AAF Virtual Navy Mod

[mankyle 418]

Wells...

 

Truth be told I haven't tried putting class xPlanes entities over it. The landing  pad is too small  for a plane, only for helicopters.

 

Now it can transport cars, tanks, static entities, cargo, helicopters.... but not Men. I will experiment today with VTOLs and I will tell you.

 

I have started animating the ship and  the ship and the horizon bar Works but the lights don't animate.. The glide  slope indicator Works but it is difficult to fine tune the lights and geometry. 

 

EDIT:

 

The VSTOL Xian can move along with the ship. The glide slope indicator needs more work. Now it is just for shows. It doesn't add anything useful for landing the ship.

 

BTW, does anyone knows if markerlights can be animated???

[mankyle 418]

I got the horizon bar working. In the end I had to resort to light emitting materials and an animation. Now whenever the colision lights are connected the horizon bar lights up.

 

Future Plans:

- I intend to do use light emitting materials in the model, adding colission lights  and also other lamps. Light emitting materials are very cool.

- I have two doors that can be animated using switches and I intend to light up the switches when the doors are open/closed.

- I'm doing some experiments using a crane and attachto. My idea is to use a turret and some animations to get a fully working crane on the aft part of the ship. I think that animating the cable using horizonbank and horizondive it will always remain vertical.

- I have started modelling a millenium gun turret

- I have also started adding details to the bridge. The details in the new destroyer ships are awesome and I intend to reuse the textures in the ship...

- I have also modelled the flycontrol in the aft part. It is just for shows, unless I think of a way of making it useful.

 

I will try to make some new screenshots this week

[Ex3B 266]

On 12/21/2018 at 10:20 AM, mankyle said:

... I haven't tried putting class xPlanes entities over it. The landing  pad is too small  for a plane, only for helicopters.

... EDIT:

 

The VSTOL Xian can move along with the ship.

Does the Xian fit well on the deck? Is there enough space that a player might plausibly operate a Xian from it (or would their landings need to be nearly perfect)?. I assume when you say that its to small for a plane, you mean a conventional takeoff and landing plane.

Is there enough space for a 2 Xians/ 1 Xian and 1 Heli? What about a F-35 and a Ghost hawk?

This month I started making an F-35 port (as I mentioned), as well as an "upgraded" Xian: 16km wide angle radar, and each of its 4 pylons can carry racks of 3x R-77 or R-73, or 1xKH-58. No cargo capacity, but improved flight characteristics and a larger CM magazine. I had intended to make missions with static ships (USS Freedom, USS Independence, a tweaked Atlas:LHD) as bases (changing or placing flags/papering over with CSAT banners as appropriate)... but I'd be really interested in mobile bases instead (or a static ship + this HSSV).

 

If each side had 3 of these, and each one could hold 2 aircraft (VTOL plane, or helicopter), that would be 6 aircraft for each side... it could make for some very interesting naval mini-carrier battles.

I'm also imagining as part of this scenario that the HSSVs might deploy ground based AA (since cheetahs and Tigris can embark on this, no?), so that its not just a pure air battle.

 

[mankyle 418]

It is big enough for a medium sized  helicopter. A Hellcat or  a Ghosthawk. The Xian  fits with an  small  margin  to spare.

Now I'm  modelling details and small thingies and  experimenting with  lights. You could land the Xian or a F-35 but  the ship  is too small  to operate properly with  an VTOL  plane.

 

EDIT: Just added a picture to compare the size of the Xian on the landing pad. There are near the landing pad. Over them you can see the horizon bar

 

 

 

 

Now the ship at dusk without the colision lights

 

 

 

And with colision lights. Nevermind the White lights on the landing pad. I have to increase their brilliance. 

 

[mankyle 418]

kell…. some updates

 

- I'm adding the fly control room near the landing pad and I have also started modelling the seats.

- The stabilized Works now. It is stabilized and when enabling the position lights the lamps light and it can be seen very well in the darkness. It has one stabilized section and two non stabilized. It provides a useful reference at night when trying to land. 

- The Glide slope indicator Works too although it Will requiere a little bit more of fine tuning to make it useful.

- I got working the glass and Fire GEO lod. Now the correct FX are showed when firing at the ship. I still have some errors in the GEO LOD that I have to solve. I Will take some time to refine them in order to make the ship more stable. Right now GEO LOD is working in 95% of the ship. 

 

Next

- I Will be modeling some more details to the upper superstructure such as radars, antennaes etc....

- I Will start this weekend modelling the bridge details.

- I want to add a computer screen with the radar UI. I'm planning to add an overlay over the radar screen that unhides when the radar is activated.

- I want to add an armory. That place Will be where the inventory action Will be located.

 

Problems

- I'm reusing the Carrier Windows texture and it correspondent material but the texture is opaque. All glass surfaces are two sided it this helps…. I have already tried to normalize Alpha and move to top.  It doesn't work. The part to the texture and material is correct.

 

EDIT: I was having problems while trying to script a transport system for the ship but in the end I realized that as the ship is floating on the water and I was using setPos scriptig command the vehicle was teleported to an incorrect position. I changed the code to use setPosWorld and I got it working. Now it is possible to load a gunboat on the HSSV just using PHYSX. No attachto, no vehicle in vehicle….. nothing.

I'm going to add a couple more actions to load RHIBs, CRRCs and SDV and to get floating men back on the ship.

 

EDIT 2: There is a problema with the gunboat. If I teleport it inside of the boat docking bay either it tumbles or if I add some pieces in the GEO PHYSX LOD it explodes. In the end I Will resort to use Attachto. I Will keep you posted

[Ex3B 266]

On 12/24/2018 at 10:34 AM, mankyle said:

You could land the Xian or a F-35 but  the ship  is too small  to operate properly with  an VTOL  plane.

EDIT: Just added a picture to compare the size of the Xian on the landing pad. There are near the landing pad. Over them you can see the horizon bar

I don't know what you mean by a "horizon bar" that is supposed to be "over them" (I assume "them refers to the Xian and the landing pad)

 

Based on what I see, one could properly operate a VTOL plane from that deck, in the game that is. In real life many VTOL aircraft aren't really operated as VTOL, but rather STOVL, or at best V/STOL. In real life, such a deck would not be suitable for operating harriers/F-35Bs/Yak-38s/Yak-41s. Since such jets can't take off vertically with any appreciable armament or fuel. Something like a V-22 osprey might work from such a deck...

But this is Arma, and we can have VTOL planes that really are VTOL and not STOVL.

 

It looks good to me... I'm not sure about using Hurons or Blackfish on that thing, but it looks like an F-35 or a Xian would work fine.

 

13 hours ago, mankyle said:

Now it is possible to load a gunboat on the HSSV just using PHYSX. No attachto, no vehicle in vehicle….. nothing.

...

EDIT 2: There is a problema with the gunboat. If I teleport it inside of the boat docking bay either it tumbles or if I add some pieces in the GEO PHYSX LOD it explodes. In the end I Will resort to use Attachto.

Wouldn't ViV be better than attach to? I've always been a bit skeptical of attachto, as I've encountered many bugs with mods that used it prior to ViV... mostly relating to landing craft where detaching leads to the detached vehicle and the landing craft clipping, colliding, and often one of them being destroyed/otherwise lost.

... That said, I'm not so interested in using a ship like this to carry other boats... I'm more interested in using it to deploy amphibious IFVs, tanks to shores, and operate as a mobile heli/VTOL base...

So if all that works as it is now, and the only issues are with gunboats (I assume you mean the speedboats that are armed with a 40mm GMG and an HMG/minigun?), bravo

 

*edit* couldn't one just place a boat rack on that opening on the port/left side, and use that to deploy/recover boats?

I don't think it needs to be all in one, after all the "official" USS liberty has to be pieced together in the mission editor with various armaments and the boat rack. If physX will keep the boat rack sitting in the right space, that seems like the simplest solution, no?

[mankyle 418]

Mmmmm

 

I was too ambitious, I think...

Now I have two posible solutions

a) Remove all actions and such and let the misión makers add a boat rack in the boat bay…. Thanks to PHYSx it stays there when the ship moves…. I could even set an onInit eventhandler to make one be loaded/attachedto the correct position when creating the ship.

The limitation is that the boat rack fits only inside the port boat bay. The starboard boat bay is much smaller and adequate only for a CRRC/SDV....

If only it was possible to add more ViV spaces in another vehicle….

Another limitation is that it is possible to add only ONE boat to the boat bay.

 

b) Use Attachto and diverse actions to load ships in both sides. Theoretically I could even load two RHIBs/CRRCs/SDVs in the port boat bay (or one gunboat) and one CRRC/SDV in the starboard one…. 

This option attracts me more because this way I can load more boats in the ship….but as you said, is much more complicated….

 

I Will continue my experiments and Will keep you informed….

 

EDIT:

I have decided that I Will follow the second alternative. I have already enabled a couple of actions so a human player can load it's Gunboat/RHIB/CRRC/SDV in the HSSV using actions. and before anyone says anything, I have devised a foolproof system for avoiding clipping/colissions etc... between the transported boat and the ship… Unfortunately I cannot show it yet but I think you Will be pleased with the results.

 

[mankyle 418]

Yesterday I had a critical problem with the PC and now it doesn't Work.

I'm trying to get it working back again today. I hope  I won't loose the base  files.

 

I will  keep you  informed

 

EDIT: Tomorrow I hope I'll get back my computer. Let's hope the ITs can recover everything 

[mankyle 418]

Good news!!!

Thank god I haven't lost the source files. so I think I will be able to continue working on the HSSV soon, after I get my computer back in shape.

 

I have had a couple more ideas that I want to try. Let's hope they can be feasible

 

 

[mankyle 418]

Today I got some time to devote to modelling and experimenting.

I got maybe 50% of the millenium turret done (I still have to model the gun Barrel and optics) and I got some placeholder textures.

 

Regarding the boat cargo system... I got the scripts done for loading/unloading gunboats and RHIBs on the port boat bay and it is only a matter of copy/pasting them  for the starbord  one.

 

Unfortunately my wife in command has decreed that we have to do a christmas trip so I will be far from the computar for a week.

 

I wish you all a happy new year!!!

[mankyle 418]

I got back from my trip and today I have worked a Little bit on this.

I have started modelling the doors and such and improving some details. I'm havin problems with some animations (in the end the model Will have like 40 or 50 different animated parts) but I'm progressing steadily. I Will try to post a couple more screenshots soon. 

 

Cheers mates, and a happy new year!!!

 

 

[wansec_6 200]

G'day @mankyle

 

Glad to see you're back.

Hope you had an enjoyable holiday.

[mankyle 418]

Yep... one week in the tuscany in Italy.

 

I was lucky because I had the chance to see a couple of the new F-35s of the Italian air force deployed at Pisa's airport and we also went one day to La Spezia and visited the Marina Militare museum at the naval base.

 

I'm lucky because my wife concedes me these little things. Women usually don't understand the things we, weapons freaks, love...

 

I have just finished modelling and texturing the metal doors and I will start adding them to the model in the next days…

 

UPDATE:

 

Got the docking system working with gunboats and other small boats. I still have to model some details on the cranes but the system Works. A gunboat can get near the ship and get pulled by the cranes and deposited in the boat bay. Unfortunately, and I don't know the reason, the AAF gunboat characters disembark on the right side. The BLUEFOR on the left side and the avatar fall to the water. Still more things to do but the system Works. Maybe with an eventhandler I could get the avatars be moved to a specific locations. The boat bay doors work and cabe be animated and I'm starting to add interior doors to the ship. The GEO is rock stable on the whole ship and the transparencies work now…. 

 

Still far from an Alpha but its starting to take form...

 

I need help determining the caller of an action. I want an action that can be called by PLAYER or by an AI and I don't know how to identify the entity that executes the action. Could anyone help with this???

Next thing will be to see if reflectors can be used as the slope indicator lights and finishing the millenium AHEAD turret and the countermeasure launchers and radars…

 

In the screenshotsa couple of cubes can be distinguished on the ship's hull. Those Will be the position lights. They Will have light emitting materials when the lights are activated.

 

 

[NightIntruder 710]

I'm quite late to the party and haven't read all posts in this topic, but just wanted to say: amazing job mankyle!
Also, AFAIK you may define multiple ViV points and exits. Not sure if they constitute one complex shaped ViV space or several ones, tho. Also, markers cannot be animated so I would use emmisive rvmats on animated objects instead. Anyway, nice progress mate, keep up the good work!

[mankyle 418]

I have reviewed the documentation about Vehicle inVehicle. Right now I have defined a cargo space inside the mission bay and it works.

I'm working now on the boat bays on both sides and they work.

 

Regarding the marker lights... yeah. I know they cannot be animated. I'm using light emmitting RVMATs for the marker lights.

 

Next thing is to see if a Helicopter Landing Glide Indicator can be simulated using reflector class. This week I will start experimenting.

 

I'm also trying to reengineer more carrier and destroyer props to add ambience and details to the ship. I have now a  lot of them so it is a matter por copy pasting them wherever I want them to be placed.

 

Yesterday I finished modelling and texturing the doors so I will start adding them to the model this weekend.

 

I also want to add new details to the helicopter flight control and bridge...

 

Still some weeks for having an acceptable alpha, I think.

 

BTW... how does one add a bisign and bikey file to an addon???

Any tutorial on this???

 

 

[TeTeT 1523]

If you want to get hold of the caller of the action, according to https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/addAction it is (_this # 1) from the script that executes the action.

 

When defining the action callbacks in your config.cpp, I recommend to call a not yet existing function and define that function in  a mission Init.sqf. This way you can fine tune the script without a million re-packs and re-starts.

E.g.

 

config.cpp

...
statement = "[this] call ttt_fnc_testaction";


mission Init.sqf

ttt_fnc_testaction = {
  systemChat "Test Action done";
};

 

On the bisign/bikey signing, there's a tool in arma 3 tools for it: https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/DSSignFile It comes with a GUI where you add your source addon folder and either create a new bikey or use an existing one. Then you process the pbo files and sign them (create .bisign signatures). Keep the .biprivatekey to yourself and distribute the .bikey together with the .bisign for your mod's pbos. The .bikey usually goes in a directory called keys besides the addons folder in your mod.

[mankyle 418]

Thanks @TeTeT

 

I will take a look at the addaction entry in the wiki.

 

I have almost finished modelling the turret and I got it configured and ingame.

 

Does anyone know if the old Arma 2 Operation Arrowhead Shotspread simulation works in Arma 3???

 

I want to use a shotgun like weapon to simulate the AHEAD ammo.

 

Next step will be continuing modelling the bridge and adjusting the positions of the proxies.

I still have to model the seats of the csrgo spaces and such and add more details. This will still take a couple more months...

 

 

[mankyle 418]

The bridge is starting to take form and I intend to add many more props there. I want to add two PIP screens on the top to help the driver during docking procedures. The gunner (the guy on the starbord side) Will have his own PIP with the Turret optics.

 

I want to adda couple more thingies there.

 

 

 

 

This is going to be the Flight Control. Still lacking details, it Will have a PIP screen and some other props in this area.  The gunner in this área Will have a couple actions to engage/disengage the Landing aid lights and such. The lights are working But I still have to do some experiments with reflectors to see if I can do the glide slope indicator.

 

 

I have to redo the door because it is too narrow for the avatar.  The glass is destroyable, BTW, but I still haven't got to make it dissappear.

 

 

The turret Works (altough I still have to add GEO and HitPoints.) and I still have to model chairs and other props. As I said…. still some months to finish

 

[JohnKalo 657]

This looks like a really nice addition to Arma already. Since you will continue working on it for months it should turn out to be great. I can already think of many mission implementations if all ship features work nicely

[mankyle 418]

1 hour ago, JohnKalo said:

This looks like a really nice addition to Arma already. Since you will continue working on it for months it should turn out to be great. I can already think of many mission implementations if all ship features work nicely

 

 

Well... i'm changing the way the landing aids work. From now they will be activated via an action in the Flight Control Gunner position.

 

They are just beacons so....

 

And what I would really like Would be to find a way to use gunner positions to control UAVs, but without having to equip UAVTerminals.

 

I'm trying to understand how dialogs work in order to make this but I have absolutely NO IDEA about dialogs so....

 

I'm experimenting with other animations so the boats are deployed/loaded with hooks and cables and such and I have a couple more ideas.

 

I also need to look how AI paths are set and a couple more things.

 

I will be updating the thread as soon as I add more features.

[mankyle 418]

Interesting bit of code

 

I was animating the Stern ramp of the ship, where the Vehicle in Vehicle entry/exit points are, and I thought….

 

Well, there is that scripting command called "enablevehiclecargo"

 

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/enableVehicleCargo

 

So I decided to do an experiment, which was to tie the animation state of the ramp via an action with this scripting command and.... voila!!!!!

 

Whenever the ramp is lowered, the ship can load/unload vehicles, and whenever the ramp is up, you cannot load/unload vehicles…. Quite cool

 

I supose a minimod could be easily done to add this functionality to other vehicles such as the Xian, the VTOL transport etc....

 

 

Now the ramp is down and on the upper left corner, where the actions are shown, you can see "Cargar Vehículo". That means "Load Vehicle" in Spanish

 

Now with the ramp up...

 

The message doesn't appear anymore...

 

And I can confirm that if you have vehicles already loaded on the ship, the cannot be unloaded while the ramp is up

 

In the end this ship Will be only for operations with players, no AI, but I want to cram as many features in it as I can...

 

I Will keep the updates as frequent as I can mates!!!!

 

 

[JohnKalo 657]

Well maybe you can ask other Ship add-on developers how they made their ships work. Cooperation can be very profitable at times.

[mankyle 418]

32 minutes ago, JohnKalo said:

Well maybe you can ask other Ship add-on developers how they made their ships work. Cooperation can be very profitable at times.

 

Good idea...

 

I will talk to Aplion so I can be more or less compatible with his addons..

[Ex3B 266]

I'm excited about this, but I wonder if the ship needs to use a dock to load and unload vehicles, or of the ramp can extend to allow loading and unloading from the shore (I'm guessing not).

Can it load tanks? I notice there are support columns in the cargo bay, and maybe tanks are too wide?

It could be a pretty cool scenario where infantry (deployed by helo/vtol, from the same ship) needs to secure a harbor to allow the armor to roll off of this thing.

I hope that Altis flag is a separate texture, and the texture can be swapped to allow any side to use this ship - its too cool to leave to just 1 side... every side could use a boat like this... but a revival of the old Fast-Sea-Frame mod (with ViV, allowing marshalls to be carried instead of boats) could be a fun complement (would still need something for CSAT then)

[mankyle 418]

 

1 hour ago, Ex3B said:

I'm excited about this, but I wonder if the ship needs to use a dock to load and unload vehicles, or of the ramp can extend to allow loading and unloading from the shore (I'm guessing not).

Can it load tanks? I notice there are support columns in the cargo bay, and maybe tanks are too wide?

It could be a pretty cool scenario where infantry (deployed by helo/vtol, from the same ship) needs to secure a harbor to allow the armor to roll off of this thing.

I hope that Altis flag is a separate texture, and the texture can be swapped to allow any side to use this ship - its too cool to leave to just 1 side... every side could use a boat like this... but a revival of the old Fast-Sea-Frame mod (with ViV, allowing marshalls to be carried instead of boats) could be a fun complement (would still need something for CSAT then)

 

Well… it is not a landing ship. It is a fast logistics intra theater ship. It is not designed for landing operations but for transporting some troops to small ports and deploy them with their vehicles. At the moment if the ship is located near the shore vehicle in vehicle allows loading, even far from a dock.

With docks at the same level of the ramp it is posible to directly drive INSIDE of the ship. One theoretically could cram 4 tanks there or 16 o 20 MRAPs (driving there, not using Vehicle in Vehicle).

 

The boat bays can dock one gunboat or two RHIBs or two SDVs on the port side and one CRRC on the starbord side. I have take a couple liberties with the boat davits but they are animated and move when loading/unloading the boats. All actions are located in certain points that are inmediately obvious when moving inside the ship and almost all animations are already working.

 

I'm studying now dialog tutorials to see if I can devise a system for controlling UAVs from inside of the ship but I'm having trouble with the scripting part and the IDs. I also need to config the smoke FX of the turret's muzzle and the Zasleh proxy. Never understood how it worked