How to seperate A2 and Arrowhead?

[Cougs 10]

So I have combined ops (A2 + OA retail version) and I did a mission. My mate has just OA (steam). He gets the below error msg when he gets to the 'roster' screen where you chose your role.

I have a few vehicles (not many) but when was a USMC Soldier TL a vehicle? :confused:

How do I identify this object and remove/replace it in my mission so my Arrowhead mission doesn't rely on A2 to work properly?

Is there a way for me to start Arrowhead without starting/including A2 content?

[kylania 568]

Not using Marines (A2 only content) is a good start. :) You might need to go back in the editor and remove all A2 only stuff.

Here's a OA only startup line:

"E:\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2 Operation Arrowhead\Expansion\beta\arma2oa.exe" "-mod=Expansion\beta;Expansion\beta\Expansion" -nosplash

Here's a CO startup line:

"E:\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2 Operation Arrowhead\Expansion\beta\arma2oa.exe" "-mod=E:\Steam\steamapps\common\arma 2;Expansion;ca;Expansion\beta;Expansion\beta\Expansion" -nosplash

[nominesine 0]

According to the image above, the missing addon is a US Marine (unit or vehicle). Change them to US army guys in the editor and you should be fine. That's a good start.

In some cases you may also need to remove the addon dependencies from the mission.sqm manually, by opening the file in a regular text editor. At least it used to work that way in the good old OFP days. Not sure how the game handles addons today.

EDIT: What Kylania said

Edited August 6, 2010 by nominesine

[Cougs 10]

Wow -marines are A2 content?

That startup line is perfect. Now I can test under correct conditions!!!

I have other missions with dependencies to maps I don't use/need but I didn't bother to ask that question so I'm glad you answered that one as well. Mind reader! :)

[Rommel 2]

Eh?

I just rip out the A2 Addons and Dta folders... then run the OA exe :p

[Cougs 10]

I'm not sure what you're saying Rommel. When I run this

"C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\arma2OA.exe" -world=empty -nosplash

Then my expansions list shows A2 and OA. I have combined operations - dvd retail. A2 installed first and then OA. Arrowhead knows I have A2 and just includes it automatically, which is really great unless you DON'T want to do that for editing purposes - bah!

Kylania: Your command line doesn't make much sense to me unfortunately. :( I don't use steam and I never participated in any beta product.

My A2 shortcut is

C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\arma2.exe -nosplash -cpuCount=4

My combined Ops is

"C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\arma2OA.exe" -world=empty -nosplash

The arma2oa.exe is automatically enabling A2 content as well. How do I force it to not do this?

I have a

C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\Expansion

folder and in that I have

Addons

DTA

Battleye

Keys

and a

ij15.dll file

I don't have an @Expansion or a beta folder.

Edited August 8, 2010 by Cougs

[Rommel 2]

My combined Ops is

"C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\arma2OA.exe" -world=empty -nosplash

The aram2oa.exe is automatically enabling A2 content as well. How do I force it to not do this?

"C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\arma2OA.exe" -world=empty -nosplash -mod=

According to BIS, this should work.

[Cougs 10]

you mean put the

-mod=

and intentionally put nothing after it? Nope. :(

A2 shows in the expansions and in the editor I loaded Chernarus content. :(

In the meanwhile I'll just have to be extra careful what I put on the map.

[Rommel 2]

Perhaps it loads the A2 content still because it loads the 'Addons' folder, like I said, move that and the 'Dta' folder out of your ArmA2 directory (perhaps to ArmA2\Tmp) and load the OA exe. This is how I disabled my CO until I decided to just get rid of it. :p

So far all I miss from CO is the M4s...

[Cougs 10]

Ahh - I C. That works!! I renamed the folders and viola! Thx. :)

[Cougs 10]

FYI - if you rename the ADDONS folder then you *MAY* disable a lot of other custom content (mods) unwittingly (like skins).

If you rename just the DTA folder then that seems to give you pure ARROWHEAD plus whatever is in your mod line.

Don't quote me though - I don't understand it, I'm just trying different things and different mods require different files.

[Rommel 2]

FYI - if you rename the ADDONS folder then you *MAY* disable a lot of other custom content (mods) unwittingly (like skins).

If you rename just the DTA folder then that seems to give you pure ARROWHEAD plus whatever is in your mod line.

Don't quote me though - I don't understand it, I'm just trying different things and different mods require different files.

You should NEVER have put custom addons in your addons folder... and if your running ArmA2 Dependant mods, of course they won't work. :rolleyes:

[kylania 568]

Yeah, don't go renaming core game folders. Learn to use mod folders, it's quite easy. Using a launcher even more so.

[shuko 59]

I've been using codisabler to be able to create OA only missions, been working fine.

[Cougs 10]

I use only mod folders. No sweat on that one.

What I meant to say is that some mods (@SASR) seems to use vanilla A2 content that is in the ADDONS folder. I can't explain the hows or why's - I'm just trying different things and I'm discovering that some A2 Mods somehow reference/use the A2 content that is in the ADDONS folder - which is really not surprising when you think about it.

I'm still messing around with stuff to see what exactly is going on. I'm trying to work out if these A2 mods will work in a pure Arrowhead environment and I'm getting mixed results and I'm sure it depends entirely on the design of each mod.

---------- Post added at 10:09 ---------- Previous post was at 10:08 ----------

Thanks for that link shk - I'll check that out!

[STALKERGB 6]

@Cougs, yeah just to add to the referencing A2 content thing, most ARMA2 infantry mods will have their units inherit a base class from vanilla ARMA2 such as "USMC_Soldier". What this means is that all the information which defines that particular unit is taken straight from the USMC_Soldier, this saves people a bit of time when it comes to writing configs and much of the information would be left the same on the new unit anyway.

So as you mentioned, if you disable the Addons folder which will have (inside the characters2.pbo) the base class a mod inherits from then the mod wont work, or will at least be broken. I dont think there is really a way around this, modders just need to add two seperate configs (one for OA and one for A2) to their addons.

[Cougs 10]

Ah - i c. The dots are starting to line up.

If the modders made a seperate config for OA then they might go to the extra effort to include FLIR information as well - which of course was introduced in OA.

[STALKERGB 6]

Well the RVMAT files to which you add the thermal maps seem to work fine for people who just own ARMA2. Obvioulsy FLIR isn't present in game for them but having it in the RVMAT doesnt seem to cause any issues for people playing in just ARMA2. So it seems that unlike the config problem you dont need, say, two versions of your addon, one with FLIR, one without.

The backpack system needs to be removed from an addon to work in just A2 though. The proxy on the infantry for where the backpack would go causes the game to crash.

Having two versions of the same addon can get quite confusing for modders as you might imagine :) Not that it should dtop them from doing it.