Some Qs I cannot find answers to

[therev709 10]

Between being inspired by Sick1's awesome SEAL campaigns and having plenty of spare time sinc my xbox RRODed, I've been working on learning the editing system for Arma II. I haven't done anything like this since I was a youngin playin OFP, and even then I had no idea what I was doing.

So far I've got two missions down, but have some questions/issues that I haven't been able to find an answer for either on this forum or other arma community sites.

• First problem I'm having is with ACE2 Flashbangs and groups of guys in houses. I have two groups of OPFOR pre positioned inside of two different buildings, all with

nul=[this,3] execVM "setbpos.sqf"; this setUnitPos "Middle";

so they're crouching too. When I toss a flashbang, they all stand up and wobble around like their supposed to (simulating that they're stunned), but when they return to the crouched position none of them have their weapons drawn, and instead all of their guns are on their back. So in effect the flashbang has rendered all the threats absolutely defenseless. Not fun in a video game if no one is gonna shoot back at you (unless you're into that sorta thing . . . )

• Second problem I'm having is setting custom names for my teammates and player unit. I unpacked Sick1s campaign and discovered he used

this setIdentity "blahblahblah";

I have also read on this forum and others to do that as well. However . . . this for some reason does not work for me. I put the syntax in the units "init" box but they're all still using the random names the game assigns to them :( I spent all afternoon thinking of some cool call signs, but the game engine seems to prefer "Dylan Mcman" better.

• At the start of one of my missions, the player is standing in front of a police officer during a briefing at a crime scene. By default, the player's primary weapon is at the high ready, and aiming at the face of this police officer. In reality, I would consider this quite rude. I was wondering how I could have the player start the mission with his rifle at the low-ready/safe-hang position. On the same note, how can I also have the player start out the mission in "free look," such as if the player were in a chopper at the beginning of a mission and already in 3rd person (already figured out how to do this)? I just like to automatically start a mission in 3rd person/free look if I'm in a vehicle, that way the player can start right off with a good sense of where they are and where they're going, rather than starting through a tank peep sight or a chopper side door.

• Finally, I'm also wanting to figure out how to add a marker to the map during a mission when a new objective is created. I know how to set up the briefing, create objectives after a certain condition (i.e. the previous obj is completed), but I don't know how to create a new marker to display the next objective location when the new objective is created. I don't want the player to see "Target Building" or "Hostage Location" from the start of the mission, when the point of the mission is to search the area for clues before discovering these locations. So basically I want to create a new objective marker, or hide an objective marker until that objective is created.

Now since you're hear and reading this, I would like to go ahead and ask this, even though I'm sure I'll come across it with some more in depth searching (hope you don't mind, its 2:45am and im bout to hit the sack, so naturally I'm lazy). But, can someone point me to a guide for implementing voice acting into a mission. I would like to start out simple, with a voice over at the beginning of a mission, after an obj is completed, as well as "interrogating" a suspect (without doing a whole dynamic convo. . . yet). Also, as I'm currently tinkering with FSM and trying to learn how to do a dynamic conversation with an NPC, I would also like to figure out how to have this interactive convo linked to a real time voice over.

Thanks in advance, I truly do appreciate it. And hopefully I'll have a complete mini (3 or so mission) single player campaign available soon!

Jon

[Andy455 11]

As far as I know the command setGroupID does just what you want, it takes both a unit or a group as a paramater. For the ACE flashbangs I have no idea, maybe that is a problem with the ACE mod? might be able to find a better answer in the ACE thread.

Not sure about the free look camera, since I havent played with cameras before.

To add a marker during a mission there are several commands for you to use: createMarker, setMarkerBrush, setMarkerColor, setMarkerType and a few more (check the wiki).

You can run these straight off the trigger you use for objective completion or you can make a mini script that sorts it out and run that from the trigger so it doesnt look messy.

[therev709 10]

Thanks Andy, markers and unit names work great now ^_^

However, flashbangs are still givin me issues.

But right now I'm working on implementing the voice acting, which I just can't get to work fully. The first radio message sound plays and works perfectly, but every radio message afterwards wont play the sound. It'll do the text but it wont play the .wav file. I plan on converting these over to .ogg later, but I was thining that maybe I should do that now. What do you guys use to convert .wav to .ogg?

[Andy455 11]

I heard some people use Audacity to convert to ogg files. Since I havent messed around with voice acting yet I can't help you there :(

[therev709 10]

I converted them all to .ogg files and now none of the sounds play!!! Before, the first radio message would actually play wound and the rest wouldn't, but now none of them do . . . ugh.

Here is my radio section from my description.ext:

class CfgRadio
{
sounds[]={};

class RadioMsg1 {
name="RadioMsg1";
sound[]={"\sound\RM1A.ogg", db+5, 1.0};
title=Welcome to Panthera boys.;
};

class RadioMsg2 {
name="RadioMsg2";
sound[]={"\sound\RM2.ogg", db+5, 1.0};
title=Charlie Rock, this is Bloodhound, according to this evidence it looks like there's an insurgent safe house and weapons cache marked on the map to the west, the same direction they took the hostages, over.;
};

class RadioMsg3 {
name="RadioMsg3";
sound[]={"\sound\RM3.ogg", db+5, 1.0};
title=Copy that, Bloodhound.  Take your team and investigate the target location.  Leave Dingo, Manic, and Gambit to help secure the crime scene and follow up with anymore evidence. Charlie Rock out.;
};

(Theres 10 total radio messages that I've recorded and written in the description.ext, but for right now only the first 3 are actually written in mission.)

I have a trigger that is set up where the player starts and is activated by BLUFOR being present, in its "On Act." box I have:

CR sideRadio "RadioMsg1";

Note that all radio text actually shows up, and originally the .wav sound file for RadioMsg1 worked too, but none of the other ones. Now that I've converted them all to .ogg files none of the sound plays for radio messages.

Here is my collect.sqs script where I've added the sideRadio syntax so that the radio will activate with the completion of that script.

deletevehicle file1;
tskObjA setTaskState "SUCCEEDED";
[tskObjA] call mk_fTaskHint;
sleep 3;
TF141 sideRadio "RadioMsg2";
sleep 12;
CR sideRadio "RadioMsg3";
sleep 11;
[spook, Gobbles, Ace, Pez] joinsilent TF141;
tskObjB = TF141 createSimpleTask ["Investigate the target location."]; 
tskObjB setSimpleTaskDescription ["Investigate the target location for more clues or the hostages.", "Investigate the target location.", "Search"]; 
TF141 setCurrentTask tskObjB; 
[tskObjB] call mk_fTaskHint;
_marker = createMarker ["ObjB", getMarkerPos "Bravo"];
"ObjB" setMarkerType "Flag";
"ObjB" setMarkerColor "ColorRed";
"ObjB" setMarkerText "Target Location";
tskObjB setSimpleTaskDestination (getMarkerPos "Bravo");

Like I said, the radio messages pop up in game and everything works fine except the sound does not play.

---------- Post added at 09:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:48 PM ----------

somehow . . . I don't know how . . . but it works now.

I added a playSound action to the trigger and created a Sound in the description.ext file just for the first radio message to test and see if I could get it to play that way . . . then all of the radio messages have been working. hmm.

[therev709 10]

I'm having some wierd issues with my description.ext where I'll edit something, save, and test it in Arma II (note that Arma II is minimized), but the changes wont occure, then after the fifth or so try they'll work!

This has happened for both the radio messages playing as well as adding glasses in the player configs.

[Deadfast 43]

You have to save/load the mission in order for description.ext changes to take effect.