CoC Network Services 3.0

[Pennywise 0]

Network Services 3.0 Public Beta

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The Chain of Command is proud to present our first public beta release, Network Services 3.0 for ArmA.

What is it For?

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Many of you may already be aware of NS from our previous ancestor, OFP.  We took this addon and made significant updates, optimizations, and enhancements to support ArmA.  For our old-school players, there should be little explaining to do, and you can look foward to porting your NS supported addons over to ArmA.  Otherwise, you may find NS 3.0 helpful for creating in depth missions like Capture The Island (CTI), Real Time Strategy (RTS), possibly CE3 for command control , and many other missions/addons that require an advance networking solution.  NS 3.0 can also aid in minimizing network traffic and synchronizing JIP Clients.

Resources

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NS 3.0 provides many resources you can depend on like CoC_isServer, CoC_isClient, CoC_isServerClient, CoC_isServerDedicated.  In addition, the arrays CoC_ClientList and CoC_PeerList which contain a list of all the conencted users, their objects, names and prefixes. NS 3.0 can also provide many a working solution for synchronizing JIP Clients.  A new flag has also been added to represent JIP Clients, CoC_isJIPClient.  All lists and flags are updated upon respawn and JIP.  Index 0 represents the server and is always guaranteed.

Supported send data types are:

* Boolean

* Null Group

* Null Object

* Side

* String(strings must be 4000 chars or less)

* Number

* Object

* Group

* Array (filled with nothing or any of the above in any combination)

* Multi-Dimensional Array (filled with nothing or any of the above in any combination)

Special Notes

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Please understand there is currently a handshaking process completed on each machine at the beginning of every mission.  The is currently at most a 25 sec delay upon mission start, before NS 3.0 completely intializes.  We are working to minimize and prevent this wait in our final release.  This wait can significantly be reduced by adding the following at the top of your init.sqf:

CoC_ConnectTimeout = 10;

CoC_MaxRetry = 2;

Special Thanks

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First of all, I'd like to thank bn880 for the awesome addon!  I'd also like to thank Spinor for helping test, listen to my sacrastic remarks, being the nice guy that he is, and providing input when I'm completely lost or wacked out of my gord.  HudsonTPF for orignally getting me interested with making addons for OFP and shooting me down in them.  Scatter and Leopard2 for helping me test. The 506th for the good games, http://www.506th-pir.org. I'd also like to thank Zeus Community, Killswitch, ViperMaul, and lwlooz for assisting with testing and bug fixes!

DOWNLOAD

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CoC Download

http://ofp.dyndns.org/CoC_Pack.rar

Previous release

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http://www.thechainofcommand.net/downloads/zips/CoC_NSA_Pack.zip

Armaholic

Enjoy!

Pennywise

CWR Developer

CoC Network & CEX Developer

RAD F18 Developer

RAD Su34 Developer

[madrussian 347]

Goody... been waiting for this since ArmA release!

Congrats guys.

[alext223 0]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MY GOD......... You guys are on the way back. Bloody sweet! How long till CoC arty v 2.0 comes out?

Best of luck guys!

[t_d 47]

Finally, I have been waiting for this. You made my day

[t_d 47]

I had a quick look at it and first thing: You packed the .svn folder in the CoC_NS.pbo

And some ArmA functions I would like to mention and you maybe use in an update:

find - There are at least two functions (fNGetIndexNum and fGetIndex) and some stuff within the scripts that have the same purpose like this command. I dont know what is faster though...

isNil - could be used to replace fDefined function

isServer

[Pennywise 0]

Quote[/b] ]

I had a quick look at it and first thing: You packed the .svn folder in the CoC_NS.pbo

Somehow I always manage to slip those by. Oh well, at least it's only the beta. We'll get those out in the final release. Thanks for pointing it out.

Quote[/b] ]

find - There are at least two functions (fNGetIndexNum and fGetIndex) and some stuff within the scripts that have the same purpose like this command. I dont know what is faster though...

I believe those functions were somewhat unique to the situation. I forget but I could still check it out.

Quote[/b] ]

isNil - could be used to replace fDefined function

I cover that in the readme.

Quote[/b] ]

isServer

We can make the updates where applies. Thanks for the input

[.kju 3239]

congratz guys

[crashdome 1]

Thank you pennywise for the taking the initiative. I miss bn880 and his ability to always open one's eye to problems and possible solutions. You, however, have done a great service by continuing the legacy that is CoC_NS. A must have tool for any advanced MP mission designer.

[major woody 11]

Quote[/b] ]How long till CoC arty v 2.0 comes out?

Yeah! Any news about that

[walker 0]

Hi all

Artillery comes when Artillery is ready. Asking when that is does not make it come any quicker, in much the same way that the kiddy in the back seat asking "Are we there yet?" does not make the car arrive quicker  

The idea that complex projects come in on a schedule is incorrect, and part of the mythical man hour. Developing complex programs even with a proper layered architecture and the level of experience in the CoC means one is dealing in a discovery, invention and research process. Asking when someone will invent or discover something is not very sensible.

Artillery needs CoC_NSA; so that gets released first it also requires other technology so those things have to be released too.

We release each layer in the CoC architecture when it is complete.

We do a period of public beta testing as part of that release structure.

All that said, the release of CoC_NSA means we are one milestone closer to the release of other addons.

Kind Regards walker

[lwlooz 0]

Thank you very much , this has been the most useful addon in OFP and I am pretty sure it will be same in ArmA

[p^ddy 0]

Mmm, I agree, I remeber the old suite for OFP and how (and I dont use this word lightly) invaluable it was when designing MP missions. I can only hope that when I get my new computer and get playing ArmA that this suite is as good as its predecessor, which I have no doubt it will be.

Thanks alot to all of the CoC guys and everyone else who contributed, for taking the time to get this ready for the community, we cant give you money (well, I cant, im a student) but we can give you a well deserved ...

[alext223 0]

To the CoC crew, Guys, only really saying that in jest. To be honest, I'm expecting six months till your arty addon comes out. It comes when it comes, plain and simple. Its just you guys have started, which is why I am so excited. God speed gentlemen!

You have alot of fans out there!

YT

alext223.

[mrj-fin 0]

Thx ur effort all member of CoC. There is much of need to this system so god job .

[vipermaul 246]

This is great!!

Do you have a thread on your forum dedicated to CoC NS 3.0 bug reports like you do with CEX?

I believe I have some bugs when I use the examples listed from your documentation for fNSendGlobal.

Then again it may be my learning curve.

[terox 316]

CoC forums down atm, so posted here..

I'm having difficulty auto initiating CoC_Ns for internal useage within a mod.

I cannot seem to createunit a gamelogic, and as the coc_ns requires being in a group, this would appear to mean that my only solution, to date, is to have the mission designer include the "ns" logic in each mission that the mod uses, which is far from the ideal solution.

I would be suprised if i'm the only mod dev who has this issue, so am hoping CoC can come up with a soution.

Example snippet of test code used to try auto initiating

Quote[/b] ]

sleep 2;

_SideHQ = createCenter logic;

sleep 2;

_grp = createGroup logic;

sleep 2;

_u = ("CoC_NS" createUnit [position player, _grp]);

// _u = ("CoC_NS" createUnit [[0,0,0], _grp]);

// _u = ("Logic" createUnit [[0,0,0], _grp]);

sleep 2;

Player sidechat format ["DEBUG>> type = %1...group = %2, pos = %3",typeName _u, group _u, position _u];

The debug outputs

_SideHQ as 0x1000

_grp as 0x2000

typename _u returns absolutely nothing

group _u as 0x2000

getpos _u or position _u as ARRAY

which leads me to believe that creatunit logic isn't possible

as a test to check the syntax, i created a bis soldier, as can be seen by the "commented out" lines

and I also tried variations

The createvehicle works fine, but unfortunately, because CoC_NS requires it's logic to be in a group, then this would appear to be useless

[sickboy 13]

Hi Terox,

the correct syntax is:

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">sleep 2;

_SideHQ = createCenter sideLogic;

sleep 2;

_grp = createGroup sideLogic;

sleep 2;

_u = ("CoC_NS" createUnit [position player, _grp]);

sleep 2;

Player sidechat format ["DEBUG>> type = %1...group = %2, pos = %3",typeName _u, group _u, position _u];

My tests show that createCenter aint nececairy, but im not sure how this will relate to effects in the game.

[terox 316]

Thx Sickboy, that did the trick

"sidelogic" which isnt mentioned on the wiki

[sickboy 13]

Thx Sickboy, that did the trick

"sidelogic"   which isnt mentioned on the wiki

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/sideLogic

:P

[Pennywise 0]

This is a long time over due.  We have a new update for NS.  I'm please to announce NS 3.1.  Many new bug fixes and features:

CHANGELOG (3.1 Release)

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* fNAddPublicArray is now used to modify CoC_PublicArrays

* Added special event handlers that excute globally for JIP,

  respawn, and disconnect.

* Added functions that allow you to retrieve IDs by side

* Tweaked sleeps to prevent lag upon respawn

* Updated PublicArray to prevent assigning arrays to incorrect

  variables.

* Resolved JIP connect and rejoin issues with the ClientList

  not updating appropriately

* All sqs scripts have been converted over to functions, sqf

You may retrieve the package here.  If anybody is able to provide mirrors, I'd be much appreciated.  Enjoy!

A special thanks goes out to Zeus Community, Killswitch, ViperMaul, and lwlooz for assisting with testing and bug fixes!

[Guest]

Release frontpaged at the Armaholic homepage.

COC Network Services 3.1