Small questions about changing factions and dismantling a mission without mods

[poseurfou 0]

Hello, I would like to know if this is what I found worth publishing or not.

Sorry in advance because I'm not used to posting on forums, but I think what I found is worth posting, I think.
By wanting to reopen Iron Duke missions whose addons have been removed from the workshop, I realized that I could from the mission.sqm change all the characters that are in the mission. I realized that if a mission was created with 6 Blufor to fight 80 Opfor, going through the mission.sqm we can have 6 Independent fighter 80 Opfor, I managed to make fight in the editor 10 Blufor against 10 Blufor .

So my question is is it worth making a tutorial to explain, or does it already exist?

ps: for a mission like treatment on Fallujah, from the moment we know what we are going to put as a faction, it takes about 1 hour to open it and change all the characters.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=663043810&searchtext=treatment

(sorry for my english, i use a translator)

[Janez 507]

Hi and welcome,

 

1 hour ago, poseurfou said:

So my question is is it worth making a tutorial to explain, or does it already exist?

 

1 hour ago, poseurfou said:

(sorry for my english, i use a translator)

I mean, you could try...

 

Besides that, you should probably check if the mission(s) you're referring to uses any scripts and if they are linked to sides/factions or specific units. The scripts may also spawn additional units that are not present in mission.sqm. There may be much more to this whole thing then it initially appears.

 

1 hour ago, poseurfou said:

ps: for a mission like treatment on Fallujah, from the moment we know what we are going to put as a faction, it takes about 1 hour to open it and change all the characters.

Well, that would very much depend on what kind of tools and methods are used. If you have some clever technique in mind though, let us know.

[poseurfou 0]

1 hour ago, Janez said:

2 hours ago, poseurfou said:

(sorry for my english, i use a translator)

I mean, you could try...

I would be 20 years old why not, at almost 60 I think not...😉

 

1 hour ago, Janez said:

Besides that, you should probably check if the mission(s) you're referring to uses any scripts and if they are linked to sides/factions or specific units. The scripts may also spawn additional units that are not present in mission.sqm. There may be much more to this whole thing then it initially appears. 

When I talk about the mission.sqm for character switching, I am also talking about the same characters in all the scripts. Now what is written in a character's init will not change, it will stay even if you change a TL blufor to a TL opfor. When I re-open a mission without the original mods, I check for any problems it might cause. But as I said at the beginning of my first post, I discovered this because my goal was to open missions whose mods had disappeared. Iron Duke's missions mostly use UPS and LV as the script, and if you change the characters he entered into with the ones you changed, the scripts continue to work.

[poseurfou 0]

To open a mission in the editor without mods or change the faction classes of a mission
EXPLANATIONS:
So you will have understood that everything happens in the mission file.
For my part, I only use the editor to retrieve the name of the classes that I am going to change.
I use "notepad++" to do all this, but I think other software use the same tools.
When I opened the missions.sqm (I take the example of the Iron Duke missions because they are almost all made the same), I look in the list of mods what I miss (example africanconflit and ussocom from massi) mas_afr_ and mas_usa_, and so I did a search for mas_afr_ to find all the classes exchanged for the opfor and mas_usa_ for blufor.
Then simply in the tool "search/replace in the subfolders" of notepad I enter class by class the ones I have to change (O_mas_afr_medic_F will become CFP_O_CFRebels_Surgeon_01) since I chose the Community Factions Project (CFP) mod.
When at the end I changed all the classes I wanted to open the mission, I delete the mods entries at the beginning of the SQM ("mas_afr_rebl_c"/"mas_usa_sfod_b") and then I can open it in the editor.
On the other hand if you delete the entries of the mods at the beginning of the SQM but you forget to change a vehicle or a character, this one will disappear and you will always have an error when you open the mission in the editor.
As I said at the beginning of the first post, I'm not used to posting on forums, otherwise I could have made a screen print for you to see.
Also I don't speak English and I use a translator, so my explanations may be confusing, but this way of doing things is very simple.
I leave you my Steam ID in case someone needs more explanation.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198082793525/

[Larrow 2801]

Remember it's worth mentioning to ensure the sqm is deserialised first, otherwise, you will destroy the mission file.

You can do this by using the A3 Tools and dragging the sqm onto \Arma 3 Tools\CfgConvert\MissionDerap.bat

[poseurfou 0]

3 hours ago, Larrow said:

Remember it's worth mentioning to ensure the sqm is deserialised first, otherwise, you will destroy the mission file.

You can do this by using the A3 Tools and dragging the sqm onto \Arma 3 Tools\CfgConvert\MissionDerap.bat 

If by "deserialised" you mean encrypted .sqm, no, just Eliteness and Notepad++, I think I'm going faster. I did it mainly on missions before 2016, when the editor asks me "if he can save it to another format and make a backup of the original file", I have no missing Items.

[Larrow 2801]

On 9/9/2022 at 9:58 AM, poseurfou said:

I would like to know if this is what I found worth publishing or not

On 9/9/2022 at 9:58 AM, poseurfou said:

So my question is is it worth making a tutorial to explain

On 9/9/2022 at 4:59 PM, poseurfou said:

EXPLANATIONS:

16 hours ago, Larrow said:

Remember it's worth mentioning to ensure the sqm is deserialised first,, otherwise, you will destroy the mission file.

 

13 hours ago, poseurfou said:

If by "deserialised" you mean encrypted

No, I mean serialised. If you have the option checked in Eden > Settings > Preferences > Binarise New Scenario Files when saving a scenario, then making a tutorial explaining to open said file and change stuff will corrupt the mission if it is serialised. So it is worth explaining this in your tutorial.

 

mission non serialised...

Spoiler

version=54;
class EditorData
{
	moveGridStep=1;
	angleGridStep=0.2617994;
	scaleGridStep=1;
	autoGroupingDist=10;
	toggles=1;
	class ItemIDProvider
	{
		nextID=2;
	};
	class Camera
	{
		pos[]={4096,25,4096};
	};
};
binarizationWanted=0;
sourceName="del_serialised";
addons[]=
{
	"A3_Characters_F"
};
class AddonsMetaData
{
	class List
	{
		items=1;
		class Item0
		{
			className="A3_Characters_F";
			name="Arma 3 Alpha - Characters and Clothing";
			author="Bohemia Interactive";
			url="https://www.arma3.com";
		};
	};
};
randomSeed=11233835;
class ScenarioData
{
	author="SaNiC";
};
class Mission
{
	class Intel
	{
		timeOfChanges=1800.0002;
		startWeather=0;
		startWind=0.1;
		startWaves=0.1;
		forecastWeather=0;
		forecastWind=0.1;
		forecastWaves=0.1;
		forecastLightnings=0.1;
		year=2035;
		day=28;
		hour=13;
		minute=37;
		startFogDecay=0.014;
		forecastFogDecay=0.014;
	};
	class Entities
	{
		items=1;
		class Item0
		{
			dataType="Group";
			side="West";
			class Entities
			{
				items=1;
				class Item0
				{
					dataType="Object";
					class PositionInfo
					{
						position[]={4096.0859,5.0014391,4166.5967};
					};
					side="West";
					flags=7;
					class Attributes
					{
						isPlayer=1;
					};
					id=1;
					type="B_Soldier_F";
				};
			};
			class Attributes
			{
			};
			id=0;
		};
	};
};

 

 

Mission serialised...

Spoiler

 raP       u   version 6    EditorData Ž    sourceName del_serialsied addons  A3_Characters_F  AddonsMetaData b  randomSeed YŔ  ScenarioData    Mission -  u   moveGridStep   ?angleGridStep 
>scaleGridStep   ?autoGroupingDist    Atoggles     ItemIDProvider 4   Camera G  b   nextID    G   pos   E  ČA  Eb    List r     items     Item0       className A3_Characters_F  name Arma 3 Alpha - Characters and Clothing  author Bohemia Interactive  url https://www.arma3.com     author SaNiC -    Intel L   Entities H  u   timeOfChanges  áDstartWeather     startWind ÍĚĚ=startWaves ÍĚĚ=forecastWeather     forecastWind ÍĚĚ=forecastWaves ÍĚĚ=forecastLightnings ÍĚĚ=year ó  day    hour 
   minute %   startFogDecay B`e<forecastFogDecay B`e<H   items     Item0 e  u    dataType Group  side West  Entities Ż   Attributes o  id     u   items     Item0 Ě  o    dataType Object  PositionInfo :   side West flags     Attributes Z  id     type B_Soldier_F o   position ýEĘ @8>EZ   isPlayer    o    u      

 

 

[poseurfou 0]

3 hours ago, Larrow said:

No, I mean serialised. If you have the option checked in Eden > Settings > Preferences > Binarise New Scenario Files when saving a scenario, then making a tutorial explaining to open said file and change stuff will corrupt the mission if it is serialised. So it is worth explaining this in your tutorial. 

Sorry, but as I have been dismantling missions for about 4/5 years, I may be wrong in thinking that this is an easy thing to do. Just for example of what you say, I just checked on the original missions that I have (original for me is the one that the creator shared on the workshop), all these missions had a serialized sqm:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1904058651

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1887883601

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1882760760

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1663752661

Last point, just to make you understand that I know what I'm doing, otherwise I would never have allowed myself to post on the Bohemia site, I have too much respect for the work that the whole community provides, look at this link, this is XENO's Domination, I made its translation in 2019, and you can check, its mission.sqm are still serialized:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/changelog/332088703?p=5

I came to post on this forum here because I thought what I had found was worth sharing, now if it doesn't interest anyone, we can remove this post from the forum.

Thanks anyway -mj-