FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: AAF Reinforcements, Dedicated Servers, Winter holidays
PRECEDENCE: Flash
SITUATION
Welcome to the last SITuation REPort in 2013. We'll be out of comms for a few weeks during the holiday period, returning on 14.01.2014 with our weekly updates and many awesome things. Wrapping up the year, tomorrow sees the release of the 1.08 game update - including the AAF Reinforcements Pack. But that's not all! We can finally bring you the free and stand-alone Dedicated Server package on Steam - for Windows and Linux. The tools suite will be updated with a few fixes as well.
2014 is going to be an amazing year for Arma 3. Things are only just getting started, and we are all committed to continued support. Thank you for your contributions to making 2013 a spectacular ride. Have a fantastic winter holiday period, and see you all soon!
INTELLIGENCE
Devbranch will not be updated from 16.12.2013 to 03.01.2014 (it will resume on Monday 06.01.2014). The branch will be slightly ahead of 1.08 during that time, and have the MP performance diagnostics enabled. It is also likely to have the experimental tweaking of character protection incorporated to gather feedback, unlike the 1.08 main branch.
Development on the 'Adapt' campaign episode is wrapping fully this week. It will then enter final testing under data lock until its release on 21.01.2014.
Make Arma Not War - by now you will have seen our company's announcement of this huge €500,000 modding contest. Part of an effort to take modding to the next level, we are looking forward to seeing the creative and unique results! We also hope this will be a great thing not just for content creators, but for all players out there - being able to play work-in-progress and final entries throughout the year.
OPERATIONS
There was one release that may have slipped by unnoticed due to the contest announcement. Last week we published new content licenses to support creatives working with Bohemia Interactive titles. The framework will hopefully clear up what is and what is not allowed, and make things generally more transparent. Visit the Q&A thread for more information and to ask any questions you're left with.
Together with the licenses, we have released a huge set of licensed data packages (samples, game data, models, textures, animation files, etc.). They can be used to learn from and to derive other content from - just keep in mind the specific license for each package. They are available via torrent (recommended due to bandwidth stress), FTP and also as a special 'Beta' branch for the Arma 3 Tools Steam app (licensed_data_packages). Caution: this branch will download more than 22 GB of data!
LOGISTICS
The previously mentioned Dedicated Servers can be downloaded via the standard Steam client (Arma 3 Server in library filter: Tools). Administrators can also use the command-line SteamCMD utility. The app ID is to be 233780. We should also point out that both servers have been tested on a limited scale and there may be unforeseen issues to solve in 2014 (especially for the Linux variant). We are releasing them now to gather feedback from a broader range of network situations and distributions than we are able to simulate in-house.
Last week we mentioned compatibility issues between BattlEye and real-time ESET scanners. The latter partner has begun targeting this on their end, and they have a solution which they are testing. Future updates to their software should therefore work with the anti-cheat technology much smoother.
Our programmers have fixed an old issue in triggers. There is a much-reduced update delay after triggers are created (not yet in 1.08). We highlight this because scripters may want to check their timings and execution orders are not affected by this.