baddo

Hi, Once upon a time I wrote a function called buildingPosCount for OFP which returns the number of indexed positions in a building. I will put the function up here too in addition to the link, just in case something happens for OFPEC: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">// ************************************************* // buildingPosCount.sqf // Returns number of indexed positions in a building. // These positions can be used with the buildingPos function. // When using indexed positions from a script, // take in notice that 1st position has index number 0, // 2nd has index number 1 and so on. So if a building // has 8 positions, you can use them as 0...7 from a script // with the buildingPos function. // USAGE: // init: buildingPosCount = preprocessFile "buildingPosCount.sqf" // calling: <building> call buildingPosCount // returns: <integer> // example: _posses = nearestBuilding player call buildingPosCount // Baddo 2005 // You can contact me through www.ofpec.com // ************************************************* private "_i"; _i = 0; while { format ["%1", _this buildingPos _i] != "[0,0,0]" } do { _i = _i + 1; }; _i By the way, I noticed that nearestBuilding isn't detecting buildings which are placed in a script or in the editor. I recall that in OFP it worked but not so anymore in ArmA. You will want to use the other functions starting with near if you want to query for the buildings in a script. Regards, Baddo.

Hi, grab "ArmA tools" from http://www.kegetys.net/arma/ Baddo.

CPBO from Kegetys has worked flawlessly here. The "extract" appears as first item when I right-click a PBO file. Did you try to run the cpbo.exe directly again? If you run it from the Explorer you should get a command prompt window, cpbo outputs some text there which you should have a look what it says.

Disclaimer: my information is based on how OFP:R 1.96 works. I have no reason to assume this would not be true in ArmA also. Mate, are you sure about that? In OFP it isn't like so. Param1 doesn't have to be an array. player exec "script.sqs" script.sqs: <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">hint format ["%1",getPos _this] would show as hint the position of the player, right? No arrays passed to the script. I recommend not passing an array for your scripts when you only have one argument, as there is no point in doing so (other than if you absolutely want to add an unnecessary command and use select to pick that one argument out of the array). Oh, and about the player command: it is local to the computer where it is used, as such its value is different on every computer in the session. This means, if you host a session, if you run the player command on your computer, there is only one player character and that is your own character. Other player computers in the session have the player pointing to, well you can guess it now already. This information is, as stated above, for OFP and I can't say what happens with the character switching stuff present in ArmA. But it sounds logical to me that at any one time there can only be one player, you, in your computer, even if there is a character switching system in place. Regards, Baddo.

Don't forget http://www.ofpec.com/ at OFPEC the missions are put into beta testing and reviewing and are more likely to work as intended after going through the whole process.

It can be a lot safer to not assume that an objectID will stay the same over time. Your missions which use objectID's will break if there comes a new version of the island and objectID's have changed.

First make sure that the definition of "lag" is the same for everyone. Then compare.

Now that I think more about some of the reasons that I have heard why this war was started. A) Iraq, Saddam Hussein as the leader, was a partner-in-crime with Al-Qaeda. B) Iraq has Weapons of Mass Destruction (WOMD) which it is not allowed to have. It is now clear that the leaders of the assault have not been able to show us proof that these were true. I remember seeing from television how the leaders of the assault were talking about mobile WOMD laboratories and such. At that point I started to have a bad feeling about it already. It started to look like the leaders of the assault were in urgent need of some proof for the reasons why they started the assault. Very nice graphics were shown in TV about these mobile WOMD laboratories, indeed. Took some time and careful planning to construct such graphics and show them to the World. Some of the things I have been pondering about all this. You need to come up with the evidence first before you can judge someone as guilty, in a democratic system. No person is guilty until proven otherwise. It is the responsibility of the accusers to show that their accusations are true, before conviction can be done. All this has seemed to go in wrong order. Iraq was convicted. Saddam Hussein was convicted (R.I.P). A war was started. Thousands of people have been killed. More are going to die everyday. Thousands of people have been injured, many seriously. Thousands of people will live the rest of their lives with serious psychological problems. The accusators have been desperately looking for the evidence, with no luck. They still can't show us the proof for why they started the war. They started the war with no evidence to back it up. They started the war with no acception from the international community. They were told several times not to start a war. Yet they did. OK, the leaders of the assault made a mistake. They were simply put, wrong. You can now acknowledge that. That's what human beings often do, mistakes. But we can forgive them. It's not the end of the World if you make a mistake. This far, has never been. Admit your mistake and you could be forgiven. From there on, it would be much easier to work with the international community to clean up the mess.

Hi, head on to http://www.ofpec.com/ and go to Editors Depot. Download all tutorials you can find from there and read them one by one. As you go through the tutorials make sure to try the things out by yourself too. It's really worth it to do this, if you want to dive into OFP/ArmA editing. If you haven't done that it's much harder to do anything, and people would like you to first go through the tutorials and then, if you don't understand something or there is missing some information, then come to forums and ask us. Happy editing! Baddo.

Hi, head on to http://www.ofpec.com/ and go to Editors Depot. There you can find a "The OS OFP Trig guide" written by toadlife. Baddo.

I'd put the people responsible for starting the war in Iraq into court, there they could explain their reasonings and evidences. I remember the times when it seemed that a war is coming. The people at the school I was attending were getting angrier day by day. When the war had been started, angry comments from a lot of people were heard often. Today it does not surprise me that it has all become one big, giant mess. Stalin tried to liberate the population of Finland in 1939-1940. He was going to bring us a better system which could only do good for us. He was surprised that we wanted to fight so hard against him, causing him a major embarrassment with our small army. Today, the people who started the war in Iraq are surprised because the Iraqis did not welcome them and are fighting so hard against them. I want those who started it to clean it. They were told by others that their actions are not justified, and their actions will not be accepted by a lot of people. Now that you are in the mess, clean it up by yourself. Changing the name of French Fries to Freedom Fries does not change the fact that the reasons to start the war were highly unjustified and with no proof to back it up.

Thanks for the video, I get it now. No promises of buying such device though. I'd rather first investigate other, possible cheaper choices.

Dear All, I apologize for any possible misunderstandings from my part. The thing is, I bet BIS employees are having a good time reading our posts when we make guesses on how their company works, who is working on what, when we absolutely have no clue what is happening there. That must be entertaining to read for them (hopefully). "Haha, they have absolutely no clue!" I think we should just let them release any tools in any order they happen to do it, does it really matter in the end? After all, the main priority is elsewhere than in the tools as I already said. It takes them X amount of time to accomplish the task with the bigger tools. If the X is bigger than some people want them what can we do? Not much, other than trust them to know what they are doing, better than we do. With Love, Baddo.

Hi again RockofSL. No I did not miss the point, I read the thread carefully before replying, in order to make sure I did not miss anything. I do understand that you are confused about the order in which BIS plans to release the tools - but I find that very insignificant compared to the fact that the game has not been released for a large part of the prospective customers. The patches have also much higher priority in my opinion. You want the 3D modelling tool and the island editing tool released. Maybe it is not possible to do that in the available time. Maybe there must be work done in order to get the game published in some countries. Maybe there must be work done on the patches. Isn't it clear for you too that BIS releases the small tools first because that's probably much easier and they want to give you at least something? Please do not make assumptions of the level of knowledge and experience I possess. Do you know me well-enough in order to say what I know and what I don't know? Do I need to prove you that I know something about making 3D models for OFP? Do I need to prove you my knowledge in 3D modelling? Do I need to prove you that I know what kind of functionalities are needed in a 3D modelling program in order to create 3D models fast and efficiently? Do I need to prove you that those functionalities are non-existant in O2L and are very, very unlikely to appear in the next version? Do I need to prove you that I have both significant amount of education and significant amount of full-time work experience in several state-of-the-art 3D CAD programs and I recognize what is a good and efficient 3D modelling program and what is not? No I don't. I am not here to prove such things. Deanosbeano. What you are talking about, that's not even close to a comment on what I said! Thank you for making a nice un-counter-argument. The reaction from RockofSL is unfortunately what I feared, but definitely did not hope, to receive. Last time I voiced the same opinion on this very same subject (in a more ranting style I admit that, but I did not commit any personal attacks that time either) I received a personal attack asking who I am and did I ever do anything, plus other people came to support the personal attack. Now, RockofSL is questioning my knowledge on the subject of modelling for OFP, saying that I am not understanding the creation process and I am not speaking from a "high ground of knowledge". A personal attack based on pure imagination which has nothing to do with what I said. Do not judge people if you know nothing about them or about what they have done, please. It does not surprise me anymore that people behave like this in this forum. It is called Elite-behaviour. Unfortunately many people seem to practice such behaviour here, making this a hostile place for comments and opinions not coming from members who think they truly are Elite. RockofSL, I appreciate you and your contributions. I do not question your knowledge, other than what you tried to imply of me. I believe that you are a good person. As such, please refrain from making personal attacks. Best Wishes, Baddo.

Hi, please try to understand that the game has much higher priority than any of the development tools. If you read the interview again, there Marek Španěl clearly says what they are doing when they are not working on the development tools. The interview confirms what I said before: there is no team at BIS working only on the development tools, they are the same people who work on the game. That being the case, let them do the patches, let them release the game where they want to release it, only after that start to ask for the development tools if you didn't get them by then. There are much more people out there who want the game and the patches and don't care about any development tool and their needs has to be addressed first. If you think about it from a business point-of-view then it makes very, very much sense. You could of course try to buy the development tools from BIS and see if that speeds things up for you. What you can do in the mean time. I am sure you can use some another modelling tool to create your models. It can even be a much better choice for many people to not try to make their models from scratch in a limited program similar to Oxygen 2 Light, as it severely lacks functionalities, like the very important "Extrude" for starters. I am sure you can start creating island addons for Armed Assault already, as creating such addons takes quite a lot of planning and designing if a better-than-low quality is desired. Best Wishes, Baddo.

It is possible with only you and your AI team mates. The tactics I noticed to be effective at least for my style of play: give your team the sniper rifles plus the heavy machine guns, and pistols. AT launcher is not necessary but if you like it, take it. You can quite easily take out a BRDM with only the heavy machine gun, just shoot at a tyre a couple of seconds and the crew jumps out (make sure you are positioned so that the BRDM is unlikely to fire back). Also I noticed that it can be quite effective to arrange your team into line formation, relatively far away from the enemy like 300 meters. Give all team members targets and let them have some time to target. Then give permission to fire. Retreat quickly to a safe position when the targets have been taken down. This is effective and safe, but slow. If you want to keep your whole team alive to the end, you should avoid going into the town for as long as possible, that's where your team gets wiped out if anywhere. In multiplayer I have experienced victory many times already, even twice in a row which was quite amusing even with a low-numbered team. Good communication in the team is essential in multiplayer. Tell others what you are doing, warn them if you are going to advance into the town well before the rest of team, ask for permission from team leader for your actions, etc. etc. In single player one trick you can try is to have a look at the file My Documents/Arma Demo/armausername.armaprofile. I'm sure you will find something to edit in that file if you want to affect how good the enemy is.

CrashDome, there exists a comref for ArmA which is similar to the official comref 1.85 for OFP as hoz hinted about it, saying that the latest version he received was not up-to-date. That comref is much more suitable for reading with a tool as it is in good XML format, as you probably knowalready. Notice that before you spend a good amount of time writing something to parse the Biki if you do it only to get the command reference. Maybe BIS will listen to us and release an updated version of that comref, would save us a great deal of pain. pyro05x, I recommend starting a new thread here when you release your syntax highlighting rules, so you get good visibility for them. Thanks in advance for releasing them. Baddo

We definitely need a local copy of the comref in XML form. An up-to-date comref like the one Hoz is talking about is enough. Justifications: People can use it on computers not connected to Internet. People can use it to read the information relatively easily into a program and process as needed. It is much more convenient to use as a reference by people (who already know how to script) than the Biki is, because there is the command reference and nothing else. Some people have ISP's which are not reliable. Some people use slow modems. Not all people have internet connection. Etc. the list goes on and on. And last but not least, I've said this before and I say it again: documentation directly needed in the in-game mission editor should be shipped with the game and it is a shame that it has not been realized by BIS. Documentation is an important part of the in-game mission editor and as such should not be left out from the game package. You don't require an internet connection to be able to play the game; why do you require it for getting documentation for the in-game mission editor? This is not about addon creation, this is about documentation for something which is directly accessible through the in-game menus. If you disagree, take the mission editor away from your products because without documentation it is not far from useless. To the Biki issues, then. You could provide downloadable snapshots of the whole Biki. That is done by some people already somewhere else and I think it is very good service, I use such a local copy just because it is faster to use. I'm sure this does not require much from BIS to automate, like, say one snapshot a month. Another thing about the Biki. I see it as a problem if I go to the Biki, navigate to OFP command reference, look at a command and what do I get on the page? I get links to commands which only work in ArmA! Now isn't that nice, just what I wanted to see! Not... That's a problem I am telling you. It is all over the place. True, true, many commands are equal in both games, but this really doesn't help new people who try to figure out how stuff works I am sure about that. In general, the Biki is an interesting concept and probably it will become great over time. What is keeping me from adding content into it or fixing it (other than the very small fixes I've done this far)? It's almost all been said in this thread already. One more thing which is keeping me from contributing: I am 100 % sure that after writing an article containing as precise and correct information that I have been able to gather during the many years of OFP exploring and experimenting, someone will come and break it. That is not a question of if, it is a question of when. That is a major reason for me to not start contributing into the Biki. I'm quite sure many other people have the same feeling too, they rather put their text where they have total control over it. If that's no place at all, then it is a shame. Maybe more restrictive editing of the Biki can make this problem go away. Thanks for reading, Baddo.

...so it's one big simulation space then, not divided into multiple sections. We could still have the world, or some continents, modeled on a smaller scale. What is an appropriate maximum size for a game world in Armed Assault, that is still unanswered.

That's why we should get an answer from the programmers of Armed Assault, what do they think would be a maximum world size in the game. Also there could be a system in place in the game which splits the game world into multiple simulation sections. I think we don't know that before we get answers from a BIS programmer. Also I think we are not talking about modeling the Earth on a 1:1 scale anymore as it is very clear that it is out of our reach, it would need to be scaled smaller. That's why I said make it on a smaller scale. We can have all the continents in the game if we scale them down to a reasonable size. Then put some major cities from all continents in and that would be fun enough. Like for example the continent of America could be fitted into a world equal to Sahrani (and extent it to fit the rest, maybe leaving out some ocean to make it smaller).

Care to elaborate more? If you mean that the game world would be too big for the floating point data types to simulate accurately. Do you know how does Armed Assault handle the size of the game world? What if it splits the game world into multiple simulation pieces to achieve better accuracy already?

...is there anything more you'd like to tell us...? Edit: Wait, there is more coming! Oh yes what is up with that? Why two ways to show you can pick up a weapon?

A game should be designed so that when better and better hardware become available, the game only gets better and better. More graphic detail, more detailed physics (for visual effects) etc. If you start a game development project now, what kind of hardware would you target? Not at all what is sold today, but what is sold when your game is finished and published, also the game should be able to improve when better hardware becomes available as I already said. How will you make a correct guess what kind of hardware will the end users have when the game is published, is a good question. I'm playing ArmA demo 1.03.5116 on a very low-spec system compared to what most people tell on these forums, and I acknowledge the fact that the game can't be run on nice graphics or on nice frame rates so I don't complain. I'm happy because the game will get even better in the future when I get better hardware, it is already now enough to impress and make me want to play it. Baddo

[ZG]BUZZARD, I was talking about the future, not present day. It would surprise us all if the performance of the Internet would halt to the level it is now. Also the system could work so that a client has part of the required information initially installed, but will download more detailed information from a server as, and only if, needed. Also when you would start the application for the first time, you could determine a start position in the world and the program would then download that area so startup from there on would be fast. Textures and 3D models could be pre-installed and only terrain elevation data and information how to place the textures and 3D models could be downloaded (WRP file in BIS products). The selection of textures and 3D models could be limited to a reasonable level. Many more tricks possible to use no doubt about that. Note that this talk is about another possible product, not about products from BIS to this date, of course. Some more ideas how a large world could be modelled, also for BIS products. Computer program generates the world based on pre-determined rules. A rule could be: make this area desert with no buildings. Another rule would be: make this area urban, with many buildings close to each other. Rules could include limits for maximum and minimum terrain elevation, percentage of water vs. land etc. The generator program would be given categorized textures and 3D models so the program could throw appropriate textures and 3D models into the areas set by your rules. Now the program would go on and generate the world according to the rules you gave. No need to go and model every single bit by hand. Accuracy to the real world would be reduced significantly but that would only make it practically possible to accomplish the task. If there would be a need to model a certain place more accurately, such area could be modelled by hand to the detail level you wish and let the program generate the rest. I do not see it practical to try and do all this manually by yourself; there should really be a computer program generating the content based on rules. Baddo

This kind of project could be doable on a much smaller scale (resize the Earth to 1:100 or something). If someone first makes a program which generates the required world data, based on some real-world terrain, road, city etc. database. Way too much work for anyone to do it by hand, but put a computer to do it and then it might be possible... if there is a streaming engine in place in the game then why would the loading times be too long? Only a very small portion of the world would have to be loaded, no more than your maximum view distance plus a buffer area to allow movement without hicups. Problems I see: - huge size of data required as input - huge size of data as output - huge inaccuracy of the output because of practical impossibility of the task of creating accurate result Google Earth is pretty impressive nowadays, even most buildings in Manhattan start to have 3D shape! Future could bring games which use a database centre to store the world data and the client application would download it as needed, just like in Google Earth. The required detail would be higher in a game than in Google Earth though. A database centre would solve the problem of client application package being too large to be practical to distribute.