FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Laws of War DLC Reveal, Update 1.76 RC
PRECEDENCE: Flash
SITUATION
This SITuation REPort marks the 200th of its kind since we released the public Arma 3 Alpha over 4 years ago. Starting with weekly updates, we've recently switched to reporting about on-going development and community activities every other week. It's amazing to us to see the player-base still so strong, and new recruits are joining daily. There's a lot of interesting content headed your way, with the just-revealed Laws of War DLC soon to be released, and the Tac-Ops DLC and Tanks DLC under active development. And never forget about user-generated content - modding is as strong as ever. Thank you all for contributing to the Arma 3 platform!
INTELLIGENCE
So what happened to "Orange" DLC? After some impressive community speculation, we've recently unveiled the project's final name: Arma 3 Laws of War DLC. We invite you to watch its reveal trailer and inspect the overview page for all content (both premium and free for the platform). If you own the (no longer available) Supporter Edition you, of course, automatically also own this DLC. A package deal that you can still get is DLC Bundle 2, saving over 25% on the total set. If you're interested in this DLC in particular, you can secure a 10% pre-order discount until the full release. We don't yet have an exact date for when that is, but we expect it to be in early September. Want an early preview? Both Dev-Branch and RC-Branch meanwhile contain the DLC for you to try.
Making this project even more special is our unique collaboration with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). We've wanted to make sure we respect and represent their real-world good work. That was actually one of the reasons for not revealing the final theme until this moment. Among other things, we're working with their specialists to fact-check our communications. Besides adding greater authenticity to our representation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), we're also happy to support the ICRC with a donation in 2018. Please stay tuned for a detailed OPREP, the first in what should be a series, about this project and cooperation!
OPERATIONS
Behind the scenes, development of Laws of War DLC is under a Strict Data Lock, which is a process we use to deliberately slow down development in order to stabilize the quality of the final release build. We've been processing a lot of very useful feedback on many channels, including posts on the forums, Feedback Tracker tickets, video playthroughs, and many more. Cheers! Even though the core development team is rather small, lots of tweaks and fixes were already made, and some more are to come. Several other good ideas may rather be considered for post-releases updates.
We've opened several dedicated forums threads to focus your feedback on specific topics. If you've tried the playable content (mini-campaign, showcases, and time trials), then visit this thread to share your thoughts. If you haven't yet, the post also includes notes on where to find it all. Both showcases are actually free to try for everyone, with restrictions applied to the premium assets on display. Please kindly mark any spoilers in your discussions so others can still uncover the narrative for themselves. We're applying yet more fixes and polish to the full release, so you may wish to rather wait for that version. We welcome your testing however - thanks!
Looking at the assets, this thread is the best place for feedback. Included are tips on identifying all the new assets, such as the DLC Content Browser, Virtual Arsenal / Garage, and of course Eden Editor. These all include convenient identification or filtering options to catch everything. Remember that you can try premium assets in Arsenal and Garage without restriction. Besides highlighted premium assets, such as the van and utility drone, there is a huge number of free decorative props for everyone. You didn't think we'd release this DLC without actually including an orange, did you?
Let's also go over our refinements of existing features. We knew from the start of this project that we'd focus on assets and playable content, but were still able to sneak in some feature work. Get the full details on changes in the threads for mines, cluster munitions and leaflets. Seeing your videos, we'd like to remind you to map the Left Panel next and Right Panel next controls ([ and ] by default). They can be found in the OPTIONS > CONTROLS > Common category, or you can use a preset. Mapping them will provide you access to the Info Panels introduced in Jets DLC, and remove them from the action menu. One such panel is now used for the Mine Detector. We're also working on delivering Community Wiki documentation on these subjects, for example for the scripted leaflets (caution: configuration may still change until release).
Finally, as with any Arma 3 release, we're localizing this DLC into all supported languages. The first results are available in the testing branches, but we're still doing thorough tests. If you have feedback on how things are translated, please post a ticket on Feedback Tracker. This project contains some particularly complex topics and terminology, so if you have suggestions for improvements, they are certainly welcome.
LOGISTICS
As several of you will have already learned, externally contracted Designer Killzone Kid has announced that he will no longer be working on the Arma 3 platform. Serving as a technical liaison between us and the scripting / modding community, he has brought a lot of great optimizations and additions to the platform. Ranging from new scripting commands to speed up the function library, to event handlers and general fixes, these will benefit us all into the future. We wish KK all the best and hope to see his return in the future.
This week, a part of our crew is present at the gamescom Bohemia Interactive booth. Visitors will get a chance to go hands-on with work-in-progress builds of some of our other games, such as Ylands and DayZ. The Argo team have dropped a fun little gamescom update as well! Arma 3 is also available at several stations inside the booth running the 1.76 RC. The build includes the Laws of War DLC Showcases for those who haven't had a chance to try them at home. Do drop by and get a chance to speak to a few of our devs!
The Dev-Branches for Arma 3 Tools and Arma 3 Samples have both received useful additions. Modders will find livery templates for the Jets DLC aircraft, making reskins significantly easier to create. Meanwhile, several new samples help to roll out the new features to your own aircraft. The relevant tools have been updated to prepare for Laws of War DLC integration. Before you ask, yes we are also preparing livery templates and samples for that DLC.
Let's conclude this report by outlining the details for the on-going Release Candidate test of update 1.76 (which includes Laws of War DLC). You'll find the branch after entering the Arma3Update176RC access code in your Steam client. There will still be several updates to the branch until the final release, so please mind your bandwidth. Also note that this build is not multiplayer compatible with the current main-branch. We're very much looking forward to releasing this package to everyone soon!