TPW MODS: enhanced realism and immersion for Arma 3 SP.

[Guest]

New version frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

TPW MODS v20140415



Community Base addons A3

=================================================

We have also "connected" these pages to your account on Armaholic.

This means in the future you will be able to maintain these pages yourself if you wish to do so. Once this new feature is ready we will contact you about it and explain how things work and what options you have.

When you have any questions already feel free to PM or email me!

[gliptal 25]

tpw, the debug parameter comment still makes a reference to the suppression shell, rather than the unit uniform! :D

Also, I'm adding tooltips to all buttons and parameters, so I'm slightly editing your descriptions to account for grammar or spelling errors.

Yay!

Edited April 15, 2014 by Gliptal

[heyvern69 22]

Holy cow TPW. You guys are frickin' incredible. Thank you soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much!!!!!!!!!!

You got KNOTs done so fast my head is spinning. I've been wanting knots in ARMA2/ARMA3 aircraft, like . . . FOREVER!!! Wow. Geez. And it doesn't even display knots UNTIL you actually climb into an aircraft. I have NO idea how you did that. AWESOME!!! Wow. Just awesome. Well, I'm not gay, but I think I love you man!

I see your note about the blinking text. Yes, I still have the on/off flickering with (!!text-markers), but I'm learning to live with it. Odd thing is . . . the diamond shaped markers (and range numbers) on people don't flicker like that. Only (!!text-markers).

Hey, new question. Since the HUD recognizes when you climb into an aircraft, is it possible to have the HUD centered on the screen when you are in an aircraft, but off to the bottom left when you are on the ground? I'd love to have an aircraft (plane or helo) HUD that is separated from a ground soldier HUD. Hahahahaha. Because I want more, I want it all, I want it free, and I want it yesterday! Hahahaha. Just Kidding. Love the work you've done.

Even if you add no further features to the HUD, you have already made me happier than a pig in shi# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Thank you, thank you, thank you. Seriously, I cannot thank you enough.

-Vern.

---------- Post added at 18:45 ---------- Previous post was at 18:26 ----------

Hey, how about THIS idea.

Are the "Tactical Shades" considered a separate object from the "Tactical Glasses"? If that answer is YES, then can you use the "Tactical Glasses" for a ground soldier HUD, and the "Tactical Shades" for a Pilot HUD?

Two sets of glasses wouldn't take up much weight or space in your inventory system. And when you fly, you could use a special HUD that is centered, with specific PILOT information. Pilot HUD info that's more readable and user-friendly. With info like: Airspeed(knots), Heading, Altitude, maybe the ability to change the HUD color on-the-fly [to make it readable during different lighting situations]. And of coarse, waypoint markers (!! text-markers), and/or markers that were placed by a Forward Air Controller (!!bomb_target_here).

Just a thought. I'm spit-balling here. I'm not sure if there can be two different HUDs based on 2 different types of tactical glasses.

[kremator 1065]

Hey tpw,

Is it possible to do two more things with the HUD ....

1) Allow 3rd person view to keep the icons/data

2) Have different icons for vehicles/aircraft/boats etc? (obviously to keep their different colours :) )

For me the HUD is the best bit of Arma3 now !

[SirViver 10]

So, tpw, do you think it would be possible to expose the structured/format text used for each of the HUD elements (like ASL, AZT, GRD, etc.) to the userconfig, like for example tpw_hud_asl_format = "<structured text syntax here>";?

That way everybody could - if they know what they're doing - pick their own captions and overall layout of the elements without you having to implement a myriad of visual/cosmetic options to satisfy everyone. Or if the way these texts are composed right now is too complex to make user-editable in conjunction with the other configuration options, allow specifying an on/off override that might ignore dynamic things like color, size or other computed attributes with the only convention being that "%1" contains the value of the HUD element. So if the override variable is not set/empty you create the elements the way you do now (or whatever you end up choosing as default representation) and otherwise take the configured text, call parseText format on it with the HUD element value as argument and call it a day. Though thinking about it some more, AZT probably requires a "%2" to support both the cardinal direction and degrees as separate values. Maybe passing two arguments to each format text would be the way to go then? First one would be the "main"/"raw" value and the second one a contextually sensible alternative representation (cardinal direction, distance in feet/yards/football-fields, temperature in Fahrenheit, velocity in mp/h, etc.).

Personally I think the one-time implementation effort for a nearly endless amount of customizability would be worth it :)

[heyvern69 22]

Wow. I really love the options with this HUD mod. I'm 44 years old and I probably haven't been this frickin' excited since I was a kid going to Disneyland! This is a blast.

If anybody wants to change the color of various HUD elements, I'm sharing a PDF file that lists 3-digit codes for basic colors (See link below).

TPW, feel free to copy this 1 page PDF, or the data within, for use when explaining how to customize colors of the HUD elements.

The colors in ARMA3 don't match exactly with the colors in my PDF, but close enough for government work.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/5lv5bjdrobo9hc0/ARMA_3_-_RGB_Colors.pdf

-V.

[kremator 1065]

Useful heyvern69. Thanks mate. Totally agree about the HUD. Just pure awesomeness. A few more additions to it ^^ and we are sorted :) Who needs Crysis anyway?

[heyvern69 22]

is it possible to have the HUD centered on the screen when you are in an aircraft' date=' but off to the bottom left when you are on the ground?[/quote']

Ooops. I meant to say "the bottom right" when you are on the ground.

-V

And you're very welcome Kremator.

[tpw 2315]

TPW MODS 20140416: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/481663/TPW_MODS_20140416.zip

Changes:

[HUD 1.08] Fixed sporadic HUD flickering issues.

Thanks for all the feedback recently. Lots of ideas for consideration.

@Gliptal - thanks for the code review!

@heyvern69 - I like the idea of shades vs glasses and a different HUD, will look into it.

@SirViver - Some great ideas there. I'll experiment with importing structures text.

@Kremator - I'm not a big fan of 3rd person, other than to look at how sartorial and hard my player is. I have experimented with other vehicles but the results thus far have been poor. I'll keep at it.

[kremator 1065]

Hey tpw, thanks.

I was messing around with the HUD and I can get it to pick up all vehicles (land and air) using visiblePositionASL _unit rather than eyePos (as a car tends not to have and eyePos) :)

[tpw 2315]

Hey tpw, thanks.

I was messing around with the HUD and I can get it to pick up all vehicles (land and air) using visiblePositionASL _unit rather than eyePos (as a car tends not to have and eyePos) :)

Ta Krem. This isn't my problem, there are other issues related to HUD markers lagging behind fast moving vehicles etc. I will keep working on it.

By the way, I have implemented SirViver's idea and moved HUD element structured text into the config.

[kremator 1065]

Nice mate .... keep on coding. This is fantastic !

[gliptal 25]

More HUD parameters? I'm doing that for last! :p

tpw, from now on could you please write down what exactly changes on every new .hpp version? It would make my work a bit easier and avoid unwanted bugs with the GUI.

Yay!

Edited April 16, 2014 by Gliptal

[tpw 2315]

More HUD parameters? I'm doing that for last! :p

tpw, from now on could you please write down what exactly changes on every new .hpp version? It would make my work a bit easier and avoid unwanted bugs with the GUI.

Yay!

Yeah the HUD parameters are a moving target at the moment sorry. I will document the HPP changes for you with new releases.

[Guest]

New version frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

TPW MODS v20140416



Community Base addons A3

=================================================

We have also "connected" these pages to your account on Armaholic.

This means in the future you will be able to maintain these pages yourself if you wish to do so. Once this new feature is ready we will contact you about it and explain how things work and what options you have.

When you have any questions already feel free to PM or email me!

[gliptal 25]

@tpw: in Streetlights this parameter

tpw_streetlights_colour = 1; // light colour. 1 = warm white incandescent, 2 = yellow sodium, 3 = blue/white fluorescent

has 1, 2 and 3 as possible constants: could you shift them 1 integer back so they become 0, 1 and 2? This would make it consistent with other flags you use in the config, and make it easier for me to implement a drop box.

Yay!

[tpw 2315]

@tpw: in Streetlights this parameter

tpw_streetlights_colour = 1; // light colour. 1 = warm white incandescent, 2 = yellow sodium, 3 = blue/white fluorescent

has 1, 2 and 3 as possible constants: could you shift them 1 integer back so they become 0, 1 and 2? This would make it consistent with other flags you use in the config, and make it easier for me to implement a drop box.

Yay!

Will do

[Rydygier 1317]

Some issue: if player has set in his profile some default glasses, then he launch the game, founds tactical glasses and use them, then exit to main menu then load this last saved game, default glasses will replace those, player wore earlier. Thats seems vanilla thing. But in such case strange things happens: tactical glasses are gone of course, but some HUD elements (unit icons) are still visible, but showing empty places or misplaced. New icons will not show up, it is about those present at mission exit. Finding new tactical glasses fixes the problem until next exit and load. So player is forced either to remove default glasses from the profile, or to take off tactical glasses before each save/exit. Not sure, if this happens always in such situation, or only sometimes.

Also in RPT saw once such two messages:

Error in expression <ariable ["tpw_hud_lasttime",time + 30];
drawIcon3D ["\tpw_hud\cursor.paa",(_x ge>
 Error position: <drawIcon3D ["\tpw_hud\cursor.paa",(_x ge>
 Error Type Any, expected Number
File TPW_MODS\tpw_hud.sqf, line 302

Another thing: noted, so vehicles aren't marked in 3D. IMO definitelly should be, with other icon and perhaps guesstimated type.

And some idea perhaps: thought about unit icons distance limit. If this simulates kind of technical limitations of showing distant units, then perhaps this shouldn't be always strictly same distance, when icon disappears, but rather something floating around that value? I mean, close to the limit should drop reliability of these icons (position, following target, distance shown), and somehwere at limit distance, maybe a bit closer, or farther icon could disappear completely. So there could be a slim chance to show unreliably from time to time even farther units/vehicles, the bigger, the more often, but also chance, so unit icon will disappear temporarily or permanently even within theoretical range. This IMO would improve immersion and could be more convincing way of functioning for such tool. Some random imperfections of such kind also within range, if rare, may be nice too. Probability/intensity of such interferences may be dependent on distance, daytime/night, weather (fog, rain, overcast (no shadows - harder to detect movement, sun - harder to detect hot objects etc)), unit silhuette (stance/size), speed of target movement, speed of the player or even something more fancy (eg strong wind in forest or on the sea will cause many moving elements in ambience, and this could influence following/detecting moving in the woods targets reliability etc.)... Of course as an option, not all may like that idea.

Edited April 16, 2014 by Rydygier

[king homer 1]

This mod is amazing, never ever without tactical glasses again!

Would it be possible to add a kind of keyboard shortcut to activate and deactive it's function? Or some sort of check to see if it's working or not?

Just had a weird problem yesterday: Was hosting a small MP session for a friend and me. Both playing with the mod version from 15th, all the immersion sounds were far too loud. I could here animals screaming all over the map, the random local music was playing extremley loud, helicopters, gunshots and everything was barely audible. We had to end the mission... in the editor however, everything was back to normal. There was no change in any sound settings. My friend noticed the same effect.

[kremator 1065]

The HUD is so amazing I have removed the requirement for any goggles at all. I have also changed it so that I can now see all vehicles too. I know it is not official but man, this MAKES the game!

Appreciate all the hard work tpw is doing!

[gliptal 25]

Will do

Thanks!

I'm moving through Java file I/O at a much faster rate than I expected, I may be finished by this weekend. In the meantime you can all take a look to the completed skeleton (now with tooltips!), check this github link.

I'm leaving HUD for last, since I also want to implement a working preview and I think it's better I wait for the parameters change to calm down a bit. :p

Yay!

[kremator 1065]

Hey, thanks Gliptal.

@tpw ... is it possible to use this same HUD functionality on a drone perhaps (or anything with a camera on it)? Being able to track friendlies and enemies using the HUD onboard a drone would again add to immersion (in 2035 !)

Thinking about Gliptals work, it isn't possible to change settings INGAME (obviously as admin) therefore you could switch CIVs on/off, have boats working/not working but on the fly ?

[gliptal 25]

From what I know, you can't do that because of engine limitations. Ask Opticalsnare (Blastcore mod) about this: every minimal change he wanted to make to particle effects, he had to quit the game, edit a file, and then restart everything.

Yay!

EDIT: Found the post

Don't forget every single change i have to make, major or minor i have to restart the game everytime just to see the results and i mean that to a extreme. In the space of like 1hr work i will restart the game 30-40 times.

Edited April 16, 2014 by Gliptal

[kremator 1065]

^^Aye that is a bugger ! Good thing you are on the case :)

[Nakroma 10]

cool mod, thanks for that :)