Scripting Noob Must Knows

[Gwynoak 7]

First, some info for context:

1) I'm a scripting Noob and this is being made because of the noob perspective I hope to out grow but wish to utilize.

 

2)  This forum is filled with incredibly talented and knowledgable people. Keep in mind many people reading these have no education at all in the subject and dont understand your explanations due to a lack of vocabulary.

 

Now that that's out of the way! 

 

I've been browsing topics here for awhile and there are many introduction and tutorial threads available. However, as many of you may remember with your first time learning, a lot of vital information falls through the cracks that later become insurmountable obstacles filled with frustration. 

 

So I thought I'd provide the mind melting eureka information I got that solved many of my problems and hope you guys will to.

 

Comment information, hints, and links to things most noobs miss or need to know before attempting a script of any kind. 

 

Heres mine:

 

- Theres a huge difference between how mission editing and scripting needs to be organized and utilized between SinglePlayer amd MultiPlayer. Read this if you want to know more about multiplayer scripting (https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Multiplayer_Scripting) read this entire page start to finish and navigate hyperlinks to anything that's sus this will explain why you'll see 3 different explanations for the same problem and none of them are working for you because you dont know what a description.ext file is.

 

- Arma3 has undergone updates to its scripting ( or it appears so) some functions you'll see being recommended to you from a youtube video from 2014 may not apply to the version you are using. This applies to the Eden editor and previous editors as well. Usually theres a link to new versions in and explanations to what changed in that functions wiki page.

 

- You have to make your own sqf files. When you launch a mission the game will search for specific files. By naming you file that same title it will load that file in place of. Basically, its asking for butter and a song as you've labeled it butter, its gunna use it like butter. Learn all you sqf file names in the wiki.

      - If your using Notepad ++ there are plugins. for sqf file type that highlights relevant. variables the way you see everyone else's in videos.

 

- half the battle is speaking the language. So click on every hyperlink presented to you and read it whether it makes sense or not. Sometimes it takes a single page to tie everything together.

 

More experienced people please comment your own below, feel free to criticize anything I've said above, I'm also a noob. I know there is another thread for noobs (I've read it a million times believe me, I just want more posts just like it for the monkey brain level questions I have)

[wogz187 1085]

@Gwynoak,

Here's a couple more links you may find interesting,

Variables
Scheduler
Event Scripts (init)
Description.ext
Functions
and,
Code Optimization

 

Quote

Keep in mind many people reading these have no education at all in the subject and dont understand your explanations due to a lack of vocabulary.

The forum members who respond with script help are aware of this. Because of language barriers, miscommunication and the aforementioned lack of vocabulary, even the most earnest attempt to help may fail. That said, I have seen herculean feats of patience demonstrated in this forum as we all learn together.

Have fun!

[Gwynoak 7]

6 minutes ago, wogz187 said:

That said, I have seen herculean feats of patience demonstrated in this forum as we all learn together.

 @wogz187

 

I have also seen some insane patience demonstrated here. Such as walking someone through a script comment by comment when they obviously had no idea what coding was much less how to use it. I was impressed with the person helping the topic creator, they seemed really young.

People here are largely helpful, I think some of them just forget what its like to not know what you don't know. That being said, its nearly impossible to gauge a topic creators knowledge off their question 80% of the time.