects and locations. Keep checking our careers page for positions that might be up your alley. Perhaps we'll see you at our next elite snowball fight!




It's time for some Spanish REPception! The team behind the FFAA mod have posted a SITuation REPort of their own and kindly translated it on our forums. The biggest thing they have in development is a stand-alone terrain called Lythium. It will let players set their scenarios in tribal areas of Afghanistan and is crossed by a large valley that stretches across the map. We wish the team well as they work on finishing this promising project.



We were also impressed by a new look at the grim atmosphere created in 2017 mod's terrain: Bamburgh. There's a lot of attention to detail, with unique structures and objects used to build many unique locations. We look forward to exploring this unsettling world once it gets released!

OPERATIONS

OK, so let's get to the meat of this report and take a closer look at the platform updates coming your way. Project Lead Petr Kolář kicks off with a description of several technical improvements:

"There are plenty of new features heading onto Dev-Branch just as you read these lines. Our programmers have decided to make the lives of content creators easier, mainly for those creating new models. They will be able to use a technology that generates shadows of objects on-the-fly based on the shape of a resolution LOD. Two occlusion-related features are joining the party too, one of them being a new ambient occlusion technology HBAO+ (available in the Video Options > AA & PP). The other allows creators to place shapes and faces that prevent drawing of anything behind the so-called Geometric Occluders (developed for our company's new Enfusion engine, parts of which can still benefit Arma 3). This has not been fully implemented in our data yet, but it should provide a gain of performance mainly in urban areas. Existing content will continue to work, but using the new tech will require models to be updated to benefit from it.

All these new features still need to be properly documented, and that brings us to the most important change: new parallax technology for ground surfaces. It's been already documented on the Community Wiki, because it changes the way parallax behaves even for custom-made terrains! The effect will likely work, but its depth may be more than you'd like. See the documentation for a simple guide on how to correct this. The major benefit of this change is to remove the ugly artifacts when moving close to the ground. We hope you are going to like these post-holiday gifts and we're looking for your feedback on them."




Next up is a change that is rather in your face. We're going to change the fonts for the game, Launcher and later also other places such as this very website. The goal is to make text look crisper and achieve greater legibility. As we're sure you know, some characters are currently hard to distinguish from each other for example. Besides the look and feel of the font, we've also improved memory consumption by utilizing texture sharing. This will mostly help with various Asian languages that have massive character sets. In turn, this has led to significant improvements to the FontToTGA tool.

LOGISTICS

Another significant new technology is not something you'll actually see or notice while playing. BI's Chief Technology Officer Petr Benýšek introduces us to more advanced analytics in Arma 3 (and our other games):

"Since the release of Arma 3, we've had a general overview of how the game is being played, what game mod(e)s are most popular and what people like or dislike. But this information was coming mostly from the vocal part of our community. The feedback on the forums and other channels is great and will still be used as until now. Nevertheless, it doesn't give us completely objective and unbiased information and it doesn't include feedback from a considerable part of our players. A popular and nowadays broadly used way of gathering data about player behavior is through game analytics. This allows us to know better our players (without actually disturbing them while playing), and thanks to that, to build a better gaming experience.

Along with the update 1.56, we are introducing game analytics into Arma 3. Its purpose is to collect basic information about the game, such as game settings, enabled mods, favorite scenarios and weapons, player deaths or actual performance, and report them to our analytics server. If you don't want to be part of that, you will have an option to disable it in the Launcher options. Fear not however, the amount of data is small and should not affect your gameplay experience in any way. It's also all anonymous and the data will be used solely for understanding how Arma 3 is being played. The more data we will gather, the more precisely we will know what you like in the game and how you play it - which in turn will guide us to set our priorities and make the game better for you."

We'd like to add that we see this as an additional tool for our decision-making process, but we do not intent in any way to let analytics data be our sole or primary input. We'll continue to engage with players via all channels and your feedback will remain a hugely important part of our development methods. Analytics will help us with decisions such as the removal of redundant video options, proving that such options are indeed no longer in use. Or we can use them to learn what parameters to expose more clearly in our Launcher. They may also be used to measure how two approaches to a solution on Dev-Branch work in the actual game for example.

It's been a long time coming, but we've finally found a moment to restore amphibious simulation to tracked vehicles (for the tankx PhysX-based simulation class if you'd like to get technical). Programmer Tomáš Nezval has now added the engine-side implementation, but it will require updated vehicle configurations to make use of this. Our vanilla tracked vehicles have not needed an amphibious capability thus far, but there are several big mods who will benefit from this functionality being back in the game.




Another cool addition for vehicles is the ability to set up wrecks to use the dynamically textured livery of the vehicle. Until now, there would be a generic wreck for every variant of a vehicle. Visit the Community Wiki for details on how to encode your vehicle to use this feature created by Senior Programmer BXBX. Be mindful of performance though; this type of proxy is more taxing on the engine than a simple one.

Finally, yesterday we published a small anti-cheat update by our partners at BattlEye to the main branch of the game.

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Happy 2016, Mod Showcases, Server Browsing
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Welcome to another great year for Arma 3! In 2016 we'll be releasing the free Eden Update and the Apex expansion, both of which contain their obvious core components as well as a plethora of other additions and improvements. During the first quarter you'll see us focusing on Eden, with plenty of activity on Dev-Branch leading up to the update itself. The second quarter will finally deliver more details on the contents of the expansion. It's also when our window for letting you board your flights to Tanoa opens.

A warm welcome as well to the many new recruits who joined the Arma 3 ranks during the winter sales. You've picked an excellent moment to jump in. Not only do we remain committed to improving the game and its platform, so does the ever-growing community of content creators. Several massive mods were released in 2015, with many more on the way. We're also curious about the smaller, experimental and slightly crazy mods that will showcase the capabilities of our engine. And let's not forget the boost in custom scenarios after Eden Editor becomes available to everyone.

Happy New Year!

INTELLIGENCE

Sometimes we'll see videos come along that capture the essence of Arma 3's combined arms warfare very well. DuckRustler of the Rifling Matters unit has made one such cool montage of their varied multiplayer ops last year. Great job!



It's almost impossible to comprehend the huge amount of content added to the game via the Community Upgrade Project. This inspiring collaboration of community modders is focused on bringing our Arma 2 assets to Arma 3 with many lovely upgrades. They have recently released the next major component of this effort: all legacy Terrains. From Chernarus to Takistan and Shapur to Proving Grounds, this pack expands the sandbox in mind-boggling dimensions. The team has build upon the groundwork done in the A3MP and AiA terrain packs, so kudos to their authors as well. Just take a look at this short video to get an impression of the variety in biotopes you are able to conveniently play in. CUP is also very well set up for our Launcher's mod dependencies, so both installing and updating are super smooth.



We can also recommend you check out the updated and consolidated release of Resist. This winning Make Arma Not War entry is a perfect fit with the vanilla campaign (author Kydoimos recommends you temporarily disable other mods to experience the scenarios as intended). You play Cpl. Coleridge in parallel to the events of "Survive". We're still amazed to see the splendid presentation, custom voice-acting, original sound track and many awesome details such as new objects and character emblems. The missions can also be quite challenging, so bring your A-game to the Stratis front lines!

OPERATIONS

Browsing multiplayer servers is long due an enhancement. That's why we've investigated the best way to improve this functionality for Arma 3. The first results can be seen on Dev-Branch as of late last year. We're adding a better Server Browser to the Launcher. It has more powerful filtering options and will be able to handle mod dependencies better. Read a more detailed report in a recent OPREP by Senior Designer Bořivoj Hlava. If you've already given the browser a try yourself, pop by the forums to share your feedback!







A second new OPREP was posted by Community Developer Greg Becksted soon thereafter; this one a retrospective on the End Game Tournament. Greg explains what our motivations and goals for this first official tournament were, and discusses the lessons we've learned for the future. We have definitely enjoyed the experience a lot and feel like it has brought several player communities closer together. Let us know what you'd like to see next. Perhaps you can be the winner of a special award in 2016!







Encoding Lead Martin Gregor would like to let you know that there are going to be some changes to how assets are categorized in our scenario editor(s). To facilitate a more useful organisation in the many assets for Eden Editor , new properties and categories will be created and assets are to be moved between them. This may also affect the current 2D editor in a few cases, since these changes happen on an object-level (don't worry - there will not be drastic class name alterations for example - we'll document the configuration options soon). In addition, more objects will become available (e.g. military cargo buildings, other structures and ruins) to place in your scenarios and to create nice compositions.

LOGISTICS

A second 1.54 hotfix was released just before the winter break. It addressed various (mod) compatibility issues, fixed game instabilities and made small tweaks to weapon sway. There are however still several things we're working on solving as soon as possible:

• We've temporarily disabled white-listing functionality in the remote execution technology. Once the tech was broadly enabled for standard scripted functions like BIS_fnc_MP, a lot of back-compat issues arose in custom scenarios. Or rather: the tech worked, but it asked for too many manual changes from server admins / scenario designers to set up their white-listing properly. Not doing so would cause parts of the tech to be disabled, and the scenarios to be crippled. It's important to note that you can still disable the technology, but you cannot allow it selectively at the moment. Operation mode 1 is currently doing the same as 2, whereas 0 still disables it. We are looking at an alternative solution that achieves the security and functionality with greater back-compat.


• In order to isolate Altis Life server crashes, our programmers have continued to roll out special profiling executables leading up to Xmas. This has now finally pointed us in the direction of a source problem. Something is going wrong in specific character animations, and we're honing in on a solution.


• Some players are seeing performance issues connected to audio, especially during intense fire fights. A fix for this is being tested on Dev Branch, but it's being reported that you can use this work-around: try configuring your Windows sound Default Format to 16 bit, 44100 Hz.

Our partners at Virtual Programming have been working hard on updating the client port betas to 1.54. We're testing these updates in-house right now. There are a few issues that need to be solved before we can release them to you as well. Meanwhile we're discussing with VP and BattlEye whether it might be possible to support the anti-cheat service on the port platforms in the future. We'll keep you updated!

Version 1.0.1 (02.01.2016)

+ ADDED: Editor entries for A1 and A2 objects
+ ADDED: Support for MapBuilder

@ FIXED: Missing AiA TP compatibility entries
@ FIXED: Wrong faction configuration leading to potential CTD when using 3DEN
@ FIXED: Bargate rotated by 90° on ArmA2 maps
ATTENTION terrain creators: those of who you already compensated the wrong rotation
on their ArmA3 terrains, might need to compensate that again

^ IMPROVED: Different signature keys for Core and Maps (Full will be signed with Core + Maps)

v 1.1 date 20/DEC/2015
- Fixed: Updated with new armor system for vest and headgear
- added A2 ported uniforms for Chernarus, NAPA, Insurgents and FIA
- added custom vest, helmets, headgear and backpacks
- updated camouflages
- Moved Chernarus Governatives to Blufor like in Arma2
- Removed UN forces to avoid duplicate with my African Conflict units
- vehicles are now optional, to use them install optional vehicle config as written in install instructions
- Added Urals: covert, open, reammo, repair, ZU23 and BM21
- added HIGH DISPERSION variants to all factions: units are equipped with high dispersion weapons to improve fire-fights duration and give the feeling of low trained units

Changelog.
v 1.11 date 18/DEC/2015
- Updated the ammo hit values to BI and other mods standards
- Tweaked a little bit the PSO optics
- Added SD subsonic ammo also for pistols