FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Report In!, Config Arrays
PRECEDENCE: Flash
SITUATION
As a final test before releasing campaign episode 1 next week, we are still considering to stage it on devbranch this Thursday. Whether it will happen, depends on evaluations of the latest version today and tomorrow. If we do go ahead, we would like to again request of you to try to keep spoilers to a minimum while reporting issues. Thanks in advance! For the majority of players we would recommend playing the campaign on the main branch instead. This should produce a more stable experience throughout, not risking new issues due to the daily and experimental nature of devbranch (e.g. potential savegame incompatibilities).
A new Community Guide video is coming up shortly. Korneel van 't Land describes: "Thanking all those who participated in the Arma 3 Alpha and Beta, the new video reflects on the game’s release, explores the launch package, and looks at the future of Arma 3 as a platform for official and user-made content.". We also noticed the folks Down Under at AIE Games hosted an Arma 3 booth at the expo with perhaps the most relevant of names: Armageddon Expo!
INTELLIGENCE
The lowest quality setting for clouds will be removed from the game. This was the only setting disabling fully the new cloud technology. It caused artifacts and did not help gain significant performance.
Curious what it took to bring you the awesome Republic of Altis & Stratis environment? We've posted a new Report In! with Environment Lead Martin Pezlar. He delves into the process of making a virtual game space, and shares some thoughts on the rather more unexpected and troubling adventure he and comrade Ivan Buchta went through.
Scripting command documentation continues via the Community Wiki and forums; have a look at the next batch.
OPERATIONS
Petr Kolář, whom you may know as the Lord of the Bounce, has an interesting and more technical update for modders among you: "We are steadily working on a new tools package, and we have made a new major feature that may be interesting for many community content creators. Filip Sádovský has prepared a new version of cfgConvert which is able to handle arrays in a different manner - adding new items into an array is now possible even without knowing the array itself, by defining array[] += {newItem}; This is extremely useful for adjusting shared arrays for example for weapon accessories or the infamous class Throw with its muzzle[]. The option is already working on the executable level, but the tools are needing to be released to make the configs binarizable.
LOGISTICS
Last week we pointed out a rare issue with large profile data causing menu freezes. The solution mentioned then was perhaps not the best way to go about it. A better method is to execute the following from a script or editor debug console: profileNameSpace setVariable ["BIS_fnc_diagAAR_data", nil]; saveProfileNameSpace; This is only needed when you experience very long delays when opening the pause menu, and your .vars profile file is upwards of 100 MB. We may do this clean-up via a patch automatically later, but do not see evidence of a lot of you being affected.