After Action Review 3 — battle replays in ARMA 3

[DZR_Mikhail 14]

After Action Review 3

"Record. Replay. Learn."

 

Project home: https://github.com/zvukoper/Arma3_AAR

 

Introduction

I always envied VBS for their fantastic AAR system that captured the network stream and played it back with all the details. The replay system is very common for shooters and other competitive games, but for some reason, the Arma series never got its native replay system.

Many modders have already created their own AAR systems but I couldn't find the one that suits my own needs and worked. So if some great AAR appears or Dslyexci shares his Shack Tac AAR on GIT 🙂 , I will happily close this project and have more free time, and contribute to a more complete system. But until that, I will try to complete my AAR3. I'm not a super programmer. In fact, I'm pretty lame, but just learned a couple of things. So expect slow development, lags, and bugs 🙂 If you see something stupid in my code, let me know or fork on Github. This is called AAR3 just to correspond to ARMA 3 title. But in fact, it is the second iteration. There were no AAR2 or AAR1. There was just my old partially finished AAR for Arma2, which was lost when Dev-Heaven was shut down. But the files were miraculously recovered from old HDD and community members. That is why this is possible now. Starting from scratch was not an option. I'm too old for this 🙂
 

Minimum feature version concept:

• Easy installation and integration to any mission as a mod.
• Admin\host clicks "RECORD" in-game, everything is recorded in the .aar file, clicks "STOP".
• Anyone having the .aar file opens an empty mission, clicks "PLAY", selects a replay, spectates the battle replay with pause ability.
• Record and use in replay the following data: Unit: state, position, aim, model, gear\inventory, current weapons, movement, animations; Vehicle: interaction, operation, state;
  • So you will be actually seeing all units doing almost exactly the same as during recording, excluding some dynamic events\effects.

 

The version of our dreams:

• The full science fiction and magic we want to do in AAR3 can be found in our roadmap on GitHub.

 

License and contribution conditions:

• None. This project is free, non-commercial, open-source, and is created for the awesome Bohemia Interactive Community and this project belongs to the community.
• Just don't sell it
• If you make your own stuff based on this, just attribute the original project somewhere.

 

Contact me:

• Discord: Ping me at the DayZRussia server. My username is Михаил#0937, look among the admins.
• Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/zvukoper/

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by DZR_Mikhail
Updated info

[DZR_Mikhail 14]

This project is under slow development and is still in danger of meeting a major showstopper. But by this moment I tested most of the old scripts from Arma2, and the old app that saved replays to a file. It works, but is not optimized and hard to use. And the worst part, it uses the old jayarm2lib and is 32 bit only. So I have to make it modern, fast, 32\64 bit and I need my own library.

 

So current progress is:

• DLL confirmed working. Got hard time with C# but thanks to Maca134 it is working. It just can be called from Arma3 and returns whatever you send there. When it is done, it must be whitelisted by BattlEye. Now it works only with BE disabled, as all such DLLs.
• Old Arma2 scripts are still able to record unit data. It needs polishing, but it works enough to continue. Haven't worked on them yet.
• I've set up a Visual Studio project and have the Named Pipes investigated and working.
• I'm prototyping all the communications between Arma and AARecorder. Basically I create manual functions as buttons step by step imitating how it will work when finished. So now, on both ends, I can initiate pipes, wait for commands, send commands. See gif.
• I know, that maybe I use too many pipes, but I need it now to make it compatible with the old scripts. Later, I will try using single or 2 pipes for everything.

Spoiler

 

[oksman 37]

Here's hoping for your success with this project! I think everyone is dreaming of having the AAR that Dsylexci use, but since it's private it's great to see someone wanting to contribute to the community with such a good piece of tech! I'm not a very talented coder but I know C# for web-development if that would help at all. Do you have a preview of what this looked like in Arma 2 or how it is you wish it to work? Is it a web-based replay as most of the other AARs?

[icebreakr 3156]

This looks promising!

[DZR_Mikhail 14]

On 4/13/2021 at 8:51 PM, oksman said:

 Do you have a preview of what this looked like in Arma 2 or how it is you wish it to work?

 

Yes, the AAR2 worked in Arma2, not a prototype, really working, but it was not very flexible, unfinished, and laggy for my PC was junk 🙂 and my code was a bit rough. It all upgraded now 🙂 

One of my clanmates captured this video 

 

Here are all videos I have from the old times.

 

 

On 4/13/2021 at 8:51 PM, oksman said:

 Is it a web-based replay as most of the other AARs?

 

No, web functionality is just a secondary (optional) planned feature. Moving map markers etc, it is ok, but I need a real movie 🙂 The replay system like in COD, R6 Siege or other shooters. You launch it, hit play, and see all players, bots, all the actions from any player camera or just fly around spectating + all useful visuals like ballistic tracers, overlays, unit info, admin comments, chat... All we can technically capture.

 

You can read my roadmap here.

[DZR_Mikhail 14]

One of the latest of old videos. I tested a new function. Looks better than the older videos.

 

 

[oksman 37]

That looks really nice, I really hope you manage to get it working 🙂

[Liam_McKendrick 0]

Also really excited to see this develop 😃