FROM: Project Lead
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Bootcamp released, Addon Workshop live
PRECEDENCE: Flash
SITUATION
After scaling several obstacles to get the data uploaded to Steam, we finally unleashed the 1.24 Bootcamp Update yesterday. There is a significant amount of added content, and we're glad to read that some players have indeed learned a few new things here and there! If you're a veteran already, invite some friends to the multiplayer Bootcamp. Guide them through the predefined courses and add challenges entirely of your own making as Zeus. Slightly more hidden are the random new ambient objects added to the sandbox. Scenario designers can find the list here and start using them in the editor. Of course we're also reading through your feedback to find the more controversial changes. We're taking it on board, seeing which parts truly are bugs and what is a matter of tweaking. Dev-Branch will no doubt see tweaks based on feedback over the next weeks.
Very exciting to us was finally opening the Steam Workshop for addons. It will take a while to get filled with content, but there's a few cool assets to try already! Start the launcher (third Steam launch option, or arma3launcher.exe in the game's installation directory), subscribe to the addon of your choice, let it download and play. We've previously discussed that this first iteration of the launcher is fairly light in features, with a focus on its architecture. There are plenty more features to come, such as user-defined mod pre-sets and handling dependencies between pieces of user-generated content. As a result, the Make Arma Not War contest now has its addon category open for submissions!
Did we mention we were very proud to receive the 2014 Develop Award for top Independent Studio?
INTELLIGENCE
If you are using a Killer network card (these can be on your motherboard), and you experience multiplayer BSODs, please try updating the drivers for this hardware.
Another known issue seen by a few users is the Bootcamp recommendation pop-up not closing when selecting 'NO'. We don't yet know why, but in this case it seems the game is unable to write data to your user profile. As a work-around, try adding the following entry to your \Documents\Arma 3\<GameProfileName>.Arma3Profile: bootCampWarning = 1;
It would appear the current version of the useful Community Base Addons is causing a conflict with Bootcamp's "Prologue" campaign. If you find the static targets don't go down after hitting them, consider temporarily disabling the mod.
Reddit user smushkan's self-confessed boredom has yielded some nice results for players looking to tweak their game settings for extra performance. Thanks!
OPERATIONS
Senior Designer Josef Zemánek has contributed to the Community Wiki with documentation on the Virtual Reality training courses he was primarily responsible for. While we've released Bootcamp with 8 of these courses, the system is flexible and user-made courses can be plugged in as well. We intend to use the framework ourselves for future topics also.
LOGISTICS
Take a look at the lengthy 1.24 changelog here, and go over the changes in Arma 3 Tools here. Today you may have seen another ~150 MB update to the main branch. That was not an update to the game. Valve updated one of the common redistributables (.NET).
Dev-Branch connoisseurs will have seen recent interruptions to daily updates. Much to our dismay, we've been unable to upload data to Steam servers from the office that normally handles this branch. Slower back-up solutions from other locations were adopted for the 1.24 release. We hope to now have the issue under control and should be able to start back up daily updates.