FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Bootcamp blog, Dev-Branch plan, Red Cross donation
PRECEDENCE: Flash
SITUATION
Creative Director Jay Crowe posted a detailed overview of the free Bootcamp Update coming to Arma 3 within weeks. Read all about the new modes, sandbox content and refined gameplay mechanics. Tomorrow we should be kicking off deployment of this content to Dev-Branch. While the specifics depend on a few dependencies between assets, we will begin with the sandbox content. This means the Virtual Reality world and its supporting objects, but also gear updates for the FIA faction, such as balaclavas. We think VR will not just work well for our tutorial modes, but also as a lightweight testing environment for modders and scripters. By stripping away all distractions, like natural terrain and objects, you can focus on just one thing - ideal for learning, development and testing!
Soon thereafter, we hope to also get the game launcher to Dev-Branch, and the add-on publishing tool to the Arma 3 Tools suite. Then the final step ahead of release will be to stage all the playable content. Voice acting recording has wrapped, so the team is doing final touches now. All in all, it's a good time to jump into Arma 3. Have friends who are still on the fence? Tempt them into getting the game today at a massive 50% discount in the Steam Summer Sale!
INTELLIGENCE
Bohemia Interactive today announced the donation that will be made to charity from the Karts DLC sales. One million Czech koruna will be donated to the Czech Red Cross. Thank you for raising this money for a good cause, while also providing us feedback to our strategy. We have done our first evaluations, created an action plan for tweaks and still intend to post a questionnaire to gather follow-up feedback.
We've posted documentation on the formatting of Steam's multiplayer queries, and how it differs to the GameSpy situation. This information can be used by third-party services to interpret and list servers information e.g.
OPERATIONS
Last week's 1.22 update contained a good number of "The East Wind" campaign improvements and fixes. Senior Designer Jiří Wainar presents them all in his first OPREP. You might not have made much use of the Patrol sections in the campaign on your first play through (triggered by walking off base / camp). With the addition of improved gear persistency, as well as vehicles and squads, Patrols are enjoyable side missions in-between the main scenarios. The "Survive" episode has also had Points Of Interest added to focus your Patrols a little. A lot of these improvements were based directly on player feedback. We hope you like your second run, or if you'd been waiting, are motivated to try it out!
Encoding Lead Petr Kolář announced before the weekend that we'll be making a change to the weapon accessory muzzle configuration for the Bootcamp Update (1.24). He included updated documentation on the Community Wiki to make the transition as smooth as possible for modders. While it's a tough call to affect existing user-generated content, the benefits are worth it. Weapon-specific sounds for silencers will be supported, and several issues with fire modes get fixed. The change is already live on Dev-Branch since Monday.
Now that all branches have switched from GameSpy to Steam, it's clear that there are issues to address. Besides doing smaller fixes and working on supporting more Steam browser features, we are investigating how the game handles network ports. More so than with GameSpy, Steam requires the correct ports to be forwarded in routers so that servers can be found and connected to. Since the game allows custom port settings, it can sometimes be challenging to find out which ports need to be open. On rented servers it may not even be possible to access this configuration. We are experimenting with a different approach that makes it more clear which ports are used. Meanwhile, please take a look at the following documentation to resolve the most common discoverability issues. And to remind you about a solution to router flood issues, take a look here.
LOGISTICS
As of today, we're maintaining a new executable in Dev-Branch. Found in the root of the game, arma3diag.exe contains several diagnostic modes that may help modders with development and testing (e.g. visualizing PhysX properties and collisions, debugging animations, or tweaking particle effects). The EXE has its multiplayer component removed to prevent exploits in that environment.
We've recently applied the Dev-Branch approach to Arma 3 Tools as well. For the tools we will not be updating the branch daily, but rather on developer request (e.g. when something specific has been fixed). You can find its changelog here, and discuss the changes here.
To wrap things up, here are last week's 1.22 SPOTREP and 0.68 TECHREP. We made a small correction to the game's changelog. It mentioned a new ability to lock the UAV camera using Ctrl+T, but this has not actually made it in yet. It will be there for the 1.24 Bootcamp Update. While you're at the Dev Hub, enjoy the improved navigation and filtering implemented by our web guru Jervant Malakjan.