tutorial Config tutorial - request for input what to focus on

[.kju 3239]

As tribute to Bushluker's legacy I want to give back once again some of more insights and experience about config modding.

 

Therefore input from you guys what to focus on or what to explain would be most helpful.

This can be broad or meta topics, or specific questions or what you can think of - it should just not be mod/project specific if possible.

 

Pages you should check first:

 

• Config parameter types
• Config properties megalist
• Class inheritance
• Namespace/prefix

 

Make sure to check out also BIKI: Addon Configuration (category) and BIKI: Arma 3 Editing for further documentation on config topics.

 

 

A few related guides made earlier by me:

 

• Replacement config
• Quick camo selection definition
• Simplify testing (very outdated and incomplete)
• Development setup (very outdated and incomplete)
• LITE mod version creation

 

 

Topics I would consider of potential interest:

 

• Good config design
• MergeConfig/ingame config tweaking
• Unpacked data setup/update files while ingame
• Regular expressions (search (and replace) with context pattern matching) 
• Good code editors, functionality and setup
• Diff/compare tools
• Relation of MASK-ground texture-surface-character set-clutter

 

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[TeTeT 1520]

Great initiative. What I find most confusing on config editing is usually turret configs and their inheritance, and determining if a given attribute in the config is still in use or old stuff that is no longer needed. For advanced usage, I think a guide on how to add config values yourself and retrieve them via scripts might be interesting. Last, a complete guide to physx configuration for wheeled and tracked vehicles, with a step-by-step process :) 

[.kju 3239]

For PhysX I will refer you to the work of RedPhoenix. He knows the stuff and has written various docu on this already.

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/GamingwithRedPhoenix/videos

[Grezvany13 64]

Something to share:

 

My editor of choice is Atom in combination with the ArmA Language package (developed and maintained by the ACE3 team) for syntax highlighting.

Unfortunately it doesn't have any syntax validator to prevent hours of debugging to find a missing quote or semicolon, but I can live with that.

 

 

Something I would like to see:

 

When I started with making missions there were (and still are) a lot of templates/frameworks/blueprints available to start working from, which allowed me to quickly build what I wanted without spending days at the Biki to learn everything needed. Within no-time I was able to build exactly the same from scratch, but without the overhead.

However this doesn't exist for mods/addons... The only way to get started is by digging into the Biki and going through the source code of other mods/addons without any (inline) documentation.

 

It would be nice to have a single package with a "working" mod which contains all the basic configs and script (possibly) required to build a mod, and of course fully documented.

I a (read: my) ideal world this would mean that each addon would contain a topic which is included; eg. "CfgFunctions", "CfgVehicles", "UI/dialogs", "Modules", etc.

 

 

Just my two cents :)

[.kju 3239]

For config verification there is lintcheck part of mikero's tools:

 

Rapify.exe -L config.cpp or name.rvmat or description.ext
Rapify.exe -LE file //checks for existing of files referenced in the config
MakePbo.exe -BG folder//this checks also p3d, wrp, rvmat

I have these both integrated in my code editor for the current open file/folder and made batch files to do mass mass verification.

 

 

As for your second topic - I am not a guy to configure assets from scratch.

That said one recommended approach is to create an all-in-one config, extract the class of a desired asset and its parent classes.

This way you have a decent overview and reference.

 

CfgFunctions/UI/dialogs/Modules have no real connection to configuring assets. These are about scripted functionality and are basically a different topic altogether.

[Neviothr 102]

This is a great idea!

Here are some pages folks might find useful:

Config browser

A quick way to test config changes

The PMC editing wiki