mecharius

By |TG| Will (a.k.a. mecharius) WARNING: This software is in BETA so there may be some undiscovered bugs. Please help make the software better by reporting any bugs you come across! Announcing the first supported public latest release of the Anvil Editor and Framework, version 6.5.2 BETA. Users of version 6.5.0 are strongly advised to upgrade to this release. The Anvil Editor is a windows application (requiring .NET 4.5) which lets you very rapidly generate small or large scale multi-objective COOP missions for ArmA 3 when used alongside the official ArmA 3 editor. It creates missions that use the light weight Anvil Framework which is bundled with the editor. Anvil provides the following features: Features - Point and click to create objectives, ambient occupation zones and the initial spawn point - Five selectable objective types (Assassinate, Capture, Destroy AA, Destroy Tower, Gather Intel) - Shift-click in the editor to link objectives (so that completing one unlocks the other) - Create end mission triggers on any objective or when all are completed - Select the type of objective, what is shown in the player tasks, the level of enemy occupation and capture rewards - One-click inclusion of SQF scripts, including setting up the description.ext and init.sqf - The editor can pull in changes to markers made in the official ArmA 3 editor and works alongside changes made in the official editor The Framework and Editor have already been used to create several missions (including Sunday Event missions) for the www.tacticalgamer.com community where I spend most of my playing time. I'm grateful to the guys there for the time they took to give feedback and test things out. Also thanks to 10T for his maps and Bangabob for his EOS system. You can report all bugs on this thread or over on the official Tactical Gamer release thread, it will probably help a lot if you can grab the latest log file and attach it to the post. Feel free to make some feature requests as well and I'll think about adding them to my list :) Media Quick start guide (a 5 objective mission running in 6 minutes) Timelapse of placing 192 objectives for the second showcase mission being developed More information and download links: - Home page - http://www.anvilproject.com/ - Downloads and release notes - http://www.anvilproject.com/downloads/index.html - Help page - http://www.anvilproject.com/help To learn how to install the editor please visit http://anvilproject.com/help/installation.html To learn how to install maps please visit http://anvilproject.com/help/editor.html Support me on Make ArmA Not War! The Editor source code is on github and released under an MIT license. The Framework is APL-SA licensed.

@delta99 Unfortunately the changes are fairly major and require a complete rewrite of the SQM parsing engine. That's the price of A3 editor progress I guess :) While I don't really like leaving this in a "broken" state, and the updates are on my (long) to do list, it is unlikely I'll find the time to get around to this in the near future. @-XFIRE- If you can provide the map files I'll happily upload them to the website. There is some discussion about how to export maps here - https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/170248-release-anvil-mission-editor-and-framework/?do=findComment&comment=2764607 and in the linked threads

Looks like the new Eden editor completely changes the SQM mission format which breaks Anvil. If there is an easy fix I'll try to implement it and release an update. There are a bunch of new features on the development branch https://github.com/will-hart/AnvilEditor/tree/developwhich it would be nice to release at the same time.

Thanks ice age. Have a look a few posts back for info about "supported scripts" this is what I use to get revive scripts in missions.

I'm aware of an issue for non-English speaking users of the editor which means it can't export missions. This has been fixed in version 7.6 which I'm hoping to release shortly, once I've squashed one final bug in the framework.

Hey Rox, you can simplify a bit using a single trigger and no editor placed units, The screenshot below shows how: This setup triggers some SQF when objective #3 is completed by using the following configuration: - There is only a single trigger - The activation is Game Logic - The activation is set to Once - The condition is server getVariable "objective_3" - The script I want to execute is in the On Act. section. Here the executed script is unlocking a vehicle respawn location, however you can do any kind of execVM or SQF you want.

This is currently possible using normal editor placed triggers, the basic idea is that the server object has the "objective_n" variable set to true when objective number N is complete. So you can trigger on this and server getVariable "objective_n" I'm using this approach in the "Tactical Advance" mission for unlocking vehicle spawns. The mission is on steam workshop and I'll paste in a more detailed example tomorrow if you want. You can select the friendly and enemy factions for a mission using the friendly and enemy side mission parameters. It defaults to West friendly and East enemy and currently only vanilla EAST, WEST and IND faction spawn pools are supported through the editor. In version 7 of the editor I will be introducing support for custom EOS spawn lists which should let you do this directly from the Anvil editor (and will mean mods are better supported without having to manually edit the framework files). I've already completed a similar feature for customising the ammo box rewards and EOS spawns are next! I've not yet decided exactly how the feature will look but it's likely you will be able to keep a set of different spawn configurations and choose which one to apply to any given mission through the anvil editor.

This currently isn't possible without a bit of scripting and some hacking in the framework. Its certainly something I would consider adding in the future, although I won't be so silly as to give an ETA :)

Nice job Smiley, a great looking little island.

It should be possible in theory with a bit of mucking about. Without trying it I would say export the mission then change the folder name. You may need to edit the mission.sqm to play around with the addons sections. If you want to edit in Anvil after that you may run into some difficulties with the folder name because Anvil checks the path to prevent incorrectly named folders.

I'VE JUST WORKED OUT WHY TOPOGRAPHY DIDN'T WORK. Ahem sorry... was a bit excited. I turned off numlock and the topography cheat now works :) Yeah if you want do send through the EPFs I'll happily add them in for editor v7. Personally I'm about to export Celle 2 so I can make a copy of Tactical Advance that works there :D P.S. oh yeah got distracted from your last point. As I commented on the GH issue, I'm leaning towards keeping the main parts of EOS but potentially rewriting the caching side to use something like ZBE_Cache. Either way its a long term prospect.

You can make a "friendly" convoy mission (aka drive the convoy from A to B through C, D, E and F) by using the "move" and "move through" objective types. I have though about but haven't worked out how to cleverly do an "enemy" convoy mission type (i.e. destroy convoy as it moves from A to B). It might be possible to do something with prerequisite objectives (i.e. have a convoy start and linked convoy end objective and the convoy travels between these two markers). However a current limitation of the framework is it can't handle "failed" missions. What I mean by that is that if you destroy the convoy for objective A then objective B opens up, but if you fail to destroy the convoy for objective A before it gets to its destination objective C opens up instead. This is a bit complicated to implement without making some breaking changes to the framework which has held me back to date. That's why you may notice none of the current objectives can be failed! Let me add a github issue for the convoy stuff and I'll see if I can work it out at some point.

DoRo, anvil uses EOS to manage enemy spawns. Search how to customise EOS classnames on this forum then edit the eos files in the anvil application folder to suit your needs. Make sure you edit the files in the Anvil application folder not the exported mission folder otherwise your changes will be overwritten on the next Export

Yeah I think its a limitation of the .NET compression of zoomed images (I'm using an ImageBrush if that makes sense to you). A random thought - I wonder if making the map image dimensions 2^n might help? What happens if you make your images 8192x8192 or a smaller base 2 number? In theory Anvil and mods should be able to work together nicely. I'm not really familiar with the inner workings of Alive though, having not used it since soon after its release. Let us know if you have any luck. ---------- Post added at 18:00 ---------- Previous post was at 17:42 ---------- Yes, I have a github issue for the zoom. Your last sentence is not quite correct however. Zooming with the mouse SHOULD re-center the map slightly (for instance try it in Google Maps and see what happens). The issue is that Anvil currently puts where the mouse cursor was at the centre of the screen on zoom which is not ideal. What it should do is keep the same position under the mouse and keep the mouse at the same relative x/y in the new zoomed coordinates. I hope that makes sense! This is some straightforward maths but its not high on the priority list. I haven't zoomed with the keyboard since I implemented mouse wheel scrolling so to be honest I have no idea what/how/if that works :D Status bars have been at the bottom of screens since the dawn of computer time. I'm not going to change that. Think of the controls a bit like a typical RTS. Left click places, right click drags the map, scroll wheel zooms. I'm happy with the way it works. Currently I use the ArmA editor to do this and then the EDIT >> Update from SQM command to pull the changes back into Anvil. You can also manually change the coordinates using the property editor on the right hand side. I'll consider adding drag and drop movement in the future. I'd strongly recommend you watch this video: which shows you how a number of these things are done. Its for version 3.2 so the UI has changed and some bugs have disappeared but the basics are unchanged. Not 100% sure what you mean. If you are talking about the list of scripts in the bottom right of the window then these are "included scripts" that can be added to a mission by selecting them in the list. All the init.sqf code will be created for you and the script files will be added to your mission on export. You can generate your own included scripts using the "EDIT >> Add Included Scripts" menu option. I'll need to add some documentation about this at some point as its not entirely clear. Again, watch this video - as it shows how included scripts work.

I'm considering doing a ~1hr mission making Twitch stream using Anvil between Christmas and New Years or very early in January. Would anybody be interested in this?

Hey demerzel, Yeah on Win 8 the smartscreen filter will pop up unless I pay for a signing certificate which I'm not likely to do in the near future. As far as the folder name goes if I put an empty folder called "Test.Stratis" in the missions directory then it detects it in the editor so its most likely an issue with either the folder name or location. Anvil should prevent you from naming a folder incorrectly so its possibly saved in the wrong location. Try saving a mission from the ArmA editor and making sure it goes to the same folder.

6.5.2 HOTFIX RELEASED IMPORTANT - if your version is 6.5.0.0 please update to this release as it contains an important hotfix. Download Links for 6.5.2 A quick new release to add configuration support for MCN maps - Hazar Kot and Aliabad. Upgrade is recommended for users of 6.5.0.0 or earlier. Users of version 6.5.1.0 need only update if they want support for the MCN maps and are comfortable exporting the images using the "topography cheat". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You can see your version number in the application window, it looks like this for version 6.5.2:

Oh darn it. looking at the source I've messed that one up :mad: I'll have to push a hotfix tomorrow after work. Plan for the next version is to have the map definitions in a JSON file so you can define your own.

Thanks djotacon... Yeah I agree the zoom is still a bit off. I've had about four goes at it so far but still not there :( Ill make a github issue and see if I can improve it at some point. Hmm that's odd, I thought I'd fixed that before I uploaded the zip file. What version is on your zip file, is it 6.5 or 6.5.1? Edit: You can work around this by just creating the data/maps folder manually.

Version 6.5 is out and will shortly be available for download from http://www.anvilproject.com/. Changes made include: Editor - `FIXED` outdated link for TPW_CAS supported script (BI forums user _MaSSive) - `FIXED` crash with incomplete supported scripts definition (#2) - `FIXED` Opening a non-Anvil mission and converting to an Anvil mission doesn't save opened path #15 - `ADDED` one-click download of missing map images through the new mission dialog (#13) - `ADDED` support for the Bornholm map (#14, BI forums user lawndartleo supplied map files) - `ADDED` support for the Bukovina map (#14, BI forums user lawndartleo supplied map files) - `ADDED` support for the Bystrica map (#14, BI forums user lawndartleo supplied map files) - `ADDED` support for the Desert map (#14, BI forums user lawndartleo supplied map files) - `ADDED` support for the Porto map (#14, BI forums user lawndartleo supplied map files) - `ADDED` support for the Rahmadi map, A3 version (#14, BI forums user lawndartleo supplied map files) - `ADDED` support for the Sahrani map, A3 version (#14, BI forums user lawndartleo supplied map files) - `ADDED` support for the Shapur map (#14) - `ADDED` support for the Takistan Mountains map (#14, BI forums user lawndartleo supplied map files) - `ADDED` support for the Utes map (#14, BI forums user lawndartleo supplied map files) - `ADDED` *configuration* for the Aliabad map, no images posted due to no permission from author (#14, BI forums user lawndartleo supplied map files) - `ADDED` *configuration* for the Hazar Kot map, no images posted due to no permission from author (#14, BI forums user lawndartleo supplied map files) - `ADDED` "shut up" trigger option in editor to stop AI radio chatter (#4) - `ADDED` optional (anonymous) reporting of error messages to help Anvil improve using [sentry](getsentry.com) (#12) - `ADDED` About 50 unit tests (at last) - `IMPROVED` Mission ends by default when all objectives completed for new missions. To change this per mission, set Mission "Trigger on all completed" to `None` - `IMPROVED` Update MahApps.Metro dependency to version `1.0.0`. Framework - `FIXED` The `AFW_fnc_globalHide` function no longer run every time a player JIPd - `FIXED` objects hidden by `AFW_fnc_globalHide` can no longer be damaged - `FIXED` Prevent EOS from overriding server skill settings and mods - `FIXED` Prevent enemy from being spawned when objectives are completed using `AFW_fnc_doSetObjectiveState` #3, - `ADDED` Able to conditionally run `AFW_fnc_globalHide` depending on the completed state of an objective - `IMPROVED` force multiplier now applied to infantry only #9 - `IMPROVED` ammo box contents better for larger player count missions #5,

Yeah looks that way. Luckily you can definitely use the maps in anvil following the instructions above I just won't be providing a map image on my hosting.

The ArmA community on the whole is pretty protective of its mod and map makers and their works, mostly out of a recognition that these contributions are what make ArmA what it is. In accordance with this, where there is not a clearly defined license I will not be hosting or distributing any images on my own server unless I have explicit permission from the map maker. The map makers who have responded to my PMs have all been happy to give their permission so in most cases its just a formality - but an important one in my opinion. The only maps I'm waiting on permission for are the MCN ones - Aliabad and Hazar Kot. It looks like the map maker hasn't been online for a few months now so I'm not sure I'll get it in the near future. What I will be doing is providing the configuration settings which make these maps usable, just without a download link (the next version of Anvil has an "auto map download" feature). To use these maps its a matter of exporting the terrain using the topography cheat, converting to PNG through MS Paint or Irfan Viewer, naming it correctly and putting it into the Anvil data/maps folder. For you it will be a matter of "Save As" on the two missing images you have already exported :) My plan is to release the next Anvil version on Sunday so you should be able to make Anvil missions on these islands from then. For my own part, most of the things I release are under a very permissive license such as the MIT license. The "dream" is that this will encourage an open development process and contributors such as yourself getting involved which in turn makes the editor better for everybody.

Thanks lawndartleo, those maps have been added for the next release. I'm waiting on permission to distribute caribou and the two mcn maps as the map makers don't specify a license that I can see but the majority of them are good to go! The new release is waiting on about three more bug fixes which I'll hopefully be able to do by the weekend. Thanks again for your help!

Yeah saw those this morning... Will get on it after work :)

Nah I get nothing whatsoever. I've tried all sorts of things to get it running but I've never been able to make it work. :/ Still if you are happy to do a few more emf exports I can do the editor side no problems.