UbiquitousUK

A Different Kind of War III: India Down Some time ago, I distributed a pair of missions known as "A Different Kind of War" and "A Different Kind of War II", with the expectation of making a third to finish the series. Well, now I have a release version of it. This is the third mission in the "A Different kind of War" series. As the insurgency on mainland Chernarus intensifies, it is clear that a key source of finance for the insurgents' operations is the illegal manufacture and export of opiates. The recent elimination by Force Recon of insurgent poppy seed production facilities north east of Krasnostav and key logistical facilities on Utes has severely impeded the smuggler's activities. Now is the time for the coup de grace: a once and for all strike at the leadership structure of the insurgents' operation. Intelligence gathered by FR operatives on Utes island and civilian informants in Chernarus is helping to close the net around the insurgent drug smugglers whom we have been pursuing. Your mission is to insert behind Russian lines to strike a fatal blow to the insurgent command and control structure. INSERTION: You will insert by parachute out of a C-130J above the target area. PRIMARY OBJECTIVES: Your primary objective is the elimination of two key figures; (i) Dragan Globenko, head of the local secret police and enforcer for the insurgents, and (ii) Fedor Cherchesov, the head of the smuggling operation. SECONDARY OBJECTIVES: Destroy insurgent weapons caches at Solnichniy Factory, and eliminate insurgent H.Q. Download: ArmAHolic; FileFactory Installation: Extract the pbo file to your .\ArmA2\Missions folder. No add-ons/expansions required. Version History: v1.1 (1st May 2012) Added option to select from different sniper rifles in the gear menu at the mission briefing screen.

I started back with OFP in around 2002. For the longest time I managed to get by with typing stuff into the init or on activation fields in the editor. Every time I wanted to do something that I didn't know about, I would head over to the community wiki and look up the relevant commands. One day I decided that I wanted to make a mission in which a group of 8 randomly selected opfor units would spawn and then repeatedly patrol around the perimeter of a trigger. I realised this would be too much to practically put into the editor so I wrote a simple script that randomly selected the units, spawned them, and gave them a set of waypoints whose location was calculated based on the size and orientation of the trigger. Although this script was quite simple, it was a watershed moment for me because suddenly I realised that I could do anything! A small amount of tweaking and my simple little script would create an amphibious invasion in which 20 boats full of opfor hit the beach--all without having to place anything in the editor. If I were to come up with some advice, it would be to try a little project in which you forget about building a mission for just a second and focus purely on wrting a script to do something cool. Spawn a group that patrols some random waypoints, write a script that has a jet fly overhead at random intervals, write a script so that when one group of defenders dies it is automatically replaced by another. Once you've had the awesome feeling of watching a whole bunch of stuff happen according to your script, you'll want to script everything. One last point: note that all of the scripts above are general purpose. This is something really great about writing stand alone scripts rather than doing everything in the editor. Once I have written my patrol script I can use it in every mission just by copying the script into the mission's folder. Before long you will have a personal library of scripts that will help you to develop complicated missions much more quickly than would otherwise be possible.

Is there a way via scripts to achieve any or all of the following things?: Disable collision for an object so that you can walk through it. Reduce the saturation of a single object so that it is rendered in grayscale (rest of the world still rendered at full saturation. Reduce the opacity of an object so that you can partly see through it. Essentially, this boils down to the question: is it possible to make a unit look like a ghost?

Thanks both. I can indeed achieve (1) with a combination of disableCollisionWith, disableSimulation, and allowDamage. It seems like there are problems getting setObjectTexture to put a translucent texture onto a unit. I would be willing to give up on the opacity if I could turn the object in question (a rifleman in this case) into a completely white statue. However, when I do object setObjectTexture [0,'#(argb,8,8,3)color(1,1,1,1)']; the uniform turns white, but not the skin, helmet, vest, weapon, goggles, etc. Is there a way to make all of these things white? From what I read, this isn't possible because there is no hiddenselection entry for a rifleman's skin.

In previous ArmA games, tutorials were delivered via hints. This remains true in ArmA III, but the hints now seem a lot fancier: they have a title bar that is colour-coordinated with the GUI and they start collapsed with text along the lines of "press [H] to expand". I know that I can create a very simple hint via the scripting command hint "hint text"; but does anyone know how to implement one of these modern BIS style hints?

Thanks guys, BIS_fnc_advHint was what I was looking for.

I would go with Iceman's solution (because it keeps everything nice and tidy in the editor), but if you want a more visual way to do this then you can do the following: select the group tool [F2] and drag from the trigger to the unit in order to group them together. Then when you open the trigger properties the usual menu for selecting who must be present to fire the trigger has changed to have the options "leader of this group", "the whole group", "any member of this group", "this group's vehicle".

I remember reading several months ago that BIS were considering releasing an official tool to allow you to use this content in ArmA III. Has there been any further news on this?

Awesome work. I am transitioning from emacs to ST2 for my work and your syntax highlighting gives me a personal reason to enjoy the move.

I have the strategic map working properly. For anyone who comes here looking for this, here is how I did it: As suggested by Saetheer, start by placing a whiteboard with this addAction ["Open Strategic Map", "scripts\osm.sqf"]; in the init line. Then structure the osm.sqf as follows: start_mission01 = { [color="#FF0000"] <here put the code to be executed when the player selects the first mission>[/color] }; start_mission02 = { [color="#FF0000"] <here put the code to be executed when the player selects the first mission>[/color] }; _missionsData = [ [[color="#FF0000"]<Position (array) of mission 01>[/color],start_mission01,"[color="#FF0000"]<Text to Display>[/color]","[color="#FF0000"]<Description>[/color]","","[color="#FF0000"]<image>[/color]",1,[]], [[color="#FF0000"]<Position (array) of mission 02>[/color],start_mission02,"[color="#FF0000"]<Text to Display>[/color]","[color="#FF0000"]<Description>[/color]","","[color="#FF0000"]<image>[/color]",1,[]] ]; disableserialization; _parentDisplay = [] call bis_fnc_displayMission; _mapCenter = [color="#FF0000"]<position (array) to centre the strategic map on when first opened>[/color]; _ORBAT = []; _markers = []; _images = []; _overcast = overcast; _isNight = !((dayTime > 6) && (dayTime < 20)); _scale = 0.3; _simul = true; [ findDisplay 46, _mapCenter, _missionsData, _ORBAT, _markers, _images, _overcast, _isNight, _scale, _simul ] call Bis_fnc_strategicMapOpen; changing the red stuff to meet your needs. Here's a complete example from a recent mission of mine: startAAA = { cutText ["","BLACK FADED",0,True]; player enableSimulation false; "mrk_startAAA" setMarkerSize [1,1]; player setpos getmarkerpos "mrk_startAAA"; {_x setpos getmarkerpos "mrk_startAAA";_x enableAI "ANIM";_x switchMove ""} forEach [a2,a3,a4,a5]; a2 joinAsSilent [group player, 2]; a3 joinAsSilent [group player, 3]; a4 joinAsSilent [group player, 4]; a5 joinAsSilent [group player, 5]; group player setBehaviour "STEALTH"; player setdir 64; var_start = true; var_startAAA = true; player say ["start_AAA",500]; sleep 7; player enableSimulation true; cutText ["","BLACK IN",5,True]; sleep 9; savegame; }; startArty = { cutText ["","BLACK FADED",0,True]; player enableSimulation false; "mrk_startArty" setMarkerSize [1,1]; player setpos getmarkerpos "mrk_startArty"; {_x setpos getmarkerpos "mrk_startArty";_x enableAI "ANIM";_x switchMove ""} forEach [a2,a3,a4,a5]; a2 joinAsSilent [group player, 2]; a3 joinAsSilent [group player, 3]; a4 joinAsSilent [group player, 4]; a5 joinAsSilent [group player, 5]; group player setBehaviour "STEALTH"; player setdir 124; var_start = true; var_startArty = true; player say ["start_Arty",500]; sleep 7; player enableSimulation true; cutText ["","BLACK IN",5,True]; sleep 13; savegame; }; startHelo = { cutText ["","BLACK FADED",0,True]; player enableSimulation false; "mrk_startHelo" setMarkerSize [1,1]; player setpos getmarkerpos "mrk_startHelo"; {_x setpos getmarkerpos "mrk_startHelo";_x enableAI "ANIM";_x switchMove ""} forEach [a2,a3,a4,a5]; a2 joinAsSilent [group player, 2]; a3 joinAsSilent [group player, 3]; a4 joinAsSilent [group player, 4]; a5 joinAsSilent [group player, 5]; group player setBehaviour "STEALTH"; player setdir 57; var_start = true; var_startHelo = true; player say ["start_Helo",500]; sleep 5; player enableSimulation true; cutText ["","BLACK IN",5,True]; sleep 8; savegame; }; ////////////////////////////////////////// _missionsData = [ [getmarkerpos "mrk_AAA",startAAA,"AAA Position","Secondary Objective: This OPFOR AAA base must be eliminated before CAS can safely be tasked to the area.","","images\img_AAA.jpg",1,[]], [getmarkerpos "mrk_Arty",startArty,"Artillery Emplacement","The primary objective is the destruction of the Aktinarki artillery battery.","","images\img_Arty.jpg",1,[]], [getmarkerpos "mrk_Helo",startHelo,"Attack Helicopter","Secondary Objective: A CSAT attack helicopter operates out of this position and represents a threat to the mission.","","images\img_Helo.jpg",1,[]] ]; ////////////////////////////////////////// disableserialization; _parentDisplay = [] call bis_fnc_displayMission; _mapCenter = getmarkerpos "mrk_mapCentre"; _ORBAT = []; _markers = []; _images = []; _overcast = overcast; _isNight = !((dayTime > 6) && (dayTime < 20)); _scale = 0.3; _simul = true; [ findDisplay 46, _mapCenter, _missionsData, _ORBAT, _markers, _images, _overcast, _isNight, _scale, _simul ] call Bis_fnc_strategicMapOpen;

I read in the comments on one of the community wiki articles the code necessary to create a link within a briefing entry or task description that, when clicked, executes a script. Now I can't find the article in question. Does anyone know how to create such a link?

Yes, that's it. Thank you very much.

A quick way to change a bunch of units to Brits is to put the following into your init.sqf file. { private ["_vests","_uniforms","_mags","_y"]; _y = _x; _vests = ["V_PlateCarrierL_CTRG","V_PlateCarrierH_CTRG"]; _uniforms = ["U_B_CTRG_1","U_B_CTRG_2","U_B_CTRG_3"]; _mags = magazines _y; removeVest _y; removeUniform _y; _y addVest (_vests call BIS_fnc_selectRandom); _y addUniform (_uniforms call BIS_fnc_selectRandom); { _y addMagazine _x } forEach _mags; } forEach [[color="#FF0000"]unit1,unit2,unit3,etc.[/color]]; changing the red unit names to match those of the units you want to change to Brits. This code randomly selects a British vest uniforms to give to each unit in the list so you get some variety. The one quirk is that removing the unit's vest also seems to remove all of their ammo so it is necessary to temporarily store a list of their ammo in the variable "_mags" and then give them the ammo back once their vest is changed.

I think BIS have been selling themselves short by calling this the "crown jewel of Arma III"; Altis is the crown jewel of the entire gaming industry.

Will steam start fetching the update automatically, or is a steam restart required?

Well, I have been playing BI military simulations since picking up OFP in 2002, but I always shied away from the multiplayer scene because public servers seemed to offer little more than chaos. Then, by pure chance, I stumbled upon the Zeus community server. In the ~2 weeks that I have been frequenting the Zeus server I have discovered a whole new side to ArmA that is even more wonderful that that which I knew already. The Zeus guys have a truly great server/community going on, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to play this game the way it was intended. I, for one, am grateful for the work the admins put into keeping everything running along smoothly. Thanks folks!

I have a rig with the following specs: i7 950 12GB DDR3 GTX 460SE 1024mb 256gb OCZ Vertex 4 SSD and get 30-40fps with "standard" settings at 1920x1200 in the average single player missions. I am contemplating upgrading the GPU to allow me to bump the graphics quality up, but I'm not sure how effective this will be. Does anyone have any idea how badly my CPU is likely to bottleneck with, say, a GTX760?

Don't laugh.... but A3 runs about as well well on my 15" MacBook Retina Pro as it does on my desktop (desktop specs: Win 7/i7 950/ 12GB/ GTX460). Neither system maxes this game, but the Macbook is thin, light, stylish, and surprisingly capable as a gaming rig. you can see lots of videos on YouTube of the retina MacBook running Crysis 3/Battlefield 3 if you want an idea of what it can do. You should get a similar experience out of a Razer Blade gaming laptop, but I find the aesthetics of the apple device less conspicuous when I want to run Arma in the middle of a work committee meeting!

I would gladly take Arma 3 in its current state over the awkwardness that was Arma 2's movement controls. The negative mouse acceleration et al were the worst things about Arma 2.

That doesn't make sense. If you don't want to give rights to Valve then no one is going to make you put your content onto steamworks. Why stope people who want to distribute their work through that channel from doing so? This also doesn't make sense. Firstly, steam/valve does not have legal rights to rock's works if you upload them without permission. I.P law (and property rights more generally) just doesn't work like that. I agree that there is a practical problem insofar as it takes time to contact Valve and tell them to take content down, but I fail to see how this is specific to steam workshop. The same would be true about contacting any host regarding an I.P. violation.

But this is a separate issue. The justificantion for not using Steam Workshop is that it involves an assignment of I.P rights. You are now not talking about the license terms, but rather about the piracy of content. There are two problems with steamworks: You have to transfer unlimited usage rights to valve when putting content up there. People might upload content that isn't theirs and try to take credit for it. 1 is not really a problem because any transfer of rights to Valve is invalid if the transferer does not have any rights in the I.P. concerned. Nobody is going to be able to give away any I.P. rights that they don't own. 2 is a problem, but it is in no way a problem specific to steam. I can easily take someone's I.P. and put it up on a website I host on some Swedish server somewhere. If anything, Steam helps with this problem because it's going to be a lot easier to get that content taken off of steam workshop than it is to get it taken down from some random website.

I don't see the problem with Steamworks. Are people saying that they think someone will take content that isn't theirs and assign unlimited usage rights to Valve? It's impossible for someone to assign I.P. rights in something they don't own; any attempt to transfer rights to Valve would be invalid and Valve would be obliged to respect the rights owner's demands to desist in any usage. The only time the Steamworks agreement would have any bite is when people are transferring rights in their own intellectual property, and they should be free to do that if they wish.

For what it's worth, I have been playing since the original OFP a little over a decade ago and this is the first time that the movement has felt slick enough for me to consider PvP appealing. I'm sure that I'm not alone in this sentiment, so I would expect to see a vibrant PvP scene. Right now there are a bunch of servers running a PvP mode called Blitzkried, and I am having an absolute blast playing that.

Good article, which I enjoyed. I have been making essentially this point on IGN--thought I might exploit EA's misfortune to convert a few more over the the ArmA fold :cool:. Had head about the SC connection problems, but not about the apparent simplicity of the glass box "simulation" engine.

{deleteVehicle _x} foreach thislist in the on act field of a trigger should delete the unit inside of the trigger.