SITREP #00186

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: ARMAnet Podcast, Ambient Occlusion Improvements, Server Monetization Extension
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

The development team is now preparing a Release Candidate build of Update 1.68 for public testing. If things go well, we intend to make it available to the community later this week. Internally, we're also very much in the production phase of all of this year's planned additions, which are now all starting to come together nicely.

INTELLIGENCE

The latest Dev Photo shows the commitment of ARMAnet Podcast hosts Reaver and Dagger to present their audience with new episodes. With Bohemia Interactive Project Leads, Petr Kolář and Joris-Jan van 't Land, finally making their appearance on the show, the four of them discuss the turbulent history of Arma 3's development, explain some decisions that shaped to become Arma 3 as we know it now, and provide a glimpse into the future of the game and platform. We can recommend subscribing to their show for interesting segments like Units discussions, mod-maker interviews, scenario design tips and all other things Arma 3. Kudos to the podcast crew, and we hope we'll talk again!

Isla Duala, a terrain made by a well-known community modder IceBreakr, has recently been updated on the Steam Workshop! More than 100 square kilometers of African terrain provide more than enough opportunities to discover new kinds of warfare. This update improves the satellite textures, adds particle effects for units, and much more. Splendid work, IceBreakr!

The art of developing animations and editing characters in the Real Virtuality engine is one of the most difficult tasks, both for ourselves and our community. However, practice makes perfect, and so Mondkalb (Animation Lead at Bohemia Interactive Simulations) came up with a rather creative way of tweaking the animation sources and show off his mastery of the tech. The author describes his admirable goals for the release as: "The main reason for this release is to get the sources out for others to learn from. It's a fully independent character setup in Arma 3 using all the things there are. Animations, Ragdoll, Weapons, Clothes Swapping, Head and Face textures, lip movement and of course hats." Watching those yellow-brick toy characters come to life and rag-dolling on Arma 3's terrains is one of the most hilarious (yet educational!) things we've seen in a while!

OPERATIONS

Over the past weeks, the artists in our Team Mike studio have been working on improving the structures on all Arma 3 terrains. With careful attention to detail, our buildings now display shadows and light more realistically by tweaking their Ambient Occlusion configurations. As per usual, we're asking you, the community, to provide us with your feedback. Head over to the respective forums thread for more Intel and do not hesitate to leave a comment.

Some of our players have been reporting an issue where their game performance degrades drastically over time. We've already spent months hunting the infamous '3FPS Issue'. The process has led to various improvements and fixes, but we have not yet been able to find the full cure. Project Lead Petr Kolář asks the community for help on the forums once more: "As we are yet unable to reproduce said behavior on our internal machines, we need your help to crush this issue. There is a Feedback Tracker ticket about this issue, we would like to ask anyone experiencing said behavior to collect their dxdiag data (simply by typing "dxdiag" in their start menu and saving the profile, removing the Machine Name and Machine ID parts) and trying to get minidumps of their memory prior and after the issue using ProcDump (thanks to the guys from Microsoft for recommending this software to us)." We hope to have some results soon and will continue the pursuit for a solution. We once again apologize to anyone affected. Ensuring a more consistent game performance is and will remain our priority.

The number of entries in the #Armachinima Awards submissions is growing rapidly. Now that the deadline of February 13 is approaching, we would like to suggest everyone who is still looking to participate to submit their entries as soon as possible. We have found that it is not unusual for there to be some issues with entries, which might even require you to update the videos and re-submit. As such, sending us your video on the last day could be risky, and potentially lead to disqualification due to a lack of time for making adjustments. Specifically, we'd like to warn everyone to make sure that the music (and possible voice-overs) in your video is NOT copyrighted or that you have clear permission from the music's author (you are welcome to use the music from the official Arma soundtracks). In addition, the video must NOT be monetized on YouTube. We wish all video creators the best of luck in this final week. Public voting for 10 nominees starts on February 14th. Let's get the popcorn ready!

LOGISTICS

Bohemia Interactive's Server Monetization program, which allows server hosts to monetize their Arma 3 server(s) as long as they are registered, approved, and listed, has been extended for another year without any policy changes for Arma 3. The extended period expires on January 31st 2018. Be sure to read the FAQ section before applying.