SITREP #00232

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: 1.90 Update, Dev-Branch Activity
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

In this SITREP we'll primarily discuss some of the highlights of the 1.90 update in greater detail.

INTELLIGENCE

First of all, you'll notice that this SITREP is a bit shorter than some of the reports from the recent past. This is because our SITREPs are now primarily focused on the development side of things, whereas our newly introduced "Community Radar" is where we'll be spotlighting some of the recent community activity. We've also decided to temporarily further reduce the frequency of the SITREPs to whenever there is a sufficient amount of interesting development intel to share. That means, in the coming weeks you might receive fewer SITREPs than before, but that doesn't mean there's nothing happening behind the scenes. In fact, the opposite is true — with the first third-party DLC on the horizon and a new non-traditional Arma 3 DLC coming up among other things. Unfortunately, we're not ready yet to present these projects to the outside world, but as soon as we are, you can expect the frequency of our SITREPs to increase again. As has been the case so far, we'll always make sure to keep you posted!

In case you missed them, let us still link the two first editions of the Community Radar:

• Community Radar #01
  
• Community Radar #02

On top of the COMRAD, we've also started a series of mini-interviews with some of the splendid members of the Arma community. These interviews — a.k.a. "Community Profiles" — are posted every other week, and below you can find a list of all the interviews published so far:

• Community Profile #01 - "thebuckfastwine"
• Community Profile #02 - "DL++"
• Community Profile #03 - "NyteMyre"
• Community Profile #04 - "Alwarren"
• Community Profile #05 - "War Is Hell"

OPERATIONS

After many weeks of RC-Branch testing, the 1.90 update has been deployed to Arma 3's Main Branch. Let's take a look at the main highlights:

• The Warlords multiplayer mode has been out for a while now, and we'd like to thank all of you for providing your feedback. The 1.90 update implements a significant number of changes to Warlords, such as 3 new scenarios, better modding support, and numerous fixes. It's also no longer possible to obtain mortar bags through an exploit in the Virtual Arsenal. And Warlords should now work properly in a singleplayer environment.
  
• As a small bonus surprise, we've added the remaining olive liveries for the NATO (Pacific) vehicles operating on Apex's Tanoa. We also threw in an older-looking variant of the Dragon Teeth anti-tank obstacle.

• Contact - AI fix - 0m - front! We've introduced a fix that makes sure AI are calling out relative directions correctly again. Previously they would shout "contact - front" even when the enemy was actually behind you, and for some time they were using incorrect cardinal directions for front, left, right, and rear.
  
• After more than 2 months of public testing the RC-Branch, we were finally confident enough to reintroduce the security improvements that were initially part of update 1.86. We'd like to specifically thank Armajunkies Germany for their help, but of course there were various other communities and individuals that also contributed greatly to tracking down issues. These security improvements were low-level changes that are particularly complicated and are notoriously difficult to test and debug. Our in-house servers (even those running mods) would often run without problems, but issues would appear when things were tested 'in the wild' on servers that were running advanced configurations, big custom mod-sets, etc.
  
• Unfortunately, despite the thorough testing, update 1.90 did still cause some unfortunate 'Session lost' situations. We're now testing a fix for this, which is available on the 1.90 Profiling Branch — also referred to as Profiling v02 for those who download it manually. The profiling branch executable contains two main components: a client-side fix, and a server-side fix. The server side fix is added to obtain more informative session lost messages and detailed logs. The Profiling Branch is compatible with the Arma 3 Main Branch. If users still experience issues with this branch, then please make sure to provide us with your RPTs, DxDiags, and other useful information. You can find more information on this in our Feedback Tracker guide. A central place to discuss this topic and potential workarounds is this forums thread. Together we can implement additional fixes, and rule out data and / or configuration issues. We'd like to release a hotfix for update 1.90 as soon as we have enough information about the success of the 1.90 Profiling Branch.
  
• Due to Dedmen's investigation and report, we were able to discover a memory leak in the compile script command usage, which was one of the probable causes of the infamous '3fps bug'. The issue was caused by a 2017 optimization fix, and mainly affected those who used the compile script command frequently with dynamic data. The memory leak would especially take a toll on servers and clients that were running for an extended period of time, as the memory would not be cleaned between sessions. Dedmen also assisted us in finding a good solution to the issue. As a result, we initially staged a fix that changed the caching of some data types, and we also added a new parameter to manually disable caching to the compile script command. However, this parameter was only available on the Dev-Branch for a short period of time and was then reverted. This is because we finally found a better solution for the issue which doesn't require any change in the existing scripts (available in 1.90), even though this fix may come at a small performance cost.
  

The full changelog of the 1.90 update can be found in our latest SPOTREP. We've also published a small update of the Arma 3 Tools, which mostly addresses Terrain Processor, as can be seen in the latest TECHREP.

Now then, let's also take a look at some out-of-the-blue yet useful engine updates that appeared on Dev-Branch. Senior Programmer Filip Sádovský recently had a very brief window of time to help out with miscellaneous quality of life improvements, additions, and fixes. Some of these may also be very useful to community modders. They include engine commands to replace certain scripted functions with higher performance code, more robust solutions for object / vehicle light control, access to the player's custom map waypoint, limited scripted control over missiles, various event handlers, and new AI sections to toggle. Please stand by as we update the Community Wiki with the corresponding documentation, and have fun scripting and modding!

LOGISTICS

After 11 years at Bohemia Interactive we're saying farewell to Vojtěch Hladík. As Lead Programmer he has been at the center of the massive engineering effort in the Arma series. Recently he was immortalized in the game with his likeness being added in update 1.86 — find him under Independent > Men (Story) > Dr. Hladík. We thank him for his endless stream of additions, tweaks, optimizations, and fixes to the engine and game. Good luck on your future endeavors, Doc!