thirith

I expect this is a very newbie question, but does the server always know where all units are? I'm asking because I've read that units can be 'owned' by clients (e.g. a Headless Client) as well, and I don't know if this means that the server might not always know every single position. More concretely: if I create a trigger that spawns, say, a smoke grenade when heli1 is in the trigger area and begin the trigger with an if (isServer) condition, will this work and is it the right way to ensure that I don't spawn a smoke grenade for every single client plus the server?

Thanks, that's a good idea.

Thanks. Somewhat tangential question: Is there an easy way to test how a mission would behave on a dedicated server setup? I do use a second PC as a dedicated server, but if there are easier ways of testing a mission I'm working on than copying it over to the second PC, launching the server, connecting and playing, that'd be much appreciated.

I've read around a bit and it seems that BIS_fnc_arrayShuffle either was or still is broken. Is that the case? I've not found any clear up-to-date info on the matter. If it's broken, what's the recommended workaround?

Ah, I didn't know about that. I assume that units or objects created in the editor are named on all clients as well as the server - is that correct?

Thanks yet again. :-)

It was this thread here: From the discussion it wasn't clear to me whether there was still a problem (or if there was some confusion in the first place). If it's not an issue, all the better. Thanks!

Thing with just trying is that I don’t have the experience to know if the results would be consistent or if they’d be different if I used a dedicated server etc. I’m a scripting newbie, but I know that there are factors that may influence the results that I’m simply not aware of.

For the mission I'm currently working on, I'd like to create areas where you might bump into enemies without placing the enemy units by hand. Is there a module that allows for this, ideally with a number of parameters (e.g. enemy types, group size, likelihood of enemies spawning when players are in the area)? Alternatively, is there a script or similar that does this sort of thing well?

Brilliant, thanks! I'll try that out next time I work on the mission. (Also, love the random answers. Arma missions need more Monkey Island.) The mission itself will be an asymmetrical versus mission: a squad is tasked with negotiating a truce with a couple of village leaders while a two-man sniper/spotter team is tasked with preventing this from happening. I don't know yet whether that'll actually work out, but I like the idea of asymmetrical versus missions as a nice change of pace from our usual coop fare.

I'm currently thinking of creating a mission where one team is tasked with gathering intel from the civilian population. The way this works in my mind is as follows: all the civilians in a Takistani village should have an action added (e.g. "Talk to civilian"); when it's used, a counter goes up by one and the action is removed from that particular civilian. Once the counter is higher than 3, a certain location is revealed. I think I know how to do this in a heavy-handed way, adding it to each civilian manually - but I expect there'd be a smarter, more elegant way to script this. Any suggestions how best to get this done?

I expect there's a common solution to this, but I haven't found any yet: when I use the "Create diary" module to create briefing texts in the editor, they appear normally when I test the mission from the editor, but once the mission is PBOed and on the dedicated server, the briefing texts always are shown twice. Is there a solution to this or is the "Create diary" module too twitchy and it's better to do the briefing texts outside the editor?

Thanks. So what's happening is that the briefing is created on each client and then again because the dedicated server runs it?

I expect this question has been answered elsewhere, but I've yet to find the relevant information. My question is about scripts that are executed only on the server and whether/how they cascade down to clients. If I have a waypoint that is only completed once a certain variable (say CheckThis) is set to True and the server executes a script CheckThis = True, what happens? Does the server tell the clients that the waypoint has been completed, even though CheckThis isn't True yet on those clients? Or does the server do its own thing? Would I need to make CheckThis public after it's been set to True so that all the clients are on the same page as the server?

Cheers. In other words, if I can't be sure that an AI group is local to the server, it's best to make sure that whatever causes the waypoint to complete happens on all machines, server and clients, right?

I'm thinking of creating a simple defend mission to use as a warmup for my group (6-10 people). They'd be placed in a small town or a camp and told that several waves of attackers are bearing down on them; then, after a couple of minutes, the first wave would attack, then the second (based either on time or on the first wave having been killed), then the third etc. However, there are a number of questions I have before getting started on this: I have a fairly good idea of how to do this in a fully scripted way, but I'd like the waves to be somewhat randomised, in particular in terms of the direction they're coming from. How do I best do this? Any rule-of-thumb suggestions how many enemies there should be in each wave? And are there any good ways (e.g. useful scripts) that help with respect to adjusting enemy numbers to the number of players? Any tips on how I can best let the number of waves be a parameter that the admin can set before launching the mission? I'd probably set this mission on Altis, putting my players in Alikampos. Any suggestions for other good locations so I can change it up? (We're using Apex as well as the CUP maps.) Any tips would be much appreciated!

Again, great tips. I'll probably try the current mission without any adjustments to see how it works (and adjust if OPFOR proves to be too cautious), but especially if I go with your Takistan/Ravanay suggestion I'd probably go for your suggestion above.

Thanks! Will they fire back at all like that? Or do I have to re-enable autocombat once they’re closer?

Final follow-up question before I test the mission on my guys: is it worth setting allowfleeing to 0 and set OPFOR courage to 1? I want to make sure that I don't have too overly cautious enemies hiding in bushes and behind walls where the players might not find them.

Not so much...ish. Say I placed the waypoint in the editor, with CheckThis as a condition for completion. Now a server-only script sets CheckThis = True. What happens?

Good tip, johnnyboy, I didn't know that about Respawn to Group. That'll make it easier for me to play the mission from beginning to end at least once.

Thanks. I ended up not using your lockwp tip, since I couldn't get it to work (no idea where I went wrong); instead, I've now got OPFOR starting at a somewhat greater distance and prone. Still using your TALK waypoints, though, and a couple of variables that need to be set to true before the teams continue to the next WP; so far it seems to work okay. I'll only be able to test the mission this coming Saturday (we only play every two weeks or so). If anyone wants to try it out (players: 1-12), though, I'd be happy to share the PBO on OneDrive. Once I've tested it with others, I might put it on the Steam workshop.

Those are some fantastic tips. I won’t put all of them into practice in my first defend mission, simply because I tend to overcomplicate my missions compared to my actual scripting skills, but I’m thinking of doing 3-4 such missions (thanks for the suggested locations!) and add some elements with each one. Right now I’ve definitely got too many enemies, though; one wave consists of 32 attackers to my 12 defenders (some groups don’t spawn based on the number of defending units), but there are four waves. That’s probably too many... I’m also wondering if the waves should be timed or based on how many attackers are still alive, e.g. once 25% of a wave has been killed, the next wave comes in. Any opinions?

Weird... If the units are hidden and then unhidden, lockWP false doesn’t seem to do anything, but if they’re not hidden, it works as it should.

Though the lockwp and hideObject commands would have to be outside the in statement, right? The effects of those commands seem to be local.