FROM: Project Lead

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: First patch, Firstlook 2013

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

We are in the final stages of preparing for the first post-release patch / main branch update. This does not yet contain the first campaign episode. There are a couple of fixes and improvements that will benefit the larger playerbase and would be good to get out. Recent optimizations benefit the performance of Altis, especially in scenarios with lots of AI units moving about. There are also a few fixes for Japanese and Korean versions - such as re-enabling blood and correcting broken font issues for some texts. The goal is to release later this week, but as per usual, this depends on testing.

INTELLIGENCE

If you are buying a digital copy of Arma 3, we recommend to use either Steam or Store.bistudio.com. This avoids the chance of encountering a fraudulent online Steam code vendor.

Continuing a nice new tradition of pointing out developer favorite Workshop creations, designer Nelson Duarte shares his thoughts on 'Get The Hostages' by papy.rabbit.08: "You'll have to neutralize an AA vehicle, carefully approach a small enemy camp, rescue three civilian hostages, and call in the choppers for extraction. It's a short, but very cool open-world mission, which lets you complete the objective any way you like."

OPERATIONS

Two Dutchies on the Arma 3 team (Joris-Jan and Korneel van ‘t Land) will attend Firstlook 2013 expo in The Netherlands on October 5 / 6. Those who don’t know the game yet, can get hands-on at the MSI booth, as well as grill the devs for intel. Two main stage demos top things off - including, we hope, some first looks at future content additions.

LOGISTICS

Behind-the-scenes work continues on the campaign, new vehicles and weapons. We don’t have exact release dates set for individual assets. They are developed in parallel and when patches get close to release, we see if they are ready to be released. It’s very likely development branch will see new assets staged first.

Devbranch aficionados have noted changes to existing idle animations they were using in modules and scripts. We have been splendidizing these and adding new ones for campaign purposes (in a seperate add-on due to release datalock). The new data will become available with the first patch (and devbranch before).