Couple of questions. Re: modules / addons

[Lexen 10]

Okay ladies, gents, and other...

I designed my first OA mission for my guild over the past week or so. It was a quick little thing. Didn't take us 45 minutes. Anyway, early on in our ARMA II lives, we had a lot of mods all over the place. Eight or nine of mine ended up in my addons folder for various reasons.

My issue is that when running the mission last night, I had some players unable to connect due to a vilas_pl_forces mod not being there. Before you go typing "wrong forum", keep reading. That particular mod is the Polish Army/Police Pack mod. That was one of the ones in my addons folder, not in its own @ folder.

I went through the mission file (using the search functionality of notepad 2) combing through everything, looking for anything remotely resembling that mod and found absolutely nothing there. I then did the same thing for the actual units on the map.

The only explanation I can come up with is the ambient civilian vehicles module. Does it pull from vehicles located in the addons folder or does it pull from a pre-determined list of vehicles?

I wasn't able to test it, but I assume that if I have my guys turn off the polish army mod, then remove the ambient civilian vehicles module, we would see if this is the case. Then again, I likely don't know what i'm talking about with regards to how this module works.

Anyone have any suggestions to what caused this?

Edited August 16, 2010 by Lexen

[kylania 546]

Was your server set to require same addons? If so, regardless of the mission you'd have to have the mods.

[Lexen 10]

Was your server set to require same addons? If so, regardless of the mission you'd have to have the mods.

It's never set to that. It was a co-op mission and the only mods you need are the ones that the mission requires. In reality, there were no mods outside of standard OA stuff in the mission.

This one really stumped me.

I assume that I put something down from the polish police pack, then deleted it (because we no longer use that mod). I did find where it listed vilas_pl_forces in the mission.sqm, but I got rid of it, as I said. I then combed back through the units on the map to see if any of them were related to the polish forces at all. None of them were.

---------- Post added at 10:26 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:21 AM ----------

Update: I think I did find the issue (even though i'm at work).

I am going to test it tonight by removing the civilian vehicle module and telling my guys to turn off the mod and see if it works.

[Lexen 10]

Okay, I have come to a conclusion. It's a definite maybe. ...:)

I did some thorough testing of what was going on.

1. I do have the server set to check a players mods against mine. This isn't a really big deal because we all run the exact same mods in the guild. I didn't think that this had much to do with Co-Op, but apparently it does....kinda' sorta', but not really, but yes it does,...maybe.

2. The ambient civilian vehicle module does, in fact, grab civilian vehicles from your addons folder no matter what they are.

Testing procedure.

A. Removed the ambient civilian vehicle module, and asked a guild member to join the server with the mod in question turned off. He got in without an issue.

B. I then put the module back on the map and asked him to join with his mod turned off. It didn't let him in AND I found those ambulance vehicles from the mod on the map. The mod was later found listed in the addons section of the mission.sqm.

C. I then removed the mod from my addons folder (as it is one we don't use any longer), then put the ambient civilian vehicles module down again. I then asked him to join with the mod turned off. He got in without any issues.

So, yeah...

Is there a way to turn off this mod check? I can't seem to find it.

[kylania 546]

in server.cfg:

// If set to 1 players must use exactly the same -mod= startup parameter as the server.
equalModRequired=0;

[TinManNFO 10]

Hmmm, this sounds a little messy. Though this may be a pretty nasty chore, my opinion is that I would recommend you sanitize your Addons folder of any modified files and move them to @ folders, and have all your guild members do the same. (Obviously, you should try to get everyone to use the same naming system, etc.) With the OA Expansions menu tool, you can essentially completely isolate any mods for troubleshooting, and it should help minimize (or at least significantly reduce) future mod conflicts after doing this; you basically just have to make sure everyone has the same boxes checked and unchecked before going into the mission.

There might be a problem if you used a mod that overwrites one of the default .pbo files. You might have to do a clean install if you haven't backed them up and documented which files have been changed; another option could be, if you have another system available, to make a clean install on that system and copy the .pbo files over from that installation.

[On a side note, the main problem with a clean install is that you lose all your profile and Armory info; does anyone know of a way of backing that up and restoring it when you want to install ArmA II/OA on a new computer, etc.? (My brother had to do something similar with his A2/OA install, and I'm pretty sure he tried copying the profile out of the My Documents\ArmA II but there was some problem; I'll have to ask him for specifics...)]

Edited August 19, 2010 by TinManNFO

[binkster 0]

Doesnt the mission.sqm write on the top required addons? So if you have certain addons loaded but not used they will show up in the required addons??

I think this was the case in the early days but I could be wrong.

[Lexen 10]

Yeah, I purged my addons folder of the mods that were in there. This won't happen again. 100% of those mods in the addons folder are mods we no longer used anyway, so the purge was easy.

It's just good info to know if you start having issues with mods.

[Gunter Severloh 2546]

Ya keep in mind anytime you build a mission and even MP missions build them with vanilla,

I make the mistake myself sometimes, and it screws you over when you got things missing,

or worst yet no one can join your mission because they are missing stuff you had that they

dont got, personally I really hate that system but i think its there for a good reason.