Town markers for ALICE mod?

[icebreakr 3100]

Can BIS or someone with knowledge tell us how to define markers for module Alice, so civilians can appear there automatically? Are the "closed" houses needed for this module or not?

[Snake Man 401]

I believe those are just the extra class names entries on the terrain config.

ArmA names

		type = "BorderCrossing";
	type = "Hill";
	type = "NameCity";
	type = "NameCityCapital";
	type = "NameLocal";
	type = "NameMarine";
	type = "NameVillage";
	type = "RockArea";
	type = "VegetationBroadleaf";
	type = "VegetationFir";
	type = "VegetationPalm";
	type = "VegetationVineyard";
	type = "ViewPoint";
	radiusA = 100;
	radiusB = 100;

ArmA 2 new names

		type = "Airport";
	type = "CityCenter";
	type = "FlatArea";
	type = "FlatAreaCity";
	type = "FlatAreaCitySmall";
	type = "StrongpointArea";

But dunno as I have not tried them out yet.

[icebreakr 3100]

Will try this today. Tnx.

[bushlurker 45]

Hi IceBreakr!

I've been fooling with the Civs - think I've at least semi-figured it out...

It's all down to keypoints... here's how I got ALICE spawning...

*Place a few closed houses in your "village" - I just used a random selection of the basic cottages... (some seem to work, some don't - I suspect possibly some sort of inbuilt "flag" or something in the model itself??)

*Place a keypoint in visitor - Type NameVillage - radius (say) 150m - Name = name of village...

(all this does is designate the extent of the village, name it on the gamemap, plus you can use it to "select all objects" etc...)

*Place another keypoint - within this area, and covering the houses - Type CityCenter - radius (say) 100m - in the config window at the bottom you can type the demographics stuff that'll appear in your Island.hpp, or in your config.cpp if u prefer... like demography[] = {"CIV",1,"CIV_RU",0};...

This specifies the total amount and proportions of Chernarussian Vs Russian-speaking/ethnicity civs who will spawn in the area...

The "neighbours" demographic seems to allow the Civs to know what the next town is and allows them to refer to it in conversations (havent played with that much yet)...

Not sure about the "FlatArea" designation, or the "Strongpoint" one - although I suspect the latter in some way designates the village as a holdable area - perhaps something to do with the ACM module???

Thats as far as I've got so far - the Civs spawn, they wander about, have conversations with each other, get frightened and run indoors... all the usual stuff...

B

My turn for a question..... :D - Can anyone muster a definitive description on how to align and use the pond surface/invisible pond swimming thingy????.....

Edited November 6, 2009 by Bushlurker

[icebreakr 3100]

You know whats the problem with this whole ALICE stuff and my map? I don't use closed buildings on my map, so I guess I can't spawn them? :o

[.kju 3239]

Why not send Gaia a PM and ask him. :)

[andersson 285]

This is what I miss in usermade islands and arma1 ports.

I hope you also will figure out how to have animals spawned! :)

[madine75 0]

This is what I miss in usermade islands and arma1 ports.

I hope you also will figure out how to have animals spawned! :)

I've got Ambient Animals working on my map and haven't defined anything other than a type = "NameVillage".

[icebreakr 3100]

Animals work without any tweakings and config changes. At least when you see how Utes is made.

[andersson 285]

Oh, sure? I have never seen animals on Sahrani or Everon except birds.

[icebreakr 3100]

Sure thing buddy, on my island I just place down a module icon and cows are already walking up and down the runway and all over my FOB.

[andersson 285]

I guess Im wrong then. Nothing could be better :D

[madine75 0]

I've also found that I get animals in my forest area without the Amb Animals module being placed..

[icebreakr 3100]

Yeah some of them can be defined as ambient in config, like rabbits for example.

[bushlurker 45]

Hi Guys!

Just thought I'd continue this thread with some further details - nothing really exciting or new, but some further info anyway...

OK - I've been fooling around in conjunction with Kju trying to get ALICE at least basically working on Sahrani - with mixed results... See HERE for a more detailed post on that experiment, plus a link for an example patching config...

As we've discussed before, basic ALICE spawning seems to require both some "Named Zones" in the island config, plus the presence of "suitable houses" on the map where the Civs can "live".

I know nothing about modelling, but from what I read, certain houses have "memory points such as AI door1, AI door 2, etc" - in practical terms that means some houses work and some don't... A2 closed buildings seem mostly OK - obviously - a variety of the smaller houses and some of the city block houses seem suitably equipped... only CLOSED buildings seem to work, probably for the reason above... (in most of the above - as a small bonus - when Civs are "resident" , there's often smoke coming from the house chimney).

In A1 it's slightly dodgier - none of the bigger "apartment block" and city-style buildings seem to spawn civs, although a number of the smaller "housey"-type houses do (see link to post above for more details on A1) (no chimney smoke from A1 houses either, I don't think).

So, to retrofit ALICE support onto an existing island, firstly appropriate houses need to be present on the map, and secondly, you need a patching config... (again - see thread link above for a link to an example Sahrani patch config). Here's the opening few lines...

class CfgPatches
{
class caa1_c_town_names
{
	units[] = {};
	weapons[] = {};
	requiredVersion = 1.04;
	requiredAddons[] = {"oac_core"};
};
};
class CfgWorlds
{
class Intro;
class Sara: Intro
{
	class Names
	{
		class Sara_Rashidah_CC
		{
			name = "";
			position[] =
			{
				9585.79,
				11109.2
			};
			type = "CityCenter";
			radiusA = 100;
			radiusB = 100;
			neighbors[] = {"Sara_Paraiso_CC","Sara_Balmopan_CC"};
			demography[] = {"CIV",1,"CIV_RU",0};
			angle = 0;
		};

As you can see, it's just a question of adding an additional "Named Zone" for each town (you can cheat and just use the existing "Town Name Zone" figures for position, radiusA and radiusB if they're appropriate).

Then there's the "demography" line... this seems to determine the "ethnic" proportions of the Civ population - fractions allowed - totalling 1.0.

And the "neighbors" line...

This is a bit tricky and I'm not entirely sure what's going on as yet - I've added between one and three "neighbors" to each named zone in the Sahrani config - in the hope it endows the Civs with at least some knowledge of events in a broader area around them... I think it's at least semi-working, but the Civs lack the text/vocal assets to express themselves (they have no word or voice sample for "Paraiso", so they can't tell me specifically there's bad guys there?) I dunno about neighbors as yet, though if you're making/adding keypoints for an island anyway - might as well include the parameter in case we suddenly figure it all out and they're needed after all...

Again - see the thread link above for a more detailed explanation of some "neighbors" experimenting...

That's about it I guess - Any island with suitable buildings present (which counts out Panthera goddammit!!! - still my favourite!), should be able to be ALICE patched and basic Civ spawning should work OK - as a bonus, the JTD Civilian Traffic will work too...

B

Edited November 23, 2009 by Bushlurker

[TRexian 0]

Great work Bushlurker (and kju). :) (And thanks for picking this thread up.) :D

I can add a little bit about the neighbors value.

I've used it with the BIS location function (like in the ambient traffic), and it appears to be just the theater-builder's idea of what towns are nearby. It may also have a role in the (documentation-starved) Dynamic Route module. If you use the BIS fnc location with the debug boolean activated, it creates dark lines from each city to the other, like a web. I believe it relies on the neighbor value to create that.

[bushlurker 45]

Hi Trexian!

Thats interesting! - I don't pretend to understand half of it (I'm also utterly astounded when anything I fool with works at all) but it definitely seems worthwhile including some "neighbors" parameters then... I'm not entirely sure what Dynamic Routes are, but if adding neighbors parameters makes it function then it's gotta be worth the little bit of additional effort...

B

[TRexian 0]

Check this out for all I know about it. :)

http://www.ofpec.com/forum/index.php?topic=33978.0