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  SITREP #00076 Official    

On September 30, 2014 , Joris-Jan van 't Land has reported a SITREP #00076 on the official Arma 3 web site.

FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Helicopters release date, Multiplayer update
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

The release date for Arma 3 Helicopters has been announced as November 4th of this year. Initially estimated as late September, we've determined we need an extra month of tweaking before the package is splendid. Ahead of release, we will be staging the content on Dev-Branch (more details on how that will work in an upcoming report). Besides the release date, we also unveiled the second brand-new helicopter: Mi-290 Taru. This heavy coaxial utility helicopter fits the CSAT faction well, and brings some unique logistical options to the sandbox in a different way than the CH-67 Huron does. Taru variants make use of the modular design by joining various mission pods to its frame. Alternatively it can carry heavy Sling Loads when flying without pod at all. The mission pods available are: regular closed passenger transport, special-purpose passenger benches, fuel, ammunition, repairs, medevac and cargo. Its advantage over the Huron is the ability to quickly fly supplies as part of its aerodynamic shape, rather than needing to fly more carefully with an externally slung container. On the other hand it has no defensive weapons besides countermeasures. Oh, and since we didn't specifically mention it in the press release: owners of the Supporter Edition will of course get the DLC without extra charge.

Yesterday we've updated main branch of the game with the 1.30 hotfix that had been tested and iterated for a while. As the term 'hotfix' implies, this is not a full update; it targets multiplayer optimization only. With great help from various community groups and mods, we see improvements in this version. That's not to say we're done. As with many optimizations, they may only benefit specific mod(e)s, servers or players. For example, some types of multiplayer scenario do a lot of initial scripted setup or send a lot of data during a Join-In-Progress. Such cases should be helped by these changes. More optimizations will be pursued based on logs gathered from other test sessions.

INTELLIGENCE


Version 1.30 adds the extended netcode diagnostic options to main branch. Willing server admins may help us gather even more data to base future optimizations on. Command-line parameter -networkDiagInterval=X will poll the status of bandwidth, traffic and similar data every X seconds. We'd like admins experiencing desync or other netcode issues to try and enable these diagnostics and send us the results on Feedback Tracker. The parameter is disabled by default because it may reduce performance when used.

Yet another livestream was hosted last Friday. Matt Lightfoot invited Creative Director Jay Crowe and Encoding Lead Petr Kolár along for the bouncy ride. Together they risked a sneak peak on Dev-Branch to have some fun with the new features arriving for everyone alongside Arma 3 Helicopters. The mad ordeal involved Sling Loading rubber boats under helicopters and having people inside said boats engage each other mid-flight. Several issues were still observed, but that's why they are still being tested and fixed for several weeks. There's a lot of potential for both authentic and completely crazy concepts!

OPERATIONS

Our Encoding department has added a parameter to asset configurations which can assist modders in determining what features are supported by specific assets (livery randomization, camo selections, Sling Loading, Firing from Vehicles, etc.). Config parameter features is also used in the exported asset listing on the Community Wiki. The configuration and export process is still a work-in-progress, so other categories will be done over time.

LOGISTICS

What's new for scripters on Dev-Branch? There is a set of commands to deal with various types of vehicle lights: isLightOn, isCollisionLightOn, setPilotLight and setCollisionLight. Secondly, a series of commands for vehicle turrets and their weapons were added: addWeaponTurret, removeWeaponTurret and turretLocal.

Tools Commissar Julien Vida reports on a potential work-around for modders who are experiencing difficulties with their P-drive. It may be that your system's PATH enviornment variable is not configured correctly. Please take great care when trying to adjust it as is described here.


  September 30th, 2014 - 19:15 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

  SPOTREP #00033 : Hotfix: 1.30 Official    

On September 29, 2014 , Joris-Jan van 't Land has reported a SPOTREP #00033 on the official Arma 3 web site.

FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
UNIT: Main Branch
ACTIVITY: Hotfix: 1.30 (Multiplayer desync improvements)
SIZE: ~23 MB / ~8 MB

NOTES
  • Consider using the Steam client option to verify the integrity of the local game cache to avoid corrupted data after downloading this update.

  • A Legacy Build Steam branch is available for advanced users. It contains the previous significant main branch version (1.24). It can be used to compare specific changes between major releases. The access code for this branch is: Arma3Legacy124

CHANGELOG

DATA:

  • Fixed: LEARN > COMMUNITY GUIDES videos were no longer working due to a YouTube URL format change

ENGINE:

  • Multiplayer optimizations to attempt to combat desync

  • Updated: Voice-over-Net library (Speex)

  • Added: Extended multiplayer statistics and diagnostics (-networkDiagInterval=X, X is the amount of seconds between each diagnostics polling)

  • Fixed: Stack overflow crash


  September 29th, 2014 - 15:49 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

  Arma 3 Helicopters DLC available on November 4th Official    

Korneel van 't Land has informed us about the upcoming Arma 3 Helicopters DLC release‏ date.

Arma 3 Helicopters DLC available on November 4th
Fly two brand new heavy-lift helicopters, supported by new content and features
Prague, Czech Republic, Thursday September 25th 2014

Bohemia Interactive today announced the official release date for Arma 3’s second premium DLC, Arma 3 Helicopters. Lifting off on November 4th, the new DLC will introduce the highly detailed CH-67 Huron and Mi-290 Taru heavy-lift helicopters, and will be supported by a variety of free new content and features in an accompanying Arma 3 platform update.

The CH-67 Huron is a twin-engine, tandem rotor heavy-lift helicopter. It is a modernized version of the CH-47 Chinook and its primary role is the transportation of troops, vehicles and cargo. The Huron exists in two variants: the armed variant with two side gunners manning 6.5 mm gatling guns, and the transport version which replaces the gunners with two additional passenger positions.



The Mi-290 Taru is a heavy utility helicopter with coaxial rotors and a unique modular construction. Various mission pods allow the Taru to serve many different roles. It can transport cargo, troops, and provide battlefield supplies (ammunition, fuel, repair facilities, and medical equipment). The helicopter can also transport light vehicles thanks to its sling loading capabilities. The latter, sling loading, is a brand new feature in Arma 3, and will be demonstrated in the official Sling Loading showcase scenario, which is included in the Helicopters DLC package.



Overall, the addition of the two new helicopters and their skin variants will place a stronger emphasis on the role of logistics in Arma 3’s open-world combat. This idea is complemented by the upcoming Arma 3 platform update, which delivers a variety of free new playable content, alongside multiple game-changing features.

In terms of content, the Arma 3 platform update will ship the brand new Support multiplayer mode, where players will need to provide various types of helicopter support – such as troop transport and medevac – in Sector Control multiplayer scenarios. In addition, the update will include a set of ten VR Training helicopter stages, and five helicopter Time Trials, of which four will be exclusive to Helicopters DLC owners. A variety of new in-game objects, ranging from landing platforms to military decorations and more, will also be made available to Arma 3 content creators. Plus, Bohemia Interactive will add a related set of new Steam Achievements to the game.

With regards to the new features, the Arma 3 platform update comes with the optional RotorLib helicopter flight model, which is an upgraded version of the flight model used in Bohemia Interactive’s Take On Helicopters. Furthermore, the platform update will include the aforementioned new ability to sling load cargo, and last but certainly not least: the much-anticipated firing-from-vehicles feature. This functionality enables vehicle passengers to fire their weapon while seated.

The Arma 3 Helicopters DLC will be available on November 4th for 12.99 EUR/10.99 GBP/15.99 USD on Steam and Store.bistudio.com. People can already purchase the Arma 3 DLC Bundle, which includes the Arma 3 Karts, Arma 3 Helicopters, and the upcoming Arma 3 Marksmen DLC, for 19.99 EUR/16.99 GBP/24.99 USD on Steam and Store.bistudio.com. As a result of Bohemia Interactive’s new approach to DLC in Arma 3, which the studio announced in May, players will be able to try out all new DLC content before buying.

To enlist for Arma 3 service, people can purchase 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 containing more than 350 pages, and Bohemia Interactive’s debut game Arma: Cold War Assault - from Steam and Store.bistudio.com. A boxed version of Arma 3 is sold at many major high-street retailers.


  September 25th, 2014 - 22:29 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

  SITREP #00075 Official    

On September 23, 2014 , Joris-Jan van 't Land has reported a SITREP #00075 on the official Arma 3 web site.

FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Helicopters DLC status, Firing from Vehicles Dev-Branch
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Let's take a look at the status of Arma 3 Helicopters as a whole. The two new helicopters and their variants are Beta in our internal milestones. The artwork is complete, cockpit instruments configured, crew animations plugged in, and most recently, sound effects enabled. We're very happy with the results, and will keep tweaking them for a solid release. The supporting playable content (some of which is premium content, and other bits will be added to everyone for free), sits somewhere between Alpha and Beta. Our designers are play-testing daily to offer an introduction to beginning helicopter pilots and provide a new multiplayer experience based around aerial logistics. As of yesterday, Firing from Vehicles has been staged to Dev-Branch. This means all three major features complementing the helicopters are in Beta and in testing: RotorLib Flight Dynamics Modeling, Sling Loading and Firing from Vehicles. Your feedback has already helped us improve the first two, and we're tracking your reports on the latest addition. To iterate again, these features are part of a free platform update to Arma 3, not locked to owners of the DLC.

INTELLIGENCE

1.30 hotfix testing and iterating continues on the Steam Release Candidate and Profiling branches. The (slow) procedure is as follows:

  • We place a RC version of the game on its Steam branch (access code Arma3Hotfix130).

  • Online Services technician David Foltýn updates his special testing servers and enables extensive netcode logging.

  • We ask a mix of internal testers and community players to connect and play on this server.

  • After a period of at least several hours, the logs are collected and passed to our programmers.

  • These logs are processed, and issues identified and fixed for a new iteration.

  • The process starts again, until we arrive at an acceptable state and can release it to everyone.

It is simply not feasible for us to replicate all multiplayer conditions in-house, so we appreciate your help with our 'stress tests'! If you're interested in helping, please keep an eye on our Twitter channel for tests. Community member CiforDayZServer has written a quick guide on how to use the RC branch and connect to the test servers.

OPERATIONS

The Dev-Branch staging of Firing from Vehicles was quickly followed by an OPREP on the feature in question. Senior Programmer Krzysztof Bielawski and Encoding Lead Petr Kolár joined forces to shed some light on how the technology was implemented and what it means for modders / scenario designers. Getting this feature to work was not just about firing primary weapons. We also had to support other infantry features, such as sidearms, zeroing, reloading, optics and grenades. And to top it off, the Artificial Intelligence underwent training to be able to make it rain down lead. Your feedback is very welcome in this dedicated forums thread.

The Launcher team is happy to report they have found the primary culprit for those encountering an invisible launcher. There was an incompatibility with the third-party SweetFX Shader Suite. Upcoming versions of the launcher will be able to detect this situation and correct for it.

LOGISTICS

More splendid scripting language enhancements are under way via Dev-Branch. It is now possible to select a range in an array or string, as well as to delete a specific array element or range. Scripters will now be able to avoid the common deletion work-around (_array = _array - ["delete_me"]). There also is a new command getHit to retrieve hit point damage via selection name rather than config class.


  September 24th, 2014 - 08:16 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

  OPREP - FIRING FROM VEHICLES Official    

On September 22, 2014 , Krzysztof Bielawski has reported an OPREP - Firing from Vehicles on the official Arma 3 web site.

UNIT: Krzysztof Bielawski, Senior Programmer, Programming Dept., Petr Kolár, Encoding Lead, Encoding Dept.
TO: Arma 3 Dev-Branch Users
OPSUM: Along for the Ride: Firing from Vehicles in Arma 3.



EVALUATION


Firing from vehicles. Three simple words that have echoed through the walls of Castle Bohemia across the ages. There have been different variations - Cargo Marksman, Person Turret, Shooting from vehicles - but the meaning stays the same: players (community and developers) simply want to use their personal weapons and equipment while seated in a vehicle.

Sitting on the bench of Littlebird - holding the gun idly in your hands while enemies attack your chopper - we have seen that for far too long. The time for change has finally arrived! We'd like to share a quick overview of this new feature, discuss what it means for our mod-making community, and look ahead to what's next.

FIRE-STARTER


There have always been proposals to make Firing from Vehicles (FFV); however, there have also always been many 'buts'! We have seen several scripted solutions - and done several for ourselves as proofs of concept - yet, still we lacked the perfect solution. There are several factors that we had to take into account and compromises to make in order to bring this feature to its current state in terms of the available vehicle cargo positions and the player's capabilities.

From a player's perspective, controlling a character in an enabled position is very similar to hitching a ride in a standard cargo position. Of course, everything changes when you raise your weapon; you are now able to use optics and attachments, throw grenades, switch zeroing and aiming types and, last but not least, shoot! Actually, you may find yourself shooting quite a bit, as your precision may suffer due to the movement of the vehicle.

As for the vehicles, preparing each and every position takes a lot of time, so we have had to decide which vehicles to do first and which to leave behind. To begin with, we wanted to provide a mix of land, sea and air options. While it would have been great if we could make all positions FFV-friendly, there are still some limitations; mainly, the lack of space to manipulate weapons. Although (as a good passenger with fastened safety belts) you are still unable to move around, you are not alone: other players - and even our AI - have been properly trained to handle firing from vehicles.

WILD-FIRE

We've struggled hard to not only add something new but, with the same importance, sought not to not break anything that we have delivered before. We might possibly have missed something, but we are standing ready to solve possible issues if needed. During FFV's development, we ourselves have broken our campaigns (thrice actually) in the progress; furthermore, the wide variety of community scenarios may yet throw us some curve-balls.

Naturally, we have not forgotten our dearest modding community. To prepare some surprises for their players, scripters may use new command enablePersonTurret, together with adjusted moveInCargo and assignAsCargo. Creating a new vehicle or adjusting an existing one to include FFV capability should be rather easy to achieve. Our sample models are going to be updated with new parameters, while there is just a few of them to make all configuration easier.

Modders accustomed to turret creation can simply add isPersonTurret and showAsCargo parameters, which should do the trick for most situations. Advanced modders may even try to play with some dynamicViewLimits parameters to simulate a tighter space when someone is sitting next to you.

FIRE-AT-WILL

We have had a lot of fun testing the new features in our team, and have some plans for future updates up our sleeves already, some of them well hidden for the new helicopters in the upcoming DLC, others held by lack of time to implement them properly.

However, with the release of the feature to dev-branch, we're now focused upon your feedback; there is a lot done and possibly the same amount of stuff to be done in the future. We are also sure that our community will be able to use the new technology in the ways we didn't even imagine so, go on, enjoy the feature and surprise us!



  September 22nd, 2014 - 16:40 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

  SITREP #00074 Official    

On September 16, 2014 , Joris-Jan van 't Land has reported a SITREP #00074 on the official Arma 3 web site.

FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Anniversary, Update en-route, Firing from Vehicles
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Last Friday, September 12th 2014, was Arma 3's one year anniversary (casually ignoring the public Alpha and Beta phases)! As a modest celebration, we hosted another livestream session. Producer Matthew Lightfoot had prepared a military operation for various volunteer community players and groups to tackle. Designer Nelson Duarte assumed the role of Zeus and curated the experience. And there was cake! Once again we would like to express our appreciation for everybody playing Arma 3. It's been a good year, the game is doing well and together we're improving it - with official additions and user-made mods.

One such addition, coming in Arma 3 Helicopters, was first teased at the end of the livestream: the CH-67 Huron twin-engine tandem rotor heavy-lift helicopter. It will cater to large aerial troop movements as well as heavier external cargo transport. Special cargo containers also broaden support and logistics opportunities, by quickly bringing ammunition, fuel, repair and medical resupplies across large distances. We would not ourselves classify the design as 'stealth'. While advances in engineering bring improved rotor blades, reduced heat signatures and some radar-defeating shapes - this beast is certainly too large and loud to hide effectively.

The continued multiplayer investigation has finally yielded some promising results. Our programmers have gone through detailed logs from internal and community sessions on special profiling servers, and identified several problems. A 1.30 hotfix containing fixes and optimizations is being tested, and will also be available on the Steam Release Candidate branch soon (no access code will be required). If broader testing proves this version does indeed work better, we'll push it to main branch.

INTELLIGENCE

Community member .kju [PvPscene] has posted a collection of references on tweaking the Advanced Flight Model for helicopters. Please do note that we will be updating to a newer RotorLib version ahead of release, which will require some changes. When Arma 3 Helicopters is released, all stock official helicopters will be configured for this model, as will the new helicopters. User-made helicopters will need to be configured as this is not be done automatically (it's too complex). The official helicopters should cover a broad range of aircraft and provide a good starting point for modders.

Another great guide was submitted by KingScuba. It appears to still be a work-in-progress, but already covers some useful tips and tactics for attack helicopter pilots.

OPERATIONS

The third big feature we're focusing on during development of Arma 3 Helicopters is, of course, Firing from Vehicles. We are getting very close to having a version ready for Dev-Branch. Hopefully by the end of this week, you'll be able to try the feature for an initial batch of prepared vehicles (e.g. the MH-9 with benches and the offroad car). This is a feature that will require specific configuration and animation work per vehicle, so we cannot just enable it for all vehicles. We're doing our best to deliver backwards compatibility. If you had been using one of these vehicles in your scenarios, they should not break because a standard passenger seat has been upgraded to one that allows for firing of personal weapons. In the first version there will be a couple of known issues that we're working on, but it will be good to get the technology in the game for feedback.

LOGISTICS

Our website now contains a troubleshooting page with information about the Arma 3 Launcher. There are several third-party distributables that the application requires. Steam should install these automatically, but in case it does not, this is where you can find them. Some people also experience other compatibility issues between their OS, hardware and the launcher. Several work-arounds and diagnostic modes are presented on the page. We're interested in finding out exactly what PC set-ups cause these issues, so please post details to Feedback Tracker if you're affected.

Check out this unofficial guide on tweaking performance of the game. Player Terminus goes over several categories of tweaks to try to make the game run better on your own computer. As the author indicates, please be careful with some of the more advanced tips (e.g. overclocking) as they may cause damage.


  September 16th, 2014 - 19:18 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

  One Year of Arma 3 Livestream Official    

Korneel van 't Land has informed us that Bohemia Interactive is going to celebrate Arma 3’s first anniversary with a special anniversary livestream on Arma 3’s official Twitch channel

Prague, Czech Republic, Thursday September 11th 2014

Celebrating Arma 3’s official release on September 12 last year, Bohemia Interactive announce a special anniversary livestream on Arma 3’s official Twitch channel this Friday. The livestream, which will be led by Associate Producer Matt Lightfoot and Designer Nelson Duarte, will kick off tomorrow (September 12) at 10:30 AM Zulu/GMT/UTC – and is expected to run for about 3 hours.

During the ‘One Year of Arma 3’ livestream, various Arma 3 developers and community members will
co-operate in an Arma 3 Zeus multiplayer session. For those who don’t know Arma 3 Zeus, this free DLC for Arma 3 enables players to take on the role of a game master, and influence a multiplayer session from a birds-eye perspective - creating a unique experience for the players on the ground. Since a birthday is not complete without gifts, Bohemia Interactive will also be giving away several copies of the Arma 3 Digital Deluxe Edition, as well as Arma 3 merchandise sets, to those attending the livestream. And... there will be cake!

Arma 3 was officially released on September 12th 2013 after extensive Alpha and Beta testing – pioneering Steam’s Early Access program. Since then, Bohemia Interactive has continued supporting the game with a steady flow of updates, which included the singleplayer campaign, new weapons, vehicles, objects,the Zeus and Karts DLC, plus various platform refinements. Later this year, the studio will release its Helicopters DLC, followed by the Arma 3 Marksmen DLC in the beginning of 2015. A major expansion for Arma 3, featuring a brand new terrain, is also in development.

To enlist for Arma 3 service, people can purchase 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 containing more than 350 pages, and Bohemia Interactive’s debut game Arma: Cold War Assault - from Steam and Store.bistudio.com. A boxed version of Arma 3 is sold at many major high-street retailers.

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


  September 11th, 2014 - 21:50 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

  SITREP #00073 Official    

On September 9, 2014 , Joris-Jan van 't Land has reported a SITREP #00073 on the official Arma 3 web site.

FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Sling Loading Dev-Branch, Multiplayer progress, Livestreams
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Let's start this week with some nice news: a first public version of Sling Loading is finally out on Dev-Branch. That means the underlying rope technology is enabled and being used by the helicopter ability to transport externally slung loads. We'll likely go in-depth in a future OPREP, but for the time being you can give it a go and share your feedback in this forums thread. The team will continue to test, tweak, iterate and fix this aspect as we have been doing with the RotorLib flight model. We're also curious to see what crazy stuff you'll be doing with the ropes!

And now back to the multiplayer situation and the desync issues. This is still our main focus, and there has been some progress, but we're not out of the woods yet. You may wonder how this can be so complicated. Unfortunately the likely suspects (such as the new guaranteed networking messaging), were not the sole cause. After undoing these changes, reports of desync continued. The situations are extremely random, involve large player counts. They are a frustrating problem for our programmers to reproduce while their eager debuggers are attached. The client crashes occuring since last week, were tracked down to BattlEye anti-cheat and fixed on their end (not requiring a game update). We'd like to thank our community server admins for helping us find a solid reproduction method for this crash (kudos to people like Alex Grosse). That also means our latest hotfix was effectively pointless; the change made there was ultimately not to blame.

What is planned next? We have added extensive network traffic diagnostics to Dev-Branch (command-line -networkDiagInterval=X, where X is the report interval in seconds). These will soon also be added to a new version on our performance profiling branch. With the data collected from this, we hope to narrow down what's going wrong (it's likely a combination of various things, rather than one source problem). We'll keep you updated on further progress and resulting game updates.

INTELLIGENCE

A variety of Bohemia Interactive games are on sale this week on Steam - find massive discounts up to 80%!

Associate Producer Matthew Lightfoot kicked off more regular official livestreaming last Friday. Joined by Designer Thomas Ryan, he played through the "Survive" episode of the campaign (spoilers) ... or at least made a good effort! Check out the full recording on our Twitch channel, and stay tuned for more livestream events coming up shortly.

The September newsletter for Make Arma Not War was mailed out recently. It describes an alternative submission method for people in the Multiplayer and Addon categories, when struggling to get entries up on Workshop. Another section takes a first glimpse at how entries will be judged once the submission deadline is passed (October 26). In related news, we've seen several contestants who are unable to submit their campaign to Workshop. You can only do this by making your campaign an add-on, as opposed to the older style of campaign PBOs. Our next Arma 3 Tools update will contain a sample of such campaign add-on from Thomas Ryan (already out on its dev-branch). He has also updated the relevant Community Wiki documentation. Finally, there have been questions as to how to deal with updates to the game itself, and changes potentially affecting entries after the deadline. We will maintain a special Steam branch with a locked version that will be used for judging - more details on that soon.

OPERATIONS

Audio Lead Jan Dušek has published his first OPREP, taking a look forward at audio in Arma 3. We've finally had the opportunity to reorganize and reinforce our audio team, and outlined what they will be doing to give the game the soundscape it deserves. Read the full report to learn more about some of the technologies in development, as well as instructions on who to directly and politely contact with specific feedback!

LOGISTICS

While working on the Helicopters DLC, we've decided to improve our HMD technology a bit. Senior programmer Dan Doležel has investigated various possibilities, some of which have been already added before (like the stall indicator for planes). One of the main improvements is the possibility to have separate elements aiming in a fixed direction. That means a lot for players who tend to look around the cockpit (e.g. by using TrackIR) since the crosshair stays in the correct orientation while useful information moves with their view. Encoding Velociraptor Martin Gregor has set all the current helicopters to use the new system where it should be used. We aim to continue improving the HMDs with more features in the near future.



  September 9th, 2014 - 22:53 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

  NEW F3 Web Tools - F3 Briefing Generator Editing    

fer has informed us about F3 Briefing Generator release

If you find editing the faction-specific briefing files fiddly or confusing, there's now a web tool that will help you generate the correct code. Check it out here:

http://www.ferstaberinde.com/f3/f3webtools/index.php

Remember, to make it even easier to start using F3, our fully illustrated online tutorials for making adversarial and coop missions can help you build your first F3 mission in 1-2 hours.


Discuss F3 at:
- BI Forums
- Folk ARPS Forums



  September 8th, 2014 - 17:05 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

  OPREP - AUDIO ROADMAP Official    

On September 8, 2014 , Jan Dušek has reported a OPREP - AUDIO ROADMAP on the official Arma 3 web site.


UNIT: Jan Dušek, Audio Lead, Audio Dept.
TO: Arma 3 Dev-Branch Users
OPSUM: Outlining the current & future goals of Arma 3's Audio Department.


EVALUATION

Over the past few months, Arma 3's Audio Department was reorganized, reinforced and refocused upon the job of making Arma 3 sound great. Now it's the ideal time to update you with a summary of recent developments in our team, outline further changes we have planned and, let's say, share a sense of the future progress of Arma 3's sound in general. Overall, our goal is to bring a richer, more complete audio experience, starting with new samples, through redesigning/fixing existing features and implementing brand new audio features, which we all miss the most.



Sound Map: This tool shows the density of certain environment types, which is used to generate the final mix of ambient SFX. In future we hope to extend this feature to enrich the soundscape further.



Radio Protocol FSM: This tool enables us to visually edit the links between words and logic to generate dynamic sentences for our re-worked radio protocol.



Helicopter Field Recording: Here we're recording an EC135 Helicopter from 3 different positions; it's just one of many sounds we use to fully recreate the sound of a vehicle in game

FEEDBACK

First of all, though, we'd like to thank to everyone for their splendid feedback over the last few weeks, months, and years! Recently, we've set up new workflows with a bigger emphasis upon your feedback, because what makes sound great is the listener who appreciates it! We've been browsing around every corner where people who love Arma games were constructively commenting upon our soundscape, suggesting new features, reporting bugs or describing new solutions, and we've found many great ideas that could improve or enhance your audio experience.
Also, we must admit that - compared to other departments - the audio team hasn't been quite so responsive and communicative. We want to improve that, and try to be much more synchronized with players. If you want to contact us directly, feel free to do so via our forum accounts (or Feedback Tracker). The main Arma 3 audio team is currently composed of myself (doosh - audio lead), grichard and krystof. We also closely cooperate with other sound designers working on other projects, like DayZ.

FIX, ENHANCE, IMPROVE

Right now, we are focused upon improving the most neglected aspects of sounds in our game. Of course, our resources are still fairly limited, but our overall effort could be described in 3 words: fix, enhance, improve. This means finding a specific feature, analyzing what's wrong with it, thinking about what could be better, and finding new ideas, too. Simultaneously, we will be 'filling in the gaps': there are existing features which have never been utilized to their full potential and, in general, there is also lot of room for improving samples. As an example of new feature, I could mention the recent implementation of sounds for Animation Sources. That means map-placed objects that can animate (like doors) can now handle sounds in quite complex ways.
Another example is the behavior of sounds played in first person. Now, for instance, there won’t be any issues with panning of sound for footsteps or animations, all those sounds are now played as 2D samples (with stereo support), so now we can even mix new stereo sounds for animations to improve the audio experience. By the way, the usage of stereo samples is great example of one of the underestimated aspects of A3 audio in the past, so now we are adding this support into more features, like vehicle interior sounds, for instance.

THE FUTURE IS NOW

Looking to the future, we of course want to avoid making promises we are not sure about, but there are some significant features and fixes we are planning to get into the game. We can mention the planned improvements to frequency attenuation for distant samples, we’ll try to solve the fire handler global issue, there will be new system for character Foley sounds based on actual equipment, radio filters distance-dependency, plus many more small features that will, all together, push sound in Arma even further. From a long term plan I could even mention environmental effects or directional map ambient sounds.
Overall, thanks to all the feedback, we are now hunting down the most obvious audio issues. Together with those fixes, you can look forward to many new features and refinements and - to be honest - there are already many splendid audio engine possibilities that were not squeezed out enough - so let's do it! We love the game as much as you do so, with our reinforced team and your cooperation, we will use all our effort to provide the best sound experience we can!
Stay tuned!


  September 8th, 2014 - 16:59 By Old Bear   Comment (0)  

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