skruis
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Everything posted by skruis
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What is Athena? At it's most basic, Athena is an application that you can run on your 2nd screen that provides a very highly accurate representation of the in-game map and displays icons for friendly units in real time: a 'blufor' tracker that runs outside of arma on a 2nd screen whether that screen is literally a 2nd monitor, a laptop, a Windows tablet or a Microsoft Surface but that's an oversimplification of what Athena offers. Athena supports multiple instances. Building a cockpit and want several map screens? Athena will let you do that without any additional performance impact on ARMA. Athena supports the automatic import of any ARMA map and that's both vanilla and custom. No ExportNoGrid here. Athena supports the generation of shaded 'height map' views for any ARMA map and again, that's both vanilla and custom. Athena supports the private sharing of 'ink' or 'map drawing' with other members of your communities, again, in real time and with a great degree of control that exists outside of ARMA. Athena displays and updates an ORBAT in real time: one of your units picks up an MG, it updates their representation to indicate that they're an AR. They pickup an AT weapon, their label is updated to indicate that they're now "AT". Know which of your team members fills the important roles at all times. Athena provides a convenient list of locations for the current map: "Requesting evac at Mike-26!" Don't know where it is? Look in the locations tab, click "Mike-26" and click "Locate" and there it is. Athena provides a way for you set custom locations, known as anchors, on the map that are important to you. Someone calls requesting a pickup and they provide you with their grid or coordinates, type them into Athena and have it create an 'anchor' for you. This is especially handy for pilots. Athena lets you 'track' the positions of a unit, a group and an anchor at the same time by way of tracking lines that are drawn from your unit to the chosen unit, group and anchor. It also tells you the bearing and the distance. Athena lets your record your own sessions and play them back later. But Athena also runs 'outside' of ARMA so even when you're not playing ARMA, Athena still has something to offer you and your community by way of the Athena Community Server (ACS). Collaborating on a mission design? Have both you and your associate connect to the same ACS and mark up the map from across the Internet without ever having to fire up ARMA and join a server. Have a big op coming up? Connect with your associates and plan out your op prior to game time. Expanding on your training regimen and want to introduce some tactics discussions? Connect to the ACS and mark up the map and demonstrate the concepts behind the tactics. Or let's say you're not interested in using Athena in game and you're not interested in using an Athena Community Server, Athena still has something to offer. Let's say you're designing a mission and while you're play testing, you want to keep an eye on what the AI is up to... Use the @AthenaDesigner mod to output ALL data for EVERY side to the Athena Application. You'll see the units for blufor, opfor, civilian and independent and even their next waypoint. The @AthenaDesigner mod is not intended to be used along side the @Athena mod so make sure you're using one and not the other. The @AthenaDesigner mod is not intended for use in multiplayer so it's unsigned. Athena is not just a 'blufor' tracker, it's a system that will directly contribute to better coordination and communication across your entire unit and can even help with mission design. Media Where can I download it from? You can get it from the Steam Workshop here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1181881736&tscn=1509512478 How does it work? Athena packages a series of scripts that will run during any mission that you play in ARMA and those scripts will collect all of the data for your side and feed it to the Athena software. All you need to do is start ARMA with the @Athena mod enabled, start the Athena Desktop application and click "Start". If you have the map, it will load automatically. If you don't, it'll prompt you for permission before it attempts to import it automatically. If your community has an ACS, you can connect to that and possibly download the map from the ACS from within the Athena Desktop application. But I don't have a second monitor. Can I use this on my laptop, tablet or Microsoft Surface? Absolutely. This latest version of Athena was specifically designed with that kind of setup in mind: I'm playing ARMA w/ the @Athena mod on my main PC but I've got this laptop off to the side that I'll use the Athena Desktop application on. All you need to know is the IP Address of your gaming pc. You go to File->Settings, enter the IP Address, click "OK" and that's all there is to it...in a perfect world: Of course, the IT guy in me has to mention that you've got software firewalls, spotty home wireless networks, etc. but in theory, yea, it's easy. This supports any map? Yes. Athena supports every map, both vanilla and custom and you only need to export them once (unless BIS or the map author release an updated version with changes). What we recommend is that you go into the editor, plunk down a unit, start a mission and then click "Start" in Athena. You don't have to do it that way, it's just what we recommend because in order to get a good export, the export process has to 'complete', right? So if you're in a mission, die and then restart, the scripting engine stops and the export will fail but if you're meandering safely around Tanoa during the export, it's going to finish and then you'll have that map forever. So, once you play this new map and "Start" Athena, Athena will prompt you saying "You don't have this map yet. You should import it ... bla bla bla. Do you want to proceed?" If you click yes, Athena will go into "Map Import" mode and that will trigger a series of scripts that will run within ARMA that will collect data regarding the map you're playing on and it'll send it to Athena. Athena will parse that data into a format that it can then render and display for you. Now, keep in mind: we're not exporting images. We're not using the 'ExportNoGrid' command...because we wanted to make the process as simple and painless for the player as possible. Our scripts collect the 'raw' data and we're using that raw data to build a top down visual representation of the world that is of a very high quality while also being extremely performant. You see a building on our map because we know a building is there. We know the terrain so we draw contours around it. We know where the trees are and where there are a bunch of trees, there is technically a forest. We know the ins and outs of the maps because we don't have just mere images and we're planning on doing even more with the information we have. So I can draw on the map? Athena exists because I wanted to draw on a highly detailed version of the in-game map on my Surface Pro. That's it. That's what got this started so yes, absolutely, you can draw on our map and furthermore, whatever you draw can be shared, over the Internet, with anyone that you're connected to by way of an Athena Community Server (ACS) and that will work during a mission or offline...the ACS is always available. You can draw with your Surface Pen, your Wacom Stylus, the mouse or your Capacitive Stylus if you own a touch screen laptop or with just your finger! You mentioned something about recording? Yes, I did. Athena is, very soon, going to grow to become a fully fledged After Action Reporting, Archival and Playback tool but for now, right now, you can record your own viewpoint of any mission: it will only contain the data for your side but you can record it and play it back at a later date. Once the AAR module is launched, it'll blow your mind. If you think drawing on the same map at the same time over the Internet while not even playing ARMA is something, let's talk about playing that back in a synchronized format while you and your unit review the mission together at the same time in a guided, lets say 'directed' format, while you discuss events and how those events could have unfolded differently and demonstrating that via map drawing. That's coming to Athena. The foundation is already laid... Is this app meant to replace the in-game map? Absolutely not. The game and all of the mods and scripts that are made for ARMA revolve around the in-game map and we understand that. This system compliments the in-game map. But... but... but... This isn't realistic and everything in, around or having to do with ARMA must absolutely without question always be realistic! I disagree that everything ARMA has to be realistic and I completely disagree about something like this being unrealistic. When you open a map in your actual hands or look at a map on a phone or a tablet, do you have peripheral vision or does it take up the entirety of your viewpoint? Do you literally pull the map up to your eyeballs and see nothing else? When you use Athena, you don't grow an extra set of eyes: you can only focus on one thing at a time and anyone that's intently reviewing the strategic positioning of friendly units in Athena is in a realistically vulnerable position but that position is also not as unrealistically vulnerable as they would be if they were using the in-game map which offers the player no peripheral vision whatsoever. Now, if your argument is "No one can look at a map and get back into the action that fast!", then you're not watching many ARMA videos on YouTube. I am literally amazed by how fast some players get in the map, understand what's going on, get out and get back into the action. Does it save time to be able to glance at a persistently updated display? Absolutely but this isn't far into the future out of the reach Star Trek technology: As a very janky solution, a soldier could Velcro a cellphone to their wrist and get the same 'glance and go' functionality... and glancing at your position on your map and very quickly ascertaining your relative position to other areas does not make you a super informed cheater...I still suck at ARMA. And if anything, the oddity of playing a first person shooter through a little window on a desk that dumps you into all sorts of different locales and terrain offsets, more so, the instant "I'm here compared to them" information that you get from Athena but at the end of all the discussion, it ultimately, ultimately, all depends on how you play the game and how you would think Athena would fit into that style. If it doesn't, it doesn't: I don't care :-) Will it kill my frames? Every mod has an impact on your framerate. Every mod. I can't tell you exactly how many frames you will 'lose' from running this application and it's completely subjective. Athena displays the status of every unit on your side. If you play a mission with 100 friendly units, it could take 100x longer to grab all of that data than it would if you were running around in ARMA by yourself. I myself in my testing in a mission with ~100 AI, half of which were on my 'side', experienced a ~5 fps impact and the impact will also vary depending on where the application is running. You have the mod stuff running on your gaming pc but the application can be running on a completely different device. Moving it over to another device might buy you only a frame or two so it's not an 'official performance recommendation', it's only something to be aware of when you try to measure the impact on performance that Athena will have. My guess is that it's no more impactful than some of the other major mods that alter major gameplay mechanics. Is it complete? It looks like crap and this error popped up. Hey man! This is something I'm putting together in my spare time. It's a labor of love and I think it's beautiful... jerk. More seriously though: when you find a bug, report it. Is this open source? Can I view the source? Can I "help" you with the source? If I give you 'this', will you let me look at the source? No. I may open up the SQF on GitHub and accept contributions to it but the Applications, the ACS and the AAR module will all remain closed. Why? Well, to start off with...I'm not passionate about 'open'. I'm not but why only the SQF? Mostly because the SQF is really the only thing, out of everything in Athena, that is purely ARMA focused. I have created an Internet connected whiteboard that allows multiple users to connect with each other while reviewing the same 'content', to save that content and replay it back at a later date. Is this something that no one else can do? Absolutely not. Its been done before but the fact remains that there are complete components that can be taken out and used for other purposes that could have fiscal value. Mostly though, I don't know what direction I might taken Athena in and I don't want my options to be restricted by the opinions of contributors who provided code in good faith with certain assumptions. Because I don't know where the future lies, I can't open it up so no.
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
I've released the mod as part of an open beta to the workshop. You can subscribe there to get the updates: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2902761497. Should make testing much easier. This does not include the 'side' visibility updates. I'll release that soon. Oh, also, it will, by default, open a browser window now automatically. I added this for new users. You can edit the settings file to disable it.- 764 replies
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skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Well, see now it gets complicated. So lets say i track your side prior to death: revive systems jank that up because some of them prevent death, right? Lets say i track it at mission start, mission designers might add some janky starts where you spawn as a civ and then have your side change or something. I could go based on faction but what traitor missions. I could check last side when health was above a certain amount but thats not foolproof either. Im open to suggestions.- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Ill look into that. The script is grabbing the ‘side’ every few seconds so Im guessing thats how the setCaptive works behind the scenes. re: touchability: good feedback. Ill increase the size and spacing.- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Another status update: got a little sidetracked when I realized just how much memory the map exports and transfers were taking up. Running Altis on my pc took around 4.5GB of RAM but exporting it caused Arma to sky rocket to just about 10GB. This is a combination of storing all of the exported information in memory while serializing it to JSON in memory before writing it all to disk. I've basically broken up the serialization into smaller pieces. There are still optimizations that can be made but I've reduced the impact to a rise of around 6GB. Unfortunately, to accomplish this, I broke up the world data breaking it out from a single json file however that will also make world exports easier to debug in the future anyways...the json files are now mostly human readable. The worlds are now exported to folder per world with a world file and a series of chunk files, all json. I tried a few different methods but this was the right balance of impact vs ease and it plays nicely with the web app with little memory impact there so, this is what I'm moving forward with for the time being.- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Just wanted to provide a bit of a status update. I'm in the middle of yanking the web app out of the bundled web server and will host it centrally. It will make deploying updates easier and make it easier for testers. After the next release, you'll only need to update if the @athenamod or its contents change and I might even just post it to workshop to make it even easier for you. Speaking of which, the web app should notify you and include a link to the latest version of the @athenamod when an update is released which also reminds me: I've also included an interface with version history/release notes. I should probably add links to the Workshop and this forum thread. Other than that, the code base has gotten large and wild enough that a refactor was due so I'm going through it and cleaning it up. It's gotten to the point where things work, now I need to make them maintainable. Additionally, because the app is able to be opened without Arma running, it made sense to add the ability to load a world without being in a mission however you'll only be able to load worlds that already in your cache. I will not be providing world downloads myself but when the community server is released, much farther into the future, that will include the ability to share worlds. As far as things I've fixed: 1. I've resolved issues with the group markers not changing correctly when existing/entering vehicles. 2. I've corrected issues with the waypoint markers not being removed correctly. 3. I've improved the group leader change mechanics so that the new group leader has the marker shown. 4. I've changed the tags mode to player + group leaders and enabled it by default. 5. I've resolved issues with sprite scaling for respawned units 6. I've resolved issued with tags not appearing for respawned units. So work is still progressing. I keep going back and forth about the hassle of storing the libraries (locations, vehicles, weapons) client side. Its extra work but it'll make things easier. I'll rework that process ... again and I'll release the update after. Oh, also, there will be another small change: a patreon link will be included in the app. Totally optional.- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Played a little arma last night, found a few bugs: 1. Icons for respawned units are not created at correct scale 2. Group icons are not reverting back to infantry after exiting vehicles I'll try to have these fixed today. There might be some merit to storing a copy of the app on a central website so that people who are beta testing dont have to constantly reload the wwwroot folder. I'll look into it.- 764 replies
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skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Hmm, ok. I was able to join a mission in progress as well but I had problems starting one. I'm testing on a new server I put up so I wasn't sure if it was the server or me. I'll investigate a bit further. Thanks!- 764 replies
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skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
@Tankbuster Have you run into issues using it in multiplayer? I can't seem to start a mission with it enabled.- 764 replies
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skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
If it's one of those 8" tablets, they tend to be lower spec. I bought a couple of 8" Windows tablets to test out at a few clients and they worked but barely. Anything beyond browsing the web was just too much for them so I'm not surprised they couldn't run Athena. You shouldn't have needed to dump the worlds for the version you were using but for this release, you'll have to. Speaking of which: AthenaWeb_Alpha_20221120.zip 1. Adds support for terrain location types: icon, name. 2. Second attempt at an interface for assigning icons/textures to units and groups based on the vehicles they occupy and weapons they carry. 3. Deleting multiple worlds via the interface in the web app now also deletes the chunks for the world 4. Misc little fixes Sorry for the delay in getting this update out. You'll need to delete the worlds (both in the app and in the <appdata\roaming\athena folder) and copy the included Library folder to your <appdata\roaming\athena folder.- 764 replies
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skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Locations Image Revised Vehicle Classes Management Revised Weapon Classes Management Library Files / Location To start with, I've added support for drawing the 'name' and 'icon' type map locations as seen in the Locations image posted above. They counter scroll meaning their size stays the same as you zoom in/out. The font is Roboto Condensed? which is what Arma appears to be using. It's a google font so I've added a reference to the google font to the app. Additionally, most location icons have been added as well. There's a few I'm missing like side_AA (substituted side_unknown for now) and respawn_unknown (substituted respawn_inf for now). I must not have exported those graphics years back when I originally tried to implement them. The locations that are currently shown are terrain locations, not scripted. I'm not currently collecting locations created during the mission. I plan to add that support eventually, probably when I get to markers because the two are so closely related. I had to make changes to the formats of the locations which does affect the worlds. Because of this, you'll have to delete the worlds from the <UserProfile>\AppData\Roaming\Athena\Worlds folder and you'll have to remove them from the cache in the web app. Sorry. I've revised the vehicle and weapon management screens. I wasn't a fan of the UI and the multistep process. For vehicles, you select the category. This is based on the Editor Sub Category in Eden. When you select a category, the vehicles belonging to that category are displayed in the vehicle list. You can apply the textures to the category, as defaults for all vehicles in that category, by selecting the "Set default textures for category" option. You can override that if you select a vehicle and choose different textures. Again, these textures apply to the group icon above the leaders head and changes dynamically based on what vehicle the leader is occupying. The vehicle classes screen allows you to map vehicles to group textures. If the leader isn't in a vehicle, it uses the basic infantry group texture. I might, in the future, add the ability for the user to override the texture, during a mission, and set a specific texture for a particular group. Then it would ignore vehicle occupancy moving forward. For weapons, you select the weapon slot, then then the weapon. I did not add a 'default' texture based on slot because ... there's not nearly as many secondary weapons as there are primary and most of the primary weapons correspond to the basic infantry unit icon. I might add support for GL or maybe AA icons ... I'm not sure if ARMA has one. For now, the only icons that matter in the weapon classes screen are: iconMan, iconAT, iconMG. These textures are used for the unit itself and change dynamically based on the following conditions: 1. Leader (iconLeader) 2. Medic (iconMedic) 3. Secondary Weapon -> Matches to weapon class -> unit texture 4. Primary Weapon -> Matches to weapon class -> unit texture 5. Default (iconMan) The data for all of this is stored in the library files in <UserProfile>\AppData\Roaming\Athena\Library. 1. locationClasses -> cfgLocationTypes 2. vehicleClassCategories -> I forget what config I pulled this from but the values are essentially EdSubCat_AAs and similar. The 'default' textures for the categories are stored here. 3. vehicleClasses -> cfgVehicles filtered using classes in vehicleClassCategories 4. weaponClasses -> cfgWeapons filtered using type (slots: 1 (primaryWeapon), 2 (handGun), 4 (secondaryWeapon)) You can theoretically modify these files manually so I've saved them in a human friendly format. These files will be generated automatically, if they dont exist, when the extension is started for the first time. After that, their contents are loaded into memory and then saved to disk when instructed to do so via changes in the web app. If you manually change these files while ARMA is running, you'll have to restart ARMA. I'll be including these files in the releases moving forward though. There are some text encoding issues. I spent a little time trying to resolve them but I'm not sure if it's because I'm not writing a native c++ extension (c# .net 6) that perhaps the encoding isn't crossing over as expected. I spent some time on it but its low priority so I'm not going to spend much more time on it. You'll see some strange characters here and there in the classes and location names. It's a known issue.- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
If anyone is testing out the latest version, don't bother with the unit and group icon setups. I'm redoing that whole thing.- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Added support for displaying units next waypoint. AthenaWeb_20221114_waypoints.png In desktop, I used dashed lines. In the web version, I'm adjusting the alpha/opacity. If you're further out than 1km, it's solid. Once closer than 1km, it starts fading until you're 250m out and then at that point, it remains at .25 opacity. The things I want to include before I release this in the workshop (separate item listing) are: 1. Map locations 2. Map anchors (basically your own set of locations) 3. Map markers (possibly including the drawings) 4. Map grid 5. Misc ui fixes (start/stop, resize, etc.) I'll add the following items later: 1. Orbat (unit list) 2. Hot keys (I think Arma exposed a key/action interface for mods) 3. Recording and playback 4. Map drawing 5. Community Server Also, another user requested a plugin system.- 764 replies
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skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
There's a key in the keys folder in the zip. Have you added that key to your servers keys folder? I might be signing it wrong but I'm pretty sure that's all there is to it.- 764 replies
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skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
That is also currently possible for a server admin/mission designer to do: expose both sides of the conflict to one or more players via those scope variables. If, via scripting, you set the value for 1 player to 16 (all) or 32 (leaders), they'll see units on both sides. I haven't tested it but I felt comfortable adding it because I figured, security wise, a mod would have to be whitelisted in order to be able to introduce a script that could modify the value. I should probably also add a listener to then compare the value to the allowed values but ... if you can change one, you can change both.- 764 replies
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skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Absolutely. Athena was a server side mod originally but it attracted zero attention. Much easier to get players to install it on their own than to rely on server admins. There are some assumptions in the current app about who the ‘player’ is that would have to be retooled but its entirely doable except…youre now running long running scripts on the server so thats a consideration. Marker visibility is also a problem. Only public channel markers would appear in athena because markers are only sent to the players in the target audience which makes sense from a security perspective but it is kind of annoying. In the end, nothing stopping a client from being an athena server which is what you did the other night.- 764 replies
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skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Thanks Shadow! It depends on the type of collaboration. I always welcome suggestions and feedback. As far as code sharing, the bulk of the app is sqf or js/html so its not exactly closed but Im not officially going to host a repo or anything. Re: the AI command, I do plan on having something similar later in an Athena related project. That might be a feature that could be introduced but it would have to be restricted through a reimagined community server for security reasons. Not sure if you’re familiar with that but in the workshop distributed version, theres a sever component used to share ink. This could be a feature integrated into the new version of the ACS and that would give communities control over what users have this kind of access. The SQF for it would be rolled into a different addon, like @athenaacs, and then server admins could allow @athena without implicitly allowing the possibility of remote AI control since that is a distinct feature from rendering a copy of the map the player already has … most likely. But thats a ways off.- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Depending on the age of the tablet and it's OS, it may not work. Web standards have been in flux. The signalR component may not work on it. Let me know.- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
As in they're using your computer as a webserver in order to run the apps on their own computers ... across the Internet? How well does that work?- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Tank, are there multiple Athene users in your group?- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
AthenaWeb_Alpha_20221111.zip Thanks Tank! New update released. You'll have to replace the dll, addons, wwwroot and there's a new folder that you need top copy to the <appdata>\roaming\Athena folder: Library which is included in this zip. It contains several files: 1. groupMarkers.json 2. unitIcons.json 3. vehicleClasses.json 4. weaponClasses.json These files are maintained by the extension and are persistent. New vehicles and weapons, as missions are played, are added to the vehicleClasses and weaponClasses files. There's currently no bulk export of all the vehicles and weapons. It works on an ongoing basis. When the app starts or the apps copy of these libraries are updated, the contents of these files are then retrieved by the app via HTTP and are made available to the user. If it's a new mission or a weapon is used mid-mission, you can go into the Vehicles and Weapons menus and click the refresh button to pull down the latest class list so you can make sure the right icons appear. As you add or update the classes, the changes are sent back to the extension webserver and the json files are updated. The reason for this is in case you dump your temporary internet files, the data survives. The same scheme is used for the groupMarkers and unitIcons libraries except those libraries are entirely user maintained. I'll probably have to add a way to 'import' and 'export' values from these files ... because I probably won't want to overwrite your copies moving forward. I had intended on staging the libraries with all the vehicles and all the weapons from vanilla but ... I'd like to force you to add different things so you can give me feedback on the process.- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
The group marker menu and vehicle class menus have been added. The GUI's for the weapons/vehicle classes have been revised to replace the clickable class names with a scrollable select control with 20 options showing by default. So, as you encounter vehicles, they'll appear on the list and you can set the desired marker for them. Again, the marker will be selected based on the vehicle occupied by the group leader. Additionally, I've added group identifiers to the sides of the group markers. So, typically, we have something like Alpha1-1. A1 will be displayed on the left of the marker and 1 will be displayed on the right. It's not entirely positionally correct according to NATO standards but ... I really don't care and the sizing of the markers in Athena Web vs reading font styles makes this into a practical issue. Group Markers Screenshot As you can see, with the group markers, unit icons and unit names (in this screenshot, the visible tags were set to player + leaders), it's rather easy to see who's who and get an idea of each groups capabilities. You'll notice that A1-5 and A2-4 are motorized: their leaders are in Hunter HMG's. Everyone else is on foot. I'll release an update shortly.- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Working on some new stuff. Unit Icons + Group Marker (Screenshot) Unit icons are determined in this order: 1. Group Leader (leader icon) 2. Has Medikit (medic icon) 3. Secondary Weapon 4. Primary Weapon 5. Default Icon Unit Icon Menu (Screenshot) I've, um, with BIS's help, have supplied some default icons. They're 64x64 transparent PNG's. You can supply alternate icons if you want but this screen is how you define your unit icons. I don't have icons for marksman, AT or GL ... I thought I did, maybe I do, I'll check, but I can see those being some icons that should be added. Weapon Class Menu (Screenshot) If the unit is not a group leader and does not possess a medikit, the weapons the unit carriers, primary/secondary, will be used to determine what icon is used. In this menu, you can associate a weapon class with an icon you define in the unit icon form. This UI will have to be changed because it's not efficient for large quantities. I'll probably change the class textbox to a select and maybe just not allow you to add new classes via the interface. Speaking of which, the weapons and vehicles will be added to the lists automatically as you play. New weapons and vehicles will be added as they're discovered. I'm planning something very similar for the group icons as well. There will be a way to define group markers and then you'll be able to tie vehicle classes to group markers. If the group leader occupies a vehicle and that vehicle's class is assocaited with a group marker, the marker will change from the default infantry icon to whatever marker is selected for that vehicle class. I might check all of the units in the group and update the icon based on the first vehicle that's occupied but I think going by the group leader is probably good enough. Additionally, I'll probably print the first letter of the group name and the first letter of the X-Y set to the left and then the group number to the right of the group icon. So, like, a group Alpha 1-2 will show up as A1 [ICON] 2. I'll do a bit of research but I think that's right. Both of these efforts will allow you to set the correct icons when using mods.- 764 replies
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
New release with: 1. Counter scaling unit icons (they stay the same size regardless of zoom level) 2. Unit labels 3. Unit labels can be toggled via a new slider control in the bottom left of the app 4. Which units have their labels shown can be cycled via a new button in the bottom left of the app 5. Pressing the button will cycle through: Player, Player Group, Player + Group Leaders, Player Side, All Units and then back to player Screenshot (Player + Group Leaders) AthenaWeb_20221109.png Download AthenaWeb_Alpha_20221109.zip- 764 replies
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- 2nd screen
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Athena - An ARMA 2nd Screen Application
skruis replied to skruis's topic in ARMA 3 - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
New release with: 1. Team Colors 2. Ability to use mouse wheel to zoom without disabling the follow function automatically 3. Fixed issue with follow failing after first disable AthenaWeb_Alpha_20221108b.zip- 764 replies
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- 2nd screen
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