Improved unit editor

[NeMeSiS 11]

No an init field its too time consuming. it would be better if you could just tick a box or click options on a drop down box. I think all the headwear face gloves etc are just a bit too much too that kind of stuff isnt necessary really. it would be better to have it random like in cwc. And i think a side grouping would be better than pick a side. like in Lomac

You would need too much dropdown boxes for all options that cna be used in the INIT field, so in the end typing would be faster then searching in all those clickable thingys

Just keep the init-box how it is, maybe expand it, but dont replace it!

[Jinef 2]

Well, messing around with the init box ain't fun.

To do a lot of things you need a long line of code, which is not all visible ....

Also think of the syntax errors;

When you want to setdamage you need to setdammage.

When you want to add binoculars you need to add a binocular.

[LoTekK 0]

I wouldn't mind keeping the init stuff,as long as they expand it. I don't want an init line, I want an init box.

[HoboWithAK 0]

Don't make soldiers shorter, they don't get pulled down becasue of their gear, they get bigger. The civvies all look very large and like 7ft.

It's a combat stance. Making yourself a more stable platform while presenting a smaller target. It isn't the gear weight.

[lkavadas 0]

I'd like the following:

1. Multiple firing ports per turret;

2. Allow a gunner/driver seat; and

3. Allow a vehicle skeletal system.

I want mechs!

[THE_BLITZ 0]

I would like to see the unit editor improved so you would have less units showing and also give a better deployment of troops. Here are some ideas i think could be great.

1.

The abillity to chose weapons , ammo and equipment for the unit in the editor by adding the fields for each weapon/equipment slot.

Effect

+Smaller unit list since you wont have the same soldier 10 times with different weapons.

+Wont have to add/remove weapons in inet field if you wanna use other weapons.

+Smaller unit list since people making weapon addons alone wont have to add it to a man.

+Wont have strange unit names saying which weapon it holds, like:

Soldier (M4M203) or Soldier (RPK) and so on.

But should still keep classes like machine gunner and AT soldier.

2.

Instead of east, west and resistance folder, there should be and the ability to make country folders. Under these folder one should then chose which side/force you want the unit should be. And idea could be something like blue force, red force, green force and Yellow force. I would say there should be 4 sides. 1 for a attacking part, 1 for a defending part, 1 for a resistance part and last one for a neutral part like peace keepers. Civilians should still have a folder for them selfs . There should still be the menu showing side friendly towards but it should have it for all sides instead of only resistance in OFP. Civilians should also be in that selection since they also can have aggression vs a military force. This could and should be include in ofp2 in a way like gimbals tossers that where throwing rocks and bottles. Then the aggression could be controlled by the alertness selection under a waypoints. So they would go from making hand signals to throwing things at you depending on alert level. At the same time if you come as a friendly force they would wave at you and not get scared like now.

Effect

+ Smaller unit list since you wont have unit from 10 countires under one side.

+ Make units work together since you could configure which side they are on, which you cant in OFP. Example would be us and russians troops fight together against another enemy.

- You would have more side folders.

3.

As another post said in this subject forum, the abillity to change uniform/camo in the editor. This could be activated in the cpp file for those who make multiple camo's. and if not the selection would just be non selectable.

Effect.

+ Smaller unit list since 3 or more soldiers (example. soldier, winter soldier and desert soldier) could be under 1.

+ Wont have all those strange names like as a example dkm's tunguske which have these names.

2S6M Fall, 2S6M Sand and 2S6M Green

or the BAS rangers which have these two name types.

Ranger and DES Ranger.

about the less units , i think that you should be able to chose your own wepons but still have the soldier classes. so if you want 3 m16s, 1 medic, 1 greny, 1 mg, 1 ar, and 1 law, you can do that easily but if you want a steyer, you can too. if you try giving a soldier a law and watch what happens ;)-his class actually changes. classes, for regular infantry men at least, change based on wepons so a combo of selected wepons and predefined classes is best.

[Callaghan 1]

Although a great idea and an improvement over the current unit editor, I believe having the camo/skin seperate to the unit model is fundamentally flawed. The camoflage type often affects the entire model, i.e. desert troops from a certain era would have certain webbing layouts/clothes arranged loosely etc so being able to change the textures for each model would make addon making much harder and the results would be less accurate. The weapon loadout is a great idea, saves making scripts for each soldier, but it is totally unneccesary to choose between woodland/des/snow for each model, as each addon may have totally different camo models. I suggest a simplified version -

1. Side - Blue (Friendly)

Red (Hostile)

Green (Resistance)

Yellow (Civ) ...I dont see the need in haveing resistance and neutral (UN) myself.

2. Nation - NATO

Russia

China

etc

3. Unit - '03 MFR Rifleman (DES)

'03 MFR Rifleman (ACU)

4. Rank - (more ranks through to General)

5. Loadout - Using slots AND weight, RL values for ease of addon making. Slots allow clear visual representation and stop ridiculous selections wheras the weight simply negates from an optimum speed/stamina.

6. Unit insignia - not too important but saves using scripts all the time, could have a markings folder which allows for user made unit patches. This would also allow for markings on planes and armour via the same drop down menu.

7. Race - to represent foreigners in uniform and to keep forces consistent. If bis make skins for arabs, caucasian, black, chinese, eastern europe - this would save a lot of time for addon makers, and mean that all addons are of a higher quality and consistency.

8. Mentality - as i mentioned in a recent post in the AI topic, different AI classes would greatly improve gameplay. A drop down box would allow choice of - Leader, Default (Config defined), Sniper, SF, MG, Support (Medic, Engineer) and Heavy (AA/AT).

...and all the usual - skill, azimut etc etc.

What do you think?

[SaBrE_UK 0]

I'm for massive customisability in everything, so good ideas. I reckon the 'easy' editor mode should do without lots of these thigns, but in 'advanced' then we should have dozens more options.

[Praelium 0]

The main improvements I could really hope for are a better color theme and a slider that controls civilian population. When it's to the left there are no civilians and when to the right there is a lot of foot/vehicle traffic.

[baddo 0]

The main improvements I could really hope for are a better color theme and a slider that controls civilian population. When it's to the left there are no civilians and when to the right there is a lot of foot/vehicle traffic.

Yes... YES!  

For the slider to control civilian population.

It's a lot of work to do as I see it, that's why there isn't such a feature in ArmA now.

To automatically populate an island.

The population should take into notice if there is a war going on or a battle near them. That's a problem. You can't put civilians driving through an intense firefight, because, well that's not what you would do.

So it's even more work.

But it would really give the game a lot more depth. Missions wouldn't be no-where near as dull as they are now, if the islands wouldn't be inhabitated only by the fighting troops.

It's a lot of work for a mission designer, so, if BIS did it then people would use it. Otherwise not many are going to use it.

[NeMeSiS 11]

The main improvements I could really hope for are a better color theme and a slider that controls civilian population. When it's to the left there are no civilians and when to the right there is a lot of foot/vehicle traffic.

Yes... YES!  

For the slider to control civilian population.

It's a lot of work to do as I see it, that's why there isn't such a feature in ArmA now.

To automatically populate an island.

The population should take into notice if there is a war going on or a battle near them. That's a problem. You can't put civilians driving through an intense firefight, because, well that's not what you would do.

So it's even more work.

But it would really give the game a lot more depth. Missions wouldn't be no-where near as dull as they are now, if the islands wouldn't be inhabitated only by the fighting troops.

It's a lot of work for a mission designer, so, if BIS did it then people would use it. Otherwise not many are going to use it.

It could be done the way animals are handled in ArmA, they are spawned at appropriate places in the neighbourhood of forests/water/etc etc, add 'Cities' (More houses=More change of spawning people) and 'Combat'(More combat=less chance) to those spawning conditions for people and you could have them spawned the same way as animals.

[mattxr 9]

Also think of the syntax errors;

When you want to setdamage you need to setdammage.

That was fixed at the end of OFP start of Arma if im not correct. setdamage does work.

[Deadfast 43]

Also think of the syntax errors;

When you want to setdamage you need to setdammage.

That was fixed at the end of OFP start of Arma if im not correct. setdamage does work.

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/setDamage - fixed in OFP 1.5

[Commando84 0]

im not sure where mission editor changes goes to but imo if you are making a "beach assault" / "D-day" mission wich im sure many have made and few have made good

You notice one function that would be really sweet and that is to make waypoints better.

As it is now if i have 2 groups selected and they are going to go to the same place i can't have waypoint key selected and click them to go there cause only one of the groups will get that waypoint.

So my wish is that i can set wayoints with more than 1 group at the same time selected.

[dentist guba 0]

some sort of 3d editing is a must, it would allow much better missions (especially in towns)

[eJay 1]

I hope BIS will create some templates in mission editor, which will allow designers to put custom things (sounds, pictures, texts etc.) easily without writing 2000 lines of code...

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

I personally like the general idea of the loadout editor posted at the start of this thread, but I think that the 'only have generic soldier classes' is taking things too far when so much content already exists to use the original scheme of things.

e.g. ArmA: There are already basic soldiers in game, SoldierWB class etc., and it's a simple matter to removeAllWeapons and re-kit a soldier in script...

However, an ADDITIONAL tab (or advanced page) bolted onto the existing unit editor that could (if 'ticked' on) auto-generate the removeAllWeapons and addMagazine/AddWeapon scripts and add them at unit-editing-ending to the script line would be a great time-saver :- especially if the lists of weapons and stuff were generated on-the-fly for any addon weapons that are loaded.  The huge number of classnames can get bewildering at times when dealing with multiple weapon packs.

[CyDoN 0]

many ready scripts for us to use, just that.

[Pauldarrington 9]

new waypoint system.

instead of placing say 5-10 waypoints around a village or town for a squad to patrol just have one big circle waypoint, so all you have to do it click where u want the circle to go hold down say RMB and then move the mouse back and forth to set how big or small you want the waypoint, less hassle and it looks alot better in the editor.

thats my 5cent

[jono_retard 0]

new waypoint system.

instead of placing say 5-10 waypoints around a village or town for a squad to patrol just have one big circle waypoint, so all you have to do it click where u want the circle to go hold down say RMB and then move the mouse back and forth to set how big or small you want the waypoint, less hassle and it looks alot better in the editor.

thats my 5cent  

Thats the best idea i have read in a long time, would be very pleased if BIS could add this to the game

[Commando84 0]

I got an idea, what If Bis put the scroll wheel to use in the editor?

[Taurus 20]

Someone mentioned less units.

I agree.

US has like 3 times more available units in different categories than SLA.

its kinda imbalanced.

And what happened to the T80 from OFP?

When creating units in the editor the skill defaulted for it should represent the rank of the unit.

As they are if you place a group[F2]

Also seeing different camo

like BLUFOR - Forest, Desert, Night

And the same for the other sides.

It doesn't make sense that you'd run around in Desert camo uniforms in a forest, neither does it make sense that you run around in the same uniform as a special ops unit at night.

I'm aware of that the AI only looks for the stealth value coded to the unit, but for the looks.

Also I'd like to see the move waypoints for units be treated differently by the AI.

They don't need to be at the precise spot when moving to the next, see helicopter pilots struggling with slowing down to hit that exact coordinate, instead they should just bank their air craft and fly past to the next.

Halt only on "hold/sentry" etc etc way points.

I know some of these things have been done already by the community, but addons are hard to force everyone to download, atleast the basic units should be covered in the "Vanilla" release.

[zolop 0]

I would like to see the unit editor improved so you would have less units showing and also give a better deployment of troops. Here are some ideas i think could be great.

1.

The abillity to chose weapons , ammo and equipment for the unit in the editor by adding the fields for each weapon/equipment slot.

Effect

+Smaller unit list since you wont have the same soldier 10 times with different weapons.

+Wont have to add/remove weapons in inet field if you wanna use other weapons.

+Smaller unit list since people making weapon addons alone wont have to add it to a man.

+Wont have strange unit names saying which weapon it holds, like:

Soldier (M4M203) or Soldier (RPK) and so on.

But should still keep classes like machine gunner and AT soldier.

2.

Instead of east, west and resistance folder, there should be and the ability to make country folders. Under these folder one should then chose which side/force you want the unit should be. And idea could be something like blue force, red force, green force and Yellow force. I would say there should be 4 sides. 1 for a attacking part, 1 for a defending part, 1 for a resistance part and last one for a neutral part like peace keepers. Civilians should still have a folder for them selfs . There should still be the menu showing side friendly towards but it should have it for all sides instead of only resistance in OFP. Civilians should also be in that selection since they also can have aggression vs a military force. This could and should be include in ofp2 in a way like gimbals tossers that where throwing rocks and bottles. Then the aggression could be controlled by the alertness selection under a waypoints. So they would go from making hand signals to throwing things at you depending on alert level. At the same time if you come as a friendly force they would wave at you and not get scared like now.

Effect

+ Smaller unit list since you wont have unit from 10 countires under one side.

+ Make units work together since you could configure which side they are on, which you cant in OFP. Example would be us and russians troops fight together against another enemy.

- You would have more side folders.

3.

As another post said in this subject forum, the abillity to change uniform/camo in the editor. This could be activated in the cpp file for those who make multiple camo's. and if not the selection would just be non selectable.

Effect.

+ Smaller unit list since 3 or more soldiers (example. soldier, winter soldier and desert soldier) could be under 1.

+ Wont have all those strange names like as a example dkm's tunguske which have these names.

2S6M Fall, 2S6M Sand and 2S6M Green

or the BAS rangers which have these two name types.

Ranger and DES Ranger.

Everything this person posted I would like to see added to ArmA, mostly including the second point he made about "Country Folders".

Its a better way to organize the game, for the developers, community and other people that mod or play the game. It makes the current way ArmA is organized with "Sides" (East West, Opfor, Blufor, etc) look backwards. I love ArmA but like most games out there it could always use improvement.

[zolop 0]

I got an idea, what If Bis put the scroll wheel to use in the editor?  

YES

[zolop 0]

new waypoint system.

instead of placing say 5-10 waypoints around a village or town for a squad to patrol just have one big circle waypoint, so all you have to do it click where u want the circle to go hold down say RMB and then move the mouse back and forth to set how big or small you want the waypoint, less hassle and it looks alot better in the editor.

thats my 5cent  

Thats the best idea i have read in a long time, would be very pleased if BIS could add this to the game

Agreed. It would help the developers when making missions for this game and also for the community when they get to finally use the ArmA 2 Editor.