FROM: Project Lead

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Tools

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

The positive reception of "Survive" has boosted team morale and excitement to make the "Adapt" episode a fitting continuation. Asset producers are finalizing the new sandbox content, for which we can finally share more teasers soon - including 3 added vehicles. That is not to say "Survive" came with just the campaign episode. Have a look at the full SPOTREP, and go in-depth with the cool blog written up by Creative Director Jay Crowe. Besides the second episode, what else are we working on at the moment? Coming up is the Arma 3 Tools release (read on for more) and a more traditional update of main branch later this month.

INTELLIGENCE

In certain cases of multiplayer performance issues, the problem may be security software interfering with BattlEye's anti-cheat engine. The BE systems are designed to run alongside the game and should not cause significant performance drops. If you experience these issues please consider checking if tweaking security software settings helps. Or look for other programs that your OS may be running in the background and which can interfere (specifically memory scanners).

Some people struggled to work out how to start the campaign. We've hotfixed 1.04 to improve this a little by making double-clicking expand the campaign menu tree structure (besides pressing the arrow next to the campaign). Restoration of more obvious button methods is forthcoming.

The main page had its Community Focus refreshed with videos, a shout-out to an Italian player community and a South African military equipment mod.

OPERATIONS

Petr Kolář has the following update on Arma 3's tools: "There have been many questions regarding releasing of the Arma 3 Tools package on our forums. We are still working on the package - mainly testing the stability at the moment - and it should be available as soon as possible. We have decided to take an approach similar to the release of the game - continuous staging of finished parts and enhancing the experience with later additions. The first batch will contain the basic tools with slightly enhanced functionality, but we feel that work on tools is a never-ending process. Some of you may have already found a new category in Feedback Tracker to report issues, and we've been asking around for wanted improvements on current tools. A general tools category has been added to the forums.

Primarily included in this first iteration are new versions of packing tools (new binarization for all the PhysX LODs e.g. / new config conversion with the new method of using arrays and all the current functionality). There also will be a new version of Oxygen 2, supporting PhysX and buoyancy LODs, together with some nice samples of models with commented configs. Visitor will not yet be added."

LOGISTICS

Before the release of "Survive", we mentioned intent to work on fatigue. This is about to kick off on devbranch. Designer Radko Voda will start publishing tweaks in the next few days, as well as to detail and discuss them on the forums. The goals are still to introduce better calculations and enhance authenticity of equipment affecting performance.

A commonly reported issue relates to surround sound audio setups. We are specifically looking into problems with center speaker volume during conversations in 3D space.

There have been a few changes to event handler handleDamage (and various others) - making it more easy to work with them. Designer Bořivoj Hlava explains the details in this thread.