Improved unit editor

[dentist guba 0]

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...

you could place sounds as objects in OFPE editior, would be good if there were pre set triggers and actions though. the editor could have a user friendly template system.

e.g.

Step 1: pick condition "player vehicle runs out of petrol"

Step 2: pick action "play sound <damn, were out of gas"

Step 3: muse at how easy it was and repeat for any features needed in a level

this would allow newbies (and console players) to create very complex levels. also, experienced level designers could prototype mission ideas quickly before making any time consuming scripts.

[eJay 1]

I meant custom things not default. If you want a put stupid picture in intro you have to write Rsc code in description and fix in as many times as you will receive good result.

Also I'm worried about 3D editor because Bohemia didn't confirmed it yet...

[mattxr 9]

I think it would be great to see some kind of new editor features as thats one thing that hasnt really fully changed since OFP to Arma.

[eenter 0]

There's some sort of wiki for scripting commands with examples implemented as seen in one of the GC 08 videos.

[Spetz 0]

One suggestion i have is that a easier to use editor, OFP had a much easier editor then ArmA, i hope they add more samples

Also an online editor where 2 or more people can join together to edit and create a mission

[Wolfrug 0]

One suggestion i have is that a easier to use editor, OFP had a much easier editor then ArmA, i hope they add more samples

Also an online editor where 2 or more people can join together to edit and create a mission

The editor in OFP and ArmA are entirely, 100% identical (just some UI changes). The only difference in functionality is that the ArmA editor has a few more waypoint types and, I think, one new Trigger type. That's it. Oh, and it's called RACS is friendly to.. instead ot Resistance is friendly to...

Ah well...

Regards,

Wolfrug

[DespairsRay 0]

Dunno if  this is the right section...

I want backpacks and helmets to be in a separate section.

as in this addequipment "etc" and you can add different helmet or backpack just like how you add weapons. Mind you I havn't played Arma, just years of OFP.

Also someone said...

Quote[/b] ]"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 don't think the game should force this on you. You should have the freedom to do this.

A change of clothes option should be available if possible. Would be an interesting feature.

[lwlooz 0]

I suppose this serves as the mission editor suggestion thread.

Group Dialog (Edit Mode):

- Interface Integration: In the Mission Editor while in "(F2) Group Mode" and clicking on an already existing group , that means clicking on a exisiting unit , a group edit dialog would appear.

- Requested Functionality:

* Being able to set group variable name

* Being able to set group ID

* Being able to set group Description

- Purpose:

* The purpose of the group variable name is to make life easier for new and veteran mission makers alike.

This especially applies in missions with characters that can be switched off where it would end rather intricate ways of getting the group name.

* The purpose of both the group ID and description are to provide descriptions for group slots that are more fitting to the mission and more detailed to the player who wants to find the right group

- Implementation Feasibility:

It seems easy to my untrained eye to add this information to the mission.sqm and assign the group variable name the proper group as soon as they are initialized , but considering that none of this was done as of yet I suspect that I am missing something.

[xxbbcc 6]

Don't know if this has been mentioned yet, hasn't read the whole thread.

It'd be nice to have filters in the editor to show/hide certain objects, not only markers. Like, only show WEST units or only show the waypoint for the currently selected unit, etc. Lare missions have a very chaotic map and it's sometimes hard to go through details.

[rübe 127]

Please make the editor aware of subfolders in the missions directory (load/save mission). I hate to put all missions into only one directory, which ends up in a mess too soon, too easily. Like in: a directory without island-suffix is a subdirectory, one with such an island-suffix is a mission. There. ;)

[jw custom 56]

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.

Fully agree

[landdon 0]

The editor needs improvement. Since the days of OFP, someone has provided a "Editor addon" to reveal all of the object present in the game, this should be standard fare. Additionally, objects such as the LHD should be a "one" piece unit, so an individual does not have to spend several hours trying to get it all lined up and placed right.

[sgt_hawkins 9]

I been working with the editor as long as ofp came out and if they reconfigured it like that I would be lost..I like it the way it is..but Thats coming from a guy who has 8 years exp with the editor.

[redmotion 10]

Couldn't these extras for unit editing just be added with an "advanced" tab7button like other parts of the UI? That would at least maintain some kind of consistency then without treading on too many toes.

Can I also add that I'd like to be able to visually choose units faces (if its already been mentioned, consider my own request as another vote in favour of it)

[kremator 1065]

How many of you have tried RTE (real time editor) from ionos? It can be found (in alpha release) over on OFPEC forums. Its a wonderful thing - truly wonderful.

I'm just waiting for MERLIN system to be ported over from A1.

[nuxil 2]

I had to dig this one up. instead of making new post.

i like to see in the editor is some kind of selection of layout on your vehicles/men. it would save some time for a quick mission setup.so we dont need to mess with scriping commands ..etc.

i would also like to see a better marker system. thats in general.

forexample. somethimes i only would like to have 1/2 a circle as a marker.

again there is ways to attchive this. but it would be nice have the ability to do so in the editor.

but if you want to make a mission like warfare, domination,evo etc etc.

the editor is not your friend.

i would not worrie about a editor update. i would rather worrie about when next update for notepad++ is :p

since you will be sticking your nose more in a text editor app.the editor itself you will only use to "press play on tape" Preview :p

there is one thing i also like to see. i think they should make sub dirs for each map.

example

...\My Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\blah\missions\utes\mymissions.pbo
...\My Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\blah\missions\Chernarus\mymissions.pbo
...\My Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\blah\missions\Sara\mymissions.pbo
...\My Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\blah\missions\Intro\mymissions.pbo
etc etc

it will be much more organized instead of having all missions you make dumped into

...\My Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\blah\missions\mymissions.pbo

This may not be spesific to Editor update but its related to mission design.

[Flash Thunder 10]

When you make a unit in mission editor, I think there should be quite a number of options you can do yo customize them.

Side: US

Obvious

Climate: Desert

You can either choose between 3 climates, Desert, Woodland, and Winter

Unit/Men: Soldier

This is where you select the model you want to use, it comes with default equipment.

Weapon: M4A1

You can choose what weapon you want for your unit, it oculd be an M60 to a Colt.

Face: David - Clean

You have a wide selevtion of faces, for every face, there is a clean, camo, and wounded one.

Hands: Nothing

There is a wide selection of gloves and different types of hands.

Shirt: Rolled Sleeves

You can have either rolled up sleeves, no sleeves, sleeves, etc.

Headwear: Brush

You can have small sticks or small peices of bushes put into your helmet, or you could have a bandanna, or a cap.

Stance: Crouched

Either make yourself prone, crouched, or standing up.

Rank: PVT.

You get the idea

Skill: 6

On a scale of one to ten you set the skill of the unit.

Mode: Combat

Choose from the OFP1 modes, like careless, combat and safe, etc.

Accessories: Backpack

Backpack can be chosen for extra ammo, or a medkit, or NVGs etc.

Name: Alpha 1

Name your unit.

Init field

Same as the OFP1 one, for adding extra scripts.

Health

Same as the one from OFP1 thats under the Init field.

Fuel

Same as the one from OFP1 thats under the Init field.

Ammunition

Same as the one from OFP1 thats under the Init field.

Azimut: 0

Set which direction your unit is facing.

Next to this is a 3D image of your soldier based on your settings, it is fully rotatable.

Restore to Defaults.

Ill make a picture once i get Photoshop installed again.

This is one thing I really liked from Dragon Risings Editor, being able to change almost any setting.

I agree with your idea: but one important feature you missed: RANDOMIZE this would make setting up enemies or team mates alot quicker, or harder for you if you want to try out randomize gear etc.

[RodeoX 10]

dkraver I like your ideas! I would second that motion, but it looks like I will have to 100th it.

[monotone 3]

What I need really about tweak in unit section is not about Infantry but Vehicles.

We can choose vehicle type as HMMHV or F-16 or so and set its weapon,skin,troop number written on vehicle as almost all flight sim can do.

It would be quite nice for both of mission editor and addon maker.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Here is what I would like as a unit editor within the editor:

Builtin stuff for a whole lot of new things:

* Preset - Sets all the items on the far right to preset values.

* Special - New item, "Stop". Causes the unit not to return to formation, but is free to rotate to face targets.

* Skill set - General sets all subskills, like to day, then there are also these.

* Model - Ability to choose the model freely. Allows on the fly creation of missing classes that could be important to the mission.

* DName - Ability to choose from a list of displaynames, such as rifleman, grenadier, team leader, or sniper. Allows on the fly creation of missing classes that could be important to the mission. Important here is the ability to choose from displaynames from all sides and factions. You could create a west "Sapper" if that class is available on the east side. Or a russian engineer (dearly missed). DName would be what shows up when you point at a unit ingame.

* Equip - Ability to choose from a preset equipment list based on already existing classes. Allows on the fly creation of missing classes that could be important to the mission.

* Ruck - Ability to choose what ruck the unit is equipped with. Allows on the fly creation of missing classes that could be important to the mission. Such as a miner ruck with a mine showing, or a radio ruck.

* Healer - Existing, is the unit able to heal? Aka attendant.

* Miner - Existing, can the unit disarm mines?

* Hide - Existing, can the unit hide bodies?

* Obs - New, is the unit an observer, like an FO or FAC? Gives him access to special scripts.

* SL - New, is the unit a squad leader? Gives him option to automatically dissolve squad into fireteams. Using createTeam.

* TL - New, is the unit a team leader? If squad is dissolved, he will be the new leader of the fireteam. Using createTeam.

* Updated multiline EOL capable script editor, with line numbers, monotype font, bracket matching and syntax highlighting.

* The possibility to expand the script editor to cover all the lower part of the dialog.

* New control, setBMI. Only for units.

* New control, setHeight. Only for units.

* New controls to instantly set the vectorUp part of an object. Only for objects.

* Just some other general rearrangements.

Think about the benefits for players new to the game. Although there will always be situations where you actually needs to script, the most typical things to do for "the new guy who will struggle like hell with scripting", is instantly available. The new guy will start to lookup the Biki, which contains a lot of useful information for the experienced scripter, but the examples will typically not work directly, as they may not be written with "copy & paste into editor" in mind.

BMI and height would allow the creator to setup a mission where the individual unit is easier to recognize, something that is very hard to do only by face. These are VBS2 commands though, so it is highly unlikely that we will ever see these :)

Elevation contains an instant setPos select 2 without any need of scripting knowledge.

Well... That's my dream anyway... Or at least a highly simplified version of it...

[mattxr 9]

I like it, more enchancements to the editor would be of great benifit. The Editor has been the same practically since OFP.R with few added features.. Its the least developed part of the game and i think improvements such as this would be good.

Also a Ingame Editor, Breifing [ Task Generator ] would also be cool and easy to use..

[mr.g-c 6]

Here is what I would like as a unit editor within the editor:

[/img]

Builtin stuff for a whole lot of new things:

* Preset - Sets all the items on the far right to preset values.

* Special - New item, "Stop". Causes the unit not to return to formation, but is free to rotate to face targets.

* Skill set - General sets all subskills, like to day, then there are also these.

* Model - Ability to choose the model freely. Allows on the fly creation of missing classes that could be important to the mission.

* DName - Ability to choose from a list of displaynames, such as rifleman, grenadier, team leader, or sniper. Allows on the fly creation of missing classes that could be important to the mission. Important here is the ability to choose from displaynames from all sides and factions. You could create a west "Sapper" if that class is available on the east side. Or a russian engineer (dearly missed). DName would be what shows up when you point at a unit ingame.

* Equip - Ability to choose from a preset equipment list based on already existing classes. Allows on the fly creation of missing classes that could be important to the mission.

* Ruck - Ability to choose what ruck the unit is equipped with. Allows on the fly creation of missing classes that could be important to the mission. Such as a miner ruck with a mine showing, or a radio ruck.

* Healer - Existing, is the unit able to heal? Aka attendant.

* Miner - Existing, can the unit disarm mines?

* Hide - Existing, can the unit hide bodies?

* Obs - New, is the unit an observer, like an FO or FAC? Gives him access to special scripts.

* SL - New, is the unit a squad leader? Gives him option to automatically dissolve squad into fireteams. Using createTeam.

* TL - New, is the unit a team leader? If squad is dissolved, he will be the new leader of the fireteam. Using createTeam.

* Updated multiline EOL capable script editor, with line numbers, monotype font, bracket matching and syntax highlighting.

* The possibility to expand the script editor to cover all the lower part of the dialog.

* New control, setBMI. Only for units.

* New control, setHeight. Only for units.

* New controls to instantly set the vectorUp part of an object. Only for objects.

* Just some other general rearrangements.

Think about the benefits for players new to the game. Although there will always be situations where you actually needs to script, the most typical things to do for "the new guy who will struggle like hell with scripting", is instantly available. The new guy will start to lookup the Biki, which contains a lot of useful information for the experienced scripter, but the examples will typically not work directly, as they may not be written with "copy & paste into editor" in mind.

BMI and height would allow the creator to setup a mission where the individual unit is easier to recognize, something that is very hard to do only by face. These are VBS2 commands though, so it is highly unlikely that we will ever see these :)

Elevation contains an instant setPos select 2 without any need of scripting knowledge.

Well... That's my dream anyway... Or at least a highly simplified version of it...

Absolutely Awesome! Yeahh that would be amazing, now with backpacks,etc...

But for "healer" and "miner" to be selectable, Configs must be able to change on the fly from within game.....

I hope Suma read this an watches your Picture, its really great!

Man, i like this so much that i've made a ticket for it.... maybe you can put it in your Signature so people noticed it better :p

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/10757

Edited May 20, 2010 by mr.g-c

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Well, I don't use/show signatures, so... :) Glad you like it. Now, this is naturally kept within the current paradigm of how the editor "works". My "advanced" version completely replaces the paradigm, and may not be so easy for devs to "just improve". Meaning, it's not an improvement on the current editor, rather a pretty full replacement. But for now, an improvement such as this would be a very nice first step.

The idea about "new classes" would be that they was instantly saved to the missions description.ext, rather than having to rely on addons.

The "initialization script box" could also be further enhanced. Make it tabbable (or different buttons), with tabs/buttons like "Initialization" (what you see in the example), "Script" (with default [editable] null handle and parameters, where you can edit the script called directly in the editor), and "Resource browser" (where you can show pictures contained in addons/configs and grab their paths etc).

[SkyDice 10]

Think about the benefits for players new to the game. Although there will always be situations where you actually needs to script, the most typical things to do for "the new guy who will struggle like hell with scripting", is instantly available. The new guy will start to lookup the Biki, which contains a lot of useful information for the experienced scripter, but the examples will typically not work directly, as they may not be written with "copy & paste into editor" in mind.

Heartily agree. As someone new to the mission editor, I find it incredibly intimidating and not at all 'simple' as described in the dev videos. I have ARMA2 as well but avoided the ME because it was so complex and relied so heavily on manual coding. God knows what it'd be like a for a new owner who'd seen the dev diaries and thought it'd be cool to make his own mission, only to be confronted with the packaged editor and two pages (!) in the manual to 'start you off'.

If there are to be any changes to the editor, please god make some simple graphical options for stuff that everyone uses - objectives (sync to target/unit/building/etc), halo jumps & heli insertions, artillery, briefings, mission ends/starts etc. Don't force us new players to do it the hard way because most of us won't - I'm on the verge of giving up (and I've only tried to do simple stuff) because I've just spent two hours trying to make a UAV work in multiplayer, another three hours trying to work out why the amb.civ module spawns civilians in a village 5 kilometres away from the module's placement but not in the village I put the module over and another four hours searching pointlessly on the forums/guides/stickys/search/etc to be confronted with more and more walls of code I can't understand.

Mission editing should be simple to begin with. If you want to script in crazy stuff then go for it, but something as basic as a multiplayer respawn script or an objective creator should be in there already, with simple graphical options like 'enable respawns in multiplayer? Y/N' or similar. Have two layers of editing maybe, one simple, one hard (for scripters)?

At the moment, unless we have a degree in coding, most of us can't even start. From a company with such an obvious pedigree, it's a shame that one of the most important parts of their games is so impenetrable, and therefore effectively useless to all but a select few. :mad:

[Jelliz 10]

Silent waypoints:

Hope i am not the only one that has a problem with this. To let a AI-team move around a mountain, you need to use several waypoints to get them around it, instead of over it. Now if the team contains the player, he will be spammed with "ALL, move to that position" for each single waypoint while moving around the mountain.

Now, my suggestion is:

Whenever a team with assigned waypoints has an AI leader, we should be able to give silent/hidden waypoints which only the AI leader can see and follow, while the rest of the group follows in formation behind the leader. All that the rest of the team is seeing, is the next waypoint behind the mountain. This way the player will avoid being radio spammed for each waypoint.

Paint examples:

Mountain example with only one waypoint:

Note that the group will now move directly over the mountain or hill or whatever.

Now with several waypoints to guide the team around:

This is where the radiospam-magic happens.

With hidden waypoints(blue):

Note that with each blue waypoint here, the leader will go to the next waypoint without issuing "move to xxx" orders, the only order regarding movement the player will hear, is the first "move to enemy position", and it is the only one the player will see.

This will also be useful with guiding AI-led teams through the narrow valleys of Takistan.

Edited July 25, 2010 by Jelliz