Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application

[skruis 180]

@En1gm4tic, I don't believe it will work (automatically) if you move it from the workshop folder. The auto launch assumes that the relay is in the workshop folder. So, assuming everything is back to defaults, if you open Task Manager after launching Arma and starting a mission, do you see the relay running? Look for Athena Relay or relay.exe in your processes tab. If the relay isn't running, there's a problem. You can try launching the relay manually but it will auto close if it fails to detect that A3 is running. To prevent that behavior, you have to modify the config file and set auto close to false. Let me know what happens.

[En1gm4tic 0]

You got it, the Relay wasn't opening. After editing the config file the Relay now stays open when I run it after Arma 3 starts.

I've gotten the Relay to send 'Frames' to the Desktop App. However, the app will not prompt me to 'Download' the map when I click 'Start'. Any ideas why that would be happening?

[skruis 180]

Just curious, how do you know its sending frames?

[En1gm4tic 0]

I'm using the Connection Status tool under the Athena Desktop app: File>Connection Status

If it's easier, you can reach me at En1gm4tic#1551 on Discord. 

When it's waiting for Arma to load a map it says <Pending> in all three info slots, but when receiving frames, it gives information to the Connection status tool. I've included some images down below
(The Tool)(Pending Frames)(Receiving Frames)

[skruis 180]

Of all the things, get rid of the quotes around Matic in your Arma profile name...honestly, it's always something stupid that I overlooked. I forgot that I released that Connection Status feature. How helpful :-)

[En1gm4tic 0]

HAHAHAHAHA!
That was it! It's the name or something with the profile! I just loaded in Malden and since Start was already pressed, it prompted immediately to download the map. What an interesting solution. Thanks for helping me with this!

[skruis 180]

Yea, it's a little embarrassing that I didn't escape the 'special' characters. I was probably in a hurry to see it work, skipped that and then when it worked, moved on to something else. Anyways, glad it's working and sorry you've had to permanently alter your identity ;-) I wonder how many of the other "It's not working!" reports were because they had quotes in the profile name....

[En1gm4tic 0]

Funny thing...It only works when you don't have special characters in your name. Even if you have the map downloaded. Just a thing to think about.

[skruis 180]

Yea, it's not restricted to map downloads. The frames that are sent from the game to the app are in JSON format and JSON uses " to surround strings. So, when the mission starts and frames are sent to the app, the app tries to decode those frames and the unexpected " throws off the reconstruction of the frame (the process of turning it from a string of characters into a frame 'object' - deserialization). It actually throws an error, you just don't see it. So, because the app is never able to reconstruct the frame, it's never able to figure out what map you're playing on and determine if the app already has the map data or not. If it doesn't have the map, it prompts you to import it and if you do, it tells Arma to run some scripts and send the data to the app and it works pretty well. There are improvements I want to make but no matter what, it all relies on the frames being serialized and deserialized properly.

[janb1 11]

Hey skruis

Great mod you made there.

Just a quick question, I searched this topic for an answer but found none so far.

Is there any way to "draw" nato icons directly in the desktop client without starting ArmA? If so, where? Cuz that truly would make it a great mission briefing tool...

[skruis 180]

Hey Jan! Thanks!

 

It's a 'planned' feature. Been 'planned' for a while though...

[LoneGunner1974 0]

When playing recording, Is it possible to draw a path to the map that the player has moved.

 

It would also be nice to change the player marker.

 

 

[Diveyez 12]

Your website is down, I cannot setup an ACS without that according to your steam page

[eunos 0]

It is possible to set up ACS. Just have Athena on what ever you going to use as your server, and then run server.exe in the acs folder.

[skruis 180]

@eunos I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to do. Do you not want to use Athena 'live' but only use it for drawing in the same room on an ACS?

[eunos 0]

20 hours ago, skruis said:

@eunos I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to do. Do you not want to use Athena 'live' but only use it for drawing in the same room on an ACS?

Sorry I was replying to @Diveyez to explain that you didn't need access to your website to set up an ACS

[viper4aa 0]

@skruis

Athena is a really great tool.

Is an update planned? The current version in the Steam Workshop is from November 2017.

[kibyde 64]

Hey skruis,

 

Athena is one of my favourite mods. I have recently bought a surface tablet and zooming the map is a bit difficult. Is it possible to add "pinch-to-zoom" to Athena or make the zoom slider bar a bit bigger so it is easier to operate it with fingers?

[skruis 180]

@viper4aa Updates are planned. Wrapping them up and getting them out is proving elusive though. I am aware of some issues people are having with some of the newer maps. That's my highest priority issue right now but time for Athena is limited.

 

@kibyde It's difficult to implement pinch to zoom with the framework Athena Desktop was built on. Originally, it was a native Windows 8 app but Windows 7 was more popular so I had to port it to a Win 7 framework which didn't support pinch to zoom very well. I had hoped to port it to become a Windows 10 app but Microsoft kind of dropped the ball with their UWP rollout. I'm still interested in that port … it would give me the opportunity to clean up a lot of the code but it would make more sense to target a cross platform framework that also supports Windows 10 rather than pursuing native Windows 10. But then that means I have to take more time to learn that completely new framework in addition to a code cleanup so the whole 'move to a more modern framework with more modern feature support' effort is on hold.

[kibyde 64]

You think it is possible to make the zoom bar bigger so it is easier to operate it with fingers?

Or maybe 2 larger "zoom in" (+) and "zoom out" (-) buttons.

[skruis 180]

Probably the buttons. I had the slider bigger at one point and even though it was easier to touch, the underlying control was still finnicky to use via touch. Would you prefer the buttons zoom in and out as you press them or tap for incremental zoom?

[kibyde 64]

"zoom in and out as you press them" would be better if it works smoothly. If there are problems with input delay or something like that then "tap to zoom" is probably better.

[skruis 180]

Ok, will investigate. However, I've been playing around w/ Unity. Might take the opportunity to perform a rewrite. We'll see.

[Shreeden-VX9- 10]

We have a dedicated server that we run. Do I need to have the Athena Mod and ACS running on the server side for Athena to work without the game running on the client side?

[skruis 180]

Not sure I understand the question. You want to record sessions from the server side? For that, you'll want the Athena AAR workshop item. That includes the server side mod and the logger utility which should be run on the server. It will connect to the relay running on the server, collect the mission info and store it in a zip.