Tonmeister

i had the game gifted to me, but was on the verge of buying it myself. Yet, I'm more than happy to part with my money for something like this, because 15 odd years playing arma titles, and reforger is another worthwhile experience which attempts to push at some boundaries. So far, I like the direction it's all going

@.kju and team, congrats with all the work done. With the move from the LITE version to the new steam release, should we expect previously built missions to still run using the Second wave; any immediate mission breaking changes, eg changes to asset names and associated config entries? I literally only make WW2 missions for my community using only IFA, so looking forward making IFA missions for 2022. Here's a recording of one such mission, not my recording tho.

I'm hoping someone might be able to answer this, but first-off, we've been playing Liberation for Malden on our dedicated server with HC for some time. Currently we're playing as blufor and I've noticed that at the start of the mission there's a couple of random blufor Ai units that just spawn in, on the northern side of the island thereby activating two fairly large towns. At the moment its a frame-killer as most of our activity is on the southern side of the island. Is there any way to prevent this random side based spawning from occurring? It could be that I'm not seeing it, but If it's a mechanic of the mission then I'm hoping there's a modifiable parameter for preventing units from the players side just randomly spawning in and activating areas the player isn't even in. Ultimately if it's units from the players side, then I'd like to turn that random spawning off. Any thoughts on what can be done to prevent this from happening? nvm, sorted. apparently it was an issue to do with the how the factions were set-up

I still consider your scripts, norrin, as groundbreaking even for today's armaverse

absolutely agree. This mod is the only reason I continue to make missions and play arma3. Keep those images coming and let the imagination bring them to life...

So I have a mission where I'd like players, once they die, to respawn as a group, rather than individually. So far my understanding of the respawn template "wave", is that its primary function is to do just that, however the behaviour I'm finding is that players will still respawn individually, and not as a group as intended. So its not clear to me how "wave" is any different from a standard respawn. The basic mission setup include the following parameters via the description.ext; respawn = 3; respawndelay = 60; respawnOnStart = 0; respawnTemplates[] = {"Counter","Wave"}; Each player is given a certain number of tickets, and If a player dies they go into spectator (called from playerKilled) and they see a counter starting from 1min 30sec. If a second player dies 10 seconds later, I would have thought the timer is adjusted so that both respawn together. This is not what I see. They spawn at very different times. I've been told that if a player dies, any others immediately after, are held within a common countdown (here its 60sec), thus once it reaches 0, they all spawn together. I've also tested it with just; respawn = 3; respawndelay = 120; respawnOnStart = 0; respawnTemplates[] = {"Wave"}; First person dies, then 10seconds later, the next person dies. First person respawns after waiting 2min, the next after waiting 4min. Am I missing something? Any thoughts or knowledge on how its supposed to be used would be appreciated!

great thanks for the info Larrow, and good explanation. seems I had it wrong all along

as to how the wave is put together is something I would like to reveal to better understand how it functions. Unfortunately the biki is quite limited when it comes to divulging that information, and I haven't been able to find any other cases that looks at the behaviour of the wave respawn template. In terms of changing around the respawn delay parameter, i'm not sure what other effect you are leading to, since i have already provided two cases that demonstrate players dying, using two different respawn delay values, yet the observed effect is the same... that is, they do not spawn together as a group. In terms of the respawnDelay value and its impact on how the function constructs the wave, what exactly do you mean by that? To what degree does the respawnDelay value determine how a wave is constructed? To me that seems to suggest there is an underlying structure that actively discriminates one value against another value? So what is the effective wave respawn / respawnDelay combination then? Something is amiss here, either it doesn't work and is broken, or i've misinterpreted its implementation

Unfortunately, simply copy/pasting a link provides no light on the question at hand. If I wanted a link I would have accessed it myself. Have you used the wave respawn template? Again, with the above parameters, I do not see any adjustments to counter time such that players spawn together. Or are you implying there is a waveDelay parameter I need to factor in? Or does there need to be mass player deaths for this to have any perceived effect?

So for me, I've been able to narrow the problem down, and it was due to the RHS US M113 throwing an error when attempting to turnout as driver. Had to deconstruct an entire mission to find this rat. I was convinced it wasn't the mission scripting once the entire mission was stripped to just the sqm, leading to an object placed in the editor.

i can confirm this as well. I went through a recent mission removing all my scripts and the error persists. never happened before, and seems my message is only 20bytes over the limit.

there were some insights into JIP back on page 29, that you may find helpful; https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/170177-zenophons-arma-3-co-op-mission-making-framework/?p=3046010

from my recent tests I found that 'paradrop' was having issues, but other insertion types seemed to be OK. With paradrop, the helo simply sits on the runway. Not so long ago this was never an issue. Also I found that if I were to move a group of 6 units into the cargo of an Mi8, two of these units get left outside, despite having empty slots in the vehicle. But if I move them using 'all', noone is left behind, yet throws up an error with the driver, which is expected. This seems to happen regardless of the size of the unit group.

Ooo Snap! been waiting for this release! and its great to see your framework reach its 2nd birthday!

thanks Zen, that's clear now

Hi Zenophon, first off, great update! I've been trying out the new additions and i'm not quite certain I understand how to use the caching system correctly, for example the following seems to give me errors; _pGarrison = []; _pos = "mkPos1"; _pSpawnPos = getMarkerPos "mkPos1"; for "_i" from 1 to 2 do { _pGarrIn = [_pSpawnPos, resistance,"SOF",4,"LOP_Men","LOP_AM",[],"LOP_LeightsOPFOR"] call Zen_SpawnInfantry; _pGarrison pushBack _pGarrIn; 0 = [_pGarrIn,_pos,[],[0,360],"normal","aware",false,true] spawn Zen_OrderInfantryPatrol; }; sleep 2; _cache = [resistance,"test"] call Zen_Cache; sleep 1; _cached = ["test"] call Zen_IsCached; hint str _cached; is this the correct way to use this new function? They patrol around a 20m area, but once the error pops up they all run off into the far distance, with no units cached. Same as below, Also this throws up the error "unidentified cache identifier"; _cache = [resistance, "test", _pGarrIn] call Zen_Cache; sleep 1; _cached = ["test"] call Zen_IsCached; hint str _cached; many thanks

for anyone working with LOP units, this is what I found works for spawning those units; _resGarrison = [_housePos, _side, _AISkill,5,"LOP_Men","LOP_AFR",[],"LOP_LeightsOPFOR"] call Zen_SpawnInfantryGarrison;

I haven't done ammo boxes before, but what i generally do, if i want to avoid repetition, is have a specific array of objects from which I randomly select one. So if you want 5 different ones, you could have it within a for "_i" from 0 to 4 do loop _randomElement = ["rhs_ural_chdkz","LOP_AFR_M113_W","LOP_AFR_BTR60"] call BIS_fnc_selectRandom; _reconVehicle = _randomElement createVehicle _pSpawn; //where _pSpawn is a randomly selected location I guess you could also do the same for your ammo boxes. But you would have to find their class names. I'm not sure about how best place them inside without them clipping or blowing up. Then for setting your objective maybe try Zen_InvokeTask.

for (2), if Zen_FindBuildingPositions returns valid locations, then it should just be a matter of selecting values from that array. Maybe even shuffle the array before selecting. Check the Zen_DataFunctions document for interrogating arrays.

hi, thanks, that's really helpful. this worked for me. I tried Zen_ConvertToObjectArray but I was obviously doing it incorrectly, as in the end I was applying {deleteVehicle _x;} forEach units, rather than what you have. brilliant!

Hi, I've been in this loop attempting to figure out how to best delete the units i've appended to an array using Zen_ArrayAppend. Over the course of the mission several groups are spawned, some are killed by the players and some will no doubt survive. towards the end of the mission my hope is to delete the entire array of units. so for example I use this to spawn the units; for "_i" from 0 to 7 do { _newPatrolUnitArray = [_markerJungleArray,AI_SKILL,_patrolUnitArray] call f_spawnsquad; }; // i have a function that does the spawning { private ["_pmarkerarray","_aiSkill","_pPatrolUnitArray","_startarea","_pos","_group"]; _pmarkerarray = _this select 0; _aiSkill = _this select 1; _pPatrolUnitArray = _this select 2; _startArea = [_pmarkerarray] call Zen_ArrayGetRandom; _pos = [_startArea] call Zen_FindGroundPosition; _group = [_pos, ["LOP_AFR_Infantry_SL", "LOP_AFR_Infantry_GL", "LOP_AFR_Infantry_AT"]] call Zen_SpawnGroup; 0 = [_group, _aiSkill] call Zen_SetAISkill; 0 = [_pPatrolUnitArray, _group] call Zen_ArrayAppend; _pPatrolUnitArray }; that is all fine and dandy, and throughout the mission I have an array full of unit groups. So; _newPatrolUnitArray = [alpha-1-1, alpha-1-2, alpha-1-3... etc... I could delete them manually, provided I know their group ID. But Zen_ArrayAppend gives each group a unique ID as it append them to the array, starting from alpha-x-x and onwards. I've also tried unpacking each group into the existing array using the array insert slice function, and then attempting to deleting them. I've tried different flavours of deleteVehicle, but thats looking for objects, so throws an error. Is there a zen function that will count how many indexes exist in the array so that i can then delete each item based on their index? Or maybe there is a simpler way for deleting units from merged arrays... any suggestions would be great! thx

ah great, thats good to know. Also thanks for the script snippet.

Thanks for your input guys. After reviewing my arma launch params and checking the lines of code against the spawning function in my mission, infantry seems to be placed much quicker than previously experienced. Also I didn't realise that, [ ] spawn, opened a separate thread. thats really useful to know. ton

Hi, I'm just beginning to learn how to use this framework, and recently I've been working through infantry showcase v2. I've been experiencing some consistent delays whenever I've called the Zen_SpawnInfantry function, and I'm wondering if thats just the nature of this function. As an example, I take the example from infantry showcase v2, in line 72, where a group spawn is called at the start of the mission; _b_leaderPos = ["mkBluforPoint"] call Zen_FindGroundPosition; _leadGroup = [_b_leaderPos, west, AI_SKILL, 4] call Zen_SpawnInfantry; 0 = [_leadGroup] call Zen_GiveLoadoutBlufor; but I'm finding that this one group can take upto 2mins or even longer to spawn in. I've also experienced this in the spawning demonstration, where I literally sat around for ages without anything spawning in. This question is not so much about code optimisation of the framework, but more about why this is occurring, and if there is anything I can do/ or be aware of, to speed it up. If I were to spawn in units, using this method; _spawnedGroup = ["Zen_Spawn_Marker_Three", ["B_recon_M_F", "B_recon_F"]] call Zen_SpawnGroup; then its extremely fast, and the mission flow isn't impacted on. On an aside, does Zen_SpawnGroundVehicle also spawn the crew? Should I use the ambient vehicle spawn to insert empty vehicles? thanks

so here is a simple car bomb script that will randomly place an ied into a car and set it off based on distance to the vehicle. place this into the init line of the vehicles you want to potentially have an ied planted. nul=[this] execVM "carbomb.sqf"; place this script in your mission folder; carbomb.sqf _object = _this select 0; _value = random 100; if (_value < 25) then { _trg=createTrigger["EmptyDetector", position _object]; _trg setTriggerArea[8,8,0,false]; _trg setTriggerActivation["WEST","PRESENT",false]; _trg setTriggerStatements["this", "_bomb = nearestObject [getPos (thislist select 0), 'Car']; boom = 'R_57mm_HE' createVehicle position _bomb", ""]; }; to increase the chances of any vehicle to have an ied planted, simply increase the integer of _value in the script. also props to ProfTournesol for his advice. here is the orig thread... http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=94670 cheers