Help with my first addon

[Zorasht 0]

Hi,

I'm new in addon making . I do not really know where to start from.

I have taken a look at diferent addons to see how are they structured and get a rough idea of how it might be done.

Let's start from the begining, we have a dedicated server, and we use a lot of addons on it. The thing is that we have loads of different weapons from the addons, and when it comes to missions making, we have to be creating scritps for ammo boxes, because we don't use all the weapons at once, just the ones that fits for the mission or the mission author like.

So my idea is to create an addon which add all those scripts to the game editor as ammo boxes, so instead having to use and edit the scritps for each mission we could have a bunch of custom mixed ammo crates on the editor, simplifiying everything.

So my first question is how to add a custom ammo box to the editor menu. Because the addon that i've been looking at as examples are weapons addons, and they have all the entries for each weapon and I get a little bit confused of what is actually needed to add only for the ammo boxes.

The second idea is to make custom groups using the units and the vehicles from addons. I mean, create a group which appears in the editor under BLUEFOR, OPFOR or Independent using for example the technicals from QG with insugents from the WP addon, o desert vehicles from McNools vechicles pack with desert soldiers from any other addon. There are many addons which add their own groups, but other doesn't, so I would like to have them ready to use in the editor. Would it be to complex to do?

I'm also not too pretty sure how dependencies work, but I assume that might be somehow like in the missions that depends on addons, isn't it?

And the third idea is about adding music as an addon. I mean, adding 10 or 20 songs that can be used by the mission editor for intros and outros, and having them as an addon the mission size should be normal, because everytime we create a mission with music, it grows to one or two Mb. So I would like to have all the songs as an addon so the mission size is not affected by the inclusion of music.

And as we have music in the addon, would it be possible to play that music as a MP3 player when the player is a in a vehicle? I thing this last bit might be much more dificult, but I still have it in mind.

So if somebody could point me to the right direction, tell me what tutorials should I read or could give me some examples that would help me to create this three addons I would be very grateful. Because the problem is that I don't know how to start.

Thanks in advance.

Zorasht

[scars09 9]

dont do it.

you use the xxxweaponpack, make a ammobox with it. addonmaker of the xxxweaponpack decides to add 200 new guns, you of course want to use this 200 new guns. what will you do without your addon.

you open up the mission you want to use the updated weapons in, create an ammobox and manually add them and tell your mates that they will need the new version. if you placed some units with the new weapons in editor aswell, your mates that dont have the newest version of xxxweaponpack get kicked when choosing the mission with an errormessage that they miss the xxxweaponpack. they will say, "damn i have that weaponpack", you will say, "but not the newest version". they will download it and connect and play.

now what if you use your addon.

you have to change your addon, wich in the worst case will be the representive of the old+200new weapons of the xxxweaponpack (needed addons in mission, if made badly only your addon wil be needed, wich version?? how should the game know!. This means people can join a mission, maybe get kicked at somepoint, no addonname in errormessages, if errormessage at all, you will have missing selection or p3d´s, bad errormessages with words you will never bring in relation to the addons that generated the error.

if you want to save time in editor, save the ammoboxes you allready created in a extra ammo.sara missiontemplate, and copy and paste them in whenever needed, same with groups. i have dozens of such small template missions, ammo, units, placement of objects, briefings, soundconfigs all the stuff you will need from time to time.

always keep in mind that the only file wich is intended to be exchanged online while ingame is the mission.pbo, its the quickest way to compensate changes of 3rd party stuff used. believe me, i fully understand your needs that brought up the idea for this addon, but it is contraproductive to what you want. it makes it much harder to keep all on the same addon version level and it will be more downloads for anyone and more work for you.

same with the music, maybe not in your case cause you play with the same guys all the time, but a music addon is addon wich if missing will result in disconnect of the player. whats worth, download a 2mb mission while chitchatting via von or ingame text messages with you buddies, or getting disconnected and have to search for an addon you mabe wont notice at all cause you have disabled music ingame. i really hope you get my point. believe me, i know what im talking about, if you need a reputation to believe me, check the missing addons thread in ofp/usermissions around page 11-12 and on, i really know what i am talking about.

anyways

ammoboxes config you find inside the weapons.pbo config

groups config inside the ca.pbo config

and music im not sure at the moment, sounds i guess

[Zorasht 0]

Well, we don't have the problem of the missing addons. We are a small group of people, always the same, in a password protected server and we have an standard of addons that everyone has installed. That's why I want to have different ammo boxes, to ease the work of those of us who make missions. Using scripts is being ok.

But now, after patch 1.14 we are gonna update our addon standard, updating some existing addons, adding some new addons, and that's why I want to create this ones, to simplify things. At this point I have a load of script for ammo boxes, so many that some of them are repeated, and I have to go through them everytime I want to use them, because only the name doesn't tell me anything

As I told before, we have not problem with people disconected because of missing addons, since all of us have the same, that's why I want to have the custom ammo boxes, custom groups and custom music all added as addons, since everyone will download it once and forget.

I'll take a look at those pbos to see what I can get of them.

Thanks.

[scars09 9]

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

{ class Guerrila {

name = $STR_GUERRILA;

class Infantry {

name = $STR_CFG_XBOX_GRP_INFANTRY_SQUADS;

class sc9_Towelheads {

name = "IF Heavy Weapons";

class Unit0{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF5";rank="SERGEANT";position[]={0,5,0};};

class Unit1{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF6";rank="CORPORAL";position[]={3,0,0};};

class Unit2{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF7";rank="CORPORAL";position[]={5,0,0};};

class Unit3{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF8";rank="CORPORAL";position[]={7,0,0};};

class Unit4{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF10";rank="CORPORAL";position[]={9,0,0};};

class Unit5{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF11";rank="PRIVATE";position[]={11,0,0};};

class Unit6{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF4";rank="PRIVATE";position[]={13,0,0};};

class Unit7{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF13";rank="PRIVATE";position[]={15,0,0};};

class Unit8{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF16";rank="PRIVATE";position[]={17,0,0};};

class Unit9{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF19";rank="PRIVATE";position[]={20,0,0};};

};

class sc9_Towelheadf {

name = "IF Anti Tank";

class Unit0{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF3";rank="SERGEANT";position[]={0,5,0};};

class Unit1{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF4";rank="CORPORAL";position[]={3,0,0};};

class Unit2{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF7";rank="CORPORAL";position[]={5,0,0};};

class Unit3{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF8";rank="Private";position[]={7,0,0};};

};

class sc9_Towelheadh {

name = "IF Anti Air";

class Unit0{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF12";rank="CAPTAIN";position[]={0,5,0};};

class Unit1{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF13";rank="CORPORAL";position[]={3,0,0};};

class Unit2{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF13";rank="CORPORAL";position[]={5,0,0};};

class Unit3{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF10";rank="Private";position[]={7,0,0};};

};

class sc9_Towelheade {

name = "IF Sniper/Spotter";

class Unit0{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF16";rank="CAPTAIN";position[]={0,5,0};};

class Unit1{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF19";rank="SERGEANT";position[]={3,0,0};};

};

class sc9_Towelheadg {

name = "IF Combatants";

class Unit0{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF1";rank="SERGEANT";position[]={0,5,0};};

class Unit1{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF2";rank="CORPORAL";position[]={3,0,0};};

class Unit2{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF3";rank="CORPORAL";position[]={5,0,0};};

class Unit3{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF4";rank="CORPORAL";position[]={7,0,0};};

class Unit4{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF8";rank="CORPORAL";position[]={9,0,0};};

class Unit5{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF9";rank="PRIVATE";position[]={11,0,0};};

class Unit6{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF17";rank="PRIVATE";position[]={13,0,0};};

class Unit7{side=2;vehicle="sc9_IF15";rank="PRIVATE";position[]={17,0,0};};

};

};

};

};

thats how infantry group look like, sc9_if# is the unitname, like soldiergb in original groups, thats what need to be changed (unitnames you need to get out of config of addon in most cases.) i never used ammoboxes, unpbo the weapons.pbo, you will understand how they work.

you will remember my words

[Zorasht 0]

Thank you very much.

Everything is far more clear now.

I also received very interesting replies about ammo boxes and music in this topic in armaholic, just in case somebody look for something similar.

http://www.armaholic.com/forums.....#bottom