FROM: Project Lead

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Bootcamp inbound, Community Guide, Publisher

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Bootcamp Update development is nearing its end, and we are on a mission to seek and destroy any bugs found. The entire contents of the update has been released to the development branch of Arma 3 on Steam. We are thankful for all the feedback you've provided to us. If you want to test the main branch version of the update ahead of its release, you may do so by getting into the Betas section of the Arma 3 properties on Steam and using the access code "Update124Arma3Bootcamp". This will unlock a Release Candidate branch, which we still update daily with selected fresh fixes. RC branch contains the same executable (1.24) as is going to be used for the main branch. Meanwhile there are some changes in the Dev-Branch executable that may not make it to the main branch just yet.

You may have also noticed that we've released the new Arma 3 Launcher to Dev-Branch last Friday. It is supplemented by releasing Publisher into the development branch of Arma 3 Tools. There were some issues with the first iterations, and we are working on improving both applications as fast as possible. Feel free to provide us with valuable feedback on the forums for both Launcher and Publisher or via Feedback Tracker as usual.

INTELLIGENCE

Another episode of the Community Guide series has reached our YouTube channel, this time dealing with ground vehicles and their crew. Andrew "Dslyecxi" Gluck describes the distinctive categories of ground vehicles, their role in combined arms combat and the specific crew positions needed to operate the vehicles correctly.

Those tampering with Bootcamp Update may have already tried the new Arsenal which has been documented by its creator Karel Mořický on the community wiki. He wrote even more documentation regarding the use of new unit insignia's on various soldiers.

And for those interested in the work done to improve UAV operations, Bořivoj Hlava has added documentation on five new script commands for them.

OPERATIONS

We have already briefly mentioned the changes in handling of muzzle accessories in previous reports, but now is a good time to remind modders that this change is going to hit the main branch of the game soon. This means that some sound mods may have some compatibility issues. We apologize for breaking existing content, but it was a necessary change to fix several rather big issues concerning muzzle accessories (and to allow us to bring configuration improvements).

Another modification to arrive on main branch with the 1.24 update is a change in Buldozer for Terrain Builder. The suite was still sometimes referencing the old Pal2PacE executable to convert textures. Now it uses the proper Arma 3 ImageToPAA one. That may affect modders using the old BI Tools 2.51 instead of Arma 3 Tools. Consider updating to the new tools suite if you are one of them.

LOGISTICS

The Bootcamp Update also contains some additions to Arma 3 Tools, and most of them are already in the development branch of the suite. This includes the new Publisher for publishing addons (and possibly more later on), various updates from tools engineer Julien Vida, and an additional sample of lamp to showcase parameters for new lights. As for the development branch itself, it's going to be always at least on par with the main branch, most of the time a bit forward and experimenting with new tools. There should be no need to switch to main branch unless you experience issues with the tools.

Programmer Jan Mareček has been cooperating with Killzone Kid on scripting commands for array operations. One of them is pushBack (an atomic operation that adds an element to the end of array without being interrupted by the scheduler), and the second being reverse to flip the order of elements of an array.