SITREP #00234

FROM: High Command
TO: Arma 3 Users
INFO: Arma 3 Contact, Update 1.94, Global Mobilization Update
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

After several sneaky teasers, the newest Arma 3 expansion was announced to all Earthlings, and is scheduled for arrival on July 25. In today's report we'll provide a recap of all decoded Arma 3 Contact intel, and throw in a few more bits of information. Rounding things out are a look at some technical changes in Contact's 1.94 platform update, as well as how Creator DLC (like Global Mobilization) is going to be updated.

INTELLIGENCE

With Arma 3 Contact we're exploring what may happen if humanity were to make contact with extraterrestrial intelligence on Earth. As the player you will be investigating who or what the aliens are, and why they have arrived to our planet. Being an Arma 3 spin-off expansion, we'll of course still be doing so from a military perspective. And given authenticity is central to Arma 3, even with this sci-fi theme, we've tried to keep one foot planted in the real world. Then again, who knows what's out there?! How might armed forces react to such a historic event? Watch the announcement trailer and visit the overview website for a first impression!

For more in-depth information, please check out the F.A.Q. One of the things you will learn there, is that yes, owners of the Supporter Edition (no longer available) have received Arma 3 Contact for free. For all others, Contact is already available for pre-order, either as separate expansion, or as the Arma 3 Contact Edition for new players, and even as the limited Bohemia Store exclusive Collector's Edition. You can never be too sure of who is probing your mind, so wearing tin foil hats while playing is definitely the way to go!

Owners of the expansion can immediately switch to Arma 3's Dev-Branch for a sneak preview of the new Livonia terrain and very many props for scenario creators. As veterans know, this branch contains the most recent state of the game while it's still in development. Please keep in mind that there will still be issues, and that the branch is not compatible with main branch multiplayer. Its updates can also be rather sizable (multiple GB). Unfortunately there is no simple way to keep multiple branches installed in parallel. So far the branch has been updated several times with fixes, but over the next weeks we'll of course also be staging the other parts of the platform. Likely to hit first and soon are Contact's new weapons, so stay tuned!

First contact is a premise we've wanted to try within Arma for a long time. As we're 6 years into Arma 3's life, it felt like now would be the right moment. At the same time, we are aware that not everybody shares our passion for this subject. From the start of the project we have therefore done our best to build as much as possible 'premise-agnostic' platform value into the package. By that we mean additions that benefit the vanilla military sandbox without anything too unorthodox (read: alien). We believe the resulting expansion delivers lots of toys for those who only want their military sim-game, and more extras for those who do like to get a little more fictional. To make sure players have control over their close encounters of the Arma kind, we're distributing the expansion in 2 components. This may get a little tricky to follow, and should become more clear when the full package is available, but in essence it will work like this:

• Contact (Platform): this component is automatically downloaded and installed to everybody who plays Arma 3. It is loaded into the game by default, and functions like almost all previous official DLC (e.g. Helicopters, Tanks, and Apex). Obvious examples of such content are the new Livonia terrain, weapons, vehicles, character gear, and a vast set of props. Some of these are Premium Content Licensed as per usual. This data is going to be in the enoch folder of the installation (a codename of the Livonia terrain that will remain in use in the technical data).
  
• Contact: this component is only downloaded to owners of the expansion. It is only loaded when you manually opt to do so via the Launcher for example. Examples of this data are the actual ET, the "First Contact" campaign, and several unorthodox systems. This data will be in the contact folder of the installation. Owners can also uninstall these files via the Arma 3 DLC section of Steam client by unchecking Contact there.
  

We've seen some content creators being concerned with the optional data not being available to all. Our goal here is not to unnecessarily keep stuff from you, but we are guarding the integrity of the vanilla sandbox. Certain parts of Contact were developed for the singleplayer campaign, but are not fully compatible in multiplayer, or perhaps they override parameters of the vanilla game (as a sort of 'Total Conversion'). 

On a similar note, it's true this expansion focuses less on new platform features. The Arma 3 development team has evolved a lot over the past years, and the skill mix is simply not as diverse as it was during its primary development phase. Specifically many of our programmers have moved on to developing exciting future tech, such as the Enfusion engine. That means this expansion has a greater focus on assets, the campaign, and the overall experience of "First Contact". We did develop several scripted gameplay mechanics, but they are not suitable for the vanilla sandbox. An example is limited CBRN defense to use with the relevant gear. We decided to keep the gear assets available to all, even without native sandbox functionality, so that content creators can use them as they want. A few such scripts may still be possible to transfer to the platform component post-release, so that community scripters can more easily access them, but we'll evaluate that case-by-case. Other things may be instead possible to share with you through our Arma 3 Samples app for example. We'll be discussing this a bit more in an upcoming OPREP about the project.

Now that the project is declassified, we can give you all more of a look behind-the-scenes of Contact's development. We're trying something a little different with quick mini-vlogs, starting last week with a look at the Amsterdam office planning wall. Time allowing we'll do more of these over the next weeks, so be sure to follow our usual social channels: Twitter / Facebook

OPERATIONS

We greatly appreciate all of your Contact Dev-Branch feedback, which allows us to get to a much better release day state. Several themed feedback threads were opened on the forums, and our devs also do scour various other channels for your notes. We may not have time to respond to everything individually, but know that we're reading and acting. As always, concrete bug reports are best submitted to Feedback Tracker. At the same time our internal QA is still processing many terrain sectors and assets in parallel. We've received a lot of useful and insightful feedback about the Livonia terrain, addressed various things, and are investigating other topics. Not everything will be possible to target pre-release or at all, but we'll do our best. Thank you all very much!

One topic important to terrain modders is the accessibility of the Livonia objects. Unlike Apex' Tanoa, whose data was initially only distributed to owners, Livonia data will be available to all. However, we are discussing the best option to make it possible for modders to reference the data in Terrain Builder. It's possible this will happen post-release, when the data is actually finished, but we understand the mutual benefits of doing so as soon as possible.

As has been the case with every DLC and expansion release, we'll be publishing a new platform update to Arma 3 (1.94) on July 25 as well. Besides everything needed to deploy Contact, it will contain miscellaneous fixes and improvements. A public Release Candidate branch for this update will likely open in the near future. Let's take a look at a few highlights that may be good to be aware of:

• Quite a few script commands have had their default return value fixed in case of failure (for example when providing objNull as argument). In a similar vein, waitUntil could go into infinite suspension if it returned nil. Please be sure to check its expression result is always a Boolean. Fixing these commands caused a few hidden such broken script cases to trigger warnings in Arma 3 vanilla, so community scripters may want to also scan their content for these. Warnings will be shown to aid the hunt.
  
• We've replaced the AITankSteeringComponent PID controller settings with re-tuned values that were kindly provided by the CUP mod team. In other words, AI tanks should follow their paths better than before. Please help us test this and especially let us know if tanks behave worse than they did, in this forums thread. Many thanks to CUP's devs!
  

LOGISTICS

Update 1.92 and the first Creator DLC – Global Mobilization - Cold War Germany – were released shortly after we published our previous report. Now that plenty of feedback has been gathered and fixes have been made by the Vertexmacht developers, it's almost time for its first update. This will work a little bit differently compared to regular Arma 3 main branch updates. For greater flexibility to these Creator DLC updates, we don't want to tie them to platform updates, because those have a lower frequency meanwhile. Instead, we will update the specific DLC data, which is possible due to it being stored in separate data depots on Steam.

Preparation for Creator DLC updates will occur via a newly created Steam branch: Creator DLC Release Candidate Build (accessed via code: Arma3CreatorDLCRC). Note that this branch is only useful to DLC owners; other players will not notice a difference. Similar to our previous RC branches, it may not be compatible with main branch, especially in multiplayer. And be cautious with slow and / or metered connections due to the expected large update sizes. The branch will have its own change log and discussion forum threads. Find more information on our website. The Creator DLC development teams and we at Bohemia look forward to your feedback! Speaking of which, GM now has its own project in the Feedback Tracker to have things better organized. Note that once a Creator DLC is ready for release and goes live, owners will notice the Steam client mentioning an update to Arma 3 main branch itself (even though it's just the DLC data). There will then be a change log, although we're still determining the exact format (likely different to traditional SPOTREPs).

Did you also notice the GM team has published high resolution maps of their Weferlingen terrain? And terrain modders may like to use their substitute file package for object references.