Empty > Objects (Helpers) > Arrows - What are they good for?

[IndeedPete 1038]

Good evening,

i just play around in the editor with BIS' campaign missions and i've noticed that they use a lot of editor placed arrows. (Editor > Insert Unit > Empty > Objects (Helpers) > Many Arrows)

Does anybody know what they're good for and how they can help a mission designer? Since there are many of them around Maxwell's briefing area i assume they are used to put the units for the briefings into their positions. (See picture.)

[Kunsa 10]

yea thats my guess... a visual guide for unit spacing and such(havent played campaign yet so not sure what happens there)

[IndeedPete 1038]

Hm, if you open up the BIS_fnc_ambientAnim in the functions viewer it says that you can use the cyan coloured arrow as snappoint to make sure a unit is right on the spot you desire. So it can be used as kind of helper.

[Mattar_Tharkari 10]

Usefull in many scripting situations!

1.eg - when a marker can't be used as the command requires an object:

sphere01 setObjectTexture [0,'#(argb,8,8,3)color(0,0,0,0)']; // makes it invisible

sphere01 setObjectTexture [0,'#(argb,8,8,3)color(0,1,0,1)']; // green

sphere01 setObjectTexture [0,'#(argb,8,8,3)color(0,0,1,1)']; //  blue

2. make a glowing orb or arrow - make a light with #lightpoint, change the colour of the sphere / arrow and attach the #lightpoint to it.

3. make neon animated signs with the above.

3. Use as a visual aid to mark a position in space.

4. I made a daylight flare by attaching the 10, 25 & 100cm spheres with varying alphas/colours to a smoke grenade spawned at 500m.

Edited November 15, 2013 by Mattar_Tharkari

[MulleDK19 21]

I use them for debugging. Eg. I have a function I can call to mark all triggers, markers. etc. visually in the world. (It'll put a down arrow at the center of markers and triggers, and visualize the trigger radius with the arrows going around in a circle).

They're used for whatever purpose you see fit.