Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application

[Guest]

Armaholic mirror updated:

Athena mod v20170210

[skruis 180]

Hey guys, making progress. So, the NATO indicators have been changed to use the same images as ARMA:

 

 

And I've also changed the unit icons from my own custom icons to the ARMA ones as well, and I'm attempting to load the 'correct' icon for most units as well:

 

 

So, the following icons are loaded as follows:

 

1. By default, use a normal 'man' icon

2. If the rank is LT or above, use an 'officer' icon

3. If the unit type contains either '_tl_' or '_sl_', use a 'leader' icon

4. If the unit type contains either 'medic' or the unit is carrying a 'medikit', use a 'medic' icon

5. If the unit is carrying a 'machinegun', use the 'ar' icon

6. If the unit is carrying a 'missilelauncher' or ... there's another one ..., use the 'at' icon

 

So, those are the cases for when a non normal 'man' icon is used and the icons will change depending on the unit rank, the presence of a medikit and the presence of a mg or at. In other words, they should be updated as the mission continues and weapons are swapped around.

 

There's one more marker related change I want to make before releasing this next version and that's the inclusion of vehicle icons. To this point, I have not drawn icons for vehicles because I was relying on NATO indicators to display whether or not a group/group leader was 'mounted' in a vehicle but it's a little confusing at times so I'm going to introducing vehicle icons as well but only for vehicles with visible players currently mounted (because that's all the scripts collect). So, as units mount into a vehicle, a vehicle icon will be displayed and the passengers will be listed. NATO indicators will still be visible though.

 

-bus

[Tankbuster 1744]

This is great news. A more native recognisable icon set will help a lot. Is there any icon for engineers?

[skruis 180]

There is. I look in the class names to see if there's an _eng_ or _engineer_ ... something for me to key off of ... or is it the presence of a toolkit? Probably both, right?

[Tankbuster 1744]

I'd go with the classname. As far as I can see, the use the whole word "engineer". Not sure about the icon. I'm not at a gaming machine right now, but iirc, it's a small spanner icon. If it isn't, it should be. :)

[skruis 180]

Yep, np.

[skruis 180]

Posting another progress update. So, I've changed a few marker related things:

 

 

So not only are the Group and Unit indicators using the original A3 artwork but so too now are the actual markers. If you look to the top right, you'll see one of the flags and additionally the military ambush icon. The 'icons' and 'flags' are currently limited to the vanilla icons available in the editor. I 'might' expand on that but we'll see. Also, the shape brushes have been implemented as well and you can see that the 'cross' and 'grid' brushes are being used in the ellipse (green) and rectangle (orange) shape markers. I've also moved the group name and group leader description to the right of the group marker. So far, I've gotten positive feedback on that subtle change. Sorry for the delay in getting this update out but tbh, the marker changes were a bigger pita than I thought they would be and not only because I switched from my own custom shape based controls to image based controls but because of the mechanics of drawing, rotating and scaling images are slightly different than they are from working with your own custom defined shapes. I was planning on dropping in replacement graphics and calling it a day but the positioning of the markers (units, groups, marker markers, etc.) was all slightly off and out of sync. So, subtle things like ... centering what appears to be a small blue box with a black border works differently because the height and width values that you relied on before are gone, work differently or if you rely on things like 'ActualWidth' vs 'Width', one might be a frame behind (because it isn't 'populated' until after it's rendered which is too late if you want it 'rendered' at a certain location) while the other has no value at all (because your custom 'shape' had defined dimensions with whereas an image with a dynamic source does not so it returns 0,0 instead). These things are obvious in retrospect but working through them, when you were hoping for drop in replacements, requires a series of 'discoveries' and 'aha!' moments. Then you move onto scaling and rotational issues and then backporting changes and testing them to ensure they work across all instances and not just for the one thing you're focusing on currently and the time adds up. In the end, I'm pretty happy with how this is turning out.

 

So, there's a couple of little unrelated bugs to squash and I'm going to be adding vehicle icons. After that, we'll have another release.

 

Also, tank, I added the engineer icon.

 

-bus

[skruis 180]

Ok, so, vehicle icons are 'in' but there are still some refinements to be made:

 

 

The only real thing left to implement is to automatically hide the unit and NATO icons when units and group leaders mount the vehicles. Apart from that, it seems to be working pretty well. Now, there are a few things to know: the vehicle positions and directions are not exact to the vehicles. Doing that in a performant way would have required a DLL change which would have required re-applying for whitelisting from BattleEye which I might still do but for now, it's based off of the driver's position and direction so the vehicle icon is 'centered' on the drivers position in the world so the vehicle will almost always be slightly off from where it actually is and it could possibly be facing the wrong direction. At this point in time, I'm more interested in showing that a vehicle exists and who is in it. The fact that it's position might be off by a few meters is of a lesser priority than getting this next beta into your hands so you can bug hunt.

 

Also, from what I understand, ground based vehicles have their command listed as: Commander, Gunner, Driver but for non-ground based vehicles, it's Driver/Pilot, Gunner. I don't think non-ground based vehicles have commanders, do they? Well, if they do, for non-ground based vehicles, they're listed after Driver but before Gunner. I'm basing this off of the group leaders. In the picture, the commander is the group leader of the tank while the driver/pilot is the group leader for the chopper.

 

Also, the vehicle icons function similarly to the unit icons in that they do not 'scale' like the NATO markers do. They, and their always visible text, will always remain the same size. This way, the NATO markers remain the primary method of tracking 'who is where?' but you can still account for the details (units/vehicles) if you want to at a proper zoom level. My guess is most vehicles will be separate 'groups' and will get their own NATO markers but if not, the crew manifests (including cargo and turrets) will be listed under each vehicle always.

[skruis 180]

New beta available: http://athenamod.com/download/20170225.zip

 

Included in this release:

1. Complete overhaul of markers
   1. Unit Icons changed to use ARMA icons
      1. Special icons for
         1. Officer
         2. SL/TL
         3. AR
         4. Medic
         5. Engineer
   2. NATO Icons changed to use ARMA icons
   3. Marker Icons (those available in editor) changed to use ARMA icons
   4. Marker Shapes (Rectangle/Ellipse) changed to use ARMA brush images
   5. Vehicle Icons added
2. Icons added for vehicles
   1. Icons are placed and oriented according to vehicle pos/dir
   2. Icons are no longer placed according to vehicle location, not driver, command, etc.
   3. Icons are no longer oriented according to vehicle position
   4. Crew/Passenger list is displayed beneath vehicle icon
   5. Icons for units are not displayed when in vehicle
   6. Icons for groups are not displayed if group does not own vehicle (not commander, gunner, driver)
3. Misc visual improvements
   1. Improved text visibility on grayscale color mode
   2. Improved group name/group leader position (moved from below to right) and increased size
4. Misc bugs fixed
   1. Resolved issue where Athena would immediately stop after starting
   2. Resolved issue with oddly sized group markers after new group added
   3. Resolved issue with empty groups being displayed (all members dead)

 

 

[Ritalin44 2]

My god man... I find out about this mod and 5 minutes later you post a new beta.

 

Definitely on my most recommended mods list

[skruis 180]

...new beta: http://www.athenamod.com/download/20170225b.zip

 

Fixed:

1. Code refactoring
2. Icons will now change color and type (unit, groups and vehicles were affected)
   1. Noticed this during my group's session: downed (ACE medical) players were not showing as 'civ' which indicated that existing icons were not updating properly.
3. Update frequency limits removed. Previous limit of updating all non-player groups only every 100ms lifted.

Sorry for the 2nd beta in 1 day.

 

-bus

[thedog88 4]

this is pretty awesome and i've used it for the first time over the past 4 hours. works really well once connected and overall amazing mod!

 

good job!

 

now we just need live sat feeds :P

[skruis 180]

Thanks dog88! That means a lot to me :-)  Live sat feeds?

[thedog88 4]

no worries man, def. well deserved pat on the back man. yeah was talking about satellite imagery. similar to drone feed, just a bit higher^^ i reckon that probably wont be possible given arma's engine limitations but it's all good, this is more than enough. one thing i did notice that would be helpful is some sort of TFAR tie in. i.e. display when units transmit and on what frequency maybe. was running an op that had about 6 dif. elements all on dif frequencies and of course an overarching frequency. would be great to be able to click on a unit and see what frequency he/ she has programmed.

 

anyways, again, seriously great mod and will be following further development closely :)

[skruis 180]

The live sat feeds...probably not. I think the Alive team managed to get some sort of external view working. I'm guessing they created a camera and figured out way to save the cameras content, perhaps to the clipboard or they used the screenshot scripting command...not sure but anything I would do like that would be very hackish. It would work but would most likely end up being a slideshow and not very usable. I've been playing a JTAC/Flight spinoff of Athena that would have some functions similar to the upcoming sensor overhaul...the data link connections...the sharing of sensor data between different vehicles objects. A drone is hovering over an area and it's sensors pick up vehicles/aircraft...Athena could be modified to also simulate the capture of smaller objects in the direction the drone camera is facing if thermal is available and in use on the drone. Those 'images' could then be displayed in Athena, not as enemy units but as .. circles ... squares are ground vehicles in the upcoming radar overhaul and aircraft are triangles. So as you pan the drone camera around, these circles would appear and disappear from Athena. That doesn't seem unrealistic to me.

 

Re: the radios, I did have something planned for that but it was another application that would present a visual representation of a radio but also have an ORBAT that listed the units and their frequencies. The visual radio would let you change the frequencies, channels, etc. on a 2nd screen. This would have been primarily targeted at pilots that like having functions on different screens to simulate cockpit functionality. So, I've looked into it a bit and it might happen. If it gets baked into the current Athena application, it would probably be listed in the ORBAT tab next to or under the unit names.

[thedog88 4]

awesome man! looking forward to it. this is one of those game changing mods (to me at least) that will be loaded every time i launch from now on. really enjoying it and if you ever need help let me know, i'll be glad to contribute. i'm mainly a 3d artist but have done light config coding and animation.

 

anyways, good luck with this!

 

[Tankbuster 1744]

Testing the latest one and working well. Nothing adverse to report. ;)

 

[Guest]

New version frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

 

Athena mod v20170225b

[-Sharp- 17]

Hi Skruis,

first of all, thank you very much for this awesome mod. Our group used it since you realeased it. The new features are very cool and useful.

But it is possible to make this features more configurable (Turn it on and off like the Athena Group Markers or the BIS Markers)? I ask because the addional Information overload the Screen in some situations.

Maybe you can relocate group Markers to avoid overlapping? That could be helpful.

Do you plan any syncronisation (up and down) between the BIS map and Athena (e.g. BIS lines <--> Athena Lines)?

 

 

[skruis 180]

@-Sharp- Awesome! Always great to hear from someone that uses Athena.

 

Re: The information overload, I just want to make sure that you know about the flyout to the right, under Map->Common, there's a series of layer checkboxes. You can use those checkboxes to 'hide' or 'show' various features including the BIS markers, units, groups, vehicles, etc. on the fly. Re: adjusting the position of the NATO markers so they don't overlap, I'll have to think about that one. Perhaps at some zoom level, I could combine into some sort of a 'list view' where the icons are kind of put into a 'box' one after another but ... I'm not sure that's the route I'd want to go: I'll think about it.

 

Re: Line drawing synchronization...that's something I'd very much like to see...if only to get a dump of the BIS drawn lines so I can display them in Athena but it doesn't look like BIS has released any sort of scripting commands for interacting with them. The records that a line drawing marker exists are in a 'marker' but the actual polyline data is shared via some other mechanism...I have some hunches where I can find it but in the end, we're looking at probably just getting the lines drawn in ARMA into Athena. Also, re: sharing line drawings, it's not a 'replacement' but has your group tried using an ACS to share lines drawn in Athena?

[-Sharp- 17]

54 minutes ago, skruis said:

Re: The information overload, I just want to make sure that you know about the flyout to the right, under Map->Common, there's a series of layer checkboxes. You can use those checkboxes to 'hide' or 'show' various features including the BIS markers, units, groups, vehicles, etc. on the fly. Re: adjusting the position of the NATO markers so they don't overlap, I'll have to think about that one. Perhaps at some zoom level, I could combine into some sort of a 'list view' where the icons are kind of put into a 'box' one after another but ... I'm not sure that's the route I'd want to go: I'll think about it.

 

Yes, I know the checkboxes, but especially in CQB situations the different Fireteams/Groups are very close to each other. Group and name markers are overlaped and it is very difficult you get out any information. I think your idea to put them into a list or box can solve this problem. Maybe additional checkboxes for Group names, Group markers, Waypoints .... can be helpful, too. 

 

54 minutes ago, skruis said:

Re: Line drawing synchronization...that's something I'd very much like to see...if only to get a dump of the BIS drawn lines so I can display them in Athena but it doesn't look like BIS has released any sort of scripting commands for interacting with them. The records that a line drawing marker exists are in a 'marker' but the actual polyline data is shared via some other mechanism...I have some hunches where I can find it but in the end, we're looking at probably just getting the lines drawn in ARMA into Athena. Also, re: sharing line drawings, it's not a 'replacement' but has your group tried using an ACS to share lines drawn in Athena?

 

50 - 60 Percent of our Platoon use this nice mod, espacially Leaders, JTACs and Pilots. On our root server runs an acs and everybody can share information about it. Perfect!!!..... we love it.....

but some players don't have space, money..... for a second monitor or laptop... (I know "no hands no biscuit" :-)  a full sync of Athena doesn*t seperate this two groups. I hope BIS will implements needed commands in the future.

 

Don't missunderstand me, the mod is great and fully usable, i only beef on a high Level... ;-)

 

  

[skruis 180]

Quote

Yes, I know the checkboxes, but especially in CQB situations the different Fireteams/Groups are very close to each other. Group and name markers are overlaped and it is very difficult you get out any information. I think your idea to put them into a list or box can solve this problem.

 

Ok, so, you're zoomed out slightly and it's a blob of blufor. Did you want a single item to represent 'all' of the units so that, from an unzoomed view, you can say "All of these guys are there"?

 

Quote

50 - 60 Percent of our Platoon use this nice mod, espacially Leaders, JTACs and Pilots. On our root server runs an acs and everybody can share information about it. Perfect!!!..... we love it.....

 

Yay! I was hoping some community would try this feature out. I'm currently working on the AAR functions. I think I have the 'logger' component almost ready and then I'm gonna hook it into the ACS so that users can download the replays through the ACS via Athena. After that comes the sync'd playback.

 

Quote

but some players don't have space, money..... for a second monitor or laptop... (I know "no hands no biscuit" :-)  a full sync of Athena doesn*t seperate this two groups. I hope BIS will implements needed commands in the future.

 

Yep, I can understand that. I'm not familiar enough with SQF to be able to say "Yes, if BIS implements commands that I can now get lines from Athena into ARMA for non-Athena users." just because technically, if a user isn't using Athena, I would then have to create the marker on the non-Athena users computer. I suppose they could be using the @Athena mod w/ the app (even if it is in the background) and that would execute the required scripts to create the marker locally with the lines sourced from the ACS. Yea, not sure. I'll have to either get more into SQF to figure out the mechanics of it or just hand that off to someone else. Either way, yea, it all kind of depends on BIS exposing the line drawing SQF commands. I have suspicions about how this might be implemented and I might be able to hack it but ... we'll see.

 

Quote

Don't missunderstand me, the mod is great and fully usable, i only beef on a high Level... ;-)

 

No worries man. I get it ;-) The frustrating thing about stuff like this is the better it gets overall, the more frustrating the little things can become.

[Tankbuster 1744]

Skruis mate,

 

I'm struggling with the hotkeys. I can't change them reliably. It says I should press escape to remove an existing hotkey but that sometimes doesn't work. Also, it won't accept a new key for one I have managed to clear.

[-Sharp- 17]

18 minutes ago, skruis said:

Ok, so, you're zoomed out slightly and it's a blob of blufor. Did you want a single item to represent 'all' of the units so that, from an unzoomed view, you can say "All of these guys are there"?

 

Jap, i think one symbol should be enough for a high zoom Level. Maybe you can put the size of the unit above the NATO marker  and the containing unit names could be right of the marker in a list or box. (e.g. two Fireteams (Alpha 1 and Alpha 2) are merge in one inf marker with two dots above for squad and right of the NATO Symbol you can read ALPHA 1 | Alpha 2).

That is one idea, i know that liltte things cost a lot of time.

Thank you for your friendly ear...

 

[skruis 180]

1 minute ago, Tankbuster said:

Skruis mate,

 

I'm struggling with the hotkeys. I can't change them reliably. It says I should press escape to remove an existing hotkey but that sometimes doesn't work. Also, it won't accept a new key for one I have managed to clear.

 

Yep. I hate the hotkeys implementation. You have to be very deliberate with it. Even if the textbox is blank, you might have to select it and hit 'escape' to clear it again. I'll work on it and get something a little more reliable out soon. That whole functionality is going to have to change just because ... when Athena makes the jump to a UWP app (Windows 10 Store App), it will no longer support global hotkeys because of a limitation with UWP. My work around is going to be to remove HotKeys from the Athena application itself and perhaps move it into ARMA and then relay the command to Athena. The result will be slightly delayed compared to the current HotKeys implementation (only slightly) but it'll be more reliable. The only gotcha will be filtering which Athena clients should execute the ARMA Athena control instructions because there will be no way to say "Only this client gets the command" but ... I can add a checkbox to the Athena->File->Settings dialog to toggle whether or not the Athena client (think one on a 2nd monitor, another on a laptop) ignores ARMA supplied commands (zoom in, zoom out, bla bla bla). That will actually work for other commands that groups might want to implement like "On", "Off", "Player Only (will only show your location)" or "Player Group (will only show your group)", etc...commands that allow mission designers and communities to have a little more control over what's actually displayed...but that's in the future: HotKey fixes are short term.

 

15 minutes ago, -Sharp- said:

 

Jap, i think one symbol should be enough for a high zoom Level. Maybe you can put the size of the unit above the NATO marker  and the containing unit names could be right of the marker in a list or box. (e.g. two Fireteams (Alpha 1 and Alpha 2) are merge in one inf marker with two dots above for squad and right of the NATO Symbol you can read ALPHA 1 | Alpha 2).

That is one idea, i know that liltte things cost a lot of time.

Thank you for your friendly ear...

 

 

I'll figure something out. Again, no promises on delivery time but it's a good suggestion. It's actually not difficult to detect collisions between visual objects...just figuring out how the process would actually work is the challenge. I'm guessing that I'd have to figure out the amount of overlap, get a center point on the overlap, look for other colliding objects and kind of absorb them into the unified super group. As I'm thinking how this would work, I'm picturing Agar.io blobs floating around absorbing other blobs :-) And that's really not a bad analogy.