Simplest way of adding your own basic faction?

[holsterbau 0]

I would like to create my own faction in ArmA 3. I did, of course, Google the basics of how to do it before I went onto creating this thread, but the resources I find are really big in scope, and I am not sure if they are pertinent to exactly what I want to do. The resources I found detail things like adding your own models, voices, and so on, but I don't really need all of that. I simply wish to create a faction utilizing existing resources from the base game and some mods I found on Steam Workshop. Specifically I want a "Norwegian Special Forces" NATO sub-faction, that has its own custom set of loadouts, fatigues and vests from a mod, and a few other details. In theory it should be simple, although I have no prior experience in creating my own ArmA 3 addons. What is the bare minimum I need to know to accomplish that?

 

Edit: I think I posted this in the wrong section of the forum, but it doesn't seem like there is a way of deleting your own threads.

[yevgeni89 163]

use the orbat faction creator though ALIVE , there is a very good tutorial on making a basic faction , I still have troubles with it though trying to add static weapons or anything that has a gunner position however.

[wsxcgy 1960]

you just need to configure your faction class and your vehicle and weapon classes. cfgvehicles will include backpacks, turrets, soldiers, and obviously vehicles. cfgweapons will include weapons, headwear, facewear, vests, and uniform items (emphasis on item, to make a full uniform its a little complicated since you also have to technically create a solider class for it). for what I presume you plan on doing, all you'll really need to do is define the classes you plan on inheriting from and then define things you might want to change like displayname or hiddenselectionstextures if you want. for soldiers you'll need to config them from the ground up but its really just a matter of writing in what you want them to have. this thread should be extremely helpful, should lay everything out for you. http://www.armaholic.com/forums.php?m=posts&q=31238

[holsterbau 0]

@wsxcgy I saw that thread before, but upon looking at it now a second time I understood it better. However, when I make a config.cpp, put it in a folder, and try to publish it through the ArmA 3 Publisher tool (just as a quick test), it gives me an error: "Error: No PBO files are included". What does that mean?

[wsxcgy 1960]

the pbo file is how things are archived and packed to be loaded by the game. you need to have your config inside of a pbo, and then have that pbo inside of an 'addons' folder, inside the @<yourmodnamehere> folder inside the root a3 directory. you can pack pbos with a variety of tools, addonbuilder, which comes with the Arma 3 tools on steam (great resource if you plan on modding) is probably the best way to start packing pbos.

[holsterbau 0]

@wsxcgy Okay, thanks. Hopefully the thread won't have to drag on for much longer, because I still have one more issue. I did successfully manage to pack the mod (which is just the unchanged config.cpp file from the thread you linked) into a PBO file, publish it, and then launched the game. I noticed that when I fire up the Eden Editor, I can see a nameless faction with a helicopter and some soldiers, as expected. However, when I play in Zeus, there is no such custom faction. Does one have to do something special to make it appear in Zeus?

[EO 11277]

I think you need to define your units/factions in CfgPatches under units. 

[holsterbau 0]

Whenever I try to launch Zeus with the test mod, I get this error. I don't really know what that means, since there is an entry in the file for CfgPatches.