FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Welcome newcomers, Company anniversary, Misc. technology
PRECEDENCE: Flash
SITUATION
Regular players will have seen a wave of newcomers join the frontlines this past weekend. We were hosting a Steam Free Weekend, which meant the game was temporarily available to play for every Steam user. It allowed anyone to get a taste of Arma 3 and pick it up at a sizable discount. We welcome all of the new recruits! Hopefully Arma veterans can show them the ropes and share some of their awesome multiplayer experiences. Since its launch, Arma 3 has made the installation and update procedures much smoother, but there's still ground to cover within the game. We are working on enhancements to better orient new players with the Bootcamp update. The package is close to having all of its content in prototype status. That means the content exists and is playable fully (scenario flow / logic, assets, systems, etc.). The next stage focuses on adding flair: voice acting, MOCAP animations, better-looking UI elements and more.
INTELLIGENCE
We were proud to share our 15th company anniversary with you. Your congratulatory messages meant a lot to us. It was awesome to see so many people who have been with us since the very start. Hopefully the free copy of Arma: Cold War Assault gave you a nice glance at Arma's beginnings. To see the evolution of Arma (and our other games) in motion, check out this anniversary video. And you might like to browse through our new company brochure, to get a better understanding of our history, interests and goals.
A final bit of info for owners of non-Steam versions of Arma 2 (and DLC / expansions): you can now redeem the Steam versions using your original CD keys. This will also facilitate multiplayer via Steam for Operation Arrowhead, after GameSpy shuts down at the end of this month.
OPERATIONS
Programming lead Dr. Hladík has deemed the current state of surface friction for vehicles not satisfactory, and thus added a new parameter for surface types that solves many issues. The new surfaceFriction works well with the longitudinal and lateral stiffness parameters of wheels and should provide a distinctive feeling of grip on various surfaces. The technology is work-in-progress now as our QA team is testing the changes under various conditions.
LOGISTICS
Our other programming lead, Ondřej Martinák, reports: "A new command line parameter '-enableHT' has been added which instructs Arma 3 to use all hyper-threaded CPU cores. Use of this parameter may increase the game's performance, especially on Dedicated Servers with high amount of players." It should be noted that we don't expect large improvements this addition, but every little bit helps.