Advanced Combat Radio Environment 2 (ACRE2)

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Thanks for informing us about the update :)
New version is frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

 

ACRE2 v2.4.1.947

 

Community Base addons A3

[rekkless 240]

7 hours ago, doc. caliban said:

Howdy.

 

We tried TFAR and ACRE2 a month or so ago when deciding which radio system to start using.  We really wanted to use ACRE2 after testing, but one issue really bothered 2 of our guys: The sharp "pop" at the end of the transmission.  Just the last split second of it. 

 

We've been using TFAR because of that, but tried this update of ACRE2 in tonight's mission. (3.5 hours)   No complaints during the mission, but during wrap-up afterwards I asked how our modset seemed in general, and that issue was the only thing that came up.

 

Is there a way to customize that, or as a last resort, disable it?  It sounded like they want to go back to TFAR because it bothers them enough to make the advantages of ACRE2 a wash for them.  I want to keep ACRE2,  What can I do?

 

Thanks for the great mod!

-Doc

While I tend to agree, probably the weakest part of ACRE is the radio beeps. In fact in my group going from TFAR to ACRE the radio beeps have been the single biggest gripe. Even more so than no radio racks. But all of us don't mind since ACRE is a better option in every other way.

 

If the end beeps or pop are bugging you the biggest piece of advice I can recommend is get your players to lower their POST Volume and increase their PRE Volume, this will lower the volume of the beeps and pops (along with the static and all the other good stuff with ACRE) but keep the voice volume high enough you can hear players clearly. Sadly as far as I can tell there is no way to add custom sounds without significantly modding the addons files.

[doc. caliban 34]

3 hours ago, rekkless said:

While I tend to agree, probably the weakest part of ACRE is the radio beeps. In fact in my group going from TFAR to ACRE the radio beeps have been the single biggest gripe. Even more so than no radio racks. But all of us don't mind since ACRE is a better option in every other way.

 

If the end beeps or pop are bugging you the biggest piece of advice I can recommend is get your players to lower their POST Volume and increase their PRE Volume, this will lower the volume of the beeps and pops (along with the static and all the other good stuff with ACRE) but keep the voice volume high enough you can hear players clearly. Sadly as far as I can tell there is no way to add custom sounds without significantly modding the addons files.

Thank you for the tip on the pre/post volume adjustments.  That's also the only clear definition of what they do that I've heard.  :-)  They may go for that because I don't think they care about that stuff as much as other things, so it's great that it can be tailored to individual tastes in that way.

 

-Doc

 

EDIT: Possible problem: Does that also lower the volume of positional speech?   If so, I may just delete the sounds.pbo and live without the beeps altogether.  If I understand what I've read correctly, it preloads the sounds to TS3 and then only uses the functions in the file to play them back, so that will kill them.  No idea where the sounds are stored, but once they are, the sounds pbo can supposedly be devoid of sound files and they will still play, so the only thing I can think to do is remove the mechanism by which they are played by removing that pbo.  I suppose they can remove theirs and I can continue enjoying the sounds on my system.  :-)

 

[doc. caliban 34]

In trying to stop the mic-closing sound from playing, I took a look in acre_sys_sounds.pbo myself.  What I read elsewhere does look correct in that it pre-loads those sounds to TS3 and then uses another function to play them when needed.  From testing it also appears that once those files are pre-loaded, they persist through reboots, removing and reinstalling the plugin, etc. 

 

Can someone tell me where they are cached so I can clear them?  I've looked everywhere I can imagine.  Blew out all the TS3 client caches manually in Explorer, etc.  No joy.  All of the mic and radio interface sounds still play even if I completely remove them from the pbo.

 

Also, it's not entirely clear based on the file names which sound file I'm looking for.  Once I know which one it is, I can simply remove its entry in CfgAcreSounds.hpp and/or the sound file itself from the sounds folder.

 

Forgive me if this is the incorrect place to ask this stuff!

 

-Doc

[soldia 1]

You already gave part of the answer. 

The second part is: We provide a tool for converting *.wav files to *.b64 files. This is in every ACRE2 Build as an *.exe. Take an empty wav, convert and replace the corresponding sound. Then repack the sys_sounds.pbo to provide it to your community. 

 

This would be the best solution for an entire community IMHO.

[doc. caliban 34]

1 hour ago, soldia said:

You already gave part of the answer. 

The second part is: We provide a tool for converting *.wav files to *.b64 files. This is in every ACRE2 Build as an *.exe. Take an empty wav, convert and replace the corresponding sound. Then repack the sys_sounds.pbo to provide it to your community. 

 

This would be the best solution for an entire community IMHO.

That's great!  Could you tell me which sound file it is?  We're looking to change/mute the mic closing sound on the 148.

 

EDIT: mic_click_new_off.b64      I replaced it with a converted wav of a different sound, but it just doesn't play anything when closing the mic.  That's ok though ... this is going to make the guys happy.

 

Again, thank you very much for the info, and for having provided the tools we need to tailor our experience with this great mod.

 

One other question if I may:  Is fnc_isMuted.sqf in sys_core responsible for keeping players from hearing people in the lobby?  That's the only other gripe I've gotten and our current workaround is to keep the plugin disabled until we're all in mission, and disable it again when we're done with the mission.  For our use, it would be great to be able to talk all of the time. 

 

If that's not it, or it's not that simple, I'd love to know how to enable/disable the plugin via script.  I could add it as an action to our ACE menu as enabling or disabling the radios.  Better than alt-tabbing in and out.

 

Best,

 

-Doc

 

[jonpas 294]

1 hour ago, doc. caliban said:

One other question if I may:  Is fnc_isMuted.sqf in sys_core responsible for keeping players from hearing people in the lobby?  That's the only other gripe I've gotten and our current workaround is to keep the plugin disabled until we're all in mission, and disable it again when we're done with the mission.  For our use, it would be great to be able to talk all of the time. 

 

If that's not it, or it's not that simple, I'd love to know how to enable/disable the plugin via script.  I could add it as an action to our ACE menu as enabling or disabling the radios.  Better than alt-tabbing in and out.

Lobby and even briefing should work just fine and you should not get muted there (but I am not 100% on the briefing part). Going back to lobby definitely also disconnects the plugin, but it might take a few seconds for it to timeout.

[doc. caliban 34]

6 minutes ago, jonpas said:

Lobby and even briefing should work just fine and you should not get muted there (but I am not 100% on the briefing part). Going back to lobby definitely also disconnects the plugin, but it might take a few seconds for it to timeout.

That is how it works for us now, for sure.  What we would like to be able to do is, ideally, hear everyone on the TS server even if they aren't in Arma.  One of our guys is a crazy-busy doctor and shows up late a lot, so we want him to be able to connect and talk to us while we're in mission so we can help him do whatever needs to be done before he joins in.

 

Barring that, we'd at least like to be able to manually connect and disconnect from the plugin so there is no interruption if not everyone joins the mission at the same moment.  Then when we're all in and ready, we can connect to it and cut ourselves off from the world outside of the mission.  For now we alt-tab out of the game and enable/disable the plugin in TS3, but that's a clunky workaround.

 

Thanks for the reply,

-Doc

[soldia 1]

As this part of muting is completely handled by the TS Plugin, it can't be changed without a huge effort.

[doc. caliban 34]

1 hour ago, soldia said:

As this part of muting is completely handled by the TS Plugin, it can't be changed without a huge effort.

I wondered if that was the case.  TFAR has to have a separate plugin for that as well.

 

So I'll see if I can figure out a way to enable and disable the plugin in the TS client from within the game.  That would be cool enough.

Poking around in this at the moment.  If there's a way to manually switch to and from the channel, we'd be golden.

Thanks!

-Doc

[TWRoach 15]

Hi guys just ask question 
i use steam workshop Update New 2.4.1 version

But only update the module 
How do I update the TS3 plugin together?

Ts3 still shows the old version

I also opened the game after the update

sorry english not good 

[jonpas 294]

18 hours ago, doc. caliban said:

I wondered if that was the case.  TFAR has to have a separate plugin for that as well.

 

So I'll see if I can figure out a way to enable and disable the plugin in the TS client from within the game.  That would be cool enough.

Poking around in this at the moment.  If there's a way to manually switch to and from the channel, we'd be golden.

Thanks!

-Doc

You can't enable a plugin from the game, if the plugin that handles the communication with the game is disabled. :P

 

TeamSpeak channel move. That feature is not in yet, will be with next version. You will still be able to switch manually just like you can now, the only difference is that it moves you to the appropriate channel as requested by many communities that prefer this way of doing it.

 

5 hours ago, twroach said:

Hi guys just ask question 
i use steam workshop Update New 2.4.1 version

But only update the module 
How do I update the TS3 plugin together?

Ts3 still shows the old version

I also opened the game after the update

sorry english not good 

TeamSpeak 3 plugin will automatically update itself when you start Arma 3 for the first time after you update ACRE2. It will show a pop-up during start telling you if it was successful or not and what it did.

[rekkless 240]

1 hour ago, jonpas said:

You can't enable a plugin from the game, if the plugin that handles the communication with the game is disabled. :P

 

TeamSpeak channel move. That feature is not in yet, will be with next version. You will still be able to switch manually just like you can now, the only difference is that it moves you to the appropriate channel as requested by many communities that prefer this way of doing it.

 

TeamSpeak 3 plugin will automatically update itself when you start Arma 3 for the first time after you update ACRE2. It will show a pop-up during start telling you if it was successful or not and what it did.

 

I was reading on your github you were having trouble getting the channel move to work properly if the channel was passworded. Did you guy manage to get that working? I've found a simple channel move if the channel hasn't got a password kind of doesn't have the same affect.

[TWRoach 15]

1 hour ago, jonpas said:

TeamSpeak 3 plugin will automatically update itself when you start Arma 3 for the first time after you update ACRE2. It will show a pop-up during start telling you if it was successful or not and what it did.

After the game opened nothing :(

[thirith 27]

Could someone here give me a brief rundown of how death is handled in ACRE2? I did a quick search but wasn't able to find any information. These are my concrete questions:

• When players die, can they continue talking to each other regularly (i.e. direct voice chat)? Or do they need to use an alternative method?
• I noticed that when I died during a recent session, the mic was switched off. Does ACRE2 switch it back on again after the mission ends, and if so, at what point exactly? (We didn't figure this out during our last session.)

My apologies if these have already been answered repeatedly, but my Google-fu failed me on this issue.

[GieNkoV 30]

Ad.1. If you use ACE3 spectator, you will be able to talk to other dead players normally, and you will also hear alive people talking near camera position - but they will not hear you.
Ad.2. Mic is switched off during death, and it stays off until you respawn or enter ACE3 spectator mode. It also switches on when you exit the server.

I hope that explains your questions :)

[magnetar 78]

1 minute ago, GieNkoV said:

Ad.1. If you use ACE3 spectator, you will be able to talk to other dead players normally, and you will also hear alive people talking near camera position - but they will not hear you.
Ad.2. Mic is switched off during death, and it stays off until you respawn or enter ACE3 spectator mode. It also switches on when you exit the server.

I hope that explains your questions :)

 

This is true as well for End Game spectator mode, although it works best, as Gienkov said,  when used together with ACE3 one.

[thirith 27]

Thanks, those answers definitely help. Do I understand correctly that without ACE3 spectator, players have to switch on their mics manually? And do you get ACE3 spectator only when using ACE3, or is this something that mission makers can add to their missions in general?

[jonpas 294]

7 hours ago, thirith said:

Thanks, those answers definitely help. Do I understand correctly that without ACE3 spectator, players have to switch on their mics manually? And do you get ACE3 spectator only when using ACE3, or is this something that mission makers can add to their missions in general?

Only with ACE3, and it depends if the spectator mode integrates ACRE2 or not. Vanilla one doesn't for example.

[jonpas 294]

On 24. 3. 2017 at 7:42 PM, rekkless said:

I was reading on your github you were having trouble getting the channel move to work properly if the channel was passworded. Did you guy manage to get that working? I've found a simple channel move if the channel hasn't got a password kind of doesn't have the same affect.

No, not as of yet. None of the core developers are working on that, it was a contribution (a good one at that) and I don't think any of the core developers will work on it at the time. As far as I know tbeswick96 was looking into it, but I can't say, best to keep eyes on GitHub or ask him directly on Slack. :)

[thirith 27]

Quick update: I no longer get the problem with the Tobii 4c drivers and software and ACRE2; the infinite loading screen is gone. Yay!

 

Sadly, our experiences with ACRE2 yesterday evening weren't that great. The group, which mainly consists of relative newbies to this game, enjoy what it brings to the game, especially with some of the more realistic features toned down, but the game crashed repeatedly, both on my PC (I was running the server) and on the client PCs. For the moment it's put the others off using ACRE, because once we deactivated it we no longer had any crashes or disconnects, but I was wondering whether there are setups where ACRE can lead to instability. We were using the latest versions both of ACRE and of TS3, possibly with some people using the 32-bit version and others the 64-bit version.

 

I'm hoping to get them to try it again in a few months' time, when there've been more updates, but for now I suspect they'd prefer to go without a radio mod.

[magnetar 78]

8 hours ago, thirith said:

Quick update: I no longer get the problem with the Tobii 4c drivers and software and ACRE2; the infinite loading screen is gone. Yay!

 

Sadly, our experiences with ACRE2 yesterday evening weren't that great. The group, which mainly consists of relative newbies to this game, enjoy what it brings to the game, especially with some of the more realistic features toned down, but the game crashed repeatedly, both on my PC (I was running the server) and on the client PCs. For the moment it's put the others off using ACRE, because once we deactivated it we no longer had any crashes or disconnects, but I was wondering whether there are setups where ACRE can lead to instability. We were using the latest versions both of ACRE and of TS3, possibly with some people using the 32-bit version and others the 64-bit version.

 

I'm hoping to get them to try it again in a few months' time, when there've been more updates, but for now I suspect they'd prefer to go without a radio mod.

 

The RPTs would be helpful. Note however that this may not be totally related to ACRE. I have been able to do rock stable acre sessions... Nevertheless, publish those RPTs, if there is an error in ACRE we will fix it, but  without them we cannot do anything at all!!

[thirith 27]

Sure, you should be able to access the RPT files here:

 

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiIhjeAs3M6RsC27SOzJ2_RKa0In

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiIhjeAs3M6RsCxTXBaJgcn6afAn

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiIhjeAs3M6RsC7Q4Ai1pAbkDQ75

 

I'm afraid I can't remember when exactly my crash happened (I suspect it would be the earliest of these).

 

I know it might not have been ACRE, and even if, I guess it could've been any combination of factors; right now the other players will probably be hesitant to try it again immediately, which is why I'm thinking I'll wait a bit before I suggest trying it again.

[Bamse 223]

Seconded. We had ppl crashing ~10 times per player in our not even 2 hour game both past Sunday and this one. It's a straight CTD and it seemed complete random to us.

Windows event logs says (with some small variations):

Spoiler

Faulting application name: arma3_x64.exe, version: 1.68.141.67, time stamp: 0x58d52983
Faulting module name: acre_x64.dll, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x58d18ccd
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0000000000068956
Faulting process ID: 0x19ac
Faulting application start time: 0x01d2a6604ae9a6e4
Faulting application path: E:\Steam\steamapps\common\Arma 3\arma3_x64.exe
Faulting module path: E:\Steam\steamapps\common\Arma 3\@acre2\acre_x64.dll
Report ID: 3ed77322-1254-11e7-8313-fcaa1401c1f6
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

All users have very nearly identical Windows Event logs recorded at the time of the crash. The connection to acre_x64.dll is why I'm posting in here.

 

RPTs.

All generated from the same "live" session so there are a metric fuckton of other mods loaded. Look at the timestamps to see how frequent the crashes were and we always crashed a few users at a time. At most 5 simultaneous crashes.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0srgyctfursmccj/arma3_x64_2017-03-26_20-39-25.rpt?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/92a2eokw94ncrrr/arma3_x64_2017-03-26_20-44-48.rpt?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wwy3cnzlmxemq5b/arma3_x64_2017-03-26_20-58-33.rpt?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/btk0d1eant5wtac/arma3_x64_2017-03-26_21-03-23.rpt?dl=0

and there's a few more if wanted/needed.

[jonpas 294]

BI is releasing a hotfix for 1.68 one day now, I suggest to report the crashes on GitHub with all the required information and anything else you can gather if it still keeps happening after the hotfix.

 

What I think is happening is Arma crashing and Windows reporting our extension as the faulty module because it is constantly in use.