What does it take to rattle 80-some veteran players of Earth s most hardcore military sim? ShackTac bossman Dslyecxi pointed me to this insane firefight and extraction attempt in one of his recent videos. Short on ammo, shorter on men, and their backs literally against a wall that may or may not be indestructible, Dslyecxi leads the survivors of a trapped infantry unit as they improvise an escape plan.



Dslyecxi contextualizes the chaos: "At the 33:40 mark, we're all critically low on ammo. As a fireteam leader, I've given everything I had left to other members of my fireteam, and I'm running around trying to see what we're going to do next. There are enemies swarming all over the exterior of the compound and we have reason to believe that they've started to breach into it in some areas as well. It's very much a fog-of-war period at that point. There are reports that the convoy has arrived, and while I saw a few of our vehicles earlier, I heard quite a few explosions and wasn't sure if they were still alive. I'm just waiting for orders and seeing where I can help out in the meantime. We get those orders a few minutes later, which starts the chain of events leading to the crazy finale."

We ve highlighted a few more of Dslyecxi and other Arma players variously heroic and hilarious moments in the past: watch them here. Dslyecxi also has a Patreon page where you can support his continued creation of combat and tutorial videos.

GameSpy recently announced its surrender from the world of digital matchmaking, and, as with any wide-ranging defeat, there are bound to be casualties. Not Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead, though. Bohemia have airlifted their expansion to the safety of Steam. And clinging desperately to it is the DayZ Mod, which, as a dependent of Arma 2: OA, has also been secured.

"Besides the numerous fixes and optimizations which were introduced during the 1.63 beta program which covered almost a 2 year period for this iteration of the engine, the update focuses on the transition of the multiplayer from GameSpy matchmaking to Steam," writes Bohemia Interactive's Korneel van 't Land.

Naturally, the update requires Steam to function. Those with retail copies can now transfer Arma 2, and all of its DLCs and expansions, by adding their CD Key to Steam's Product Activation.

While Bohemia's older games won't be transferring to Steam, Bohemia have created a new Master Server list for server owners to join. Using this list, players will be able to directly connect to servers for games such as Arma 1, Arma: Cold War Assault and Take On Helicopters.

Nearly three years after it was first announced, Bohemia Interactive is shutting down the Arma 2 Free servers, the free-to-play version of the military simulation game. If you were one of its dedicated players, there's good news: Bohemia is trying to soften the blow with a sale on the Arma 2 franchise.
All editions of Arma 2 and its expansion are currently discounted by 75 percent. You can buy them on Bohemia s official website, but all games are also conveniently supported by Steam. The sale will last until May 4.
Sadly, even if you do buy Arma 2, its online functionality will be limited due to the impending shutdown of online matchmaking service GameSpy on May 31. Bohemia said that Arma 3 and Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead will eventually use an alternative solution, but Take On Helicopters, Arma, Arma 2, and other games will lose the server browser and other features. You can find Bohemia s full statement here.
When May 31 comes, a large amount of games that still rely on GameSpy could go down with it. In case you missed it yesterday, Reddit has compiled a list of possible victims.

As we reported last week, online matchmaking client GameSpy will shutdown on May 31. The community at Reddit's /r/Games is compiling a list of games that will be affected, partially affected, or not affected at all. The list is not official by any means, as most publishers have yet to make official comments about the shutdown, and most games have yet to be confirmed one way or another. But it s still a pretty terrifying list.
Here are just some of the possibly affected games that stood out to me:


Battlefield 1942
Battlefield 2
Battlefield 2142
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Borderlands
Civilization III
Civilization IV
Crysis
Halo: Combat Evolved

There are many more, which you can find on the full list. As with the upcoming Games for Windows Live shutdown, it's down to individual publishers as to whether they want to update their games with new server technology.
Activision and Capcom said that this will not affect their games, and Bohemia explained that Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead and Arma 3 will migrate to Steamworks, while some of its other games will now have a more limited multiplayer experience. The Company of Heroes games, which appears on that list as affected, actually migrated to Steamworks last year.
A couple of the big question marks here are 2K (Borderlands) and Electronic Arts. These publishers (and others) have yet to release official statements. Until they do, the fate of these games remains uncertain.

Online matchmaking client GameSpy is shutting down on May 31st, owners Glu Mobile have announced. On the upside, it means no more games trying to download the hideous GameSpy Comrade launcher. The downside is rather more significant: a lot of games' multiplayer segments are about to become non-functional. As with the upcoming Games for Windows Live shutdown, it's down to individual publishers as to whether they want to update their games with new server technology.

"Effective May 31, 2014, GameSpy will cease providing all hosted services for all games still using GameSpy," the company announced on the GameSpy Technologies site. "If you have any questions about how this impacts your favorite title please contact the game s publisher for more information. Thanks for a great ride!"

So far, Bohemia Interactive seem to be the only publisher happy to publicly announce how they're handling the shutdown. In a statement on their forum, they say:

"This is going to affect multiplayer in our games that use Gamespy for matchmaking, cd keys authentification and NAT traversal from Arma: Resistance to Arma 3. We are planning to introduce an alternative solution using Steam to Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead and Arma 3 users.

"Other games (Take On Helicopters, Arma 2, Arma 2: Free, Arma, Arma: Cold War Assault) will have more limited multiplayer experience with loss of server browser, cd key authentification and NAT traversal systems. That said, direct IP connection to servers should work even after Gamespy services are no longer available."

GameSpy Technologies were formerly part of the IGN Network, until 2012 when they were eaten by a Glu.

A new Arma 3 community guide has landed in a hot LZ: this time, the subject is air assaults. Shack Tactical founder Dslyexci returns to narrate the first episode of season 3 of Arma s community guides. The video gives an overview of the coordination and planning required to bring infantry into a mission zone in the best military sim around.



Helicopters fly fast, low, and can land pretty much anywhere you can fit the rotors into, Dslyexci says. With sufficient helicopters or multiple flights, you can transport a large number of infantry practically anywhere you need to in a short period of time It s a welcome option, considering the massive terrain sizes of the Altis and Stratis islands.

Ferrying infantry to missions might sound like gruntwork to you, but it s one of the most interesting and rewarding parts of the Arma universe. Anyone who volunteers to pilot in Arma is a few bad seconds away from killing all of their friends, so prospective pilots should listen up before putting on a flight suit. Learning from Dslyexci is a valuable opportunity, because he s a master of the air taxi.



Check out more Arma videos at Bohemia Interactive s official Youtube channel. We named Arma 3 our 2013 Sim of the Year.

Arma has always been quite moddable. Every piece of Bohemia Interactive s military sim has been renovated or replaced hundreds of times over by the game s prolific community--its missions, islands, audio, weapons, and vehicles. Today Bohemia makes a major effort to support that culture of community content creation as it begins a more than year-long competition called Make Arma Not War.

A total of a half-million Euros (about $680,000 USD) will be be awarded to modders in 2015, with the winners in four categories selected by a panel of about a dozen game industry professionals, community members like Dslyecxi, and Bohemia developers. Having a competition like this is giving the people something back, essentially. Giving them more serious reasons to show off, to make something out of their hobby, says Ivan Buchta, Creative Director at Bohemia.

One of the many subcategories of missions that have emerged for Arma 3 is racing. We're not very good at them.

CEO Marek Spanel underlines that the competition is Bohemia s way of supporting a fundamental part of its franchise. Ever since Arma: Cold War Assault, we ve made it a priority to support our community with tools, documentation, and sample models, and Arma 3 is no different. With the integration of Steam Workshop, a refreshed tool suite, updated user licenses, and of course the Make Arma Not War contest, we re hoping to push things further. It s clear that, with our open architecture and creative community, much more extra content can be produced. Correspondingly, we ve seen this affect the longevity of our games: each Arma installment is played actively for years and years after their release.

Employment and publishing rights, along the lines of what was earned by DayZ creator Dean Hall, also aren t out of the question for potential winners and entrants to the contest. It s a great way for us to find new employees, says Korneel van t Land, Brand and PR Manager at Bohemia. They re training themselves with our tools and technology. We might be able to find talent. The recruitment aspect is also quite important.

The disproportionate, 200,000 sum allocated for the Total Modification category indicates that Bohemia is serious about stimulating more Arma spin-offs through this contest. After the success of DayZ, a mod that shifted Arma somewhat out of its simulation roots, Bohemia says it s looking for more original ideas alongside content that enhances Arma 3. It would be great if more people were able to think out of the box, step outside of the technical military simulation game we have, or even go deeper inside it, and create something revolutionary, something inspiring, something that will set a direction for the future, even for our competitors, says Buchta.

Read up on the contest rules at www.makearma.com. Bohemia will accept entries until October 28, 2014. In the meantime, here s a list of some of our favorite Arma 3 content created to date.

Prizes
Total Modification
200,000 1st place

Single-Player Game Mode
50,000 1st place
30,000 2nd place
20,000 3rd place

Multiplayer Game Mode
50,000 1st place
30,000 2nd place
20,000 3rd place

Addon
50,000 1st place
30,000 2nd place
20,000 3rd place

All summer, we enjoyed the community guides published in the run-up to Arma 3's fall release. They were not only informative, but they offered a nice look at the systems and graphics that the open-world military sim offer. Now that Arma 3 is out, community guide narrator Andrew Gluck (aka Dslyecxi) has compiled a wealth of information in his official guide. And while the full guide is bundled with the deluxe edition of Arma 3, a ton of it is now available for free.

Gluck is the founder of Shack Tactical, the most devoted bunch of military sim roleplayers on the internet. In addition to diving into Arma 3's various systems, the guide explores how to function within Shack Tactical by roleplaying a set of near-military rules and procedures.

"In our eyes, hardcore milsim is chock-full of 'tactical fluff' that is irrelevant to the games at hand," Gluck writes. "This hardcore milsim typically presents itself though excessive rules, regulations, attempted recreations of full military rank structures far beyond what is relevant in the scope of your average Arma mission, doing things 'because the real military does them' regardless of their actual application to the game at hand, and other things that we believe do not have a place in these games. This guide reflects that mindset as well.

Even if you're not interested in enlisting with the most hardcore of tactical simmers, the information and tips on offer will be useful to anyone who plays Arma 3. There are over 130,000 words of it in the free, online version, so you've got no shortage of briefing materials to sort through before your next mission. Better get to it!

We last checked in with DayZ Origins - that's the unofficial spin-off to DayZ, remember - back in March, and it seems the mod's mod has come on a long way since then. There's a ton of new content in Update 1.7.7, but the gist is that it adds a new island (inspired by Will Smith-and-his-dog vehicle I Am Legend, no less), along with a new race of mutants, the power to create player-made towns, and the possibility of people you've killed coming back as vengeful spirits. Wait, what?

Novistrana is the name of the new island, which has been added to the Taviana map and been inspired by scenes and locations from Will Smith's hit movie Hitch I Am Legend. It's 265 km2 - about as big as Cherno - and according to GamersPlatoon's George Edward (via email), "it is the only map designed from scratch for DayZ in a post-apocalyptic setup", in contrast to the militarily designed structures present in the base mod (obviously because DayZ is based an Arma 2). You can see an image of it below, with bonus corpses.



Interestingly, update 1.7.7 aims to supply a fresh injection of fear to the game by, as Edward puts it, "moving into the spiritual world". Sadly this doesn't involve peering at blobs of residue in tea cups or enduring Derek Acorah, but it does mean that "bandits who receive death injuries" will "start getting hunted by the visions of their victims". Crikey.

There's also some business about a Doctor Vlad and his experiments (another reference to I Am Legend, I expect), which have had the side-effect of creating a bunch of mutants, creatures that will prove a danger to both the living and the undead, apparently. Also in the update: survivor-made villages/towns, house-building and mining, a tribal system, strongholds and much, much more, in what must be the most densely packed press release I've ever seen. Head here for more info, and here for a giant list of everything that's been added and changed.

Extraordinary. The update wouldn't be complete without a trailer, of course, so here's an incredibly slow ten-minute sneak peek:



You can download DayZ Origins here.

The Project Reality mod for Battlefield 2/Arma 2 finally hit version 1.0 earlier this year, after eight years of development time. During that time, the game series it was modifying have moved on to bigger and more explodey instalments - several times, when it comes to Battlefield. Now, the PR Team have announced the mod's follow-up - and, excitingly, you won't need to rely on any other games to play it. Project Reality 2 is being built using CryEngine 3 to be "completely standalone", in contrast to the distinctly semi-detached nature of the original.

Like the original mod, the aim with PR2 is to be one of the more realistic multiplayer shooters out there. As the announcement post reveals, "Initially, Project Reality 2 will be a small scale, infantry based FPS with a comprehensive weapon handling system that will aim to be as realistic as possible. Map sizes will be 1km and 2km with an Advance and Secure (or "AAS") style game mode, similar to that seen in the Project Reality: BF2 and Project Reality: ARMA 2 modifications." The team are currently working on the alpha - development began in mid-2012 - although a public release "is still away off" as there's obviously a lot more work involved with making a standalone release.

Interestingly, Project Reality 2 will also be "free to play", and thanks to the lack of hyphens there I'm going to assume that means the good kind of free, rather than the wallet-tickling kind often favoured by many of today's online-FPS developers. For the full details, be sure to read that announcement post - in the meantime, here's how PR1 was looking just a few months ago: