FROM: Project Lead
TO: Alpha Users
INFO: Beta preparations, combat radio protocol, respawn system
PRECEDENCE: Flash
SITUATION
This week our grand Beta mobilization has begun in earnest. As such, this SITREP will be quite light on Intel - too busy rallying the troops. We are putting a lot of effort into getting the selected content working well. Understandably you would like to know already what this content will be, but we'll not specify for a few more weeks. This is not (entirely) to torment you, but we want to make sure we can deliver. Be patient a little longer and you'll be rewarded with a cool upgrade to the Arma 3 sandbox with more variety and firepower. Hints of specifics may start dropping in the coming weeks, but look towards a certain large annual game expo for all the details!
INTELLIGENCE
Supporting server admins continues by giving back the possibility of hosting multiple servers per HW / OS-instance. Keep an eye on the Dedicated Server status thread to see where we are on the road map.
Designer Karel Mořický has worked on making respawn systems more consistent by introducing templates. These control the suite of scripts and effects executed when a player dies and respawns (e.g. spectator camera and seagulls). The framework is documented for multiplayer designers on the Community Wiki.
OPERATIONS
This week we are making another internal Alpha snapshot for evaluation. If it passes, we intend to release it via SPOTREP next week. This is quite soon after the previous update, but that was really more a hotfix. It did not contain most of what was already on Development branch. This update should also be the first to include the separate Dedicated Server binary for default branch.
The Audio team and Creative Director Crowe are busy recording the radio protocol (including a new protocol for combat situations - more tense and stressed) with more voice actors. One 'Jayholder' protocol and one other actor variant of this can already be heard in Development branch starting today (when your squad is in combat behavior mode). They are still finding the sweet-spot for tone as they do more recordings. A stealth protocol is Oscar Mike.
The Arma 3 Beta will be using the exact same application on Steam as the Arma 3 Alpha (Lite will be discontinued as previously announced). There will not be a need to re-install or install a different game (but the update is going to be hefty in size). In the weeks leading up to the actual release on default branch, we will likely be staging Beta content on the Development branch. Such staging will of course be announced with details, but there is to be a transition period during which you see Beta content in a game branded as "Alpha". We hope you'll be able to suffer through this confusion and enjoy the glimpse at the future.
LOGISTICS
Caution: when we do transition to Beta, we will intentionally change the user profile paths. Mainly we want to do this to provide one more proper default detection of options (reset). We do not plan this for the transition from Beta to full release. It should not be too much of a hassle, since if desired you could copy (with some renaming) existing profile files.