FROM: Project Lead

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Update incoming, Netcode, Vehicle camera shake

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Followers of our daily experimental devbranch may have picked up on things slowing down as far as data updates go. That's because we have been on a data lock since last week, in order to prepare a game update. Version 1.20 is set to go later this week if final testing let's it roll out. On the tools side, there will be a new version of Addon Builder. Its primary new features are the ability to binarize data for both Arma 3 and older Arma games. Besides that the User Interface has received a facelift. This may seem unimportant, but it's done to allow bigger changes coming up with regards to Steam Workshop and add-ons.

INTELLIGENCE

In recent months, Real Virtuoso Ondřej Španěl, has been working on changes to the way network messages are send in multiplayer games. This was done for DayZ stand-alone, but in this case can help Arma 3's netcode as well. In basic terms, previously the netcode would send full packets with all information about updated objects (not just static objects like ammo crates, but characters, vehicles, etc.). That has been changed now to only send the difference to the previous state (similar to how Arma 3 updates on Steam only need you to download the changed data). This does not change the amount of data to process after reception, but it does lessen the amount of data to send (lower network traffic). Programmer Vojtěch Hladík has merged the changes to devbranch. This implementation is enabled by default there, but can be disabled using server config entry guaranteedUpdates = false. We'll be testing the approach for some time before we roll it out to main branch.

OPERATIONS

For our Helicopters DLC we've started to work on a few camera shake effects that contribute to the immersion of flying a copter (based on G-forces). Now that the technology exists in the engine, our encoding team will begin setting up good parameters for all stock helicopters. After that we'll also be looking at other vehicle categories, such as airplanes, cars and boats. Initial results should start to appear as we release the data lock next week.

LOGISTICS

One of our recent additions to the programming team, Richard Biely (welcome Richard!), has been fixing up some of the server admin commands:

#kick: the game was checking input only against player nickname and player number (UID wasn't checked). The command also works with strings now (so both #kick sho and #kick "sho" work).

#exec ban: the game only considered a player number as a valid input. In order to make bans work with player UIDs and player nicknames, support for string input needed to be implemented, e.g. #exec ban "crowe" or #exec ban "12345" do the trick now.

Script command addUniform now only works for uniforms of a units' side. If you were using it on uniforms of a different side in your previous projects, please change the command to forceAddUniform to prevent having naked soldiers in your scenarios! You can also use the new isUniformAllowed command to check if it is actually possible to don the uniform.