epoch Retired PR Developer



Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 4,199 United Kingdom United Kingdom Location: UK

PR: ARMA 3 Development Update

Hi everyone



Back in 2011 we had an idea that became PR:ARMA 2. We gathered together a great team of developers and eventually released a few iterations of a mod that we do believe was really good fun.



However, from the technical point of view PR:ARMA 2 was a bit of a mess - two separate systems from the era of ARMA 1 held together by duct tape. The original idea was to have 100 players on a server. On the day of the launch we did get 100 players on the server, the only problem was that the server reported 0 "FPS", or simulation cycles per second if you will. Now, the networking in ARMA is infamous on its own but the scripts did not do it any favour. The amount of traffic being broadcast from the various scripts was staggering, with the zone capture system being probably the worst offender - every time somebody was capturing a zone the server and all the connected clients would be updated with the capture status of all the zones in the mission. Approximately every 0.1 seconds.



Another major issue was that as the mission went on timed events became delayed. The more people on the server the worse the delay. I remember once playing a mission where a helicopter which was supposed to respawn every 20 minutes had respawned nearly an hour later.



With all of this in mind and with ARMA 3 on the horizon Deadfast and I made the decision to start PR:ARMA 3 from scratch. We weren't naive to think that we could create something that would completely replace PR:ARMA 2 feature-wise. We wanted to start small and create a stable foundation to build upon: infantry-only missions, advance and secure game mode, squad system, kits, rally points. This would then be incrementally built upon.



And we got 99% of it done! The problem is that the past year we've been working on the last 1%. This is not an unknown phenomenon in software development. By the time you get this far it's nothing but a grind.



The ARMA side of PR never really had that many people, and this goes double for people with SQF skills (ARMA's proprietary scripting language). I think the most we ever had at once were 4. This is because there are very few people with the necessary skills to develop for ARMA.



As we slowly reached completion the work started becoming less and less fun. Instead of implementing features we had to focus on bugfixing in order to bring it to a releasable state. Unfortunately as anyone in software development can tell you bugfixing is very time-consuming, especially in such a complex environment as a multiplayer game.



Some time ago we



Since we don't want all of our work to go to waste we have decided to publicly release the source code under the You can find it here on Github.



If you have any questions regarding the code we will stick around the



Credits need to go to all of the past and present developers and volunteers who have contributed to getting Project Reality: ARMA 3 as far as it did:

epoch - for his leadership, encouragement and imaginative use of dev hacks

- for his leadership, encouragement and imaginative use of dev hacks Deadfast - for being an SQF wizard, and somehow managing to install Redmine, twice!

- for being an SQF wizard, and somehow managing to install Redmine, twice! James2464 - for contributing missions, ideas, code and that photo

- for contributing missions, ideas, code and photo wormeaten - for contributing missions and ideas

- for contributing missions and ideas Cp - for his tireless testing and comic relief

- for his tireless testing and comic relief BearBison and the RIP team for their enthusiasm and support during testing from the very beginning of PR: ARMA.

and the RIP team for their enthusiasm and support during testing from the very beginning of PR: ARMA. shay_gman - for contributing code

- for contributing code caterpillar - for contributing the Boots on Kavala mission

- for contributing the Boots on Kavala mission igno2k - for contributing the Forest Chop Down mission

- for contributing the Forest Chop Down mission IcyFury - for contributing the Morningstar and Sidewinder missions

- for contributing the Morningstar and Sidewinder missions mayr - for contributing the Payroll mission

- for contributing the Payroll mission Seraph - for contributing the Wrath of Zaros mission

- for contributing the Wrath of Zaros mission Steeps - for contributing the Pyrgos Capital mission

In addition we would like to thank those involved with the earlier PR:ARMA 2 project:

UK_Force

Dr.Eyeball

DeanosBeano

Minimalaco

Robster and everyone else who contributed to the mod



Finally we would also like to thank the community who have supported us throughout the project. Hi everyoneBack in 2011 we had an idea that became PR:ARMA 2. We gathered together a great team of developers and eventually released a few iterations of a mod that we do believe was really good fun.However, from the technical point of view PR:ARMA 2 was a bit of a mess - two separate systems from the era of ARMA 1 held together by duct tape. The original idea was to have 100 players on a server. On the day of the launch we did get 100 players on the server, the only problem was that the server reported 0 "FPS", or simulation cycles per second if you will. Now, the networking in ARMA is infamous on its own but the scripts did not do it any favour. The amount of traffic being broadcast from the various scripts was staggering, with the zone capture system being probably the worst offender - every time somebody was capturing a zone the server and all the connected clients would be updated with the capture status ofthe zones in the mission. Approximately every 0.1 seconds.Another major issue was that as the mission went on timed events became delayed. The more people on the server the worse the delay. I remember once playing a mission where a helicopter which was supposed to respawn every 20 minutes had respawned nearly an hour later.With all of this in mind and with ARMA 3 on the horizon Deadfast and I made the decision to start PR:ARMA 3 from scratch. We weren't naive to think that we could create something that would completely replace PR:ARMA 2 feature-wise. We wanted to start small and create a stable foundation to build upon: infantry-only missions, advance and secure game mode, squad system, kits, rally points. This would then be incrementally built upon.And we got 99% of it done! The problem is that the past year we've been working on the last 1%. This is not an unknown phenomenon in software development. By the time you get this far it's nothing but a grind.The ARMA side of PR never really had that many people, and this goes double for people with SQF skills (ARMA's proprietary scripting language). I think the most we ever had at once were 4. This is because there are very few people with the necessary skills to develop for ARMA.As we slowly reached completion the work started becoming less and less fun. Instead of implementing features we had to focus on bugfixing in order to bring it to a releasable state. Unfortunately as anyone in software development can tell you bugfixing is very time-consuming, especially in such a complex environment as a multiplayer game.Some time ago we announced that, due to "real life" challenges we planned to suspend development of PR:ARMA for the time being.Since we don't want all of our work to go to waste we have decided to publicly release the source code under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License , thus allowing it to live on.If you have any questions regarding the code we will stick around the PR:ARMA 3 section to hopefully be able to answer them.Credits need to go to all of the past and present developers and volunteers who have contributed to getting Project Reality: ARMA 3 as far as it did:In addition we would like to thank those involved with the earlier PR:ARMA 2 project:and everyone else who contributed to the modFinally we would also like to thank the community who have supported us throughout the project.