ArmA: Armed Assault: Beta Patch 1.09

WARNING: THIS IS AN INTERIM PUBLIC BETAVERSION. IT'S NOT A FULLY TESTED STABLE RELEASE. USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK. DO NOT CONTACT OFFICIAL SUPPORT WITH ANY PROBLEMS USING THIS PATCH BUT USE ONLY STANDARD COMMUNITY CHANNELS TO GIVE US FEEDBACK.

THIS BETA VERSION IS RELEASED FOR PUBLIC BETATESTING PURPOSES ONLY. YOU STILL SHOULD BE ABLE TO RUN THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF THE GAME.

THIS BETA CAN BE STARTED ONLY WHEN RUNNING THE NEW BETA EXE VIA SPECIAL SHORTCUT CREATED DURING PATCH PROCESS IN YOUR MAIN ARMA WORKING FOLDER.

Copyright © 2007 Bohemia Interactive. All rights reserved.

This application will update your ArmA: Armed Assault / Combat Operations installation with a Beta folder and shortcut to launch the beta version.

BUY AND DOWNLOAD ARMA: GOLD EDITION VERSION 1.08 (INCLUDING THE ORIGINAL GAME ARMED ASSAULT / COMBAT OPERATIONS AND THE OFFICIAL EXPANSION PACK QUEEN'S GAMBIT)

DIRECTLY FROM THE DEVELOPERS AT SPROCKETIDEA.COM

DOWNLOAD MIRRORS

armedassault.com (Czech Republic)

Ofpec.com (United Kingdom)

Armedassault.info No1 mirror (France)

Armedassault.info No2 mirror (France)

GOL-Clan.net Mirror (United Kingdom)

Mediafire (Free US host)

OGN (Australia)

Armatechsquad.com (US)

Armaholic (US)

Got Flashpoint? (UK)

BIS.4Players.de (Germany)

BIS-inGame.de (Europe)

Combat-Prison.net (Europe)

gamershell.com (Europe, USA)

SPECIAL THANKS

• Dslyecxi and Shack Tactical for their invaluable support with VON testing
• The entire ARMA community for testing 1.09 beta

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

ANY ORIGINAL VERSION OF ARMA 1.08 (Note that some of the fixes were included in the 1.08 hotfix already).

Visit updates section at armedassault.com to update your ArmA as necessary.

October 2006 DirectX 9 runtime is required (d3dx9_31.dll) and patch installer will update your system with it automatically if you don't have it installed.

OpenAL will be updated during the patch process to version 2.0.3.

HOW TO INSTALL THE BETA

Run the patch exe to apply the patch setup automatically (you may be prompted to choose your exact version in some occasions).

It will install all beta content to a mod folder "Beta" and shortcut "Launch Arma Beta Patch" to your ArmA directory (default is C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA or C:\Program Files\Atari\ArmA).

It is recommended to uninstall older beta patches before installing this new beta patch.

HOW TO UNINSTALL THE BETA

There's an uninstall application exe Uninstall_ARMAPatch_109beta.exe included in the patch archive that allows you to remove the beta folder and associated shortcut from you game directory.

HOW TO RUN THE BETA

You can still run your existing ArmA normally by using the existing shortcuts and as far as we know, the beta shouldn't interfere with your game, so even after you installed the beta you should be able to install this beta patch normally.

To run the beta version, you need to start "Launch Arma Beta Patch" in your ArmA game directory.

If you need to run ArmA another way, and you still want to run the beta, make sure to start the ArmA.exe from the beta subfolder with working directory set to the normal ArmA directory and also with command line option -mod=beta

Note: 1.09 is not compatible in multiplayer with any previously available versions.

1.09 HIGHLIGHTS - MAIN NEW IMPROVEMENTS AND FIXES

• significantly smoother gameplay on Northern part of Sahrani (up to 100% increase in frame rate depending on scene, video settings and graphics card)

• combat AI improvements

• voice over net and multiplayer related fixes and improvements

• new anti cheating methods in multiplayer (including optional www.BattlEye.com depending on server settings: if enabled, be server and be client dlls will be used and automatically updated to your computer)

• fixed compatibility problems caused by various copy protections used

• fog is rendered correctly on DX10 generation cards

• new scripting functions (string manipulation, multiplayer synchronization)

KNOWN ISSUES

• occasional BSOD in multiplayer using VOIP with some SoundBlaster cards (this problem was present also in all previous version of ArmA including 1.08 but due to limited use of VOIP it wasn't real issue). Known work around is to disable hardware acceleration in ArmA audio options.

• To use BattlEye server and all users joining such BE enabled server need to install BattlEye dlls to Arma working directory.

• Patch can't be installed if you have beta folder with version 1.07 present:you need to remove beta folder in case you have 1.07 beta folder present in order to install this patch

ENGINE CHANGELOG

5164 - Fixed: spinning in select() on Linux Dedicated Server

5164 - Fixed: Handling of invalid CD keys on dedicated servers improved

5164 - Fixed: Signature verification timeout significantly relaxed.

5164 - Fixed: System audio mixer settings no longer changed by ingame volume options.

5164 - Fixed: Vehicle channel no longer transforms to a side channel when not in the vehicle.

5164 - Fixed: assignToAirport did the same as landAt. Now it assigns for purpose of future getout commands.

5164 - Fixed: MP: Player driving motorcycle could die suddenly with no apparent reason.

5164 - Fixed: Building ruins were not visible for JIP-ed players.

5164 - Improved: UI - better detection of focused buttons

5170 - New: Scripting: Full object orientation can be set now using new function setVectorDirAndUp

5170 - Fixed: Handling of duplicate CD key improved

5170 - Added: Improved anti-cheat measures

5170 - New: Command line argument -ranking=... was removed. MP mission statistics can be written to file specified by logFile entry in the server config.

5170 - Fixed: Memory leak on dedicated server (several KB per a mission played).

5170 - Fixed: leader, AI tanks subordinate to a player sometimes did not open fire against some enemy tanks.

5170 - Fixed: AI was not able to fire over sandbags unless the enemy came very near.

5170 - Fixed: Recoil was working badly (moving in unexpected directions) when fps was low.

5170 - Fixed: AI was able to pinpoint enemy by ear after seeing him for a while.

5170 - Fixed: Fixed: Fog on DX10 cards (nVidia 8800, ATI X2900) was too dense.

5170 - Fixed: AI was sometimes unable to move when seeing enemy very near.

5170 - Fixed: Error when loading a save from a complex mission (containing a lot of variables).

5170 - Fixed: Possible crash caused by malformed resize scripting command.

5175 - Fixed: Chat message length limited to 150 characters

5175 - Added: After 3 wrong attempts to log in as an admin further attempts are ignored for some time

5175 - Fixed: Reduced loading time for large textures.

5178 - Fixed: Default handling of different data detected was stricter then intended, resulting in a kick of players.

5178 - Fixed: Dedicated server sometimes crashes after downloading Squad.xml.

5178 - Experimental: Depth only pass used to reduce pixel shader load on some GPUs.

5178 - New: Improved Voice over Net packet re-translation (voice is re-translated when no direct Peer to Peer connection is available or to spare some network bandwidth).

5179 - Fixed: VoN loudness is sometimes not matching selected voice channel (too quiet on Global channel or too loud on Direct channel).

5180 - New: BattlEye protection integration (server admin can enable it using battlEye = 1; in server config)

5180 - New: Better NAT traversal for VoN.

5180 - Optimized: Reduced GPU load of shore area rendering.

5181 - Fixed: NAT traversal for VoN makes dedicated server crashing.

5184 - Fixed: AI units in safe mode could randomly stop

5190 - Fixed: Bad object ID after loading a game - caused frequent crashes when loading Rahmadi Conflict saves.

5191 - New: publicVariable now works for all types of variables

5191 - Added: function addPublicVariableEventHandler

5191 - Fixed: Airplanes bombing laser designated targets.

5193 - Changed: aiDispersionCoef now used scaled by unit skill, high skill units always having low dispersion.

5194 - Fixed: Airplanes with tail wheel were placed with the tail in the air when mission was started.

5195 - Added: functions toUpper, toLower, toArray, toString

5196 - Fixed: Airplanes standing on the ground sometimes oscillated (observed esp. with DC3)

5196 - New: Added difficulty option VonID (VON ID), allowing to see in-game who is currently speaking over the radio.

5196 - New: Added difficulty option DeathMessages (KILL MSG), allowing disabling of XXX killed by YYY messages.

5196 - Fixed: Improved dynamic range handling for vehicle interior sounds (reduces their loudness)

5196 - New: Added difficulty option NetStats (MP SCORE), allowing disabling of scoreboard functionality.

5198 - Fixed: Dead players can no longer talk or write to in-game players unless they are admins.

5199 - Fixed: Further reduced virtual address space usage. Should reduce frequency of out of memory errors. Use command line switch -vm108 to mimic the behaviour of 1.08 version if the new scheme does not work for you.

5201 - New: Command line option -noPause to allow the game running even when its window does not have a focus.

5203 - New: Option to mute individual players in the Players screen (key P)

5203 - Fixed: Thrust vectoring was not transferred in MP, causing warping of hovering airplanes.

5203 - Fixed: Possible crashes with VoN used with HW acceleration.

5203 - Improved: Some ingame .rpt messages removed or clarified to make them more useful

5205 - Fixed: MP "Head bug" - when two players were boarding passenger space of the vehicle simultaneously, one of them might end outside of the vehicle with no control over direction of his character.

5207 - Improved: Fast aiming with mouse, problem was with mouse movement adaptive filtering, which handled badly the transition from fast to slow motion.

5207 - Fixed: Players in Seagull mode cannot hear direct speech of others properly.

DATA CHANGELOG

All data changes are included in HotFix.pbo, HotFix_QG.pbo, HotFix_DBE1.pbo, ui.pbo and language.pbo

(Important: Beta patch doesn't fully support Queen's Gambit, to test the specific Queen's Gambit fixes, you need to copy manually HotFix_QG.pbo and HotFix_DBE1.pbo to your addons folder. There will be no automated uninstall process supported for Queen's Gambit beta addons)

• FIX (RECOIL): recoil for all hand weapons were reworked.
• NEW (AMMO): ballistics reworked introducing air friction specific values for each bullet class
• FIX (AMMO): AT4 and RPG7 reduced HIT strength and changed ballistics
• FIX (AMMO): Improved Javelin missile precision.
• FIX (AMMO): land mines - increased indirect hit range and reduced hit value
• FIX (AMMO): Grenades and Flares deflection reduced to half
• FIX (WEAPONS): Unloaded Javelin will not show optics attachment to avoid view blocking in most of the moves.
• FIX (AMMO): count of ammo is changed (M113).
• FIX (AMMO): Cobra cannon ammo changed from AP to HEI
• FIX (AMMO): Sabot rounds no longer produce large explosion effects
• FIX (WEAPONS): GAU-8 fixed rate of fire
• NEW (WEAPONS): Added unguided rockets salvo for AI.
• FIX (WEAPONS): Weapon ranges tweaks. Increased minimum range hit probability.
• FIX (AMMO): reduced secondary explosion range (destroyed vehicle blast range)
• FIX (AMMOBOXES): added some weapons and magazines to existing ammoboxes.
• FIX (ANIMATIONS): Improved turning around with launcher.
• FIX (WEAPONS): Improved M16A2 reload time (faster).
• FIX (VEHICLES): Increased structural armor value of several vehicles to give the crew more chances for survival.
• NEW (DATA): reworked grass clutter on Northern Sahrani, New Sahrani designed for smoother gameplay experience
• FIX (LOCALIZATION): various localization fixes
• FIX (ANIMATIONS): some problems with ladders introduced in 1.08 (stuck on ladders, problem when going from knelt or prone on a ladder, healing when knelt with rifle or launcher)
• FIX (LOCALIZATION): mission M13 is localized to all languages
• FIX (RUSSIAN): several missing translations in the Russian version, UI.pbo is modified to prevent an error message displayed in Russian version of the game when entering Single mission directory
• FIX (DC3): Eject speed is correct, improved get in and get out time, now it's possible to get out.
• FIX (HILUX, DATSUN): Game doesn't fail when using this car in ARMA without Queens Gambit mod.