FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: ARMAnet Podcast, Ambient Occlusion Improvements, Server Monetization Extension
PRECEDENCE: Flash
SITUATION
The development team is now preparing a
Release Candidate build for public testing. If things go well, we intend to make it available to the community
later this week. Internally, we're also very much in the
production phase of all of this year's
planned additions, which are now all starting to come together nicely.
INTELLIGENCE
The latest
Dev Photo shows the commitment of
ARMAnet Podcast hosts
Reaver and
Dagger to present their audience with new episodes. With
Bohemia Interactive Project Leads,
Petr Kolář and
Joris-Jan van 't Land, finally making their appearance on the show, the four of them discuss the turbulent history of
Arma 3's development, explain some decisions that shaped to become
Arma 3 as we know it now, and provide a
glimpse into the future of the game and platform. We can recommend subscribing to their show for interesting segments like
Units discussions, mod-maker interviews, scenario design tips and all other things
Arma 3.
Kudos to the podcast crew, and we hope we'll talk again!
Isla Duala[/b], a
terrain made by a well-known community modder
IceBreakr, has recently been updated on the
Steam Workshop! More than 100 square kilometers of
African terrain provide more than enough opportunities to discover new kinds of warfare. This update
improves the satellite textures, adds particle effects for units, and much more. Splendid work,
IceBreakr!
The art of
developing animations and editing characters in the
Real Virtuality engine is one of the most difficult tasks, both for ourselves and our community. However, practice makes perfect, and so
Mondkalb (Animation Lead at
Bohemia Interactive Simulations) came up with a rather
creative way of tweaking the animation sources and show off his mastery of the tech. The author describes his admirable goals for the release as:
"The main reason for this release is to get the sources out for others to learn from. It's a fully independent character setup in Arma 3 using all the things there are. Animations, Ragdoll, Weapons, Clothes Swapping, Head and Face textures, lip movement and of course hats." Watching those yellow-brick
toy characters come to life and rag-dolling on
Arma 3's terrains is one of the most
hilarious (yet educational!) things we've seen in a while!
OPERATIONS
Over the past weeks, the artists in our
Team Mike studio have been working on improving the structures on all
Arma 3 terrains. With careful attention to detail, our buildings now display
shadows and light more realistically by tweaking their Ambient Occlusion configurations. As per usual, we're asking you, the community, to provide us with your feedback. Head over to the
respective forums thread for more Intel and do not hesitate to leave a comment.
Some of our players have been reporting an issue where their game performance degrades drastically over time. We've already spent months hunting the infamous
'3FPS Issue'. The process has led to various improvements and fixes, but we have not yet been able to find the full cure. Project Lead
Petr Kolář asks the community for help
on the forums once more:
"As we are yet unable to reproduce said behavior on our internal machines, we need your help to crush this issue. There is a Feedback Tracker ticket about this issue, we would like to ask anyone experiencing said behavior to collect their dxdiag data (simply by typing "dxdiag" in their start menu and saving the profile, removing the Machine Name and Machine ID parts) and trying to get minidumps of their memory prior and after the issue using ProcDump (thanks to the guys from Microsoft for recommending this software to us)." We hope to have some results soon and will continue the pursuit for a solution. We once again apologize to anyone affected. Ensuring a more consistent game performance is and will remain our priority.
The number of entries in the
#Armachinima Awards submissions is growing rapidly. Now that the deadline of
February 13 is approaching, we would like to suggest everyone who is still looking to participate to submit their entries
as soon as possible. We have found that it is not unusual for there to be some issues with entries, which might even require you to update the videos and re-submit. As such, sending us your video on the last day could be risky, and potentially lead to
disqualification due to a lack of time for making adjustments. Specifically, we'd like to warn everyone to make sure that the music (and possible voice-overs) in your video is
NOT copyrighted or that you have clear permission from the music's author (you are welcome to use the music from the official Arma soundtracks). In addition, the video must
NOT be monetized on
YouTube. We wish all video creators the best of luck in this final week. Public voting for 10 nominees starts on February 14th. Let's get the popcorn ready!
LOGISTICS
Bohemia Interactive's
Server Monetization program, which allows server hosts to monetize their
Arma 3 server(s) as long as they are
registered, approved, and listed, has been
extended for another year without any policy changes for
Arma 3. The extended period expires on
January 31st 2018. Be sure to read the
FAQ section before applying.