Rock, Paper, Shotgun

“But Craig”, you’re probably saying to your monitor. “I totes remember insects casting shadows in Arma 2. Like seriously.” To that I say: “That’s cool. Let’s talk.”

This was supposed to be a post about the wonders of Arma 3′s new screenshot mode, splendidly named the Splendid Camera. It still is. Splendid Camera, I shall always call it by its full name, is one of those additions that shows you how deeply into the community’s den that Bohemia are willing to burrow to make people happy. In this case it’s a function that’s specifically designed to allow players to fly around the game, slow time, remove the HUD, and even change exposure and focus settings, just so they can take nice screenshots. That is how I discovered that both Arma 2 and Arma 3 had insects that cast shadows.
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Hello, readers. I am alone in the RPS forbidden chatroom of mystery, which means that I am in charge of RPS until someone comes and takes it away from me. They actually forgot I was here and took Good Friday off without telling me! I am just a freelancer. So today we’ll have none of the usual nonsense that passes for RPS posts these days. News? Schmews! Faetures? I can’t even spell the word. GDC? I just checked and it doesn’t mean “Gloriously Decadent Chips”, so I don’t know why John and Jim are there. My autonomy means I get to do stuff like this. ArmA 3′s creative director pointed me towards a lovely ArmA 2 mod. An inquisitive six year-old’s first ArmA 2 addon. In the middle of all the horribly detailed war bastards that are usually built for the game, the wee boy made a table. Being a huge sap, I asked for more screenshots and details. They are EXCLUSIVE and below.
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Bohemia Interactive is doing smart things at the moment. The first smart thing they did was to give me access to Arma 3 before everyone else had it, which made me happy. That is a smart thing, because I am very important person, and my mum says I am handsome. The second smart thing they did was to release the Arma 3 Alpha to people who are not me, because it makes multiplayer games a lot more fun, and it means they can get to work with optimising their Greek pixels. The third smart thing was just launched: everyone who owns a copy of the Arma 3 Alpha has copies of the Lite edition to give away. Check your Steam Gifts, everyone. A heavily armed Santa Claus has been!

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DayZ‘s latest dev log features a man ingesting and then allegedly defecating a tin can, at which point Dean “Rocket” Hall nonchalantly decides to bend over, pick it up, and save it for later. This has led me to the following earth-shatteringly profound revelation: videogames are weird, you guys. Really weird. I doubt anyone else noticed, but I’m being totally honest! Most of the time, people don’t procure their cans that way in real life. Also, zombies don’t exist. The latest batch of Rocket-narrated DayZ footage, however, has those too! What’s next, I ask you? Men ignoring the iron-etched laws of common decency and discarding their trousers with reckless abandon? Like filthy, brief-flaunting savages?

…Oh. Oh god.

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From next week you’ll be able to play Arma 3. Yes, the headline gave it away, didn’t it? Pre-ordering a “Arma 3 Alpha, Arma 3 Digital Deluxe, Or Arma 3 Supporter editions” (all available soon) will soon give immediate access to Arma 3 on Steam, or at least to an alpha test of a limited build of the game that will run until the full beta test some time in the second quarter of the year. Bohemia explain: “Featured in the Arma 3 Alpha are four showcase missions (Infantry, Vehicles, SCUBA and Helicopter), a limited subset of weapons and vehicles, two multiplayer scenarios, the powerful scenario editor and modding support. The 20 km² island of Stratis, which is positioned right off the coast from Arma 3’s main destination ‘Altis’ (270 km²), will form the backdrop of the Arma 3 Alpha.” There’s much more to come, as the scope of the test expands.

Hands on with Arma 3′s alpha, as well as an interview with the Bohemians, coming up later this week.

I wonder if this thing could be related to this other thing? Whatever the case, Bohemia Interactive are putting their next egg into a single basket, and that basket is Steam and the egg is Arma III. Rather than just sending out a press release to tell us, Bohemia have posted a detailed blog entry to make the argument that removal of choice for the consumer is ‘a good thing’. Primarily, it’ll allow Bohemia to concentrate on making the game, ensuring it’s out in 2013 rather than slipping as a result of “two quite serious situations”: the arrest of members of the team and, less specifically, Bohemia’s unhappiness “with how the project was going”.

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If you’re me, and you’ve tried to install the DayZ mod into Arma II, then you made a real hash of it. Fortunately for all the me out there, there’s a simpler way. The mod has been made available directly over Steam, meaning you can just click a couple of buttons and all the scary work is done for you.

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The two Bohemia Interactive developers arrested on accusations of spying in Greece have, it’s been announced today, been released on bail. And even better, are free to return to the Czech Republic. This has come about, remarkably, after the involvement of Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, directly in communication with the Czech PM, Petr Nečas.

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It is 2013. If you’re still alive, congratulations (or sorry, I guess, depending on your perspective)! You made it. But while this techno-neo-cyber-space-face year is going quite swimmingly so far, there’s one thing missing from society’s collective vision of a utopian ultrafuture: DayZ‘s standalone version. It was supposed to come crawling out of the woodwork at the tail end of 2012, but Bohemia’s camp didn’t make a peep as we all made our annual holiday sacrifices to our respective Blood Gods, as per cataclysm-averting tradition. So then, what’s the deal? Why the delay? Rocket took to DayZ’s dev log to provide answers.

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Things haven’t exactly been going well for jailed ArmA III developers Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar, but if nothing else, they’re not without support. Bohemia Interactive and the Czech Embassy have been in their corner for the more-than-70-day duration – though unfortunately, they haven’t been able to make any significant headway. Most recently, the pair was unable to post bail, and now a trial seems almost completely unavoidable. And so, with things seemingly stuck in a nosedive that never ends, the president of the Czech Republic has decided to step in.

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Things have to get worse before they can get better. It would seem, however, that the universal rules of life forget to apply that second part to the case of ArmA III developers Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar. They’ve now been imprisoned in Greece for nearly 70 days, and their recent attempt to post bail was completely unsuccessful. So then, what’s next? At this point, it’s looking like a trial is inevitable. And in the event that the Greek legal system treats Buchta and Pezlar as well as the Greek prison system, they could be facing up to 20 years of jail time.

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