Changes Related to the Licensed Data Packages

A few years ago, we released the Licensed Data Packages to the Bohemia modding community; a set of data and samples (e.g. weapons and vehicles from Arma 2) from our past games, so they can learn from examples and base new creations upon this content — to expand the Armaverse and others. These packages include configuration files, material files, 3D models, textures, and animations, as well as complete game data in the form of PBOs. We want to offer the same possibility to the young DayZ Modding community, by making most of the Public Data Package available under two new licenses which allow usage in DayZ.

The following changes will happen:

• All Licensed Data Packages previously released under APL will also be made available under DPL. Users may opt for one or the other.
  
• All Licensed Data Packages previously released under APL-SA will also be made available under ADPL-SA. Users may opt for one or the other.
  
• A new set of Licensed Data Package containing DayZ Mod data (currently under DML-SA) will be made available under ADPL-SA. Users may opt for one or the other.
  

The above only impacts the Licensed Data Packages released by Bohemia Interactive, it is to be noted that the licenses of all already released content won't change — their licenses remain in effect.

Here, the summary of the new licenses:

DayZ Public License (DPL)

• 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.
  
• DayZ Only — You may not convert or adapt this material to be used in games other than DayZ.
  

Arma and DayZ Public License Share Alike (ADPL-SA)

• 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.
  
• Share Alike — If you adapt, or build upon this material, you may distribute the resulting material only under the same license.
  
• Arma and DayZ Only — You may not convert or adapt this material to be used in games other than Arma and DayZ.
  

Here, an example of licensing for a mod using Public Data licensed under APL-SA/ADPL-SA:

• The mod may be released under APL-SA
  
  
  • Is Arma only
    
  • Can't be adapted to be released on DayZ
    
• The mod may be released under ADPL-SA
  
  • Is DayZ and Arma 3
    
  • Can be adapted for DayZ and/or Arma
    

We'd like to take a moment to remind everyone that it's in the interest of us all that the Steam Workshop, and any other user-generated content portal, remains an open and fair place. Please respect the work of others. If you'd like to include content that is not your own, seek permission from the original author, and add credits where they are due. It should go without saying that using assets from other games or other digital sources is especially risky unless there are explicit permissions to do so (i.e., in the EULA). If an original author has decided to take down content, do not re-upload it without permission.

Server owners who want to use several mods on their server are invited to create Workshop Collections which are essentially groups of existing Workshop mods, letting the player subscribe to all mods at once, with respect for the author rights, and ensuring the included mods are up to date.

Modding is a fantastic aspect of our games, and it makes the game more fun for everyone. There are many wonderful examples of inter-mod cooperation, community documentation, custom tools, and endless hours of extra gameplay (take the excellent Arma 3 Community Upgrade Project (CUP) as a perfect example of what can be achieved with these packages). We want to let our games be an open and creative platform for as many content creators as possible. Let's respect each other and keep moving forward together! 

Arma 3 makes PC Gamers top 100 games!

Couldn't see the story online, but Arma 3 made number 42. Not bad for the age of the game. Didn't see Squad in there. but it was a only a quick read of the article.

Offworld Industries Squad Championship, Season 1

SPOTREPs

Whereas SITREPs are general development updates, the SPOTREPs will focus solely on big default branch updates to the game.

Keep checking the Dev Hub for all details.

---------- Post added at 13:16 ---------- Previous post was at 13:14 ----------
 

FROM: Project Lead
TO: Alpha Users
UNIT: Arma 3 Alpha, Arma 3 Alpha Lite
ACTIVITY: Game Update: 0.52 (shadow improvements, crash fixes, destructible windows)
SIZE: ~310 MB

Full changelog and SPOTREP

#Arma3Tips

If you have any suggestions or can recommend any tips/tricks to other Arma 3 players, please post them here!

CAF Patch and Alpha 16 Status

Hey squaddies!

The Canadian Armed Forces team has been hard at work since the Modding Weekend to incorporate your feedback, smash bugs, and make all sorts of tweaks! We’re happy to present those changes now, as well as provide an update on Alpha 16 and the OWI Company Holiday.

CANADIAN ARMED FORCES UPDATE

As mentioned, the CAF team has been hard at work polishing their release and are ready to roll out some of those changes! The update will release today, August 28, 2019, at 3 PM PDT. This is a separate update from Alpha 16, which we’ll touch on in just a minute.

KITS AND LOADOUTS

• Added Arid (or Desert) Canadian faction.
  
• Added a second Medic role with C8A3+C79A2.
  
• LAT now receives two LAS instead of one.
  
• Changed HAT Kit to have 1 Tandem and 1 HEAT round.
  
• Added a second HAT Kit with 1 Tandem and 2 HE rounds.
  
• Added the proper C8A3 icon for the M203 Grenadier version.
  

WEAPONS

• Reworked ballistics of C14 .338 round:
  
  • The projectile arc is now flatter.
    
  • Raised muzzle velocity.
    
  • Increased one-hit kill range and damage over time.
    
• Updated C79A2 sights by making the base post smaller and adding the illuminated part.
  
• Streamlined ADS and weapon positions.
  
• Streamlined recoil on C7A2+C79A2.
  
• Increased ammo requirement for Carl Gustaf 751 Tandem to 80 instead of 60.
  
• Decreased ammo requirement for Carl Gustaf 441D HE to 30 instead of 60.
  
• Tweaked Carl Gustaf 441D damage.
  
• Tweaked zeroing on Carl Gustaf Tandem slightly.
  
• Fixed scope effect on Carl Gustaf.
  

VEHICLES

• Added desert versions for all vehicles.
  
• Fixed accuracy on 2A6M’s Gunner Sight.
  
• Increased visibility on 2A6M’s Rangefinder.
  
• Increased zeroing speed on 2A6M.
  
• Fixed Hunter-Killer on 2A6M.
  
• Fixed Cage Collision on 2A6M.
  
• Fixed LODs on Turret of 2A6M.
  
• Fixed Armor on 2A6M.
  
• Fixed wreck effects on LUV-A1.
  
• Fixed missing components on LAV.
  
• Adjusted Passenger viewblocks on LAV.
  
• Adjusted Driver Camera on 2A6M and LAV.
  
• Increased LAV Mobility.
  
• LAV fixed dust effects.
  
• Fixed LAV armor model.
  
• Fixed armor on LAV side panels.
  

ADDED LAYERS

• Added proper Jensens_Range_v4 with vehicles and ammo boxes
  
• Kohat: Invasion_V1, RAAS_V3, TC_V1
  
• Kamdesh: Invasion_V2, RAAS_V4, TC_V1
  

UPDATED LAYERS

• Gorodok: RAAS_V2, Invasion_V2
  
• Nanisivik: Invasion_V1, RAAS_V1, RAAS_V2
  
• Manic 5: RAAS_V1, Skirmish_V1, TC_v1
  
• Yehorivka: Invasion_V2, RAAS_V1
  

KNOWN ISSUES

• Parts of Nanisivik are still Work-in-Progress.
  
• Guns don’t drop on the floor when soldiers get incapacitated.
  
• Desert Canadian Forces don’t have their own ammo boxes yet.
  
• The Holosight Crosshair still reacts to resolution.
  
• Mouths on characters don’t move when Voicing.
  
• In some cases, a version mismatch may occur if a client updates before the server. Restarting the server should resolve the error.
  

ALPHA 16 STATUS

As some of the more observant of you noticed, we’ve been putting Alpha 16 through its paces through closed testing. While the results are encouraging, we feel the choppers aren’t quite there yet, so we’re planning to push the release back a little.

First, choppers are fully flyable and can be used to transport troops and supplies. They come equipped with door guns for self-defense, a gimbal camera to aid in landing, and a functional cockpit to help you keep aloft. As mentioned, we’ve held full-scale internal testing recently and gathered a lot of feedback from the first folks outside of Offworld to take flight.

While we’ve made some strides in getting performance improvements in place, especially for users with higher latency, the pilot experience still needs some work. In some rare cases, there are some crash bugs, plus some other quality-of-life improvements that need to be made before the patch is ready.

As we’ve been striving to maintain the 4-6 week patch cadence, we wanted to be fully upfront about the delay. Our humble apologies, but we believe getting helicopters right is worth it. As we move forward, we’ll ask for your help in doing just that with periods of public testing. We hope you’ll share your feedback!

Additionally, we want to ensure our modding community has better support and less downtime. With that in mind, releasing Alpha 16 too early would also cause a gap in SDK support. The hope is to have as little time possible between the patch and mod support for that patch being available, especially for communities using mods to host leagues and events.

OWI COMPANY HOLIDAY

Every year, the company takes a week off to get together, get to know everyone who’s joined us that year, hash out the next year (including planning the next trip), and recharge our batteries. It is, as you may have guessed, that time of year!

From Monday, September 9th through Friday, September 13th (most) of Offworld Industries will be in Japan. We’ll have a crew on hand to monitor things, but you may experience delays from support. You can still find assistance on the forums, the help site, or in Discord though.

Should you see a pack of Squad developers somewhere in Japan, please send help and a translator. =)

SIGN-OFF

We appreciate your patience and understanding! We’ll be back and in full swing, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed before you know it. In the meantime, please enjoy the updates from the Canadian Armed Forces Team!

OFFWORLD OUT.

Track Attack Tournament Announcement

Armored squaddies rejoice, the time has come to prove your mettle!

A good tank crew is the backbone of a team and we’ve noticed that the armored crews out there have not had the opportunity to strut their stuff: enter the official Track Attack Tank Tournament.

Our newly formed tournament committee will be hosting an evening of knockout tank action for teams of 3 people to compete for vehicular bragging rights in true 1v1 tank action!

Taking to the field in intense and brutal 15-minute rounds, teams will fight for the top spot in a knockout-style tournament leading to a grand finale, all streamed for your enjoyment!

We’re hoping this small but high-octane event will be the perfect practice our team needs for our future event organization and management.

Sign-ups for this event will be open on Tuesday 27th August 12:00 UTC with spots limited to 8 teams — we want to give it a shakedown run before going any bigger.

From there we can look to put teams into their matchups and present the full tournament schedule.

TOURNAMENT INFORMATION

BASIC RULES

• “First come, first served” sign up basis.
  
• 8 teams will participate.
  
• 3 players per team.
  
• The tournament will play out over one day with all rounds, including final, being decided on Saturday, August 31st, 2019.
  
• The tournament will start at 13:00 UTC.
  

MATCH FORMAT

• Each match will be played in turn. All matches will be streamed by Nordic + Guests at http://twitch.tv/JoinSquad
  
• Teams are unable to choose map or side, they will be randomly distributed to participants just before the match.
  
• A random location on the map will be picked, and one tank each will be spawned to participants.
  
• A match ends when either one tank has been destroyed, or at the end of 15 minutes playtime. If time runs out, the most damaged tank will lose.
  
• In case no damage has been done, the casters will decide the winner between who was more aggressive. Passive play is not rewarded!
  
• If unable to decide a clear winner, a coin flip will be used.
  

MATCH RULES

• Crew members are allowed to leave the vehicle, however, they are not allowed to use their small arms or knives.
  
• Players are allowed to repair their vehicles.
  
• Crew members are allowed to use smoke grenades in any way.
  
• Crew members are allowed to move all over the map, but enemy tanks are allowed to kill the opponent crew members with any weapon on the tank.
  

ORGANIZATION

• Offworld will provide servers.
  
• All participants must have at least one person from the team in the Offworld Tournament discord. Invite will be sent upon accepted attendance.
  
• Teams are allowed to switch players between matches as long as they’re from the same organization/clan/team.
  
• Rules and format may change at any time at the discretion of the tournament manager.
  

OFFWORLD OUT.

Arma 3 still a popular title

We’ll file the following stories under ‘Use when cynics complain Arma 3 is dead’.

The game continues to sell, ranking at the Bronze level for Steam sales in 2018

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/winter2018bestof/

Verge lists Arma 3 among the 15 must have games for a new gaming PC!

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/26/18131097/best-pc-games-2018-free-multiplayer-rpg-top

SITREPs

In this thread we'll post updates in the form of quick SITREPs about ongoing work during on Arma 3. These will include things like high-profile fixes, content additions, focus areas, announcements, and general development chatter.

Keep an eye on the Dev Hub for all the details.

---------- Post added at 16:09 ---------- Previous post was at 16:06 ----------
 

FROM: Project Lead
TO: Alpha Users
PRECEDENCE: Flash

SITUATION
The Arma 3 Alpha was released, and our team is actively monitoring all feedback flooding in. We’re prioritizing and starting work on fixes deployed onto the Steam Development branch.

Full SITREP

Cpu

hello rigging 3 is a nice game but my distress is the reason of 13% of the cpu in this game

Alpha 15.4 Released

Hey squaddies!

We’ve got some slightly-unusual patch notes for you today.

But first, you can say goodbye to that annoying server filter bug! (The “show full servers” checkbox functionality was inverted. Whoops!)

Additionally, we’re introducing some experimental changes to the “dead dead” mechanic, as well as the way “instadeath” works. Let’s dig in a little.

PRE-ALPHA 13

Prior to Alpha 13, the mechanics worked like this:

After dying and being revived, there was a 60-second time frame during which you were extra vulnerable. This meant that if you died again during these 60 seconds, you would become unrevivable (“dead dead”) and be instantly sent to the spawn screen. There was no UI indication of this vulnerability.

Taking a large caliber headshot (such as 50cal) would instantly make you unrevivable (instadeath).

This was a mechanic was originally added to convey some consequence of death, as well as a sense of tension and vulnerability to newly revived players. The goal was (hopefully) to encourage the vulnerable player to stick back with their squadmates.

We had some questions on whether the role of this mechanic was too punishing and negatively impacting the teamwork aspect, especially for new players to an already challenging game. It could be difficult to understand why the “instadeath” black screen occurred and the 60-second timer was not well-exposed.

ALPHA 13

With Alpha 13, when dying and being revived, there was no longer a period of extra “vulnerability,” allowing a player to be revived indefinitely. (Or until your medic ran out of bandages, anyway.)

The caliber required to make you unrevivable was increased, meaning you could be revivable after a 50cal headshot, but not after a 30mm headshot.

After 3 months of evaluation with these new changes, including lots of feedback from our community, we’re introducing a new iteration of these mechanics. 

As with the previous ones, the effects will be monitored and tweaked. Keep us updated with your feedback!

ALPHA 15.4

As of this patch (Alpha 15.4), when you are incapacitated, you have a revive window (5 minutes by default). This revive window will be shortened based on the amount of damage you took as part of your death.

For example, if you got downed by minimal damage from a pistol, your revive timer will be very close to 5 minutes. If you got downed by a rifle headshot, your revive timer will be slightly less than 2 and a half minutes. A 50 caliber headshot will give you a short 30-second revive window. Lastly, anything from a close proximity IED blast to a 30mm headshot and beyond will cause your revive window to be 5 seconds – too short to get revived in, so you’re effectively dead.

On top of this mechanic, the revive window persists through revives until you have been healed by a medic. This means that if you get headshot by a rifle, revived without getting healed, and then headshot again, the remaining revive window will be too short for another revive.

If not getting healed, this “persistent revive window” will automatically slowly increase back to the full 5 minutes as long as you remain alive. If you died, were revived, and managed to stay alive for a few minutes, you would be nearing the five-minute timer again.

Anything that previously sent you instantly sent to spawn screen (“instadeath”) will now instead give you a 5-second revive timer, too short to be revived in. The hope is to give the player more feedback about what happened when he died, instead of instantly disappearing from the map and into the spawn screen. 

In the future, we hope to include a 1-2 second ragdoll moment before entering the incapacitated state to provide better feedback about what just occurred in a more intuitive and immersive way.

Please note: there can and will be further tweaks and/or additions to this system. All in all, we hope it is a more flexible way to tune players’ revivability, as well as increase information available to the player. 

Our goal is to balance between the game being too forgiving and too unforgiving. In this version, revive trains should be harder to maintain and most catastrophic damage (e.g., headshots, IED explosions) should be more effective as well. However, players will still get a second chance in most cases. We will keep tracking revive statistics as well as your feedback.

BUDDY RALLY

Finally, we would like to give you some information on our intended gameplay ideas in the future concerning the Buddy Rally system. For the time being, lacking a system to reclaim or reset abandoned vehicles in the field, we will be keeping the buddy rally mechanic. 

In the future, we would like to see this replaced with a mechanic that deals with abandoned vehicles in the field, so that respawning at main is a more viable option. The buddy rally mechanic might still become a limited option available to the Commander, giving squads an extra option for situational redeployment. Another option is to make it available only to the Insurgents faction. Please keep your feedback coming on this as well.

Enjoy the patch! Let us know what you think!

OFFWORLD OUT.

Servers Unavailable (Aug 6)

Hey squaddies!

We’re tracking an issue that’s preventing players from accessing servers.

Early reports from the team are pointing to an issue with Steam-Unreal functionality related to the FOnlineAsyncTaskSteamFindServers queue. It appears to be an issue that will impact other games (e.g., Mordhau) using the Epic Steam OSS will be unable to display servers.

We’ll keep an eye on the situation and let you know more once we do.

Hang in there, squaddies.

OFFWORLD OUT.

Arma 3 - Feedback Tracker

For the Arma 3 Alpha we have decided to make use of our own Feedback Tracker (FT - opened with the release on March 5th). Some of you will wonder why we do not use the DevHeaven Community Issue Tracker, so I will try to explain our rationale in this post.

First of all, let me thank the people involved in running CIT, such as Sickboy, kju and the rest of its admin staff! Big thanks as well to those who took the time to report issues, work on good repro methods and validating fixes. This has especially helped with the ongoing development of the Operation Arrowhead beta patches. It's good to have a dedicated place to track issues, rather than to contain it all within the forums. That leaves these forums to be a place of discussion and community collaboration.

For the Arma 3 Alpha we however wished things from the tracking platform that CIT did not currently do. I have no doubt its creators could eventually implement some of what we needed, but we had to get it up and running very quickly. Most of it was about direct administration control and connections to our own web services. In our vision for Arma 3, the consistent and complete package is important. We feel the Feedback Tracker is part of that, and so it should feel as close as possible to the rest of the websites and the game. If we decide to make a subtle change quickly (e.g. an artwork or disclaimer text), we need to be able to immediately get it done via our own web team. We are also expecting an influx of people who have no experience with CIT or our community at all. We need a platform those people can easily find and use. They should not be confused about whether the platform is official or not.

In the end though, no matter what platform is used, the goal is for us to cooperate with you: developers and the community. We'd like to ask you to help us to do that. By reporting issues to us in a good way, we can do our best to correct them. By voting you let us know which issues are of key importance to you. On our end we are getting our pipelines ready to be able to more frequently update the game during Alpha, Beta and the main release. We'll have a default branch on Steam where we release major and tested updates. Interesting for rapid iterations is the Development branch, where we'll let any of our developers update data much more frequently. Sometimes this will break that branch, but a key differentiation to OA's beta patches: data updates are used more. Fixes are not primarily focused on the programmers.

Also let me introduce you to our Senior Quality Assurance team member: Astaroth. He will be your Community QA Liaison - which means he'll help the team stay aware of issues being reported and voted on. That's not to say the rest of the team will not also be using FT: we are encouraging as many of our developers as possible to keep an eye on it.

We hope CIT can continue to provide its excellent services to many other projects such as the community's. Please join us in creating a stable and optimized Arma 3 game

Canadian Armed Forces Deployed!

Hey squaddies!

We’ve got some fresh reinforcements incoming: The Canadian Armed Forces are now fully deployed! That’s right, there’s a brand new faction in Squad and it’s already yours, completely free.

Originally known as CAFMOD, the team behind the new faction is straight from our modding community. We’re honored to be able to include them as official content for all players. What content is that, you ask?

So, what are you waiting for, soldier? Do it for The Great White North!

OFFWORLD OUT.

SECREPs

SECREPs will signal the update of main branch for anti-cheat / security only. Typically this means only BattlEye files were changed, and the game is not changed itself.

---------- Post added at 15:26 ---------- Previous post was at 15:23 ----------
 

FROM: BattlEye
TO: Arma 3 Users
UNIT: Main Branch
ACTIVITY: Anti-Cheat Update
SIZE: ~2.5 MB / ~102 KB