Error "'author/' is not a value"

[Mynock 244]

Randomly getting this error when saving missions in the Eden editor after the 1.60 update today or when loading the mission in single player after exporting it. 'author/' is not a value. Not sure what that is suppose to mean. I have the author name in the mission attributes and in a description.ext file, so I'm guessing this is referring to something else? This seems to be occurring with any mod enabled, but has not yet happened to me on vanilla only, so is this a mod related error I need not worry about? Or is this a mission error itself? I have never seen it before today and googling comes up with nothing. It's very annoying and I refuse to re-release all of the missions I'm repairing after 1.60 if they are going to throw this error when the player starts the mission. Nothing starts a mission off with a bad taste in a player's mouth more than having to see errors immediately before even reading the briefing.

[Jnr4817 215]

I am as well.

[dudleyaz 1]

Me too!  I read something where they have incorporated access to the description file into the editor, but I don't see anything specifically calling it out other than possibly some of the stuff in the Attributes>General item.

[cosmic10r 2331]

I understand this to actually be an issue with mods themselves and is an issue with author changing from array to string in cfgpatches... mods will need to be updated and is not a problem with the mission itself from what I understand

[Mynock 244]

Well hopefully it's something simple then that will slowly go away over time as mods are updated, but sadly some of the popular mods that are no longer supported will probably never get an update to eliminate the error (TRYK comes to mind...). Time to add disclaimers to all missions that errors are being caused by mods and not the mission itself so don't take it out on the mission makers.

[cosmic10r 2331]

Ill do a few tests to and see if i can pinpoint it... ive been getting it for awhile... 

[Midgard_117th 11]

i have the same problem with CBA, ACE and RHS (with RHS Weapons). but witout ACE the problem does not show itself (it is an ACE problem with the new ARMA patch).

[FR-Helios 28]

Same problem, hope to will fix.

[donelsarjo 60]

I have commented out the value "author=me;" in description.ext.

Worked fine for me.

Just set it in Eden directly.

[Incontinentia 339]

I have commented out the value "author=me;" in description.ext.

Worked fine for me.

Just set it in Eden directly.

How do you set it in Eden directly?

[Mynock 244]

I have commented out the value "author=me;" in description.ext.

Worked fine for me.

Just set it in Eden directly.

This will not fix the issue, I have already tried this like many others have I'm sure. If that were causing the issue I'd imagine every mission with that line in a description.ext would have the same error, which for me at least has not occurred yet in vanilla only missions.

How do you set it in Eden directly?

If you want to know anyway even if it doesn't solve this error, you can find the line for it in the scenario attributes menu right under where you can put the title for the mission. I think (correct me if I'm wrong someone) that your profile name in Arma is automatically inserted with Eden into that field, but you can change it I suppose or perhaps remove it entirely if you wished.

[FR-Helios 28]

@Mynock, maybe you post this problem in this section:

https://forums.bistudio.com/forum/153-arma-3-troubleshooting/

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

I have a suspicion this error has broken all four of my ALiVE missions. I obviously can't be certain, but ALiVE is having difficultly initializing and this is the only startup error is can see (I should add I don't think ALiVE is responsible for this error. I think most of my unit packs are).

I wonder why BIS couldn't make this a legacy code?

Anyway, I'd love to see this get fixed.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

@Mynock, maybe you post this problem in this section:

https://forums.bistudio.com/forum/153-arma-3-troubleshooting/

Or even the feedback tracker or both.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

I was wrong and the amazing Spyderblack723 fixed it for the upcoming ALiVE release lol. Hopefully other mod authors follow suit here as they are made aware of the change.

[Mynock 244]

Well it depends what the "problem" is really. If it's a problem with Arma itself, then making a feedback ticket might be worth it (I don't have a feedback tracker account or whatever is required to make a ticket currently).

If it's something BI changed for some unannounced reason that's going to require modders to update something within their mods, then I doubt BI will do anything about it. While it's very annoying and ignorant people who play missions won't understand this is an error out of the mission maker's control (and thus probably negatively rate them because of the "error"), it doesn't seem to be causing me any other actual issues with the missions. So as of right now the options are:

1) Don't release any missions that aren't 100% vanilla for fear that the error popping up with make ignorant players think you're a poor mission maker

2) Don't worry about it, deal with the annoyance when saving in the editor and testing the mission, and ignore the idiots who will say you don't properly test your missions because it has an error out of your control

If a moderator wants to move this to another section like troubleshooting or whatever they're welcome to do so.

[Jackal326 1181]

The problem is this:

Pre 1.60 addons could be tagged in their cfgPatches section with an array of names in the author section:

e.g

		author[] = {"author1","author2"};

However, in the 1.60 patch, for whatever reason, BI changed it from an array to string, so now it must be coded like this:

		author = "Author1, Author2";

Addons (and missions) that still have the previous (array) method are throwing errors. The configs (and/or mission.sqm/description.exts) need to be updated to the new string format.

[Mynock 244]

I've always authored my missions the second way, I suppose that's why my vanilla missions are uneffected. But the mods I'm using must be written the other way. Good to know, hopefully we will see that change made as mods are updated.

It does make me wonder what the rules are about unpacking mods, changing the author's format, then re-packing for personal use only just to get rid of the annoying error. Not talking about releasing it, just on your own personal hard drive until a patch for the mod becomes available. I'd imagine it would have no effects on people playing missions that require mods since you're not changing anything that has to do with the assets themselves. But then again I don't really know anything about this stuff, so there's a good chance I'm wrong to assume that.

[navydoctom 0]

I'm getting this on old missions and even brand new missions I'm making and testing local (like the one I am building and haven't even saved it yet). More of an annoyance closing out the dialog box, it doesn't seem to affect my game play.

[Jackal326 1181]

I'm getting this on old missions and even brand new missions I'm making and testing local (like the one I am building and haven't even saved it yet). More of an annoyance closing out the dialog box, it doesn't seem to affect my game play.

Its probably not the mission at fault, it is caused mostly by addons that need updating to the new way of doing things outlined in my previous reply...

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

This is not a harmless error. I've spent the last several days trying to figure out why the missions I had just released had broken and I've now isolated it to this specific error. Here's a post I just wrote to one of ALiVE's developers:

@marceldev89

I just wanted to update you. So I made a vanilla mission on Stratis, slowly adding my mods and scripts in one by one until I could duplicate my issue with the large discrepancy of profile spawns on mission start.

Long story short, once I introduced this \author is not a value error in, I was able to consistently repro the problem.

But here's the catch. I could only duplicate it when more than one object or mod that has this error was present.

Example, Spyder Addons has this error. With just that being used the profile initialization was fine. So I added a CBA object (which has this error too) and BAM, the problems started.

So I messed around for a while trying to see if it was the specific object and over and over, this profile problem would only occur if 2 or more instances of \author is not a value was present. So if someone is using two mods that both have this error, they will very likely encounter issues with ALiVE. I spent a good amount of time with this and feel pretty confident when I'm seeing is accurate.

Also, even one instance of this error is enough to delay ALiVE's initialization. Example: I use a trigger to detect once all East profiles are dead to give me a "mission complete" screen. Anytime this error occurs, the trigger fires on mission start because the trigger is beating ALiVE to the punch. Without this author error, the trigger works and always has worked in the past.

Anyway, I figured you guys should be aware of this, in the event someone else asks or sees this thread.

Long story short, under certain circumstances, this error can break triggers and when multiple mods are simultaneously shooting this error at the same time, mission initialization can break (in ALiVE at least).

There are mods out there that will never get updated that don't deserve to have the chance at being broken because BIS made this change. Take a map like FATA, for example. The CUP team is configuring the lighting and sound as we speak. This map is not officially being supported by the original author anymore and unless BIS makes the old way a legacy code, it will forever have this error.

Now, in most circumstances, I agree the error is pretty harmless. But not in all cases as I've witnessed first hand.

[Mynock 244]

That's rather unfortunate. Would that error still break the triggers once the mission had been exported as well? I don't use ALIVE so I don't know how it works.

I suppose a really ghetto work around would be to put a second or two delay on triggers that are dependent on things like a faction not being present. Not ideal, but might work. I have to do something similar for Lingor missions since all units insta-die when the mission starts, so I set every unit to be invincible for the first few seconds until all of the assets are loaded in, then allow damage on everything after a few seconds. It's a PITA, but it works as a ghetto solution for that terrain just as an example.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

That's rather unfortunate. Would that error still break the triggers once the mission had been exported as well? I don't use ALIVE so I don't know how it works.I suppose a really ghetto work around would be to put a second or two delay on triggers that are dependent on things like a faction not being present. Not ideal, but might work. I have to do something similar for Lingor missions since all units insta-die when the mission starts, so I set every unit to be invincible for the first few seconds until all of the assets are loaded in, then allow damage on everything after a few seconds. It's a PITA, but it works as a ghetto solution for that terrain just as an example.

My main adventures in mission making until super recently have all been centered around ALiVE. So I definitely am not in any position to say whether any of the affects I'm seeing could ever be relevant or hazardous when that mod is not present. Though, this behavior may be relevant to someone with a more solid understanding of Arma's framework so I figured it would be of public service to share my testing.

The trigger part I'd assume would be most relevant to most players; the initial ALiVE units spawning in absurd fluctuation being most relevant to my never ending battle of having my missions just be freaking stable.

I was pretty pumped to have released my first ever missions like what, a week or so ago? Only to find them now being an absolute failure because 1.60 has caused every damn one of them to stop working or working as intended. :(

I personally think a sleep function would do just fine if a trigger was being killed by the error. I mean I don't see why not.

But if I've learned one thing with Arma since delving in, is that this game HATES errors (especially in MP due to log spam and crashes) so an error voluntarily added to the game such as this is pretty worrisome to me. Lots of mods will never NOT have this error because the assets aren't being supported anymore. Take the glorious map FATA for example. Unless I can find a way around it, my mission on that specific map may have just as well been voluntarily killed by this.

I personally think there's no excuse for not having made the old way legacy code. But I'm also no coder or scripter so I'm sure there's a very valid reason for BIS intentionally making this change.

[navydoctom 0]

So is there any easy way to find out if Mod's have updates or do I have to manually go through each mod and check on sites like Armaholic? I am running ARMASync but it doesn't seem to have a check for updates features on mods.

[ANGRY_FARMER 10]

eh i'm by no means expert, but i see ALiVE mod team fixed the errors somehow, i still have errors with ACE3 (i cant play arma3 whithout it), hope they will fix it too !
i suppose you just have to wait a bit to see if they fix that.
Sure is that BIS could have keep some sort of retro-compatibility to save us and mod makers this useless problem.