Successfull PBO, but empty.

[scotg 204]

I have a PBO that works in pboProject, but for <reasons> I have to use Addon Builder. I uninstalled A3 Tools, and then reinstalled. Buldozer works, P: drive is set up, and mod even packs with "success" notification. When I start the game there is a puzzle icon for my mod having loaded, but when I look for my vehicle in the Virtual Garage or 3den, it's not there - not even a mention of it. Model and textures are displaying well in Buldozer.

I am not sure if I missed a step for installing the tools, or if I needed to uninstall one or all of Mikero's tools first... or something along those lines. I was just hoping to find some common causes of this type of problem.

[Gunter Severloh 4051]

Have no idea about the issue, could be the tool, if it is i recommend using eliteness to pbo your files, never had an issue with it.

https://armaservices.maverick-applications.com/Products/MikerosDosTools/FileBrowserFree

[RoF 240]

Its called addon breaker for a reason, don't expect much help if your using it

[scotg 204]

9 hours ago, Gunter Severloh said:

Have no idea about the issue, could be the tool, if it is i recommend using eliteness to pbo your files, never had an issue with it.

https://armaservices.maverick-applications.com/Products/MikerosDosTools/FileBrowserFree

This is not really an option, because

9 hours ago, scotg said:

<reasons>

...but it may become more clear if you keep reading.
First, for those trying to follow along: AB = Addon Builder/Breaker; MT = Mikero's Tools; RTMs = animation.rtm files; A3T = ArmA 3 Tools

8 hours ago, RoF said:

Its called addon breaker for a reason, don't expect much help if your using it

What, do you just hang out under the bridge of this thread waiting for innocent passersby? The funny thing is that I had AB working perfectly well until well-meaning people (for the benefit of the doubt) suggested using Mikero's Tools. It took way too long to get Mikero's pboProject (the Addon Stopper - I jest, but yeah pretty much by Mikero's own description) working right despite the thoroughly documented suite Mikero offers. After moving to the Mikero Tools I was not able to get Buldozer working properly, despite all the documentation on how it only needs to point to the one and only arma3.exe. It's a great suite for those who know how to use this kind of toolset and can concentrate more on the technical portion of a mod's development. As an artist, however, I can only allocate a little time to the setup. I have received as much help on Addon Builder in the past as I have with MT presently, so although I don't "expect" help from anyone on either method I bet there are other AB experts out there willing to help. As for MT, Mikero himself and you (RoF, and a sincere Thanks to you, btw!) have been some of the few people who actually started* to help. Just when it looked like Mikero was about to roll up his sleeves and dig in, he persisted I was not viewing a document that I have no access to - the readme for deRtm. Although most of his programs are thoroughly documented (as in abundance, not quality), it wasn't until after I decided to move back to Arma 3 Tools that I happened upon a tucked away webpage revealing in no uncertain terms that deRtm was, in fact, a subscriber only program. I have custom driver and crew static animations fitting my original vehicle models, so RTMs need to be included. It had been disappointing to finally get Mikero's Tools barely working, only to find that my mods would not pack as expected without paying for deRtm. Since AB does pack with RTMs, I have attempted to switch back to it. Now, I'm only not sure if I missed a step in the setup of A3T or if I need to fully uninstall the whole MT suite (which will allegedly remove all MT registry entries). If I can avoid going that drastic it would be best, because I'd like to keep dePbo/eliteness.

Although I do appreciate the more informative error reports MT provides and the clean PBOs it produces, I need the ability to push a project into initial testing - including RTMs. When I have a big team working on this project, then maybe I can justify the annual cost of full MT. Until then, I'll be making "dirty" PBOs for myself to test these assets I'm creating. If it's okay with @RoF, then I'll wait for the advice of experienced pro-Addon Builder users and kindly ask the negative people to hold their tongues.

[martinezfg11 334]

May be late, but Make sure your output path in Addon Breaker  Builder contains the \addon. Example P:\@YourMod\addons. I don't think that needs to be defined in Mikero's PboProject.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

@scotg Im 99% sure that DeRtm is for debinarizing RTMs back to editable format and for converting rtms between Arma titles. It has nothing to do with the packing of them into PBO. Free tools should binarize rtms just fine.

[scotg 204]

...Except that they did not. It's too far in the past for me to remember correctly the how's and why's. It was a long, convoluted ordeal just to get back to having compile functionality after trying to rely on mikero's free tools. I didn't understand their limitations, and the documentation that came with them was misleading.

 

On 3/17/2018 at 7:27 PM, mikero said:

dertm is part of the subscriber toolset. But you can use any model.cfg (such as the one from samples) that contains an ofp2_manskeleton. What is provided in dertm is the skeletons for three different games. you only want arma3

 

On 5/1/2018 at 4:16 PM, mikero said:

If you don't have the tool, you don't have the documentation...If i update the tools that you DO have, that documentation doesn't occur for you either.

My conundrum was that the docs related to RTMs are only available in the subscriber tools, if I understand that correctly. There was nothing in the free tools docs, which mikero said shouldn't exist, explaining how to pack RTMs. I kind of felt like monkey in the middle.

The long-to-short is:

• I could compile with AB before.
• I wanted to re-structure my mod folders and have P:\ drive and buldozer working smoothly.
• I tried to accomplish this while converting to MT (free), but then I couldn't pack RTMs into my mod.
• I then went back to AB, only using MTfree as a helper.
• All is well.

I moved on, and have had better success with AB, using pboProject only as an error checking tool. RTMs are being packed (except for one unusual case which I haven't been able to look in to). This isn't a bad review of Mikero's tools, it's just an indication of what I can do at this time. I am super-busy with the artwork and promoting of my mod, and for lots of other reasons I don't have time to sift through technical docs right now. Perhaps when the artwork load calms down I can justify getting the subscriber version of MT and put out cleaner, fully inclusive PBOs - and have more time to get better acquainted with the tools.