JOHN007

Hello thankyou for the reply. Over at Armaholic, a user has provided a great script, it works for Arma 2. player addEventHandler ["Respawn", { params ["_unit", "_corpse"]; (group _unit) setGroupOwner (owner _unit); // not needed I don't think... just in case group isn't local (group _unit) selectLeader _unit; // group has to be local, Wiki says... }]; The script works 99% but its much better than the original script. May I ask do you know the base/class name for the ACE unconscious state? This is what happens. If the Squad leader is killed instantly, he stays as squad leader, no problem there. The problem is when you get shot and you fall unconscious, you instantly lose squad leader status,(Goes to next rank) If you are revived without dying, you will get back your squad leader status. If you die while been unconscious, you don't get back the squad leader status? Its just a guess, but I'm sure it would be included in the params ["_unit", "_corpse"]; section? I believe that's the last piece of the puzzle, the Ace unconscious state has to be included. Thankyou for your time and hope to speak soon.

Update here. Unfortunately removing the F_40_White brightness/intensity values makes no difference I'm afraid. Also I have just Arma 2 OA with no Ace or other mods and from my testing with 3 PC's you can see Z-fighting bugs with the chaff countermeasures. For example load up the standard Desert map, set the time to 20:30, and fly over to the centre of the map while ejecting countermeasures and you can see the bugs, with nightvision active. Without nightvision you cant really see the terrain bug. May I ask can anyone verify this please if they got some spare time. I honestly believe we need the actual classname of the chaff projectile so we can add it to the config and edit the values. What is the classname for this projectile may I ask? Thankyou again and hope to speak soon.

Hello Goliath thankyou for the reply. I had some problems on the unit so I had to reinstall, absolute nightmare. Now I have Arma online so I will edit the config ASAP. Just wondering from looking at the config from yourself that there are entries for brightness/intensity for the F_40_White, I replicated your settings into the Ace config. So may I ask which values are actually used here if I have brightness/intensity on both Flarecore and flarebase sections? So the theory is to have one set of brightness and intensity values across all flares? Would that be correct? Thankyou again for your brilliant config, hope to speak soon.

Hello Goliath86. After much searching online found a few baseclass names for chaff magazines, adding the 60, 120 and 240 capacity mags to the config. Unfortunately I may have made an error, replicating the working config, or maybe the baseclass names are incorrect, I believe I need to find the actual bassclass of the projectile instead of the magazine classname? I'm not quite sure. // Generated by unRap v1.06 by Kegetys class CfgAmmo { class FlareCore; // External class reference class FlareBase : FlareCore { brightness = 200; size = 0.71; intensity = 1000000; ACE_Simulation = "shotFlare"; }; class F_40mm_White : FlareBase { soundFly[] = {"\x\ace\addons\sys_flares\sound\flare.ogg", 0.1, 1}; ace_sys_flares_SLOW = 1; ace_sys_flares_DAY = 1; ace_sys_flares_DESCEND = -2; ace_sys_flares_COLOR[] = {0.9, 0.9, 0.9, 0}; timeToLive = 90; brightness = 100; intensity = 5; }; class 60Rnd_CMFlare_Chaff_Magazine : F_40mm_White { ace_sys_flares_Color[] = {0.9, 0.9, 0.9, 0}; }; class 120Rnd_CMFlare_Chaff_Magazine : F_40mm_White { ace_sys_flares_Color[] = {0.9, 0.9, 0.9, 0}; }; class 240Rnd_CMFlare_Chaff_Magazine : F_40mm_White { ace_sys_flares_Color[] = {0.9, 0.9, 0.9, 0}; }; class F_40mm_Green : F_40mm_White { ace_sys_flares_Color[] = {0.05, 0.9, 0.05, 0}; }; class F_40mm_Red : F_40mm_White { ace_sys_flares_COLOR[] = {0.9, 0.05, 0.05, 0}; }; class F_40mm_Yellow : F_40mm_White { ace_sys_flares_COLOR[] = {0.9, 0.9, 0.05, 0}; }; Trying to find the Classname of the chaff projectile from the 240Rnd_CMFlare_Chaff_Magazine'' is difficult, could I ask the BIS Devs if they could help us here? Were just requesting a classname, should be reasonable enough right? Dwarden could you point us in the right direction here please? Thankyou for your time and hope to speak soon.

Hello goliath86 thankyou for the reply much appreciated. The config 100% fixes the flares!! Thankyou ever so much for helping us! How did you fix this bug?? You are a Genius. I've noticed you mentioned that I posted a config for the countermeasures? The reason I ask is because unfortunately the aircraft countermeasures still cause the z fighting bugs even though the flares from example an m203 work correctly. Its really strange but I cannot find the post for the countermeasures? Do you know where/what the baseclass name is for the countermeasures? If we could replicate your settings I'm sure it would work. Thankyou again for your time and expertise Arma looks outstanding at nighttime now!! I SALUTE YOU SIR!!

Hello Goliath thankyou for the reply. Would you kindly provide the config parameters please for the dedicated Arma 2 community. This bug is killing us. SOS.

Hello Opusfmspol sorry for the late reply, I have tried other scripts but failed, so it seems that this one is the best one at the moment, I'll follow your instructions and hopefully fix the lag issue. Would you recommend editing the script in anyway? Could it be altered somehow? Or in your opinion is the 'waituntil' parameter actually fixing this issue in the first place? Thankyou very much for your expertise and hope to speak soon.

Hello opusfmspol thankyou very much for the reply much appreciated. I understand, there is no information regarding this issue with Arma2, there are similar posts stating the same, there's no way. I've spent years on and off trying to fix this. Last night I bashed my head against the wall so hard something clicked. This is the diagnostic. Instead of respawning at the base when killed, I implemented a custom revive framework, this works. 3 revives and your kicked from the server, it works correctly with Ace wounds also which is brilliant. The script originally posted does actually work correctly, but only on some maps, so it does 99.9% work after much testing. Unfortunately some maps don't work, but I have a theory, the maps that don't work have custom units for players. The units have the Squad leader, Medic and Engineer parameters setup correctly also. So it may be that modded units don't work correctly with the script, but guess what? The other night I found a thread in the bloody Steam forums for Arma3, followed the instructions writing the script into the main Init sqf but still no luck, until I executed the scipt with execVM. Its bloody worked! There is one problem here, the new script caused some serious FPS issues/lag? May I ask if you could have a look at this script before I follow your instructions which I am eternally grateful for, maybe this script could be altered slightly? 1. Give your squad leader the variable name "OurSquadLeader" 2. Create .sqf script if (isServer) then { CheckGroupLeader = { waitUntil { (leader group OurSquadLeader) != OurSquadLeader) && (alive OurSquadLeader) }; {[_x] joinSilent OurSquadLeader)} forEach units group OurSquadLeader; [] spawn CheckGroupLeader; }; [] spawn CheckGroupLeader; }; 3. Call script from main Init.sqf This works correctly but causes serious lag issues? I haven't got the slightest clue as to why either? If we could fix this issue for the Arma2 community than we have a 1st fully working script for this problem. Thankyou very much for your time and hope to speak soon.

Hello Chrisb thankyou very much for the reply much appreciated. I'm afraid not, as the squad leader can only issue orders/missions. When the squad leader is killed, the role is taken to the next rank, problem is that they cannot issue orders/missions because the framework is tied to the original allocated squad leader. This breaks the whole game. May I ask do you have any idea how we could fix this issue? Do you know anyone on the Arma forums who may be able to help? Its just incredibly difficult to get a response here on the forum so I am grateful for this Chris. Thanks again for your time and hope to speak soon.

Hello Dwarden thanks for the reply. I have wrote a detailed description of the issue and provided a test mission that's all setup for you to test, the download link is still there? You must have missed the original post regarding this? I honestly thought you had already downloaded the test mission? Here is the post again from Feb 27th. Posted February 27 Arma 2 OA 1.64.1443373 I'll provide a simple mission for diagnostic. https://www.dropbox.com/s/e0wac1zcpf3dds0/FLARETEST.Takistan.rar?dl=0 No mods, just a normal install of Arma2 and OA. All you have to do is activate NVG and fire a flare straight up, anytime after 20:30 the bug is at its worse. Vegetation starts flashing/flickering between a white texture and a black square as some kind of alpha bug? Huge black squares on the terrain start flashing/flickering some kind of grid z-fighting bug? NVidia or AMD GPU, new or old drivers. High end GPU or Low end GPU, We have tried everything. DVD Version. 1.60 / 1.62 / Steam Version 1.63 / 1.64 / End of the day if an enemy fires a flare its game over. This bug is so bad it needs seizure warning. Please consider looking into this game breaking bug. Thankyou for your time and hope to speak soon.

Hello Dwarden thankyou for the reply much appreciated. Finally a response from a BIS Dev this is fantastic. Downloading a screen capture program and recording the comparisons. There's still z-fighting bugs with light sources from aircraft projectiles so it looks like the issue still persists. Also ran into a slight issue with enemies firing multiple flares, over ten at once and the light seems to multiply with each flare and with over ten flares lit it causes z-fighting bugs again. Looks like were reducing the flares light parameters once again. Regarding the 1.64 patch we don't use that particular patch as many mods break, but the z-fighting bug is on every Arma 2 patch so it doesn't matter which patch is used here. What the community needs is an addon which works with all Arma2 patch versions. We still don't know exactly where the dimming effect parameter is located for the flares lightpoint. Can you provide this information please as we can fix the issue with the flares at least. You can easily find this bug, just load up Takistan at nighttime, fire a flare, its easy. Many forum threads stating this issue and nothing been fixed in all the years. If you have actually worked on Arma2 which I don't know if you have but even so, if you have worked on Arma 2 you will know about this. I'll upload the videos and addon fix for you to analyze. Please consider fixing this game breaking issue. Thankyou for your time and hope to speak soon.

Update on the z-fighting bug. Managed to fix the terrain bug and 99% of the vegetation, as soon as the flares light is round a few meter from ground it seems to be working correctly which is strange but editing the lightpoint shape and editing the size fixes the issue, the edited script allows the flare to burn on the ground for a few mins also which is much better, for testing I drove around 300-400 meters from a cut out mission enemy camp schematic, waited for the Ai to fire a flare. Running into the flares light once it hits the ground is instant death. Now we can enjoy the nighttime, now one time the Ai were literally firing flare after flare it was outstanding, hid from the lights in some Takistan town, the flares had us surrounded, I couldn't see much with the NVG, all of a sudden some civ runs around the corner, alah Akbar! Gone. Jumped out of my bloody skin. Now that's an Arma experience. Bloody fantastic.

Many mods break on the recent Arma2 updates. Unless the mod is updated also you will run into issues, I would suggest requesting permission from the author of the mod to try and edit/update the parameters.

Any news on the location of the Lightpoints for the flares BIS Devs? I just want to fix the z-fighting bug. I doubt any update will fix this seeing as this bug has been around for a long time with every patch. So with all due respect can you please provide the location where the lightpoint scripts are located. Thankyou.

I'm sure you need Arma2 and Arma2 Operation Arrowhead. Then proceed to install A2 patch, A2OA patch, and lastly install the Arma2 Reinforcements. Hope this helps.

Thankyou for the screenshots Noma greatly appreciated.

Hello Chris thankyou for the reply. I spent weeks going through every single patch for Arma 2 and OA. Also editing the Video options and config files till I bashed my head against the wall and realized 'Every' patch has this issue. For diagnostic I have 3 units with different versions. 1 has the DVD version 1.60 1 has another DVD version 1.62 1 has a Steam Version Beta 1.64 No mods. Its a real shame because the amount of work BIS coded with the star system is outstanding. We should be able to enjoy the nighttime, not have a near seizure when the terrain starts flashing black squares. If BIS would kindly point us in the right direction where the flares light parameters are located we will be able to fix this issue by disabling/reducing the flicker effect. We can edit the parameters with Ace_sys_Flares but we don't know what parameter controls the flicker effect?

Hello and thankyou for the reply Chris. I completely understand the reason behind the flickering light effect on the flare. I would suggest reading the last post from us which describes the problem with this effect. ( 6 posts back ) The effect is not ok if the terrain flashes huge black squares and the vegetation flickers from black squares to white textures. I even provided a simple mission pbo where if you have 5 mins spare please load up the mission and all you have to do is fire a flare straight up. Then you will 100% understand why this flare flickering effect needs to be either disable or toned down drastically. Thankyou for your time and hope to speak soon.

Update here. I have an idea, which may actually fix this issue but we need your assistance if we may ask? Countermeasure Flares don't have a flickering light source, which don't cause z-fight bugs with the terrain and vegetation. The theory is to actually disable the 'flickering' effect of the flare, which is apparently the reason why this bug occurs. If you fire a flare at nighttime, looking at the terrain without nightvision active you can see the bug, as the flare increases light the terrain goes black. As soon as the flare dims the terrain is rendered normal. Its the flares effect causing this. The problem is, how do you actually disable the flickering parameter of a light source? ie the flare? //Calculate vehocity to launch flare at _div=abs(_dirpos select 0)+abs(_dirpos select 1)+abs(_dirpos select 2); _flarevel=[(_dirpos select 0)/_div*_muzzzlevel,(_dirpos select 1)/_div*_muzzzlevel,(_dirpos select 2)/_div*_muzzzlevel]; _vvel=velocity _v; _flare setvelocity [(_flarevel select 0) + (_vvel select 0),(_flarevel select 1) + (_vvel select 1),(_flarevel select 2) + (_vvel select 2)]; hint format ["%1",_flarevel]; _flares=_flares+[_flare]; _sm = "#particlesource" createVehicleLocal getpos _flare; _sm setParticleRandom [0.5, [0.3, 0.3, 0.3], [0.5, 0.5, 0.5], 0, 0.3, [0, 0, 0, 0], 0, 0,360]; _sm setParticleParams [["\ca\Data\ParticleEffects\Universal\Universal", 16, 12, 8,0], "", "Billboard", 1, 3, [0, 0, 0], [0,0,0], 1, 1, 0.80, 0.5, [1.3,4], [[0.9,0.9,0.9,0.6], [1,1,1,0.3], [1,1,1,0]],[1],0.1,0.1,"","",_flare]; _sm setdropinterval 0.02; _sp = "#particlesource" createVehicleLocal getpos _flare; _sp setParticleRandom [0.03, [0.3, 0.3, 0.3], [1, 1, 1], 0, 0.2, [0, 0, 0, 0], 0, 0,360]; _sp setParticleParams [["\ca\Data\ParticleEffects\Universal\Universal", 16, 13, 2,0], "", "Billboard", 1, 0.1, [0, 0, 0], [0,0,0], 1, 1, 0.80, 0.5, [1.5,0], [[1,1,1,-4], [1,1,1,-4], [1,1,1,-2],[1,1,1,0]],[1000],0.1,0.1,"","",_flare,360]; _sp setdropinterval 0.001; _li = "#lightpoint" createVehicleLocal getpos _flare; _li setLightBrightness 0.1; _li setLightAmbient[0.8, 0.6, 0.2]; _li setLightColor[1, 0.5, 0.2]; _li lightAttachObject [_flare, [0,0,0]]; _emmiters=_emmiters+[_sm,_sp,_li]; }; (_emmiters + _flares) spawn { sleep 4.5 + random 1; {deletevehicle _x} foreach _this; }; We researched the setParticleRandom' and setParticleParams' but unless we missed something we couldn't see any parameter for the flicker effect? Another theory could be to setup the flares parameter similar to a streetlamp, a coned source of light instead. Also I don't know if the script provided is for countermeasure flares only I'm not 100% sure? I know we can fix this BIS Devs the theory is there, we just need to execute the parameters which in all 6 years of modding Arma2 we have never had to edit light sources. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thankyou for your time and hope to speak soon.

Arma 2 OA 1.64.1443373 I'll provide a simple mission for diagnostic. https://www.dropbox.com/s/e0wac1zcpf3dds0/FLARETEST.Takistan.rar?dl=0 No mods, just a normal install of Arma2 and OA. All you have to do is activate NVG and fire a flare straight up, anytime after 20:30 the bug is at its worse. Vegetation starts flashing/flickering between a white texture and a black square as some kind of alpha bug? Huge black squares on the terrain start flashing/flickering some kind of grid z-fighting bug? NVidia or AMD GPU, new or old drivers. High end GPU or Low end GPU, We have tried everything. DVD Version. 1.60 / 1.62 / Steam Version 1.63 / 1.64 / End of the day if an enemy fires a flare its game over. This bug is so bad it needs seizure warning. Please consider looking into this game breaking bug. Thankyou for your time and hope to speak soon.

Hello. We ran into a massive bug with Arma 2 regarding flashing vegetation and large black flashing squares on the terrain when either a player or enemy fires a flare at nighttime. Players have NVidia and AMD GPU's and its all the same result, old drivers and new drivers it doesn't make a difference. Its completely unplayable I'm surprised no one has had a bloody seizure yet its that bad. The vegetation turns into black flashing squares also? This bug killed us all, you cannot see anything. I've tried to fix this bug for weeks following the only thread available here is the link. Apparently this bug happens in Arma3 with some users also so I really don't know where to turn too right now regarding this? Are there any mods/scripts that fix this issue? Requesting assistance please. Thankyou for your time and hope to speak soon.

Any response from a BIS Dev here? This gamebreaking bug is awful, the flickering vegetation and huge black flashing squares on the terrain when a flare is lit. This happens on every single patch version of Arma2 OA. We have literally gone through every one, even the 1.64 beta, makes no difference if the GPU is NVidia or AMD with old and new drivers so its 100% confirmed that the game is at fault here.

Its actually better to contact the authors and request permission. I haven't been denied by any author as just yet to edit their work. Most authors are quite happy that people are still using their mods. If they are still active on the forums that is. Also you might get valuable information from the author regarding editing. Its just logical. Hope this helps.

Well the error message is the answer as to why the addon isn't loading correctly. What does the error state?

Fixed.