Virtual Arsenal Idea for Future developement

[p_siddy 58]

After making several missions (and never actually finishing them) I know how much of a pain it could be to get all the class names together and get your units looking exactly how you want.

In the release of the Virtual Arsenal this process is made much quicker, it also runs smoother than Dyslexci's Gear Menu system with added functionality.

Upon playing with this for a little while, I came up with an idea which im hoping Bohemia are already one step ahead of me, or that my idea will get support and it could be something they look at implementing.

"So what is it?" I hear you ask. Well its simple really, integrating the Virtual Arsenal and the Editor.

Now what I mean by this is: the ability to save loadouts within the Arsenal is great, however, I think Bohemia can go one step, no, giant leap further with this by creating a system whereby you first can select which Faction you would like this unit to represent, so say for example, you select 'NATO'. The next stage is to create the Faction, for examples sake we'll call it 'PMC'. Then you can save your loadouts in there, thus having a more organised Arsenal Loadout Bank.

Now, if this could be integrated into the editor, so if I was to place a unit down and select 'NATO', within the faction list appeared a new faction 'PMC' and within the 'NATO'>'PMC' section I could select one of my units as a pre-made unit, eradicating the still laborious task of having to copy and paste each individual init lines between the arsenal and the editor.

I describe this as well as other ideas in a small video I made as Part 2 to an initial look at the Arsenal:

Edited July 15, 2014 by P_Siddy

[major_shepard 82]

Well to say all Loadout Editor integrated into Mission Editor exists for years in VBS2.

So BIS dev come on an have a talk to your collegues from BI Sim next door.

Problem solved.

[p_siddy 58]

Unfortunately this is the first game/sim I've ever played of Bohemia's. So I as unaware of such integration within VBS2. However one holds high hopes that they might actually be doing something similar for Arma 3 (Y)

[theevancat 277]

I think this is good. More organization.

Another thing is that maybe there could be a way to do setobjecttexture from the Virtual Arsenal. This would be a pretty useful thing for those who don't want to spin up a special editor mission (I have a texture test map on Stratis) to see new textures.

[p_siddy 58]

Yeah that's the kind of lines I was thinking along for having Vehicles in the Virtual Arsenal as well. Being able to change weapon loadouts on aircraft and stuff and textures etc on all vehicles.

[il_padrino 1530]

Another thing is that maybe there could be a way to do setobjecttexture from the Virtual Arsenal. This would be a pretty useful thing for those who don't want to spin up a special editor mission (I have a texture test map on Stratis) to see new textures.

This x10000000000000000

[roshnak 41]

I think it might be cleaner and easier to have a button on the unit info screen that opens up the virtual arsenal and allows you to edit, save, and load presets, and then automatically exports the required stuff to the init line.

[kilroy the nerd 14]

Yeah that's the kind of lines I was thinking along for having Vehicles in the Virtual Arsenal as well. Being able to change weapon loadouts on aircraft and stuff and textures etc on all vehicles.

If turrets were like attachments for vehicles, that'd be amazing. You could be able to RTB, go to the vehicle ammo crate, and activate arsenal in the same way that when Zeus sets a item to negative, it goes infinite and activates Arsenal in the mission when someone selects it. That would be fantastic for CAS missions mostly, but maybe changing out ammo types like having mostly HE in your tank for an urban environment would be a thing you could do?

[the_demongod 31]

You can already use the saved arsenal presets as player-available classes for Zeus, so they should take the next step and 1. Allow Zeus to spawn AI using said presets, and 2. Allow the loadouts to be placed in the editor.

Even keeping them the way they are in Zeus, where you can place the loadouts to a unit from any side would be equally useful.

[chortles 263]

Yeah that's the kind of lines I was thinking along for having Vehicles in the Virtual Arsenal as well. Being able to change weapon loadouts on aircraft and stuff and textures etc on all vehicles.

Unfortunately 'weapon loadouts on aircraft' don't quite work that way -- the Buzzard is literally the game's only vanilla airframe that has more than one loadout -- all of the weapons are proxied onto the same model, with a different set of show-hide anims used for each loadout -- and the "weapon status display" in the A-164 and the To-199 is specific to their loadouts (textures specifically referring the weapons/loadouts used in-game plus a lot of show-and-hide)... to say nothing of aircraft using several or even single "multi-round" magazines, unlike mods like the F/A-18E/F or Su-35S or dezkit's fighters (each of which use "one 'round' per magazine, with each jet having a lot of magazines loaded") and 'vehicles in Arsenal' won't be what people are expecting unless you were to go ahead and change that as well.

Not saying that that's a negative... but I wouldn't expect it from BI when throughout the series' history they've treated air power the exact same way.

So BIS dev come on an have a talk to your collegues from BI Sim next door.

I've heard at least one claim that they can't.

[dr. hladik 231]

Virtual Arsenal and editor are not compatible.

[p_siddy 58]

Unfortunately 'weapon loadouts on aircraft' don't quite work that way -- the Buzzard is literally the game's only vanilla airframe that has more than one loadout -- all of the weapons are proxied onto the same model, with a different set of show-hide anims used for each loadout -- and the "weapon status display" in the A-164 and the To-199 is specific to their loadouts (textures specifically referring the weapons/loadouts used in-game plus a lot of show-and-hide)... to say nothing of aircraft using several or even single "multi-round" magazines, unlike mods like the F/A-18E/F or Su-35S or dezkit's fighters (each of which use "one 'round' per magazine, with each jet having a lot of magazines loaded") and 'vehicles in Arsenal' won't be what people are expecting unless you were to go ahead and change that as well.

Not saying that that's a negative... but I wouldn't expect it from BI when throughout the series' history they've treated air power the exact same way.I've heard at least one claim that they can't.

Ah that's a shame, as I say im not a modder and have no knowledge of the inner workings of Arma, was just a few ideas I had regarding the potential of the Virtual Arsenal system and others have come up with some pretty good ideas too. Let hope Bohemia are already on the road to some of them.

---------- Post added at 21:42 ---------- Previous post was at 21:39 ----------

Virtual Arsenal and editor are not compatible.

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view/773567/shot-down-o.gif

Well there goes that idea...

[chortles 263]

The idea is sensible, it's just that the way BI has handled vehicle weapons -- or at least that of aircraft -- throughout the series doesn't mesh with what you described, or Kilroy's idea of turrets as attachments. Heck, the only case I can remember until the Buzzard of a fixed-wing jet with multiple loadouts by BI was the Harrier in ArmA and Arma 2... which unlike the Buzzard had two separate models just for each loadout, differing mostly in the weapon proxies and the modeled underwing hardpoints!

(Think of it this way -- historically BI has seemed to prefer to create aircraft magazines whose 'round count' matches the number of shots that they plan the aircraft to have, and also place that number of proxies on the jet calling the model for that weapon; I on the other hand used dezkit's method of instead pointing proxies "a3\weapons_f\empty" and creating magazines with count = 1, then adding each magazine individually in an order corresponding to the order in which the proxies were placed/numbered... BI's method is why you get funny appearances/models not matching up if you init-line change a vanilla jet's loadout.)

[roberthammer 582]

Virtual Arsenal and editor are not compatible.

Here's an idea - what about simple version of this so we can change loadout directly in the editor ?

[Varanon 892]

Virtual Arsenal and editor are not compatible.

Why isn't it possible to make it compatible ?

I mean, I have no idea about the internals, but as far as I can see, the loadouts created via VA are profile variables. Why isn't it possible to read those in the editor and create an initialization that simply replicates that loadout for this unit ?

We're approaching a situation where the Zeus RTE is much more powerful than the original Mission editor, and quite frankly, that's a real shame, because from my "uninitiaded" standpoint, there's only so little to do to turn Zeus's RTE into the real 3D editor we've been crying out for for the last nearly 10 years.

[maddogx 13]

We're approaching a situation where the Zeus RTE is much more powerful than the original Mission editor, and quite frankly, that's a real shame, because from my "uninitiaded" standpoint, there's only so little to do to turn Zeus's RTE into the real 3D editor we've been crying out for for the last nearly 10 years.

Exactly this has already been mentioned:

Building on our experience with Zeus, we're exploring ways to develop a more 'fully featured' 3D scenario editor.

Source.

I'm pretty sure Dr. Hladik is only talking about the 2D editor, i.e. it would be too much work to integrate the arsenal into the 2D editor, and it would be an unnecessary waste of time if they are already working on a "fully featured 3D editor" that would supersede it. (Just guessing here.)

Why isn't it possible to read those [profile variables] in the editor and create an initialization that simply replicates that loadout for this unit ?

This seems like a reasonable request though.

[Varanon 892]

Exactly this has already been mentioned:

I know, and no definite plan, no promises, no ETA, nothing. Just frustrating to see what could be and being totally in the dark about when or even if we ever see it.

I'm pretty sure Dr. Hladik is only talking about the 2D editor, i.e. it would be too much work to integrate the arsenal into the 2D editor, and it would be an unnecessary waste of time if they are already working on a "fully featured 3D editor" that would supersede it. (Just guessing here.)

VA is not "integrated" in Zeus, either.. you need to predefine the loadouts in VA before going into Zeus. That's the point, though, why not handle the 2d Editor the same ? Just let the user pick a loadout from the list of loadouts previously saved with VA ?

[p_siddy 58]

Exactly this has already been mentioned:

Source.

I'm pretty sure Dr. Hladik is only talking about the 2D editor, i.e. it would be too much work to integrate the arsenal into the 2D editor, and it would be an unnecessary waste of time if they are already working on a "fully featured 3D editor" that would supersede it. (Just guessing here.)

This seems like a reasonable request though.

When I said integrate VA and the editor that is exactly what I meant.. just allow the editor a path to read the saved units in the VA and spawn them with the init line already sorted.. thus no need to copy/paste back and forth.

Not actually have the VA load within the editor.

[Teddybear1 11]

You can use STI-A-10 add on plane with its load out editor ,maybe running in the background so that It is changing the weapon for you and spawn the plane of such a kind that it uses what you want and "inject",copy and past it into the mission.

Here is another thing ;It may work if someone writes a Module that could fix that ,see http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=26265

Edited July 16, 2014 by Teddybear1

[chortles 263]

We're approaching a situation where the Zeus RTE is much more powerful than the original Mission editor, and quite frankly, that's a real shame, because from my "uninitiaded" standpoint, there's only so little to do to turn Zeus's RTE into the real 3D editor we've been crying out for for the last nearly 10 years.

Funny or sad, your pick: Zeus just got an Arsenal module in dev branch... "Added: New "Arsenal" module (when placed on top of a unit, Zeus can configure its loadout)"

Then again, if MadDogX's supposition is correct, then this happening for Zeus and not the 2D Editor would be consistent.

[Janez 530]

It would be great if you could move your saved loadout presets order up/down.

[p_siddy 58]

You could try numbering them? but that's a bit of a faff