Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application

[fathersarge 46]

So I want to share a story of triumph for this mod, which in the last week I've come to really enjoy and use on any server that will let me.

I am one of the main helicopter pilots for a group that does TvT and vsAI missions every week. During last week's operation we noticed (due to the distance from base at the airfield to the OBJ in the far northwest of Altis) that communication (using TFR) was shotty at best between air assets and ground units. The helicopters were running supplies and respawned allies back and forth from the airfield to the AO but about halfway back, they'd completely loss comms with the ground units. This left quite a blind spot as you can imagine.

Taking it upon myself in righteous fury to stress test this mod, I bid farewell to my duties of running transport and resupply for a lonely existence high in the air so that my radio would reach our entire force no matter where they were. Some might recognize this as C2 or Command and Control. Using my second screen, I had a bird's eye view of the entire AO (where I used a dry erase marker to mark LZs for resupply locations for the incoming helicopters) and then on my touchscreen laptop I was able to zoom on certain parts of the AO and keep an eye on air assets to give accurate ETAs for resupply as well as easily visualize vectors for CAS gun runs to support the ground forces. I want to point out that this was before Ink or MultiInk.

skruis, you've created quite a mod. I look forward to all the updates and improvements. Everyone should have use this mod. The cool factor is off the f**kin chain.

tl;dr

I used this to call in gun runs and mess up the AI bad guys. This mod is all cool and demands you download and try it

[Guest]

Thanks for sending us the new version :cool:

New version frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

Athena mod v1.0.0.17 Alpha

[sjaba 19]

Just wanted to pitch in and say WAY TO GO SKRUIS !!

This is a mod and a feature i and many like me ( read air heads) have been waiting on for a long time.

[skruis 180]

Hey guys, just wanted to drop a quick line to say "Thanks!" When I started putting Athena together, I had only envisioned use for command and control or infantry focused "battlefield awareness". I had never anticipated it's use as a piloting tool so "Thanks!" for seeing possibilities that I didn't. If you couldn't tell, I'm extremely giddy about Multi Ink and for those of you that are flying and coordinating with ground forces, it'll be amazing :-)

Just for background info on 'status':

1. The @Athena mod is obviously no longer 'export' only so with the changes I've made, I've automatically introduced some more complexity. I'm going to be testing out the Multi Ink feature (which will automatically test the Extension (mod) changes) for the next week or so before I'm comfortable releasing the next version.

2. Group icon sizes. If you right click on a group, it lists the members. In that 'pop-up' interface, per request by FatherSarge, I'm going to be adding a 'drop down' to allow you to have some control over the size of the selected group marker. Example: 1x (normal), 1.5x (large), 2x (larger). Going to try to keep it simple so you can 'focus' on the right group. Additionally, I want to add the ability to 'rename' the group. As of right now, all groups are exported as "Alpha-1-1" or something similar. That will become customizable.

On the radar:

1. If I can get a WPF InkCanvas strokes collection syncing through Arma, I'm sure I can get an Athena created marker to appear on your Arma map :-) That will be a huge feature for Mouse and Keyboard users. I've already dabble in some of the UI for this.

2. Improved playback and recording controls.

3. Overview - View everything. This one is tricky. The intent is to allow one or more players to have the ability to see ALL sides activity. Why? To record the entire mission via the recording/playback functions. I will only introduce this feature if I can get it to work securely.

[aterfax 10]

Love the mod, cheers for the effort.

I've zipped up the maps (including Kunduz) here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/h1gatae0lxlemgp/Maps.zip?dl=0

You can extract to C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\Athena\

Link to the Kunduz full png map only: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ru0n8oeqqxv3aaa/Kunduz.png?dl=0

Unrelated:

A minor bug (I think), when you zoom out the icons and text for units and locations doesn't scale with the zoom level and it becomes impossible to read.

You've said you are adding the option to change the sizes, wouldn't it be better to autoscale?

Edited May 30, 2015 by aterfax

[skruis 180]

Aterfax: Thanks! Re: Scaling, that's not so much a bug as it is a missing feature. There's a lot of super duper exciting things I want to do with Athena like Multi Ink, getting Markers from Athena into ARMA, etc. that are taking priority over introducing an option to counter scale the icons in comparison to the zoom. The size adjustments that I mentioned are intended as a complimentary feature to the eventual icon scaling meaning that, even if the icons do scale, the ones that you've specifically chosen to make larger will still be larger than the others so it's easier for you to 'glance' at the location of the specific group you're interested in. So, in summary, we're talking about two different things and I want to do both (eventually).

[skruis 180]

Aterfax, I just noticed that you edited your post and added some maps. Just wanted to say: Thanks!

[doveman 7]

This is coming on in leaps and bounds and has the potential to be a game changer. Are you planning to allow servers to restrict the display of units, as some people aren't keen on that and it would be great if we could just use it for the inking function?

EDIT: Another option would be to limit the display of units to players who are carrying GPS or in vehicles and only showing other units also carrying GPS or in vehicles.

[skruis 180]

Doveman: I hadn't planned on that specifically. I had tinkered with the idea of allowing mission designers to have control over enabling/disabling Athena. An example being: 2 teams have bases. In each base is a radar dish/radio tower thing and if the teams radar/radio tower is destroyed, the Athena 'link' goes down and disables that teams Athena data export. In that same sense, I could expose variables that allow designers to have control of 'what' data is being exported and not just on/off. If I did that, then the mission designers could manually tie the status of the variables to GPS, Maps, Radio's, whatever.

[doveman 7]

Doveman: I hadn't planned on that specifically. I had tinkered with the idea of allowing mission designers to have control over enabling/disabling Athena. An example being: 2 teams have bases. In each base is a radar dish/radio tower thing and if the teams radar/radio tower is destroyed, the Athena 'link' goes down and disables that teams Athena data export. In that same sense, I could expose variables that allow designers to have control of 'what' data is being exported and not just on/off. If I did that, then the mission designers could manually tie the status of the variables to GPS, Maps, Radio's, whatever.

That sound really useful and could add some nice realism to missions. Perhaps a config option for the server to completely disable unit display unless the mission designer has specified variables would be useful though, so that old missions don't need to be edited to stop them being shown. Some missions, such as where a friendly helo has to search and rescue some ground troops, would be rather ruined if their location was shown in Athena.

[skruis 180]

Good point. I believe that would require a server side mod which would launch a script every mission that would poll a config file for settings and then push server side vars into the mission. So then by default, I would have the client side Athena mod export all data, in the absence of mission vars, I would use server vars, otherwise the mission vars will override. I'll add it to the list.

[doveman 7]

That sounds good, thanks. Another server option that would be useful to have is "show only self" as that would allow the player to see where he is and navigate and I think would be acceptable to most people, even if they find showing other units a bit cheaty. Mission settings should still take precedence though, so that designers can disable it where it doesn't fit the mission.

[fathersarge 46]

skruis I mentioned this to you but I wanted to see what everyone else though about it. We can all agree this mod has near limitless mission planning potential but for those of you in the military one very simple thing is missing! (missing from arma in general, in fact)

A tool to allow you to accurately measure distance and direction to tell your teams and aircraft where to move and fly. I suggested to skruis that he look into adding something that told you the straight-line distance and the compass bearing when you clicked one point on the map, then another. Personally I think it would be a fun addition as I can think of many other scenarios where it would be useful (the deadliest one being ground observers can give CAS aircraft exact vectors to fly for a gun run) What do you all think?

[skruis 180]

Well, until I tried this, I never knew marker sizes were in 2m increments. So, how the tool looks and works in Athena is one thing. How it 'can' look in Arma is another (and keeping it vanilla). So, using markers, does this output look ok? (simulated)

[fathersarge 46]

Looks awesome to me, simple and gives you what you need

[skruis 180]

The next batch of Athena updates are ready. Both the app and the mod have been updated so be sure to update both. Visit www.athenamod.com to grab the latest versions.

The highlight of this release is Multi Ink. What is it? It's amazing is what it is. Multi Ink allows two Athena users to share their ink, in real time, with each when they're both connected to the same multiplayer server. There aren't any new addons (besides @athena itself), 3rd party services or software that needs to be setup. It's Athena and ARMA. That's it. Player 1's ink will show up in Player 2's Athena and vice versa, assuming they're on the same team. If your JTAC is running Athena and they need an Air Strike, they can draw a circle in Athena along with an inbound path and call it in. The Athena enabled pilot will see the path and circle in their Athena app and commence the strike. If you're commanding a platoon and you need to specify movement path's for your SL's and TL's, draw it in Athena and they'll see it on their end (in Athena). Designing a mission with a friend? Put the mission on a server, join it and collaborate live in Athena.

Don't have a stylus? No need to worry. Mouse ink is supported. Have a touchscreen but no digitizer? Buy an iPad stylus and use that. Have a Surface or other device w/ a digitizer? You NEED to use Athena. Anyone can ink and everyone will benefit.

Athena Desktop 1.0.0.26

Changes:

•Added - Multi Ink

•Added - Initial background image

•Added - Clear Map Controls Menu option (clears the map to remove data left over from previous missions)

•Added - Logic to detect mission change (Mission Name change)

•Added - Ability to rename groups

•Added - Cursor to indicate map panning

•Added - Ability to use scroll bars to pan map

•Added - Additional unit descriptions (crew, pilot, officer, ammo bearer, rifleman)

•Added - Alpha blended colors for GreenFor and Civ Group Icons

•Changed - Map Panning Logic

•Changed - Layer Management

•Changed - Group Icons Controls (Left Click on toggle unit list, Right Click to change size, Touch to change size)

•Changed - Group Icon display logic

•Fixed - Unable to ink near labels

•Fixed - Unable to ink near group icons

@Athena Mod 6/2/2015

Changes:

•Added - Support for Multi-Ink

•Added - Support for player based Athena variables

•Changed - Methods for grab files from network source improved

[Guest]

New version frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

Athena mod v1.0.0.26 Alpha

[skruis 180]

Right after releasing the latest version, I found a bug in the @athena mod that caused other players ink to disappear and reappear. I've released the updated mod @athena 6/4/2015 and updated the downloads. I apologize to anyone that may have already downloaded the @athena mod.

Thanks!

skruis

[Rawhide 2]

A delayed response from me.

Remember, this is from a pilots point of view. I know opinions may differ.

Good stuff that's not mentioned:

• Multi Inc is just plain great!
  
• Little - if any - performance impact
  

Things I think could be different:

• Zoom further out. It's good for flight path consideration, and overview in general
  
• Same goes for icon sizes, I need them even bigger when zoomed far out. Is it possible to sync them with zoom?
  
• Change size on one icon, and the others change as well. Not just on markers, but player icons as well
  
• Possibility to draw lines. As in click on pos A and then pos B, and it draws a straight line between the points
  
• I notice the addon foldername differ from Play WithSIX (PWS) (@athena_mod) and Armaholic and your homepage (@athena)). This could cause misunderstandings? Or does it not matter if I download the software from your site, and the mod from PWS?
  
• Possibility to move the map by right clicking, when the ugly I is active
  
• Write on the map (keyboard text)
  
• Faster updates, optional. As you can choose frame counts on recordings, could it possible to speed up framecount visible on the map as well? On the cost of performance, I guess.
  

I'm very happy with this mod, it's great in so many ways. Hope you keep building it skruis!

[skruis 180]

Rawhide: Thanks for the feedback!

1. Will consider

2. On the list

3. The tap to enlarge feature was meant to 'highlight' a particular groups location while the other groups remain the same size. I think what you're more interested in is tied to 2.

4. Various tools are going to be introduced in the next version (ruler/protractor, marker icon, marker shapes (rectangle/circle/line), etc.)

5. I don't think it matters. A lot of groups, from what I understand, frequently merge many mods into a single @folder for simplicity and easier updates amongst their members.

6. Not a bad idea. I might just have map movement switched to 'right click' by default like the in game map.

7. That will be part of the marker tool (Item 4)

8. There are always improvements that can be made but I can't make any promises.

I will :-)

[kecharles28 197]

Updated mod v1.0.0.26 available at withSIX. Download now by clicking:

[Guest]

Thanks for the headsup! The Armaholic mirror has been updated with the fixed version :)

Update frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

Athena mod v1.0.0.26 Alpha fixed

[fathersarge 46]

A delayed response from me.

Remember, this is from a pilots point of view. I know opinions may differ.

Hell yea man, I'm always bugging skruis about additional pilot stuff

• Same goes for icon sizes, I need them even bigger when zoomed far out. Is it possible to sync them with zoom?
  
• Change size on one icon, and the others change as well. Not just on markers, but player icons as well
  
• I notice the addon foldername differ from Play WithSIX (PWS) (@athena_mod) and Armaholic and your homepage (@athena)). This could cause misunderstandings? Or does it not matter if I download the software from your site, and the mod from PWS?
  

I agree with the larger icon option overall, maybe linked to zoom but I am 100% behind the ability to resize individual player icons. That's actually exactly what I was after when I mentioned resizing icons in the first place ;) group resize has proven invaluable as well though.

As for the @folder names, I have both, PWS keeps it the most recent PWS version while I might be running a version off the site. I just change my launch parameters accordingly, but it is still the exact same desktop mod. The PWS version also have the correct desktop app inside the @athena_mod folder if you don't want to keep downloading from 2 sites

[skruis 180]

I don't mind :-)

So zoom combined with automatic resizing of 'icon' based elements (markers and group icons) seems to be a popular request. I'll try to include it in the next release. I'm still on the fence about scaling unit indicators and allowing you to additionally bump ones size. I can obviously do that but ... why?

Moving forward, I've settled on an interface for creating markers:

which resulted in ...

(note: the pics were taken at different zoom levels - the marker 'is' the same size in both)

So, there are several 'scopes' for marker creation:

1. Athena

2. ARMA - Myself

3. ARMA - Group

4. ARMA - Side

5. ARMA - Global

The Athena option will create the marker (allowing you to enter text on the map) and keep it in Athena only. All of the ARMA options will export the marker to ARMA where it will be recreated on the appropriate clients. I'm not 100% sure if I can create the marker on non-athena players maps but I'm pretty sure I can. The created markers will be 'local' to each players ARMA instance so each player can delete it freely without affecting another users Athena created markers.

[fathersarge 46]

I'm still on the fence about scaling unit indicators and allowing you to additionally bump ones size. I can obviously do that but ... why?

It's a simple matter of missions rarely being properly formatted. In an ideal world it wouldn't be needed. In our world, everyone in the mission might be part of the same group even though it encompasses 2 or more teams and they have to split up. A sniper team might be part of a group with an infantry team and might get lost on the map because they are on a hill somewhere and aren't easy to pick out by just their unit markers.

For pilots, all the pilots might be in the same group, so only one has a large marker over him, so to track the other aircraft it is nearly impossible (small fast moving unit markers) This was another reason I suggested those vehicle markers whenever someone was in a vehicle or aircraft (they don't appear till someone is in the vehicle)

I like the interface, something I just thought about, what about additional information in a drop down style menu. So the "This is a test" text would be available for all and pushed to the game but for athena only users there would be an option to include extra info in the form of a drop down with a window to see the text clearly while you had the info window open. This would allow people to more fully describe something or add additional information without cluttering the game map