Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application

[Tankbuster 1747]

Couple of things to report.:)

 

When waiting for respawn or revive, Athena shows enemy units as purple.

 

Athena shows Independent units, regardless of their affiliation. In my mission Indi are enemy to blufor and freindlyto opfor, but my blufor guys see indis on the Athena.

 

Marker colours change in my mission to reflect objective status, Athena only shows that if we do "map clear". Possible solution and feature request. Could the Athena mod monitor a variable, perhaps called athenaRefresh, which mission makers could publicVariable from the server to force an update of things like marker colours.

 

Athena doesn't show markers that are type icon.

 

The zoom level affects when Athena shows. When zoomed out, it shows groups and names the group leader. When zoomed in, it shows individual units regardless of group, but it doesn't name them at this zoom level. It would be good if it could.

[skruis 180]

@Tankbuster 

 

1. I think what's happening is that it's showing all 'dead' units regardless of whether they were friendly or not because when dead, everyone goes 'civ' (afaik). I think I may have resolved this by querying the side of the players group rather than the player.

2. I'm curious about this one. Does it show group indicators for the independents or does it just show the unit icons? Cause here's 2 snippets of code:

 

ATH_Sides = [side group player];

 

ATH_Groups_List_Sched = [];

{if((side _x) in ATH_Sides) then {
//  get data for the group

ATH_Groups_List_Sched pushBack _x;
 }} forEach allGroups;

 

{{
   //get data for the unit  
 } forEach units _x;
} forEach ATH_Groups_List_Sched;

 

That should work, right?

 

3. I believe I've identified the issue with the marker colors not updating. It would have also affected text, rotation, etc. It should be resolved now.

4. Athena only currently supports some 'icon' type markers and the actual icons are custom...as placeholders. Getting full support is on my to do list. I've exported all of the icons from ARMA. I just have to hook them into Athena and display them properly.

5. At a certain level it shows units and groups, then just units (>2.2), then units and their names.(>2.2) but the individual unit names 'should' show under 2 sets of conditions:

A. The zoom is greater than or maybe equal to 2.2 and the unit is not in a vehicle

B. The zoom is greater than or maybe equal to 2.2, the group layer is hidden, they're in a vehicle and the unit happens to be the group leader (basically, you've hidden the group markers and if the unit is in a vehicle, only show their name if they're the group leader)

 

The conditions for showing unit names automatically should be expanded on and refined but basically, I didn't want a whole bunch of names being displayed one on top of another.

[Tankbuster 1747]

7 hours ago, skruis said:

@Tankbuster 

 

1. I think what's happening is that it's showing all 'dead' units regardless of whether they were friendly or not because when dead, everyone goes 'civ' (afaik). I think I may have resolved this by querying the side of the players group rather than the player.

 

1

IIRC, the purple units were seen moving during the revive/respawn phase so they weren't dead. I'll recheck and confirm soon.

[Tankbuster 1747]

7 hours ago, skruis said:

@Tankbuster 

 

 

2. I'm curious about this one. Does it show group indicators for the independents or does it just show the unit icons? Cause here's 2 snippets of code:

 

 

Unsure. It was very late and everyone was tired when this was observed. Will try to have another look. Your code looks OK, apart from inviting the wrath of the code optimisation nazis by having a nested loop. :) (Yes, I know it's unavoidable in this instance)

[Tankbuster 1747]

7 hours ago, skruis said:

@Tankbuster 

 

A. The zoom is greater than or maybe equal to 2.2 and the unit is not in a vehicle

B. The zoom is greater than or maybe equal to 2.2, the group layer is hidden, they're in a vehicle and the unit happens to be the group leader (basically, you've hidden the group markers and if the unit is in a vehicle, only show their name if they're the group leader)

 

The conditions for showing unit names automatically should be expanded on and refined but basically, I didn't want a whole bunch of names being displayed one on top of another.

 

I'm not saying that its wrong or buggy; it was a little confusing but that's perhaps because we've not accustomed to the NATO map symbology.

[Tankbuster 1747]

Oh... I was expecting the forum software to amalgamate my quoted replies into one post. Apologies!

[skruis 180]

Ha, no problem. So the purple units were moving? Any chance they were being dragged, carried or that they were stationary but looking around (spinning)? A lot of this would depend on how the respawn/revive functions are implemented but either way, that gives you too much intel. I 'think' the latest changes will resolve that issue.

 

Re: the SQF, I in no way shape or form claim to like coding in SQF. Where it concerns SQF: get it working and move on ;-) So if anyone feels that they want to 'optimize' the routine while providing speedier updates and the same amount of functionality, have at it.

 

Oh, I didn't think you were saying it was buggy...I was saying it might be buggy or rather more appropriately, the behavior may 'seem' buggy because it's not clear what is exactly happening and why some units have their names displayed and others don't. I feel that that area needs improvement. For example, what if a group of units are the drivers in a convoy? Their unit icons will be displayed over a large area, the group icon will only be over the leader...their names won't appear if you zoom in because they're in a vehicle but not the group leader and neither will any of their passengers so you'll just see a blob of unit icons drawn over each other moving together...messy. It's not 'right' yet. I think I'll keep the nato group marker over the leader but wherever there's an occupied vehicle, I'll draw an icon for the type of vehicle. I'll draw driver (steering wheel), gunner (target sights), commander (target sights?) icons and list the names of the units in those slots under the vehicle but next to the correct icon and perhaps also the units in 'cargo'. When a unit is in a vehicle: no unit icon. I think that will be much better but it probably won't happen before this next release.

 

-bus

 

 

 

[skruis 180]

EDIT - Removed - I've found small gaps on Altis too...it's an Arma thing. Will write gap detection code.

[Tankbuster 1747]

3 hours ago, skruis said:

Ha, no problem. So the purple units were moving? Any chance they were being dragged, carried or that they were stationary but looking around (spinning)? A lot of this would depend on how the respawn/revive functions are implemented but either way, that gives you too much intel. I 'think' the latest changes will resolve that issue.

 

 

 

 

 

Annoyingly I can't replicate this now. I'm on my own in the test server, so I can't enter 'needing revive' state - there's no-one to revive me and when you're knocked down, you go straight to respawn. I'm not seeing any other units on Athena during that stage. But I'm sure I did see units moving around when it happened yesterday.

[skruis 180]

Tank, is your mission posted anywhere? I can try running some tests on my end.

 

General Question to Anyone: Would you consider it unrealistic if I shaded the enterable buildings differently from the enterable buildings? Personally, the fact that not all buildings are enterable is unrealistic ... so flagging the enterable ones I think is counter-balancing to the unrealistic building occupancy limitations ARMA places on the players. Multi-story from single story? Theoretically, isometric (? I think that's the right term) maps are pretty common now. Even publicly available Google Maps can display maps in pseudo 3d to give you an idea of the height of a building.

 

Also, sorry for the delay guys. Wife went in for her final surgery last week and just got home today. She's doing great and I'm back at it trying to wrap up this update and get it out the door.

[Tankbuster 1747]

5 hours ago, skruis said:

Tank, is your mission posted anywhere? I can try running some tests on my end.

 

General Question to Anyone: Would you consider it unrealistic if I shaded the enterable buildings differently from the enterable buildings? Personally, the fact that not all buildings are enterable is unrealistic ... so flagging the enterable ones I think is counter-balancing to the unrealistic building occupancy limitations ARMA places on the players. Multi-story from single story? Theoretically, isometric (? I think that's the right term) maps are pretty common now. Even publicly available Google Maps can display maps in pseudo 3d to give you an idea of the height of a building.

 

Also, sorry for the delay guys. Wife went in for her final surgery last week and just got home today. She's doing great and I'm back at it trying to wrap up this update and get it out the door.

 

Authority Tanoa

Authority Altis

 

Both are addon free, although I do run it with the NSS admin console and urban rappelling client side.

 

Reference enterable buildings and I don't want to graft what is a VERY partisan debate onto your thread, but personally, I don't understand why some players want to know which buildings are enterable and which aren't. I'm no realism junkie. The only way we should know if a closed door is usable or not is by trying the handle. I disagree that it's unrealistic that some buildings are not enterable. My neighbours are at work - their house is unenterable. *shrug*. I mean, I get the argument that it's disingenuous of BI to give us some buildings that we can't enter (or more accurately, don't have an interior) and then suggest that realism not a lack of model making resources drove that decision, but an artificial mechanic that tells us, from a distance which buildings are open or not isn't a balance to the issue. Two wrongs don't make a right. So, in summary, Add it if you feel it's worthwhile, but let me turn it off. :)

 

isometric 3d buildings? That would be awesome functionality, though I'm not convinced it would be useful. Google maps only show the height element of buildings at extreme zoom levels. Again, personally, I don't use those high levels of zoom, but that said, I've not yet worked out how to run the application twice to have a highly zoomed instance and a wider overview instance of Athena.

 

Very best wishes for Mrs Skruis. I hope she recovers well.

 

 

 

 

 

[skruis 180]

Ok, Cool. I'll check them out and thanks! she's doing great.

 

Enterable Buildings - I'm not a realism junkie either and I can completely understand why some aren't but you know, if I'm in a combat environment, I'm probably going to kick a door down if I have to. Now, that's not to support the claim that the building 'should' be enterable in-game but when you're seeking shelter and you're unable to kick down a door because in the game environment, it's a fixed model with no interior, would it be so wrong, as a time saver, to have a small indication of whether or not a building is enterable or not enterable and would that completely put you off to using Athena?

 

Isometric - I didn't mean Athena would have an isometric display (it could but na) but my intent was just to shade buildings differently depending on their height ... sorta like the height maps. Claiming that Google Maps can show isometric views was only a supporting argument for the functionality.

 

Application Twice - If you're running 2 windows from the same PC, make sure one in File->Settings is using a different port from the other (try 28803 instead of 28802). Only one application/instance of an application can claim a port on a given computer. In my video, I was running Athena on 2 different computers so I didn't need to play around w/ the port.

 

-bus

[Tankbuster 1747]

A discreet indication of useable doors wouldn't put me off using Athena, I just think it's a feature I'd turn off if I could. Colour coding of the height of buildings is sort of the same for me - a cool feature, but not one I can imagine me using. Mind you, once it's in and I get used to it, perhaps I'd adore it! :)

 

I was planning to use multiple instances on the same machine. I have 3 monitors, plus, as I described earlier in the thread, a 10" android I can use as another screen via an app and a virtual display driver. That said, I could also use a laptop and run Athena on that as the zoomed in map and have an area view on one of my other monitors. Have you described how to run Athena on another machine elsewhere in the thread?

[skruis 180]

Re: Athena on multiple computers: Not yet. I'll make a video for it. Basically, you just need to know the ARMA PC's ip address and enter it into Athena on the other computer.

[Tankbuster 1747]

Oh, that makes sense. I'll have a go at it later.

[skruis 180]

Hey guys, just wanted to provide a status update. I had to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new algorithm for the road generation and I'm very happy with the results. They're not 100% perfect but as far as I could tell, Taunus's roads are pretty well populated. I took a look and I could only notice a couple of missing segments (20m stretches of missing road). I'm sorry I couldn't get it exactly perfect but I think we'll all be ok with 99.9999% accuracy ;-) As part of the testing process, I also ran the updated algorithm against all of the other maps (vanilla, cups, ziwasogo, some of Icebreaker's maps, etc.) and they all look great! The new algorithm is definitely much more comprehensive and also faster than the previous version so... the delay was worth it. Additionally, I had to retool the map export process in order to accommodate large well populated (trees/buildings) worlds (Taunus/Ziwasogo) without ARMA crashing so that's resolved or at least...there's a band aid on it. I'm still not convinced that the routine I've defined can scale infinitely but well, neither can Arma so it's probably a non-issue. I'll be uploading the new versions to the official ACS later today as well.

 

Additionally, a couple of other changes I've made: Largish objects and all roads are now visible at every zoom level. It made almost no difference performance wise so no big deal.

 

So, on my list of things to do: Investigate the issues that Tank reported and after that, we'll have our next official release.

 

Also, the latest version of the @Athena mod has been whitelisted. I was able to play and use Athena with BattleEye enabled.

 

-bus

[Tankbuster 1747]

Confirmed that the purple units seen moving during respawn/revive are civilians. Got handheld film of it if you want to see.

[skruis 180]

Ok, well, that's a little better than enemy units being purple ;-) Either way, it's not what we want. Working on fixing it now.

[skruis 180]

Alright Tank, I've changed the ATH_Sides array to an ATH_Side variable and that 'side' is based on 'side group unit' rather than 'side leader group unit' so it's more...um...representative I guess would be the best way to describe it. I put myself (blufor), a civ, a guer (ind) and a csat in a mission and as a blufor, all I saw was myself so I think that issue will be resolved now. I downloaded your Altis mission but I didn't see any civilians on there...are there civilians? Not seeing them and having them there would be a good thing :-)  Also, your HQ unit spawns at 0,0 and then dies in the water. There are some technicalities that are out of my hands with regards to civilians...theoretically, when you are dead, waiting revive, awaiting respawn, your unit is technically a 'civilian' at that point so the unit icon is going to go purple for that player. Because I'm switching the data collection to the side of the group you belong to, regardless of whether or not you're dead, awaiting revive, awaiting respawn, you should still only see players from the groups side however your icon will go purple because your unit is technically a civilian at that point...at least as part of the vanilla mechanics for death, revive, respawn so that's something you should expect to see.

[skruis 180]

And a new beta.... http://athenamod.com/download/20170209.zip

 

Included in this version:

1. Updated map export routine that's better capable of handling large maps with lots of objects (trees, houses, etc)

2. Map will now display buildings and roads at all zoom levels

3. Improvements to side detection to limit seeing units only on your groups side

4. Fix for marker color updates

5. Fix for groups not being moved to the correct ORBAT panels (West, East, Guer, Civ)

6. Improved road path algorithm

7. BattleEye white listing - Now works with BattleEye enabled

8. Relay supports multiple independent outbound queues for better multi device support over the network

 

[Tankbuster 1747]

6 hours ago, skruis said:

 I downloaded your Altis mission but I didn't see any civilians on there...are there civilians? Not seeing them and having them there would be a good thing :-)  Also, your HQ unit spawns at 0,0 and then dies in the water.

 

There are civilians in the objectives after the airfield assault - I should have said (or made a proper briefing) :)

 

I know that HQ units spawn and drown - I asked the community about it before but got no replies, so assume it's not an issue.

[Tankbuster 1747]

 

[Tankbuster 1747]

7 hours ago, skruis said:

Alright Tank, I've changed the ATH_Sides array to an ATH_Side variable and that 'side' is based on 'side group unit' rather than 'side leader group unit' so it's more...um...representative I guess would be the best way to describe it. I put myself (blufor), a civ, a guer (ind) and a csat in a mission and as a blufor, all I saw was myself so I think that issue will be resolved now.

5

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/playerSide

Of interest?

[skruis 180]

Ok so after resolving a little miscommunication between Tank and I, I've verified that dead 'west' units are not able to see civilians anymore and I've fixed an issue with marker colors not updating properly. New beta: http://athenamod.com/download/20170210.zip

 

Make sure you update the @Athena folder and use the updated App\Athena Desktop.exe.

[skruis 180]

All, just wanted to provide an update. I've decided to fix the marker icons in 'this' release. I'll be supporting the vanilla icon markers that are usable in the editor. I've got the vast majority of them working. Going to replace my custom unit icons w/ the ones from the game and then setup vehicle icons as well. Shouldn't add too much of a delay to the release...just trying to spruce it up a bit. -bus