Arma 3's 3D editor gets public beta

Arma 3's 3D editing tools are now available in beta form, and I hope at least one of you will be using them to recreate MGSV: Ground Zeroes' Camp Omega. Of course, Bohemia's military sim has had scenario editing tools for a while now, but they've suffered from one fewer dimension than many of us are used to in our daily lives. In addition to that extra D, the 'Eden' tools will supposedly be easier to use.

If you've made scenarios with the 2D editor before now, rest assured that Eden will be backwards compatible as well. I keep using the future tense during this article—because Bohema says the new editor "will be made available to all Arma 3 players for free as part of a future platform update"—but it's actually available right now! Er, if you fancy putting up with "an experimental and largely untested version of Arma 3". Simply right-click on Arma 3 in your Steam Library, and opt-in to development builds on the properties tab, and Eden will be all yours.

Bohemia revealed the tools on a livestream a couple of days ago. Here's a YouTube recording of that:

The accompanying blog post goes into some detail about the editor. I'll quote a chunk of it below.

"Users will now be able to directly create or edit entities, such as characters, vehicles, buildings and other objects, within the 3D game environment. They can also set mission objectives, define waypoints, control time of day and weather, and make use of all other functionality previously available in the classic 2D editor."

"[...] The more advanced scenario creators, on the other hand, can continue to make use of the extensive library of custom scripts. Plus their previously created scenarios made in the original 2D editor will be backwards-compatible. In addition, modders can extend the editor's functionality via custom plugins."

Bohemia says the Eden editor will be "seamlessly" integrated into the Arma 3 Steam Worskhop, which is nice. (Thanks, Blue's News.)