Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application

[skruis 180]

Just wanted to provide an update. Some backend stuff for the mod is changing. Currently, the mod dumps the arma data to a json file. Instead, the mod and the app will be communicating via sockets in the next release w/ ARMA actually pushing the data to Athena rather than Athena polling the server for it. Additionally, the JSON files will be formatted differently with the next release so if any of you have been using the 'recording' feature, those recordings may not work w/ the next version w/o some additional work. Regardless, if you're a fan of Athena, the updates will bring a much more efficient and better experience. Additionally, for anyone interested in AAR, a server side mod is under works along w/ a logger. The two combined will generate recordings of all missions run on the server and it will dump the completed mission data to a folder from which you can share the recordings with your players, clan members, etc. and they can replay the mission in Athena on their pc. The recordings include all data whereas the Athena client mod and desktop app will only provide data for your side. It's exciting stuff for anyone that's been interested in providing AAR to your squad. I've seen some of the other AAR solutions and while they're impressive, Athena does things a little differently, in a good way, and has the benefit of providing the 2nd screen close to real time experience.

 

As far as the future goes, the switch to sockets has some additional benefits. I don't want to make any promises but Athena might be switching to the Xamarin framework and with that, comes the possibility of Android and iOS ports.

 

If anyone is interested in beta testing the upcoming changes, please let me know. I'm especially interested in getting the AAR server mod/logger tested.

[skruis 180]

Athena has a new website! Thanks to Moc (Michael Letcher) for the new site. Check him out at http://www.michaelletcher.com/and consider him for your website.

 

Also, as an added convenience and thanks to Cobra Strike for providing these, I've published zip's with pre-packaged, pre-imported maps to the download page.

[Tokkok 18]

Battleye have this error when launching: Blocked loading of file 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Arma 3\@athena\Athena.Extension.dll'

[skruis 180]

Tokkok,

 

I'll take a look at that and get back to you. From my exchanges w/ BIS, my understanding was that the DLL was added to their system and 'allowed'.

 

Thanks,

 

bus/skruis

[skruis 180]

Still moving forward. In addition to revamping the underlying communications framework, I've also decided to try to make the process of getting up and running easier and that is mostly hampered by dealing w/ the map imports. It's a pain to obtain them for the maps you want. I've posted some that were provided by Cobra Strike to the AthenaMod.com website but it's still a bit of a hassle. So, to get around that, I had to figure out a way to render the maps w/o having the user go through a bunch of odd steps involving image manipulation ... and I've made progress:

 

 

So this is a bit of a teaser really. This is at a 20% zoom level (0.2) and as you can tell, it has a height map for the background. The background, the roads, the buildings (which you don't see at this zoom percentage), etc. are all pulled from ArmA in a 1 time per world process. My goal is to make it as easy as:

 

1. Athena: "You don't have this map. Would you like to import it?"

2. You: Click "Yes"

3. Athena: Instructs ArmA to run some scripts, during which you can play though it will affect your framerate

4. Athena: A short time later, the map is drawn and you never have to import it again

 

There are some benefits to changing the rendering system. The first is the most obvious from this picture: having access to the terrain data makes it easier to do cool stuff like generate height maps. The Height Map you see there was generated automatically and it will be available automatically for every map you play on. Having quick visible access to terrain information should make it much easier for players to ascertain their elevation in comparison to other units. It'll be great for route planning, especially for pilots. I've included support for 'plain elevation' view as well as Height Map Color and Height Map Gray. The Gray one looks particularly cool. As an additional benefit of overhauling the map rendering system, the flaky tile based image mechanism is gone so those annoying white blocks in the map that some of you (and I) have complained about will no longer be an issue. Also, hotkey support has been added so 'zoom', 'pan', 'track', 'start', toggle layer visibility, etc. You can trigger all of that via hotkeys that you can define yourself within Athena. There are a lot of things that I have planned that will take things to the next level, especially for pilots. So... good stuff on the horizon.

 

-bus

[skruis 180]

Just providing another little update. Athena now has an ORBAT!

 

 

If you go to the "Controls" menu and click "Show ORBAT", a new window is opened that will list, in tabs for each side, the units (that are on your side) in the mission. You might ask "Why have multiple tabs at all then?" Well, the answer is primarily because of the upcoming AAR tool. If you're playing a recording made by the AAR tool, it will contain the data for every side so it'll be important to sort them out.

 

In the ORBAT window, the list will be sorted by Group ID with the units comprising each group sorted by Rank. The leader is denoted by a *. In most cases, I would guess that leadership would travel down through the ranks (or perhaps in order of being added to the group, who knows) and that the unit at the top of the list for a given group would be the leader but the * will confirm it. Additionally, it displays the units rank, name (will display player's profileName if the unit is being controlled by a player) and it will tell you, roughly, what type of weapon the unit is carrying. For example, if I'm carrying an MX class rifle, that's returned as an AssaultRifle and denoted by an [R]. If however, I'm carrying a GL enabled MX rifle, it will be denoted by [RGL]. It also checks to see if the unit is carrying a 2ndary weapon and will display it's type as well so you'll have something like [weapon1/weapon2] or [R/AT]. Additionally, it performs a mixture of item and class checks. A unit is flagged as a medic if it has either a Medikit or 'medic' as part of it's class name. 'Crew' and 'Pilots' are flagged if 'crew' and 'pilot' are a part of the class name as I couldn't determine if there was an item that only crew and pilots had...maybe helmets, uniforms or SMG's but that didn't seem all that reliable so, for now, 'crew' and 'pilot' designations are bonuses if they happen to get flagged. Oh, and the ORBAT is updated on every data update from ARMA so, should your AR die and your AAR pick up the AR's weapon, the AAR's listing will be updated to [AR] from [R]. The same for units carrying Medikits though ... I'm not quite sure if ARMA allows non classed medics to use the Medikit. Either way, it updates if you have the ORBAT window open while playing ARMA.

 

 

Taking the ORBAT a step further though, it can interact with the tracking mechanism. Click on the unit item in the list and 2 buttons will appear beneath it: Track and Locate. Track will instantly switch your view in Athena to center on the selected unit, flag them as your 'tracking' target so it will continue to alter you view as to follow the unit and it will enable tracking if tracking is disabled. Locate will disable tracking, switch your view to center on the selected unit but not change your tracking target so if you choose to re-enable tracking, your view will be switched (upon the next update from ARMA) to center back onto the currently tracked target. This list is not currently 'hotkey' enabled but there are hotkeys for Next Unit, Previous Unit and Track Toggle that are tied to the unit drop down list in the bottom left portion of the main Athena window so even though the ORBAT is more direct and easier to use, during the mission, I'd recommend disabling tracking, using Next/Previous to find your target unit and then re-enable tracking. That is basically the sequence of actions you would perform in the ORBAT if it were hotkey enabled. The probability is 'high' that the two windows will merge in the future but for the next Athena release, it will likely be a separate window.

[skruis 180]

Continuing to make progress. The new map rendering system is almost complete. We have terrain, objects, roads, forests, locations, etc. It's all being exported to Athena and rendered in Athena. Here's a snip of the new Height Map (Gray) option on Stratis:

 

 

The color height maps are useful but I find the gray version to be even more so. At a glance, you can find the best routes for concealed travel or identify strategic locations for capture and defense. Again, these height maps will be available for every map you import...automatically as it's generated using the terrain data we export from ARMA.

 

Notice that I've taken a little artistic license with the forest rendering. It looks odd but cool at the same the time like US Army camouflage but it also provides you with strategic data. In the view you have in the screenshot above, you'll notice many green squares roughly forming the outline of the forests on Stratis. There are a few reasons I've gone this specific route. First, I wanted to be able to provide data. A forest in ARMA is a green blob on a map but these tiles are 'data', strategic data. By glancing at the map, you know there's a forest there but those green squares are not only the forest, they're the dense portions of the forest. There are at least 3 trees within each of those green tiles. As you zoom in, additional tiles are populated of a lighter shade of green. Those are composed of 2 trees and then as you zoom in even closer, and you see what I'm talking about in the screenshot of Air Station Mike-26 below, the individual trees outside of the forest 'tiles' are also rendered giving you progressive levels of information as you 'focus' on areas of the map. An additional benefit of this, and a goal of Athena, is that at various zoom levels, I'm able to maintain a high level of performance (in Athena) by selectively showing as much information as I can for the 'scale' of your interaction with the operation. When you zoom in almost completely, we render the individual trees (outside of the forest tiles), as you zoom out, you'll see the forest tiles. As you zoom out further, you see the heavy forest tiles and when you zoom out fully, you'll see the outline of the island and the structure (if you're in a height map render mode) of the terrain.

 

 

Again, all of this is to help you make better and more informed decisions. Many of you will already have learned how to read a contour elevation map but when mixed with a height map, the learning curve disappears. "I'm here and he's there. How much higher is he than I am? He's three shades lighter...30m."

[fathersarge 46]

This looks amazing!!! I can't wait to test it out!

[skruis 180]

So, as of right now, the biggest pet peeve of Athena is importing and exporting maps. I'm happy to say that I've solved that particular problem. All of the work on the new rendering system has paid off, though it still needs some tweaking, and now new worlds will import into Athena automatically. Let's say you're playing on Chernarus and you start Athena. Athena will notify you that you don't have this world and it will offer to import it for you. All you have to do is tell it to 'proceed' and it will launch a series of scripts that export the terrain information (elevations, trees, buildings, barriers, walls, roads, locations, etc.) to Athena while you continue to play ARMA (FPS will be impacted). Once the data is exported, ARMA will continue to run as normal while Athena analyzes the information and turns it into a usable format. When that stage is complete, the world will be loaded in Athena and you'll begin to see the mission data populate (groups, units, etc.). The process takes minutes and apart from asking for your consent, is entirely automatic. In my testing, most maps export within a few minutes. Larger worlds with more complicated geometry, trees and roads (like Chernarus - Chernarus takes the longest) will take longer but on average, it's a fairly quick process. I was able to go through and export all of the CUPS and vanilla terrains within an hour or so. Some users may not want to wait so I will continue to post completed exports to the athenamod.com website however for any worlds that are not posted, users will now have a much easier time using those worlds with Athena. I still have some changes I want to make before I release this version for testing, some have to do with the import and world rendering and some, well, some don't :-)

 

For example, a 'behind the scenes' improvement, well, I guess it's not completely behind the scenes, is that I've overhauled the grid system. It was tied specifically to the ARMA3 vanilla terrains grid systems. In previous versions of ARMA, some of the grids were calculated beginning in the top left of the world so 000000 was in the NW corner but in ARMA3, 000000 is in the SW. As part of the new world import system, I'm now grabbing the world offsets (from where on the map to calculate the grid from), steps (in what direction do the grid counts increase) and centering positions (show the correct part of the world when the map is loaded) and I'm now able to match the 6 digit grid positions on non-ARMA3 vanilla worlds. A good example of a world with an odd grid definition would be Bystrica or "Woodland_ACR" (another small change is that we're pulling the 'descriptive' title of the World and displaying that in the map menu). Most worlds either start their grid systems (000000) in the NW or SW corners. Bystrica's actually starts 30m south of the NW corner so the NW corner is actually 000999 (or something) and 30m south of it, is 000000. I'm sure there's a good reason for that oddity but more importantly, Athena now calculates grid references in a more reliable manner.

 

Another new addition is a change to the upcoming ORBAT window. In addition to providing a list of groups and units for your side (or others if you're playing an AAR recording), it now has a LOCs tab. In this tab are all of the 'locations' for the world. This is very helpful for people like me who either have a poor memory for places or haven't fully explored the world yet. When someone tells you "I'm in Gorka", you can reference the LOCs tab. You can scroll up and down through the alphabetically sorted list to find the location. The LOCs tab will display each location's 6 digit grid reference as well as it's XY coordinates. If you click on a location name (to select it), the "Locate" button will be displayed. Click "Locate" to have the map auto-pan to the Locations ... location. No more scrolling across the map, leering at titles and searching for the one you want. The LOCs tab provides you with a much more user friendly list.

 

 

 

This is all well and good but when will you be able to use it? Soon. I have a few minor changes that I want to make before I release the next test version ... and 1 major feature addition. The major feature addition ... it will be difficult to make it perfectly 'fluid' using just hotkeys but pilots will love it and I'm excited to share it with you ... soon.

[skruis 180]

Nearing the next release and I wanted to share some recently completed work with you. So, 'tracking' has been in Athena since the beginning. The primary feature of Athena was to find your own unit on the map, to follow it as you moved through world and to help you determine your position within the larger operation. That remains the primary focus but what you've known as 'tracking' is now 'following' and an additional mechanism is being introduced under the 'tracking' name. Imagine you're a pilot. You may be a part of a group of pilots, a group of helicopter pilots ferrying units to and from the battlefield. You get a call for extract from an infantry group leader. Traditionally, you would spend some time communicating, getting their location, hashing out an LZ, etc. but now with Athena, you simply open the ORBAT window, find the group in the list and click 'Locate'. The Athena map is instantly panned to the group leader's location so now you can scout around Athena and find a good LZ. You find one and you create what's now referred to as a "Map Anchor". In the ORBAT window, you go to the ANCR tab, you type in "LZ Bravo" and enter the grid (or the specific coordinates if you have them) and click "Add". A "Map Anchor" is placed on the Athena Map and you relay the grid to the group leader and tell him to meet you there. At this point, you would normally go into the ARMA map and perhaps, if the difficulty allowed it, place a waypoint for yourself and that might suffice but with Athena, you can 'track' groups, units and map anchors.

 

 

When you 'track' a group, unit or an anchor, you're telling Athena: "This is important to me. I want to know where I am relative to this object at all times. I want to know how far I am away from it and I want to know on what bearing I have to travel to get there." Athena understands this and to help you, it draws dashed lines (up to 3, 1 each for a group, unit or anchor) to each of the objects you're tracking. A red line for map anchors. A green line for groups and a blue line for units. The exact distance and bearing are displayed in the lower left but to make it easier for you to ascertain, at a glance, how far you are from your tracking target, the line is 'dashed' and the length of the dashes increases as you move away from your target and decrease as you move closer so again, at a glance, you know where you are relative to the group you're picking up, to the LZ Bravo map anchor you created and to the fellow pilot in your own group flying his own chopper.

[Bamse 223]

This looks _amazing_!

[Singh Aram 137]

Awesome mod !!!!!!!

[Tankbuster 1744]

I'm so glad this is coming back. I admit I stopped using it back in the day because my Domi mission was too 'marker heavy' for Athena to work properly. But now I'm working on a new project and Athena is a great tool for mission makers and testers.

 

Any idea when we can expect a version I can try and break? :)

[skruis 180]

Tankbuster, I think you've helped to identify one of the biggest strengths of Athena I've known about but haven't pushed: that it's a great tool for mission makers. There's an additional mod coming out that will make that even better. It's intended for use with server side AAR recording -but- it can also work with Athena Desktop directly. To calm fears that people might use it to cheat, it's signed with a different key that I'm not going to release but it exports 'all' unit data, for all sides. Why that's great for mission makers is that if you've ever wondered "Where are those units?" or "Did the script run and create that fireteam it was supposed to?", running Athena while you're developing and testing your mission gives you that feedback. It'll give you an overview of the entire map and what the AI is doing. Additionally, it's great for mission designers when not paired with ARMA. Imagine you're on your couch watching TV and either your Windows tablet, your touchscreen enabled laptop or even your normal laptop is there with you and you have a spark of an idea. Fire that device up and sketch it out in Athena using Ink. Using Athena with a stylus enabled (active digitizer) device is the best possible combination but you can use 'touch' for ink or you can use an iPad stylus with your touchscreen laptop to get a slightly higher level of precision versus just touch. Athena is such a great tool for mission design and testing.

 

With regards to the release time frame. We're almost feature locked at this point. If my testing goes well, we're days away, not weeks, and I'll be very interested to see how Athena works with your Domi mission.

[Tankbuster 1744]

I'm grateful you remember the time we spent working on this. :)

 

As you say, it's a valuable tool for mission makers, particularly authors of Co-ops who need to check on the AI and to make sure they are doing what they are expected to do, or indeed, have even spawned!

 

Although I don't actively develop or play that Domination mission anymore - I've moved on to making my own co-op mission, I'll certainly plug it into the Domi and see if Athena plays nicely with it.

[1212PDMCDMPPM 200]

skruis, it looks really promising ! great job !  :wub:

[fathersarge 46]

skruis you've done it again! I stopped playing arma for a bit but I'm back and Athena on my touch laptop is functioning as my ever present companion. Anchors are going to make my life on waypointless, first person only missions as the CAS and trans pilot so much easier!

[skruis 180]

Ok, well, this isn't the 'formal' release but if you don't mind helping to 'test' the latest version, you can download it here: http://www.athenamod.com/download/20160427.zip.

 

So, there are a few things you should be aware of should you decide to test this version:

 

1. I have not yet submitted the extension DLL to BattleEye for whitelisting so for now, disable BattleEye if you intend to use Athena.

2. After you download the zip, it may be 'blocked' by Windows so you have to right click on the zip file, go to the "General" tab, place a check in the "Unblock" checkbox at the bottom and click "OK". Then it's ok to extract the contents.

3. You should uninstall and remove older versions of Athena from your "Add/Remove Programs" or "Programs and Features"

4. You should delete the current @athena mod folder if you have one.

5. You should delete the current Athena folder in your "My Documents" or "Documents". The map, saves and the recording formats are completely different.

 

To use Athena:

 

1. Extract the contents of the zip (which you unblocked) to a folder on your hard drive

2. Copy @athena to your Arma 3 directory and add it to your list of Mods in the ARMA 3 launcher

3. Disable BattleEye (for now)

4. Launch ARMA

5. Launch Athena Desktop (either on a 2nd monitor or on a spare laptop - wired ethernet connections yield the best performance if you're running Athena Desktop on a different PC from the ARMA PC)

6. Click "Start" in Athena Desktop to go into "Start" mode

7. Launch a mission in ARMA (multiplayer will require the server admins to have the ATH.bikey in their keys folder)

8. Athena Desktop, once it establishes communication with ARMA, will display the relevant mission data.

 

If it doesn't have the world on which the current mission is based, it will prompt you to import it. Read the notification and then proceed if you are comfortable. Altis and Chernarus are pretty slow but others will only take a few minutes and it will inform you of the status of the import. There are 2 stages to the export. The first is getting data out of ARMA and the 2nd is the actual processing of the data by Athena. Once the first stage is complete, ARMA performance will mostly return to normal and any ingame actions will not affect the quality of the exported world (dieing, mission restart, crashing, etc.). The 2nd stage will take about the same amount of time as the first stage but once it's complete, the map will auto load and display the unit information, assuming you are still in the mission. The actual displaying of the map is CPU intensive and will slow ARMA momentarily but after the map is loaded into Athena, performance will return to normal.

 

Should the import fail, for whatever reason (mission change, arma crash, etc.), close Athena, go to your My Documents\Athena\Maps folder, delete the folder for the world, then restart Athena and go back into "Start" mode to try again. I highly recommend performing the map export/imports in an editor session. While ARMA is exporting the data, avoid restarting the mission or doing anything that interupts the scripts. You can walk around but if you die, stay dead, do not 'restart' the mission. Restarting the mission stops the scripts on which the export relies and will result in a failed export.

 

Now, because the export process for Altis and Chernarus is so slow, I've made pre-packaged versions for those worlds but I'd like for you, as testers, to try to export the others. Here are the downloads for Altis, Chernarus and Chernarus (Summer):

 

Altis - http://www.athenamod.com/download/mapsv2/altis.zip

 

Chernarus - http://www.athenamod.com/download/mapsv2/chernarus.zip

 

Chernarus Summer - http://www.athenamod.com/download/mapsv2/chernarus_summer.zip

 

A couple of other things to note: This version 'should' be much faster than any version before it. The less data for it to export, the faster it'll be. If you're in an editor mission by yourself, I would expect the update frequency (how often the data in Athena is updated) to be almost real time (by the time your eyes shift from ARMA to Athena, it should be up to date). As the mission grows and more units, markers, vehicles, etc. are added, and as more of your CPU time is dedicated to other functions like processing AI, the less frequent the updates will become however in my testing w/ ~100 units in an editor run singleplayer session, the update frequency was much much better than the current official version, 1.0.0.26.

 

Additionally, Athena does support running the @athena mod on your ARMA PC and having Athena Desktop run on another PC (an extra PC, a spare laptop, a Windows tablet [i use a Surface Pro 4 myself]). The new version uses 'sockets' to transfer data from ARMA to Athena and back again. If you decide to use Athena Desktop on a different PC than your ARMA PC - Not a 2nd monitor, open the Settings menu in Athena Desktop and set the hostname/ip to your ARMA PC. You should not need to modify the port, only the hostname/ip. If you're not able to establish a connection, ensure that any software firewall you may be running on either PC allows the traffic or is disabled (preferably you know how to modify your firewall to allow Athena, (TCP ports 28800, 28801, 28802), rather than disabling your software firewalls completely). In my testing, the faster the connection between the two PC's, the better the Athena experience ... obviously but take note: A wired connection is usually lower latency when compared to wireless (wifi) which means more frequent and relevant updates to Athena. Of course, this depends on the quality of your network and wireless hardware but in general, a wired ethernet connection to your router, switch, etc for both your ARMA and Athena PC is ideal. This is especially important for you laptop and windows tablet users.

 

Also, do NOT forget about Ink. It's easy to overlook the ugly "I" button the left but if you're playing in a multiplayer session w/ other Athena users, Ink is the killer feature for collaboration during battle. You'll see your ink and the ink of any other Athena user (on your side). Everyone that uses this feature instantly realizes how powerful it is. Now, it's intended for use with an Active Digitizer/Stylus (stylii?) but it works almost as well with iPad capacative stylus's if you have a touchscreen or just a plain mouse. I've tested Athena extensively on my Surface Pro 3 and 4's and the quality of the 'inking' experience is far superior with an actual active digitizer like the one paired with any Surface device.

 

Other than that, please keep in mind this is the first release with the new communications platform, the new map rendering system and a bunch of other changes...it's a beta. Please report any bugs and provide constructive criticism. If you're reporting a bug, please be descriptive about what you were doing, what was going on in ARMA, etc. at the time of ... whatever it is you're reporting :-) To resolve the issue you're experiencing, I'll need as much info as possible. If you have questions, feel free to respond in this thread, to look for skruis or bus on Steam and/or check out the ARMA 3 or Bravo Company Discords. I'm usually lurking about. Thanks!

 

-bus (skruis)

[Tankbuster 1744]

Just in case anyone is unaware of the utter awesome that is Athena, and with apologies for the dodgy hand held phone shot and further apologies for the big file...

 

How do you take an ingame screen shot across multiple monitors? No alt-prtscr or win-prtscr got both the map and the game....

[skruis 180]

Yea, its really hard to capture in an easy to relate to way. Maybe ill post a pic of my setup when i get home tonight. Tank, how was the setup? How's it tunning?

[Tankbuster 1744]

It's running sweet, really nice and smooth.
 

[Tankbuster 1744]

One thing I have noticed, a minor thing, though maybe not quite so minor for a mission maker developing and testing... when I set my man to setcaptive true (makes him side civilian), then map display jumps to his original spawn point and never recovers. Have to restart Athena, but this is not an occurence you would have planned for or expected.

[skruis 180]

Hmmm, yea, because the side changes, all data collection would cease because the side is never recalculated, currently, after mission start. That's a fairly important oversight on my part. You know, I test things from my perspective but anticipating how someone else goes about doing things is always a guessing game. Thanks for bringing that to my attention, will resolve. Did you try exporting any maps from Arma into Athena? I see you're on ... Altis? Did you download the pre-generated version from the website or is that one you exported on your own?

[Tankbuster 1744]

I gave up waiting for the export and used your pre-generated. On that subject, I think the level of detail on that map is absolutely spot on - don't change it! :)

[Tankbuster 1744]

Hmmm, yea, because the side changes, all data collection would cease because the side is never recalculated, currently, after mission start. That's a fairly important oversight on my part. You know, I test things from my perspective but anticipating how someone else goes about doing things is always a guessing game. Thanks for bringing that to my attention, will resolve.

I hoped that when I setcaptive false him, and he went back on side west, Athena would pick him up again, but it didn't.