The Limitations of HiddenSelections and SetObjectTexture

[wiggie 24]

Hi all.

I have been having a few ideas about a mod as it is both something that is close to my heart and I also want to give something back to the community. I am fairly competent as a 3D artist to some degree bit have no doubt I will need help with configz and whatnot later but that is not the purpose of this post.

My question is on the workings of hiddenselections and their limitations inside ArmA. I was inspired mostly but Road Runner and his fantastic idea of using hiddenSelections on his vests to apply different setups.

I have read into hiddenSelections a bit but I can't find the answers to my questions. I will use an example first. For this example I will use Road Runners vests, but I have absolutely no intention of doing anything with his splendid work. I am just using it as an example.

So, I have one of Road Runners LBT's. I decide that I want to pick up a smoke grenade and have it change one of the magazine pouches to a grenade pouch on the vest (as I noticed they are in the same space).

If I used the setObjectTexture command to try and hide the magazine pouch and unhide the smoke grenade pouch after the mission has initialized, would it work, or not as the config for the particular vest is set up to have a magazine pouch instead?

Next question, lets say hypothetically that this works, wonderful, but now I want to scuba into the AO so I put my vest into my pack and don my rebreather. When I take the vest out of the pack and put it on the ground or on myself, will the game retain my changes to the hiddenSelections or revert it to whatever the object config has them set to?

I ask as I would like to know the possibilities of using the features in a way such as this before I get carried away with designing a mod that cannot work.

To recap:

Can hiddenSelections be hidden/unhidden after the beggining of a mission?

Will the game retain those settings if the object changes states (cargo, on the ground)

Thank you in advance for any help.

[da12thMonkey 1943]

setObjectTexture only works on cfgVehicles class objects - uniforms (actually player models), vehicles, props and backpacks etc.
Backpacks are unique in this respect that they're a wearable item that can be targeted by the script command with e.g.

(backpackContainer player) setObjectTexture [N,"path\To\Texture.paa"]

There is no way to dynamically change textures on cfgWeapons class objects - guns, vests, headgear etc.
hiddenSelections only work as assigned in the config for that class, so you would have to swap out the entire vest class to change its appearence.

[wiggie 24]

I see. Whilst this does halt the mod idea dead in the water, it makes a lot of sense and answers both my questions. Oddly, it was yourself and StalkerGB that i was thinking of when I wondered who would be able to answer my queries :D.

Thank you very much!

[road runner 4344]

if you use setObjectTexture, you will replace everything that uses that texture.

I also think it's possible via scripts to hide textures/selections, ie, if you have SCUBA/HALO gear all using the same textures, they can be triggered via scripts, as A Duke did this in A2 with his HALO script.

What he did was HALO out wearing all the gear, and as soon as they landed, a script was activated that basically HID these items for the rest of the mission.

My vests at present have something like 20 separate selections, set into 5 "camo's" if you open up the config.cpp, everything on vest#1 is hidden apart from the vest itself, giving it the appearance of being empty, but the reality is it's like an army/navy store jammed with shit!!

Interesting concept you have, I once toyed with the idea of having magazine visible that each time you reloaded, the magazine on your vest disappeared, adding more to the realism, but wasn't sure how that would be possible, if it can be done with bullets in clear magazines, I'd guess it could be done with individual magazines too??

[Uncle Swag 4]

With a good use of event handlers, you could make seperate vest models and add them to your own desires..