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ACEREP #00009

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Last week we have released another big update to ACE3 (and a little hotfix too). ACE3 v3.10.0 (and v3.10.1) brought a numerous amount of additions, changes, fixes and improved translations. Following the release of Jets DLC for Arma 3 a lot of things have changed on how we need to handle certain situations in the code and configuration.

With Jets DLC focusing primarily on … Jets … this update we also focused a little bit more on aircraft. As an example we added rearm features to the new pylon system introduced with Jets DLC, we added settings to increase the fuel hose’s length (for refueling on the carrier) and removed our custom flight model changes in favour of the constantly improved one’s from vanilla Arma 3.

A pilot and two deck crew members rearming an F-18 Black Wasp.

Secondly Zeus has received new toys and improvements. One of which is to use AI to suppress positions and direct it using a slick new UI component we have developed for the Zeus interface.

Intercept

Back in ACEREP #00004 we last spoke about Intercept a project that hooks into the Arma 3 game engine and calls scripting commands on an engine level (in C++) thus circumventing the SQF interpreter and saving valuable time executing the commands.

The intercept project's logo.

Though in June 2016 progress on Intercept had become stagnant as the main developer got started on his new job and time for intercept had become rather sparse. In may 2017 @dedmen joined the project and Intercept has made a lot of progress since then.

It has now reached a milestone where 100% of Arma 3 script commands are available to be used and a lot of the core code was redesigned and refactored which also removed the latest hurdle in getting Intercept whitelisted by BattlEye.

Besides just improving on existing code also new features have been added. The most notable being the ability to register one’s own SQF commands so one can easily move small parts of one’s SQF code directly to Intercept:,

64bit support and Linux server compatibility have been added to Intercept which was also important because now Intercept can use its full potential even on a server.

The latest features currently in active development are cross plugin communication and a rework of the eventhandler system. It allows doing the following:

// showing a message when a unit is being hit
// of who did the damage and how much damage has been inflicted
void intercept::post_init() {
    static auto hitEH = addEventHandler<eventhandlers_object::Hit>(sqf::player(),
        [](object unit, object causedBy, float damage, object instigator) {
        sqf::system_chat(sqf::format({ "Ouch! %1 Hit me for %2!", causedBy, damage }));
    });
}

Thanks to @senfo’s ongoing investigations we might also be able to get real multi threading to SQF/Intercept. Making it possible to run some scripts in parallel.

Intercept is already being used to create new scripting mods. @dedmen is working on bringing LUA scripting to Arma. @overfl0, @zakant and @KoffeinFlummi are starting to bring Python scripting to life.

What Intercept needs most right now are people trying it out, finding bugs and give ideas, and maybe even contribute to Intercept or any of the great child projects that are growing all around it.

The End Things

The change log for ACE3 v3.10.0 can be found here: https://github.com/acemod/ACE3/releases/v3.10.0

The change log for ACE3 v3.10.1 can be found here: https://github.com/acemod/ACE3/releases/v3.10.1

We are still in need for translations for some languages within the ACE3 project. Please have a look at this GitHub issue to track the progress and what languages lack translations. Any and all help with this is very appreciated.

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