Homer Johnston

Current Version: 0.3 (BETA) May 25, 2012 DOWNLOAD v0.3 -Download Mirrors/news posts welcome! This should be considered "beta" software - backup your work frequently before and during use! Caution: the tool uses your clipboard to transfer data. It's possible to get large amounts of data on your clipboard (80+ MB in some cases)... I've noticed this causes some programs (like mIRC) to lag strangely. You may want to copy something else small onto the clipboard after you finish using the tool, to "clear it off". CHANGELOG: v0.3 - added terrain smoother, file in/out operations (saving session, exporting road paths to file), several misc. UI improvements and bug fixes v0.2 - added Operation Arrowhead road definitions, fixed panning issue with windowed or 3D res other than 100% v0.1 - initial release DEMO VIDEO OF INSTALLATION AND USAGE: INSTALLATION: 1) Move the included folder, "_Road_Painter2.TerrainName", into your "...\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\Username\Missions" folder 2) Rename the suffix ".TerrainName" to your own terrain 3) Move the included folder, "@HOMJ", into your "...\ArmA 2 Operation Arrowhead" folder 4) Launch ArmA loading 1.60 Beta, plus @HOMJ and your terrain as addons. The supplied .cmd file is optional to help with this (all you should have to do is edit it to include your @folder) Questions, comments, bugs, suggestions, maybe even offers for help are welcome! Currently on the future to-do list, in order of priority, are: 1) See if I can add train tracks to the system Cheers. ------------ Old Versions for archive/backup v0.2 alpha v0.1 alpha

We're hoping to have some config bugs solved with our next update, which will (in theory) allow Sickboy to add I44 to his online classlist generator. In the meantime, there are some "ghetto" classlists available; see this ticket: https://dev-heaven.net/issues/28987

First, you need an addon defining your roads so that they can be spawned in-game via createVehicle (or placed with the editor) Second, you have to define it for the tool in roadpainter.terrain\RoadParts.sqf... it's fairly well commented and a motivated person should be able to figure it out; add a new "Master" entry into the HOMJ_RP_RoadListMaster array, and then define your new road family by that name down below, similar to the other existing ones. I'm hoping to try adding the basic BIS rail pieces in the next update, I'm not sure yet how they'll work!

A couple more work-in-progress tank videos to wet peoples' appetites. For best results, open it in youtube and turn on hi-def: SiT9ChLBF1o _kpy8RPkPjg

Ah, yes; it is hardcoded to use ...ArmA 2\@HOMJ. I'll clarify that at some point. Thanks.

There's no such thing as "real" roads... Once they're exported to the WRP file, the roads made by this are no different than any other road you've made. If the AI aren't following them, it's because of some other reason (combat behaviour, road doesn't benefit their pathfinding, etc). In any of my tests, they'll follow these roads just fine.

Sounds like another annoying bug in Visitor... possibly a small error inside your PEW file that occurred earlier. I know I've heard of objects being non-selectable in Visitor but this is much worse than "normal" :( Perhaps we'll also need a Visitor script to search for and delete road p3ds too

1. Yes 2. Hmm, not something I noticed in my tests. Do you know which road family you were using? Maybe some of them are bugged 3. I'm guessing you're working with a 2048x2048 heightmap, it will take some time (maybe several minutes). Longer especially if you have a very slow CPU. 4. not in the near future, I may have further interest in tool dev later on, or possibly for A3.

Hmm... some questions for you: 1) does the "save session" button work and create a file with some data or is it also empty? 2) are you sure the export process is done when you check? (arma freezes while it is working, it unfreezes when done) 3) what OS are you using? The process of operations is: 1) Arma tells plugin "make new file" 2) Plugin makes new file, empty (0 bytes) 3) Arma copies data to windows clipboard 4) Arma tells plugin to write data from clipboard to file 5) plugin transfers data from clipboard to file (0 bytes should almost instantly change to XX megabytes)

IMPORTANT NOTE: The file export/import functions require you to be using the latest beta version of Arma, not just 1.60 retail. Sorry for forgetting to mention earlier! Also, there may be bugs with the terrain smoother if roads pass under-water; I have to find time to test this (or hope one of you guys does :P) and will try to fix for next release

Root post updated, v0.3 download link posted. god help us all. Let me know in this thread if you find any nasty issues, if needed I'll try to do a maintenance update within a couple weeks.

Has anyone ever started doing something to make summer ArmA2 trees? I ask because several months ago, I started recoloring the trees but never finished. It's a pretty time intensive task. Anyways, I've had the work half-complete on my PC since August and feel like either giving it away, or soliciting help to complete it. I'm at work (and bored) but here's an example of what I was doing: Sample small forest (over 100kb I think): http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l7/kylewilcox/Fonzo/green-test2.jpg I stopped working on this because a) I didn't want to have to recolor all the ground of Chernarus to summer colors, b) the tree LOD's aren't all that great in ArmA2, c) it just takes a lot of time. I think I got about 1/3rd of all the trees done though (not bushes or other vegetation). I'm basically just opening this up to public discussion if anyone's interested; I have a how-to written up on how I did this that I can post here as well. Also, I am not sure if releasing this type of mod would be allowed since BIS hasn't released MLOD's, and it requires a minor hex-edit to change a texture path in the binarized model. Cheers.

Nice thought; I wasn't really aware of those commands. I'll be able to use them to speed one or two things up, but sadly the actual smoother algorithm simply involves millions (literally) of point->point distance calculations and it just isn't that fast. However, I'm also using a near-3-year-old CPU, and the number of calculations required depends on both the map cell size & your total smoothing width (i.e. 20m in my test). Proving Grounds is a pretty brutal heightmap to work on, compared to e.g. a 10m grid. There are a couple things I'll be able to do to speed it up, but it's still going to be a pretty slow process. Users will hopefully be able to quickly learn some settings they like (or just draw a short "test" path) and reuse them without needing to try out a bunch of different settings...

Sigh, time passes too fast... here's a new little video to tide you folks over, and hopefully buy me just another week or so to run this thing through some rigorous tests and finalize some needed import/export options :) CGA2KnFN3DM

As Pac said, please confirm if you are using 2.6 or 2.61; should be fixed in 2.61, but if it isn't then I would like to know. Further, there are no instructions to move anything into the ArmA 2 folder - just ArmA 2 OA (maybe you just weren't clear on that - no problem if so). You're correct and incorrect. If you just doubleclick on the exe it will do this; if you run with special launch parameters (-mod) then it won't.

There is a rough list of items here in a .txt file: https://dev-heaven.net/issues/28987 In a few weeks, we'll probably have a more attractive classlist tree viewer, but for now that'll have to do. Let me know if you can't find your item in the file, there may still be bugs in the generator I'm using.

I haven't fiddled with terrains in years, but back in ancient times I always used 3DEM to convert a GeoTIFF to a terragen .ter, and then loaded that into Wilbur & converted again to a 16 bit png. Took me a while to figure out how to do it, but it always worked just fine for me ;) can't recall how I cropped an area, though.

"Old" missions will have to be played the "old" way; medic units should have a magic "heal" action item. If you edit the mission and place the [i44] wounding module, the new system will be active.

Yeah it looks like you're right - no XYZ export from Visitor. However, I've got the DePBO source now (thanks Mikero!) and it looks like it may have all the capability I'll need to plug it into my program. I'll be able to do a test later this week - fingers crossed.

Sure, but not much! I've been spending every spare hour helping Invasion '44 get version 2.6 and just a few hours ago patch 2.61 released :) However - now that those are done, I get a break from it. I spent today getting my DLL plugin working nicely, and added my own self-explanatory functions to the game: ["filepath"] call HOMJ_DLL_IO_newFile; ["filepath", "data"] call HOMJ_DLL_IO_write; ["filepath"] call HOMJ_DLL_IO_read; Using these, I've got it set up now that the "Export" buttons will create .txt files ready for Visitor. Now I'm working on a system to save/load work-paths so that you can close/reopen a project. Pictures: I draw two roads and use "Save Paths to File" + "Export All", and it makes files under subfolders within "ArmA2OA\@HOMJ\DataFolder\". For now I'm hardcoding it to only work on files in this subfolder, to prevent the chance of wrecking other files on your HDD ;). Once I have this all working, I have to make a little dialog for the Smoother... then I have to tackle the heightmap, loading the elevation matrix of the terrain so I can modify it and export it. My dream is to load data from a PEW file into ArmA (and inject data back into it!), but for a speedier release I might do something more simple, like export XYZ from Visitor and manually load that into RoadPainter, and vice-versa. Hoping for something usable by the end of the month, but we'll see how it goes after I dedicate a few more nights to it.

Apologies, perhaps we're all a bit spoiled by "good" internet these days. These are the MD5s from my downloads, which I'd believe to be valid: 2.60 -- 40fe45f9977ac913e6e47a1b2fe5be10 2.61 -- 7b97e10dddab8360095a37249ae871e1

The armor module is pretty basic at the moment. It takes into consideration the angle from which you're attacking the target (there are 6 "sides" at 60 degree intervals), not so much what portion of the tank you actually hit... i.e. shooting a tank from its 1 o'clock and hitting it on the side will do the same % damage as hitting it on the front, however one would hurt the tracks more and one would hurt the hull more. In the future I'd like to set things up more in-depth (i.e. define falloff distances for shells, set up more accurate hitpoints so that a track hit will disable tracks and not damage your whole tank, etc...) but it'll be a slow process, there's a lot on my plate and it takes a lot of testing to develop stuff like that. If this ticket were resolved, I'd be able to implement actual rounds bouncing off of armor based on their actual impact angle and other fun features... but currently all I have is the handleDamage eventhandler which is pretty basic. :(

Unfortunately the wounding system will not be developed for AI units, only player-units. Currently in 2.6, there is no way to heal AI soldiers - I'm planning to put it in, but it will be a fairly basic system; the dialog will just say "<AI's name> is wounded" and allow you to heal, but give no further info. As well, if the wounding system isn't enabled and you are a medic, there will be a simple addaction to heal wounded soldiers. Sadly we had to break some of the normal gameplay mechanics to make these features.

No further discussion please.