After Action Review script

[maddogx 13]

This is no joke.

I've made a very basic demo video of my first alpha version: Watch it on YouTube.

Yes I know it's not spectacular. I'll make more videos when I find the time.

Note that in the video, the AAR does not have gun fire sounds. This is because I create the fired projectiles using createVehicle instead of making the units fire, for accuracy reasons. I currently use the "drop" command to show approximately where the bullets are going and where they are coming from.

Like I said, this script is still in a very early alpha version. At the moment it can record the following data from any number of soldiers:

- Unit position and direction

- Unit weapons fired. (projectiles are recreated, but not the actual gun firing - hence the lack of sound in the video)

- Unit animation. In the AAR the unit will actually replay the exact animations he did during the recording. This includes rolling, switching weapons, dying, throwing grenades etc.

At the moment it only supports "man" type units and is highly unoptimized. I hope to implement full recording of battles - including vehicles.

It really depends on how well I can optimize the recording process, because at the moment the large amount of data that is recorded can really bog the system down when there are more than 12-15 units running around and shooting.

If / when I get the script running, I'll probably need a dialog guru such as Kegetys to help me out with creating an interface, because I've never even touched that stuff yet. The cool thing is - the way the script works will allow for us not only to play back the AAR, but also to pause, rewind, fast forward and replay it as often as we need.

Like I said, this is no joke.

[Blanco 0]

Cool for outro's...

[moricky 210]

How you managed to save data. Are there stored in some array and available only in one mission or you found any way to save it externally? When I was recently thinking about continuation of my OFP AAR, I never find the way to save them.

[Dwarden 1124]

lol Gaia i was just gonna to say this reminds me on Your Top1 project

nice to see You around too

p.s. i hope You and MadDogX  can cooperate  

[mcpxxl 2]

Mad is really doing a great job with cool ideas. Looking forward into it :-)

[maddogx 13]

It currently only saves it to arrays - so the AAR can only be played while still in the mission.

I've heard of some external tools that somehow allow you to save data to files, but I don't know where to find them or how to use them.

At the moment the script works as follows:

The data on each soldier is saved to 4 arrays (position, direction,animation,shot) at 10FPS.

Once I stop recording and start playback, the script creates new soldiers without AI (using createVehicle) and then applies all data on them, also at 10fps.

As you can see in my alpha demo, it works quite well - right down to the recreated bullets actually hitting their targets. So the AAR is actually quite accurate.

I am currently optimizing the system by only saving unit data when there is actually a change. This should improve performance greatly.

[HqPL 0]

Looks nice, waiting for more

[maddogx 13]

Oh, and I've also started to implement AAR for vehicles. I'll see how well that goes...

[-DirTyDeeDs--Ziggy- 0]

OH MAN!

The video of VBS2 AAR is such a TEASE!

I enjoy the "BattleRecorder" function of BF2, and so wish that a similar feature can be a part of ArmA.

[Maddmatt 1]

Great work, can't wait to see it finished.

To get firing sounds working, maybe you could use the fire command. In OFP it made the AI aim up into the air before firing, I don't know if there is a way to prevent that in ArmA. Then delete the bullet and create the new one that will follow the flightpath it's suppose to.

It should work fine on vehicles, it's just that infantry would be a problem if they aim up into the sky.

If you still can't get them to fire, maybe it would be good to use the drop command to simulate the muzzle flash so that we have a good indicator that the unit is firing.

[maddogx 13]

Great work, can't wait to see it finished.

To get firing sounds working, maybe you could use the fire command. In OFP it made the AI aim up into the air before firing, I don't know if there is a way to prevent that in ArmA. Then delete the bullet and create the new one that will follow the flightpath it's suppose to.

It should work fine on vehicles, it's just that infantry would be a problem if they aim up into the sky.

If you still can't get them to fire, maybe it would be good to use the drop command to simulate the muzzle flash so that we have a good indicator that the unit is firing.

I've tried using the fire command, but since I create the units without AI, they don't seem to do it. Perhaps I'll try creating them properly with createUnit and see what happens.

[Cowburn199 0]

Hi, I was wondering if you could update us about how far you are too releasing the script. It looks great

[DZR_Mikhail 14]

It currently only saves it to arrays - so the AAR can only be played while still in the mission.

I've heard of some external tools that somehow allow you to save data to files, but I don't know where to find them or how to use them.

At the moment the script works as follows:

The data on each soldier is saved to 4 arrays (position, direction,animation,shot) at 10FPS.

Once I stop recording and start playback, the script creates new soldiers without AI (using createVehicle) and then applies all data on them, also at 10fps.

As you can see in my alpha demo, it works quite well - right down to the recreated bullets actually hitting their targets. So the AAR is actually quite accurate.

I am currently optimizing the system by only saving unit data when there is actually a change. This should improve performance greatly.

The thing you need is ArmaExt

I managed to create a script which dumps all the predefined players' inventory into an external file on hard disk.

All you need is to run the arma.exe through the run.bat of the armaExt and it adds all the external file manipulation features that we require.

Here's an example line which appends data to a defined file, I run this as a separate write.sqs file by a trigger's init:

PLAYA = mMikhail
call compile loadfile format["%8:File.Append(""dump.php"")@%9%2%3%4%5%6%7%10%1","\r\n","$",PLAYA,"='", weapons PLAYA, magazines PLAYA,"';","7","<?","?>"]

and get the followng output added to D:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA\ArmAExt\files\dump.php

In my case it's formatted for further php parsing at my website in player's personal inventory and RPG profile:

<?$aMikhail='["ACE_Flaregun"]["ACE_1Rnd_Flare_Red","ACE_1Rnd_Flare_Red","ACE_1Rnd_Flare_Red","ACE_1Rnd_Flare_Red","ACE_1Rnd_Flare_Red","ACE_1Rnd_Flare_Red","ACE_1Rnd_Flare_Red"]';?>

Still don't know what purpose of that %8 string preceding the File.Append command though.

May be it's not to good idea of appending all the data on the fly, but it's definitely will work in the end of the record and you just append (write) all the recorded arrays and data to a file. This would be a demo\replay file for sure.

May be you can share your recording script with us :rolleyes: :bounce3: We'll develop it together into the long awaited and dreamed of AAR system for Arma!

Edited June 9, 2009 by zvukoper
added script output strings

[maddogx 13]

Wow, this thread is old.

I think I've gone through about ten reinstalls of ArmA and switched from Windows XP to Vista to Win7 in the meantime, so I'm pretty sure I don't have the files anymore. ;)

I still remember how the script basically worked, so I guess I could reproduce it with time, but I also remember I stopped working on it because the performance impact was immense over time. Even with only a few units in the field, fps would start to break down after just a few minutes. Probably because it was filling up multiple arrays per unit.

Maybe if we managed to stream the data directly into a file it could work, but with Arma2 out I wasn't really planning on spending much time with ArmA1. An AAR system for Arma2 might be interesting, but there's probably not much point until we get an "Arma2Ext". :)