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FROM: Project Lead

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Eden Editor, UGL Reloading, Update 1.52 Released

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Welcome to all new recruits who have joined the growing community after the recent sales on Bohemia Interactive Store and Steam! You've arrived at the front lines during exciting times. We've just released maintenance update 1.52, which, allowing some time for servers and mods to adopt it, should help a little with stability and performance. The next update promises to be rather significant. As discussed last week, plenty of things are starting to appear on Dev-Branch, and await your evaluation. Some things will make it into 1.54 in November, other things may require more time in the incubator. Enjoy your time with Arma 3!

 

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FROM: Project Lead

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Launcher Mod Dependencies, Scripted System Optimizations

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

We've said it a few times over the past weeks, but Dev-Branch really is where our attention is placed as we move towards to next big update. We're already processing feedback on several live changes and iterating via the daily experimental updates. Other major improvements, such as for the Launcher, are detailed in another section of this report. Please keep sharing your findings in the dedicated forum threads, or via the general discussion thread. Specific issues are best filed in the Feedback Tracker.

 

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FROM: Project Lead

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Firing From Vehicles Enhancements, Eden Editor Layers

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

It's been a long time coming, but later this week we'll finally be ready to share our roadmap for the rest of 2015 and 2016. We'll be discussing how we've divided our work on the Expansion and Arma 3 platform across several themed updates, meaning you'll not have to wait for all improvements. You can also look forward to the Expansion's name and more Intel on the contents besides Tanoa. In unison, we're going to publish an in-depth OPREP about the refinements to core mechanics that are due in the next big platform update. And Bohemia Interactive will hopefully have a cool little bonus to close out the week!

 

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FROM: Project Lead

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Roadmap Blog, Nexus Feature Iterations

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

By now you'll have likely familiarized yourself with Creative Director Jay Crowe's blog concerning the roadmap. Its key bits of information were the names and themes of our two primary free platform updates: Nexus Update (1.54) and Eden Update. There will be more regular updates along the way, but these are the significant milestones on the road to the main Apex expansion. Just as we've done in the past with our Early Access packages, campaign episodes and DLC, this approach lets focus our work and bring the results to players sooner. One of the revelations that seemed to garner quite some interest, was the Arma 3 Units service (more on that next month). Another observation is the Visual Update package having been moved to Eden Update. This work needs a bit more time to tweak within the team, before we unleash it on Dev-Branch. We hope the roadmap gave you a good impression of our ambitions. Many more specifics will be shared as we continue our journey together.

 

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FROM: Project Lead

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: End Game Additions, Spectator, Audio Progress, Terrain Processor SDK

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Almost all aspects of Nexus Update (1.54) have been staged on Dev-Branch. That does not mean they are considered final; some furious tweaking is on-going. Since the update contains a lot of moving parts, we'll use a fairly lengthy Release Candidate period. Internally, we'll probably apply our data lock next week. For those of you new to our development processes, data lock means we make a snapshot of the build (engine and data) and strictly control every change that is made and allowed in. This does slow down the creative processes, but also stabilizes the game and lets us focus on the most important tasks. Not long after this lock is applied, we'll prepare the RC branch for public testing. We've also published a page to better explain how RC testing works, what our goals for it are and how you can help.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Project Leadership, End Game Tournament

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Breaking with tradition, this opening section will be written from my own perspective. After well over a hundred reports and therefore weeks, the time has come for me to hand the Arma 3 project to someone else. As of this week, the game will be in the capable hands of someone most of you know: former Encoding Lead, Lord of the Bounce, Petr Kolář. He will lead the awesome team on the road to Apex and beyond.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: 1.54 RC Started, Tournament Update

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

The public Release Candidate branch for Nexus Update (1.54) has opened to anyone who'd like to participate in testing or who wants to start preparing their scenarios and mods. Its Steam branch access code is Arma3Update154RC, which is available for the game and its server package. Please post specific issues to the Feedback Tracker. Since this update is quite large, we expect the RC period to last a good two weeks. Several of its components are even now undergoing carefully monitored tweaking. A high-level list of changes can be found on the forums, where the build can also be generally discussed. We do however recommend using specific threads for large topics such as audio, Launcher mod dependencies, personal protective equipment, stamina, spectator, FFV, etc.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Development Update, Community Art, Stacked Event Handlers

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

We felt now might be a good time to deliver a small status report on plans beyond Nexus Update (1.54 is undergoing public RC testing). For Eden Update we are obviously chiefly focused on Eden Editor, although several other platform features are in the pipes. The Audio team hopes to stage a first set of improved weapon firing configurations, which use the new functionality to deliver much nicer distance-based sounds for example. Work on the Visual Update package has continued as well. Staging its tweaked lighting, water reflections, improved underwater fog and fixed up parallax maps to Dev-Branch is set for a while after 1.54. The primary Apex release is greedily devouring all of our Art capacity. The artists in various offices are building Tanoa's unique structures, decorative objects, vegetation, rocks, clutter, surfaces and more. Some of them are modeling the new Light Strike Vehicles, VTOLs and other assets. It will be a while before any of this sees the light of day, but it's all shaping up very nicely.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Arma 3 Units, Tournament Update, Stamina

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Our planned release for Nexus Update (1.54) was meant to be today, but last Friday we uncovered a few issues in large-scale multiplayer testing. Those should since have been fixed. We're going to confirm the fixes in follow-up tests this week to determine when we can publish to main branch. Please keep trying the Release Candidate and reporting any issues, especially new ones. We'll keep you apprised of further RC updates and the actual release timing via our usual channels.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Nexus Update Released, Units Live, Tournament Update

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

The last major update of 2015 has gone live on main branch; welcome to Nexus Update! Visit the improved Arma 3 website for Creative Director Jay Crowe's blog on all the highlights. We'd like to thank all participants of the RC tests for your assistance. Together with the players and mod teams we were able to catch a few things and address them ahead of release. Please allow some time for all server administrators and mods to update and adjust to the latest version of the game. We'll of course be monitoring Feedback Tracker and other channels for potential issues that may have slipped through. Your patience while we get the game running great with all improvements and mods is appreciated. An update of our client port betas is also in progress with our Virtual Programming partners. We hope to push this update out as soon as it's ready and tested.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Tournament Champions, Personal Protective Equipment Configuration

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

We've been working hard to process your feedback tickets after last week's 1.54 release. Some of the results have reached main branch swiftly, some topics are discussed later in this report, and some are otherwise in progress. We're also looking ahead to Eden Update in the first months of the new year by slowly wrapping up Eden Editor implementation and prioritizing other components of that promising release. Dev-Branch is set to be an interesting place over the next few months. Besides that and on-going Tanoa production, December is typically also a month during which we're busy with activities not directly connected to development of our games. We evaluate the past year and prepare the company and teams for a great and productive 2016.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Winter Break, Scripted Function Optimizations, Animal Enhancements, Server Stability

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

As the end of the year draws near, Bohemia Interactive is preparing for its winter hibernation. We will pause our regular operations from December 21 until January 4. This means there will not be daily Dev-Branch updates or further Dev Hub reports during that time. We will however continue to work on addressing the remaining version 1.54 issues as best we can before the holidays (more on that later in this report). It goes without saying that our intention is for the game to work well for everyone, so this has our full attention.
 
2016 is going to be a great year for Arma 3. The Eden Update and Apex will expand the sandbox in interesting ways and give you new tools to play with. We wish everyone the happiest of holidays and a fantastic new year!

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Happy 2016, Mod Showcases, Server Browsing

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Welcome to another great year for Arma 3! In 2016 we'll be releasing the free Eden Update and the Apex expansion, both of which contain their obvious core components as well as a plethora of other additions and improvements. During the first quarter you'll see us focusing on Eden, with plenty of activity on Dev-Branch leading up to the update itself. The second quarter will finally deliver more details on the contents of the expansion. It's also when our window for letting you board your flights to Tanoa opens.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Analytics, Dev-Branch Activity, Geometric Occluders, Parallax Improvements, Font Changes

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

As we eluded to last week, Dev-Branch is seeing interesting changes on an almost daily basis now. Creative Director Jay Crowe has been offering some highlights from the forums change logs via Twitter #DevBranchThisWeek, and we will elaborate on several more in this report. All components of the Eden Update are coming together and soon the whole package will be available for testing. Your feedback on this daily experimental Steam branch is very useful to the game's development. We would however like to remind you that this version of the game is not intended for regular play. If you're brave enough to storm the front lines of development, please let us know about specific issues on the Feedback Tracker or general thoughts via the forums.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Scanning the Horizon, Apex Pre-Orders, Visual Update Status

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

For this week's overview of the situation, we'll join Creative Brit Jay Crowe for his annual scanning of the horizon (~ > 3 > 7). In both text and video form, he has reflected on 10 outstanding bits of progress and looked ahead to just 10 of the splendid things to look forward to in 2016. If you pay close attention, you'll see glimpses of work-in-progress concepts for the new NATO VTOL aircraft and both NATO's and CSAT's Light Strike Vehicles. The latter are going to be a blast to drive across Tanoa, with mounted weapon variants and lots of Firing From Vehicles possibilities. We've also not yet confirmed all vehicles, let alone weapons, for Apex. The same is true for features. We do have more things in the pipeline, but will confirm and share those once we're confident we can finish them properly. Keep your attention locked to the Dev Hub over the next few months!

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Eden Update Consolidation, Audio Fidelity, Weapon Switching

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

We now have a pretty good picture of the consolidated Eden Update package. It is shaping up to be an awesome free update to Arma 3, made possible by your support for the game. We have created our data snapshot and applied the usual development locks, so that we can begin to focus on testing and tweaking the update as a whole. This also means that we'll open the Steam Release Candidate testing branch this or next week.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Eden Release Candidate, Ongoing Investigations, Simple Objects

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Release Candidate testing for the 1.56 Eden Update has now kicked off in earnest. If you'd like to participate, the Steam branch access code is: Arma3Update156RC. The actual release date will be determined based on test results, but it should be somewhere in the middle of this month. Please visit the Dev Hub overview page with details and some cautions. One particular warning this time around is one-way compatibility of campaign save games. You will not be able to load 1.56 saves in the older 1.54 version due to fixes to inventory serialization. Campaign saves do carry over from 1.54 to the newer 1.56 (overall progress, not mid-scenario). Please keep this in mind and consider backing up your saves before switching branches. Alternatively you could use a new user profile to carry out RC tests. Thank you all in advance for helping us move towards a solid release!

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: RC Official Servers, Top 10 Eden Editor, Report In! Project

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

We've been getting a lot of good feedback and issue reports from the Eden Update (1.56) Release Candidate branch. A number of fixes were deployed and some are close to being committed. This week we'll continue testing and you can still help out. There are a number of official servers online that run the build. Find them by going to the new Launcher Server Browser and filtering for official servers. You can also favorite them for quick access later. These servers may be offline for updates occasionally, but we'll try to keep them up to provide a place to play-test. Thankfully, there are also a number of unofficial servers being hosted by community admins and mod(e) teams. Did you also know that you can use our Game Updater tool to install multiple branches at the same time? Keep your reports to Feedback Tracker coming. We're as excited as you to get the update to everyone's PC once it feels solid!

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Eden Editor Dev Diary, Top 10 Server Browser, Font Metrics

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

We're getting closer and closer to Eden Update's release. There are a few fixes we'd like to confirm via in-house multiplayer tests. Play-testing the publicly available Release Candidate for 1.56 is still very relevant as well. If you do spot new issues, let us know on Feedback Tracker and share the link on the forums to make sure we catch it. We'd like to release the update this week if we can, so stay connected to our usual channels.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Eden Update Released, Top 10 Audio, Eden Editor Plans, Feedback Tracker

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Wow! Eden Update was a seriously massive release - the length of its change log surprised even us. We were happy to see your reactions to the various larger and smaller improvements. To be sure you're all caught up, visit the Arma 3 website for a new blog, an overview of the changes, a splendid launch trailer, and the full SPOTREP with corresponding TECHREP for the Tools. It continues to be very rewarding for our team to support the game this long after its release, and there are so many more cool things coming up on the #RoadToApex!

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Apex Pre-Order, Difficulty Overhaul, Dynamic Character Specialties, Legacy 2D Editor

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

A lot of you played Arma 3 over the past weekend! The concurrent player peak was the highest we've ever recorded, almost 50,000 people at the same time. There were close to 200,000 unique players on Sunday alone. Of course this was in part because of an Arma Franchise Weekend sale we ran on Steam, and people digging into the sandbox via Eden Editor. That sandbox keeps expanding as well; there are now over 1000 mods on Workshop. We've been addressing more of the issues mentioned last week, and are preparing a small hotfix to 1.56 for this week. Other parts of the team steadily continue their work on Apex, with more and more assets coming online for Tanoa. The platform improvements are being evaluated and mapped to the various main branch updates that are planned for the #RoadToApex.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Ports Update, Tasks Overhaul, Scripting Additions

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

It has been a while since we had concrete information to share about the experimental client ports to Linux and Mac OS. We've finally received the green light to release the 1.54 version (so that is not yet Eden Update). The plan is to publish these updates tomorrow for people who've installed Arma 3 on those platforms (this does not affect Windows players in any way). Our tech partners at Virtual Programming will then proceed to work on the next update, but we cannot yet say when it will be ready. As we communicated when we first opened the public beta for these ports, the timing of port updates cannot be guaranteed. In this case for example, our QA teams needed to prioritize 1.56 testing of the primary Windows version, causing extra delays for the ports. We do however see good support on the port platforms, so we've decided to continue updating them this year. We can also say that BattlEye anti-cheat support should finally arrive to a future update of the ports.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Upcoming Update, Eden Editor Compositions, Ports Updated

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Preparations for the 1.58 main branch update are beginning to kick off this week on the #RoadToApex. That means we'll be creating a snapshot of the data and code, and we'll start organizing an intensive testing period. Besides regular maintenance of the platform and game, the update is to include the Tasks Overhaul. Several additional improvements are being mobilized for Dev-Branch deployment this week. We're quite excited about those, but their inclusion into this particular update is still unsure. Keep your sights trained on our channels for more information as well as details about Release Candidate tests starting.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: Release Candidate 1.58, Difficulty Overhaul Phase 2, Eden Editor Improvements

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

Release Candidate testing for update 1.58 has now indeed begun. The access code for the Steam beta branch is Arma3Update158RC. Beware that this branch will require over a gigabyte of downloaded data, and may still be updated several times during the testing period. A few official servers are running the RC build, and more will likely follow suit. You'll find an indication of the highlighted changes on our forums, which is also where we'd like to ask you to share your feedback. Another good channel to discuss the RC is the Arma subreddit. In order to more effectively track your feedback on the #RoadToApex, a re-launch of the Feedback Tracker is still being worked on diligently by our web team.

 

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FROM: High Command

TO: Arma 3 Users

INFO: RC 1.58 Intel, Feedback Tracker Status, Debug Console Improvements

PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION

So far it has been our intention to release update 1.58 (currently undergoing Release Candidate testing) this week. We are now re-evaluating that plan however. There are a few fresh issues that we need to search and destroy. And there is a cool new feature which we'd love to get in this update, but which is not entirely finished yet. The options are being discussed with our team as we speak. Whether we release 1.58 this week or later, we'll keep you in the loop via our usual development channels.

 

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