New location types... how?

[madrussian 347]

Hi all,

I'm working on a dynamic prisoner escape mission and making some big strides... including a working overlapping full-coverage activating/deactivating DAC system, as well as relentless secret police that hunt you down like a dog (tracking you and the other escaped prisoners via "tags" that were implanted back in the prison before you escaped).

I've just started using locations recently. Mighty handy, especially when you want to get the closest locations to a position via nearestLocations.

After some experimentation, it appears there are no "Name" type locations by default (unlike with the other location types I checked). So I've been using those for my aforementioned DAC system.

Now I'm realizing I really need at least a few more unused location types, for use on the civilian settlements, military bases, and then the dynamic invasion of liberation that may occur once randomly at some point in the mission. Seems like we should be able to define our own location types.

So the question is this:

1. Anyone know where location types are defined in the config?

2. Stepping back a bit, are locations types even defined in the config, and if not, then where?

From the wiki:

Possible location types are:

Mount

Name

NameMarine

NameCityCapital

NameCity

NameVillage

NameLocal

Hill

ViewPoint

RockArea

BorderCrossing

VegetationBroadleaf

VegetationFir

VegetationPalm

VegetationVineyard

[Planck 1]

Location types are configured in the bin.pbo config.bin and the list you have there is in full agreement with the location types available.

These location types are set on an island when the island maker is constructing the island in Visitor.

Planck

[madrussian 347]

Thank you so much Planck! :)

I would have had no idea where to start looking... And now I have defined all sorts of useful new location types for my mission.

Locations are so incredibly powerful it kind of boggles the mind really. Looking back, I'm not sure how I ever got by without them. Especially when you take into account that locations can store their own variables via setVariable and getVariable.

For instance, I've currently got a system going where I create a series of locations with markered point clouds around them (read in by a purpose built ReadMarkers function). Then I systematically move my deactivated DAC zones on top and swap out the DAC points with my point clouds. And it's sooooo easy now, due to nearestLocations, setVariable, and getVariable and all the new capability they allow.

Anyhow, here's the new location types I came up with, in case anyone may be interested for their own mission ideas and such:

class CfgLocationTypes {

class Name; // External class reference

class MRU_Settlement : Name {};

class MRU_Village : Name {};

class MRU_City : Name {};

class MRU_CityCapital : Name {};

class MRU_RemoteLoc : Name {};

class MRU_Base : Name {};

class MRU_OpForceBase : Name {};

class MRU_BlueForceBase : Name {};

class MRU_ResistanceBase : Name {};

class MRU_Objective : Name {};

class MRU_OpForceObjective : Name {};

class MRU_BlueForceObjective : Name {};

class MRU_ResistanceObjective : Name {};

class MRU_DACZone : Name {};

class MRU_OpForceDACZone : Name {};

class MRU_BlueForceDACZone : Name {};

class MRU_ResistanceDACZone : Name {};

class MRU_CivilianDACZone : Name {};

};

btw- Turns out I needed to create mirrors for the three standard settlement types (NameCityCapital, NameCity, and NameVillage), because apparently you can't use the standard map ones to store anything. (Even though they are detectable and you can get thier position, they don't really exist in memory for variable storage without using createMarker, or so it appears.)

Edited June 20, 2009 by MadRussian