Edge

We have several reports of TerrainProcesssor not properly terrain-processing shapefiles on drives different from EXE location or P:\ drive. For now, we recommend to have the project file (TPP) and shapefiles stored near the TP executable. Apologies, we are working on the fix. :)

Hello gentlemen, nice to hear about some job done in the TP, and sorry about the issues. Please, if you have particular issues with Terrain Processor, please PM me. We are interested in repros including the data.

Hello modders! Bohemia Interactive a.s. has released sample files and data from their games for the community, to learn from examples, base their own creations on the existing content, and expand the Armaverse. These packs include configuration files, material files, 3D models, textures, animations as well as complete game data in the form of PBOs. The public data packages are released under Bohemia Interactive's content licenses, established to support the creative community evolving around its titles, and to set clear rules for the use of both Bohemia Interactive's and user-made content. Note that previous releases of sample model packages are replaced by the new ones, with new licenses applied to the content. You can learn more including the download links at http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Public_Data. We recommend to download the data using our torrents. Due to high demand the direct download links may be overloaded. Overview of the packages: Arma 1 Sample Models - Re-release of the Arma 1 complete sample models pack under new licenses, in ZIP archives divided according to the licenses applied. Arma 2 Sample Models - The pack of sample models and animations from Arma 2 and its expansions; contains unbinarized models, configs, model configs, RVMATs and scripts from Arma 2 including all DLCs in ZIP archives divided according to the licenses applied. Arma Licensed Data Pack - Binarized data from the Arma series (from CWC to A2:CO) in PBO files. The purpose of this package is to clearly identify which game data is licensed for public use and modification, and what are the related conditions and requirements. Sahrani Community Package - This archive contains source data for the Sahrani island from Arma 1 (Armed Assault), licensed under (APL-SA). Take On Helicopters Data Pack - Binarized data from the Take On Helicopters series in PBO files. Happy editing, folks! :)

Hello, mod makers, Bohemia Interactive has just released new (Arma) content licenses. We would like to encourage you to use them to license your work, and of course, we are releasing our sample models and game data from the past Arma installments under these licenses. You can check them all at http://www.bistudio.com/english/community/licenses. Brief summary follows: Arma Public License (APL) With this licence you are free to adapt (i.e. modify, rework or update) and share (i.e. copy, distribute or transmit) the material under the following conditions: Attribution — You must attribute the material in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the material). Noncommercial — You may not use this material for any commercial purposes. Arma Only - You may not convert or adapt this material to be used in other games than Arma. The full text of the license can be obtained at http://www.bistudio.com/licenses/arma-public-license. Arma Public License Share Alike (APL-SA) With this licence you are free to adapt (i.e. modify, rework or update) and share (i.e. copy, distribute or transmit) the material under the following conditions: Attribution — You must attribute the material in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the material). Noncommercial — You may not use this material for any commercial purposes. Arma Only - You may not convert or adapt this material to be used in other games than Arma. Share Alike — If you adapt, or build upon this material, you may distribute the resulting material only under the same license. The full text of the license can be obtained at http://www.bistudio.com/licenses/arma-public-license-share-alike. DAYZ Mod License Share Alike (DML-SA) With this licence you are free to adapt (i.e. modify, rework or update) and share (i.e. copy, distribute or transmit) the material under the following conditions: Attribution — You must attribute the material in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the material). Noncommercial — You may not use this material for any commercial purposes Arma 2 Only - You may not convert or adapt this material to be used in other games than Arma 2 Share Alike — If you adapt, or build upon this material, you may distribute the resulting material only under the same license The full text of the license can be obtained at http://www.bistudio.com/licenses/dayz-mod-license-share-alike.

Thank you for the information!

Hi Olli, we consider depicting a vehicle or weapon and naming it by its military designation allright for the purpose of the contest, and we will NOT disqualify anyone for e.g. naming M-16 as "M-16" in game. However, it will probably do no harm if you avoid company names or obvious brands (e.g. "Aimpoint"). Please note that MANW contestats warrant they hold the rights, and if we (BI) would receive compaints of copyright or trademark holders, we will investigate and make sure to remove any infringements in cooperation with respective entry's authors. Please, may you tell me about the references for trademark ownership you used? PM will certainly do if you'd feel an extensive info would clutter the thread. Thanks in advance!

Hello, you are free to use the BI's models in your MP mission entry provided their release would be compliant with the Arma Public License under which the models were released. From the technical POV, the models should be integral part of the entry (in your case, inside the MP mission's PBO). Hope this helps! :)

Hello, the rules state that your contest entry must not require any other addon (except of Community Base Addons) to work correctly in Arma 3. Let's use your example to illustrate what's possible: If your addon would require the 3rd-party flying tanker addon to work and it would be impossible to run game with your addon alone, it would be unfortunately unacceptable. If your addon would just allow or support the use of 3rd-party addons, but they would not be required to run it, it would be just fine. :)

Hello kju, thanks for your questions. :) Regarding the Selection of Finalists: ad 1) Yes, the criteria apply only to the contribution itself. Other promotional activities of the contestants do not influence the selection of Finalists. ad 2) MANW content page, wiki info or website are not considered to be part of a contest entry. The promotion opportunities are meant to give the contestants chance to promote their work in the community, get visibility on the contest website etc. ad 3) The information required to install and use a contest entry are mandatory part of the submission, and may come in any suitable form (TXT readme, ingame instructions etc.). The point is to give us enough information to be able to judge the entries properly, the readme's form and content will not be judged. E.g. if you deliver a plain TXT explaining the setup of your MP mission and what are the special rules and controls of it, it is just what we need. Regarding the Selection of Winners: ad 1) The criteria of the Jury are purely subjective, in order to allow every member of Jury to express his professional and personal preferences. Jury will be judging the cream of the crop of the contest entries, hence more freedom for Jury to promote the entries which would seem special to them. ad 2) Jury members will focus on the entries themselves, they will not give points for nice websites etc. As for the internal infrastructure, the Jury members will have all BI's support to be able to judge all the Finalist entries in the required extent. ad 3) Yes, of course, servers will be arranged to ensure the Jury has chance to have the full experience. We are considering whether to make the servers public or whether to use a more private environment.

Thanks for your question, I will check if it's allright and let you know (IMHO it is, as you have agreed with the derivative work's author).

Hello, I understand your concerns and reasons, but we need to keep the conditions same for all participants, submission methods included. If you want to take part in the contest, please publish the mission on Steam Workshop no later than on 28th October 2014 at 12am (GMT+1), as stated in the contest rules. Thanks in advance and looking forward to see King of The Hill among the entries! :)

Hello, you might be interested in how to use APL-SA-licensed 3rd-party content in your contest entries: Winning a prize in the competition could be considered commercial use. You can NOT include any 3rd-party content in your submission that is licenced for non commercial use only (e.g. under Arma Public Licenses or Creative Commons Non Commercial Licenses) without consent and specific license from the 3rd party. Bohemia Interactive grants license all participants in MANW to use its licensed data from http://www.bistudio.com/english/community/licenses/licenced-data-packages in the contest, as well as to use Arma 3 and Arma 3 Tools to create competition entries. To sum it up, you are free to use Bohemia's data for the contest, but you ALWAYS need to obtain 3rd-party's permission from anyone else. In case of APL-SA, the license's requirements apply even for the Make Arma Not War contest entries (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Arma Only, Share Alike).

Hello, Mecharius, I have the info regarding the use of PDF map of Altis and Stratis. As it's a product BI sells as part of Arma 3 Digital Deluxe Edition, publishing the map content on the internet is regarded illegal and we cannot allow you to use it. If you need a decent map of Altis and Stratis for your mission generator, the legally safe option is to use the map imagery obtained from the game (e.g. by print-screening), which would be considered fair use of game content according to the Game Content Usage Rules. Please feel free to PM me if you'd have further questions, and keep up the great work! :)

The explanation why we "cooked" our own licenses is pretty easy, as 10T put it: CC don't address some specific things we wanted to promote or legalize, e.g. limited usage of content only withing range of our products. Also, BI's licenses are based on the latest version of CC licenses. :) Of course you are free to use a suitable CC license provided your work is 100% yours and does not contain any remixes. Anyway, back to the hard work: regarding the questions about whether unbinarized models need to be provided as part of modifications released under APL-SA, it is NOT required. I would say the FAQ is pretty clear about this: We have released plenty of past Armas' data ourselves, with APL-SA parts of the Arma Licensed Data Packs containing binarized models. The intention behind the cited FAQ answer is not to impose rules on community we did not abide ourselves. :) If you, the community, would feel there is need to enforce the release of unbinarized models in order to allow easier remixes, we are open to discussion (but please start it in a separate thread).

Mecharius, you have PM. I will ask around what's the situation with our PDF maps, and let you (and everybody here) know - we will most likely add this to the Game Content Usage Rules and/or Licenses FAQ. And BTW, it's a really nice mission generator you made. :)

As you would still be using something based on our game's data, I think the same rules as for using the files directly would apply. Please check the Game Content Usage Rules and if you would not spot a reasonable answer, please send me a PM and I will ask around.

According to the Game Content Usage Rules, it seems that you can use the music tracks from A3 for the purpose of promoting your contest entry. I will need to verify this but if you keep the Arma stuff in Arma and Arma-related promo, it's generally fine with us. However, A3 music is not part of any licensed data pack, therefore I would be careful with editing it. If we would spot an issue we would not like, we would let you know and see how we could handle that to both your and our satisfaction. :) The voiceovers you recorded for the mission are all yours. It would be awesome if you would release them under APL or APL-SA, but we cannot force you to use any of them - please check the chart. Of course, you can use only one license for a single piece of work. As Undeceived said, we only want to avoid having to download more PBOs, but if you make them part of the mission package, it's perfectly fine and much welcome! You do not need to release your work under an Arma Public License, but it would be noble thing surely appreciated by other community mission makers. :) It is important for you to make sure you (as individual or as a team) have rights to use the custom voiceovers, but it's between you and voiceactors and sound engineers, but I suppose you have this covered. Thanks for your questions! I will definitely need to take a look at how we limit the usage of music. :)

Hello, if it's in ALDP package, then you are free to use it in Arma and abide to the license's requirements. ---------- Post added at 08:57 ---------- Previous post was at 08:21 ---------- The things are a bit different: Our (BI) content is licensed by our EULA and part of the game data were released inder certain licenses (APL, APL-SA). Content made by an addonmaker from scratch may be licensed in any way provided the license is compliant with our EULA. It is up to particular addonmaker to choose under which conditions he releases their work, with APL and APL-SA being among the options. In case somebody is using BI's data as basis for their work, they are required to follow the licenses' conditions (see the licenses selection chart). Of course, this is nonsense. Your model is yours, and it is up to you how you limit its further usage. However, it is always good do define these things when you release something. Again, APL or APL-SA can be used. Obviously, licenses always cover particular and well defined content, and are not universal to everything the community produces - you would have to state that paticular addon of yours is released under particular license. Even if you do not define licensing conditions for your work, you remain its author and your IP rights should be respected. You are definitely not required to release any sources, but it's welcome help expecially in case of APL-SA-licensed content. Let me just add that everyone is welcome to use APL or APL-SA, which are based on CC but were tailored to be EULA-compliant and promote the spirit of openness and cooperation us veterans experienced in the early days of OFP community. I also recommend to read through the Licenses FAQ and check the licenses selection chart which can help in understanding how we mean it. Hope this helps. :)

I think the use of proxies as you describe it is perfectly fine. :) ---------- Post added at 09:08 ---------- Previous post was at 08:54 ---------- Hello, I sent you a "harsh" e-mail notifying you about the issues just before reading the message. :) Many thanks for all the efforts to solve the possible IP issues! From the entry processing POV, we are not really interested in IP issues until submissions are closed and we would need to determine finalists and make sure they do not violate anyone's IP rights, but from the community standpoint, sooner your entry is fully compliant with the rules the better. We have set up a possibility to report 3rd-content abuse, and it is obvious from the first few reports that it would be good if we make the use of 3rd-party work in entries more transparent / visible, otherwise people will tend to report even cases where the author has permission to use 3rd-party works. I would like to offer the authors a formalized way to report 3rd-party content in their works, and make this information part of the entry presentations, but it will take us some time to implement. Just to "harsh e-mails" in general, we are only notifying the authors about possible issue and ask them to make sure they got the IP stuff right. It is in our interest to support the contestants. By receiving an e-mail warning, authors are not getting any "black mark", it's just a friendly heads-up to make sure we would not need to disqualify them later because of their omission. :) Of course, we record the reports and in case a reported entry would become finalist, we would double-check the possible issues.

This is definitely good and safe approach.

Yes, but only if the 3rd party (author of the content released under APL-SA) agrees. Consent of all 3rd-party authors would be required. If it would be just you and BI, then the person who's using your licensed work would only need to get your permission, as we've given it for all our licensed data.

Hello, we at Bohemia have nothing against this as long as you would only reward the supporters. :) Rules don't prevent such activities and it's something everyone can do. My suggestion would be to keep things absolutely transparent and avoid "buying" people's votes, in which case we would probably have to disqualify you. Good luck in promoting your contest entry! There's never enough Arma3-themed mats and mugs!

Hello, please feel free to do so! Bohemia's Arma data were released to help modmakers, we only ask people to respect the licenses under which the data were released.

Hi Lato, I am not sure if military unit names are copyrighted, but I suppose you can use them as general terms (I cannot imagine all the people writing about worl militaries having to obtain permission to use the names in their books)? Logos might be trickier, as many organizations have regulations for use fo their symbols. If you have more information about this, please do share them here or send me a PM, I would definitely like to learn more! You may also consider whether a particular unit patch or name is indispensable for making a good modification. :) On a side note, you can use copyrighted material (e.g. music), but only in case you don't violate the material owner's rights (e.g. by obtaining a permission from them).

Unconventinal submissions are welcome, well said Mr gdscei. The point is to have fun with the new content in Arma 3, so please be as creative as possible and surprise us! :)