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Arma 3 Editor Guide PDF
Arma 3 Editor Guide PDF
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Introduction
Hi, I'm sproyd. Welcome to my simple Arma 3 Editor
Guide. This guide is designed to teach you how to use
the Arma 3 editor from scratch to create your own
missions and scenarios and get your ideas from your
head into the game. It is written in plain English and
assuming no prior knowledge of editing although you
should have a good base level of skill in playing Arma.
This guide is designed to be read from start to finish
and should bring you up to a basic level of skill in the
Arma 3 Editor.
A little about me - I am by no means an editor guru, in fact my first foray into Arma missions was in
Arma 3. I don't have a background in coding or game design but I am a huge gamer and Arma fan
and I hope that this guide will introduce you to the wonderful world that awaits you in the Arma 3
Editor.
The Arma 3 editor is probably one of the most powerful editors in the gaming world. This isn't a
cookie-cutter editor with only a few customization options - you can create everything from basic
Single Player or Co-Op missions to huge Multiplayer wars or entirely new game modes!
This guide will focus on how to create fairly basic missions with functional Briefings, Dynamic Tasks,
Win conditions, Lose conditions and more.
ATTOW you can buy A3 from either Steam or from BIS directly at their online store. Versions
bought from BIS will still need to be activated in Steam for download. There are three now
two versions of A3, all include the base game in its varying phases of development and
access to the full game upon release. Here is what you are getting for each version.
a. Arma 3 Beta
The cheapest option, includes everything you need to start playing A3.
b. Arma 3 Digital Deluxe Edition
The mid-tier option. Includes (a), some digital goodies including maps, soundtrack
and a tactical guide as well as Arma : Cold War Assault.
c. Arma 3 Supporter Edition no longer available
The most expensive version included all of (a) and (b), Arma X - which is pretty much
every previous Arma game including A2, OA and DLC - and access to future
unannounced A3 DLC. You could also get a BIS Forum badge and early purchasers
got their names in the A3 credits.
2. Launch A3 in Steam.
There are a number of things you can do pre-launch to optimise your experience. I won't go
into detail here but I'll point you in the right direction if you want to google it. You can;
a) Customise launch parameters to make the game boot faster or optimise hardware
detection.
b) Opt-in to the developer's build which includes frequent updates and roll-out of
experimental features at the expense of stability.
c) Optimise your hardware. A3 is CPU-heavy so many users overclock their CPU to
boost in-game performance.
Now click Traditional, then OK. You will need to restart the Editor, although next time you
launch the Editor it should default to Traditional layout.
1. The icons in the top left should look familiar - from left to right;
The New Page icon opens a fresh Mission, the Folder icon opens an existing Mission you are
working on, the Floppy Disk icon saves your current Mission, the second Floppy Disk icon is 'save
as' which allows you to save a version of your current Mission without overwriting the main
Mission (useful for templates), the Arrows allow you to merge two missions together and the
Checker Board toggles between topographical (recommended) and satellite view. Don't worry
about the rest of the icons you won't need them for now.
2. The main Editor Panel.
Here you can quick-edit the Weather and TOD, you can edit Advanced Intel which allows you to
customise the name of the Mission, the date and highly detailed weather adjustments and you
can select the various editing modes. Alternatively, you can also use the F1 to F7 keys on your
keyboard to select these modes. The Preview Button will appear here once you have placed a
Player unit - this lets you jump into the game to check things out - and the Continue button will
appear once you have clicked Preview once (although I recommend not using Continue to ensure
any changes you make have a chance to reload).
3. The Map.
Here is the visual representation of your
mission. You will be able to see all of the
units, waypoints, triggers and modules
that you have placed. As you can imagine
it can get quite messy so it is important to
try and keep things as clean as possible.
Here is a small section of a mission I have
made to give you an idea of what it will
look like when WIP. Thankfully, Markers
are only visible in the Editor when in
Markers mode which helps to reduce
clutter.
Placing and Editing Units
Now time for the fun part!! Placing units in the Editor is very easy. Select
[F1] Units with your mouse on the right hand side of the screen or press
F1 on your keyboard.
To place a unit, you simply double click on the map. Let's place a solitary
man in the middle of the runway at the large airfield on the West of the
island. Zoom in on the airfield (mousescroll or numpad +/-) and double click. A dialog box will pop-
up. Ignore this for now and just click OK. Your Editor should now look like this.
Let's give it a whirl. You have probably noticed that a Preview button
has appeared on the Editor Panel to the right now that we have a Player
unit. Click it.
If you are now a solitary rifleman standing in the middle of the airfield
then congratulations you have successfully just placed your first unit in the
Editor. Press Esc and Suspend to return to the Editor.
If you want to Move the placement of the unit, just drag and drop like you
would with a file in Windows. If you want to Rotate the unit's initial
orientation, simply hold down Shift and then click the unit, holding the
mouse button (which will turn green) and dragging until the desired
orientation is reached.
To Delete a unit hover your cursor over the unit and press the Delete key.
Careful, this can't be undone! Hence why you need to deliberately hover over the unit to delete it.
The same applies to Copy & Paste - hover over a unit, press Ctrl + C to
Copy, then hover over where you want to create a duplicate unit and
press Ctrl + V to Paste. This will also copy fields from the units Dialog
Box including the Init field.
We'll now take a look at the Unit Dialog Box that pops up when you first create a unit. You can also
open an existing unit's dialog box for editing by double clicking on that unit in the Editor. Do that
now on our Rifleman.
While this box may look slightly daunting, this is a very powerful tool for editing our units. Here is
what everything does. We are going to make some changes to our rifleman in blue underline.
Side: This is probably greyed out as BLUFOR for our unit. This is because
he is our first unit and has already been created. Any new unit or
subsequent unit we create you can change its Side. Changing the Side
also changes selections available for the type of Unit because different
Sides have access to different types of equipment and training.
Faction: At the moment there is only one option of Faction for each Side so it can't be changed.
However, in the future there may be different options i.e. for BLUFOR there could be US, UK, France.
Class: Different types of units. Let's change Class from 'Men' into 'Cars'.
Unit: This will show us all the different types of Unit for a given Side, Faction
and Class. We have selected BLUFOR > Blue > Cars and so should be able to
see a selection of different vehicles. Let's choose Quadbike. By default
vehicles created will be occupied by men, and if selected as Player you will usually be the driver. You
can also place empty vehicles by changing Side to Empty.
Vehicle Lock: Determines who can and can't use a vehicle. Leave on Default.
Rank: The unit's military rank. Important for Groups (more on that later). For
now, let's change it from Private to Lieutenant. These roughly resemble
military ranks but are more for game purposes rather than realism as in real
life ranks vary depending on country and military division (Army, Air Force,
Navy etc).
Info Age: Ignore this for now. Used for providing intel i.e. last known position.
Name: The Unit's Editor name. Important for advanced editing, make sure you keep track of each of
your unit's names. Let's call our Quadbike unit quad1 by typing in the box.
!!! Initialization: Also known as the Init Field. This is extremely important for advanced editing,
including customising a Unit's loadout, launching scripts and a myriad of other features. Leave it
blank for now.
Skill: AI Skill if an AI unit. Higher skill means the unit will be more accurate when shooting.
Health/Armor, Fuel, Ammunition: Self-explanatory, used to adjust the various qualities of units and
vehicles.
Probability of Presence: For Playable/Player units leave this at default. For Non Playable units this
will introduce an element of randomness and variability to your missions as some friendly or enemy
units may or may not be spawned on mission launch depending on your settings.
Placement Radius: Another element of randomness - this will randomise placement within a set
radius from where you place the unit on the map.
With Groups selected you can do 2 things - place Groups of Units, or Group
existing Units together.
Double click on the airfield near your Player Unit to place a Group. The dialog box that pops up is like
an abbreviated version of the Unit Dialog Box but features Groups instead of Units. Choose the
default option - a BLUFOR Infantry Rifle Squad. You should see a group of 10 Units, with Grouping
lines leading from each Unit to the Squad Leader as below.
Here we can see the group of 10 Units all in wedge formation, with us on our Quadbike in the
middle. Currently we aren't part of the Group. Note that the units spawn in formation, not where
they're placed on the map, with the exception of the group leader who is the axis point for the
formation.
You can now give commands to your Group and if you move up the airfield they will follow you in
formation. Cool huh?
Okay, now for an experiment. Change back to [F1] Units mode and double click the Player Unit.
Change his Rank back to Private and click OK.
As you can see, you should still be Grouped but you are no longer the Group Leader. If you double
click the Squad Leader you will see he is a Sergeant. If he were to get killed, the Group Leader role
would then default to the next highest rank and so on.
Clicking Preview now you should notice that you are still in formation with the Group, but instead
now you are no longer in control of the Group and you will be at the back of the formation.
Now go back to the Editor and try dragging your Player Unit far away from the Group.
Clicking Preview you will notice you are instantly back In Formation with the Group as under your
Unit Dialog Box you have chosen In Formation under the Special field. If you change this to None you
will remain Grouped with the Group but will retain your map placement upon launch. Give it a go.
Your AI Group Leader might even yell at you "Return to Formation!!". To unGroup a Unit from a
Group just select the [F2] Group mode and drag from the unit to an empty space on the map.
That's about all you need to know about Grouping for now. If you are getting bored and want to
have a little fun before moving on, try creating a separate BLUFOR and OPFOR Group at opposite
ends of the airfield and watch them fight it out! Or create your own Group and assault an enemy
Group's position. You can issue commands to a Group by pressing the F key corresponding to the
unit otherwise they will follow you in formation and attack when they see an enemy. Go Groups!
Waypoints (don't worry, we'll get to Triggers later)
Waypoints are the best way to control AI behaviour in A3. However, contrary
to what a lot of beginners think (myself included) they are not a tool for
guiding the player through a mission (that is best done with Tasks and
Markers which give more flexibility).
By far the most frequently used Waypoint is a Move waypoint. Let's create one now.
First, delete all units except your player on the Quadbike. Now create a rifleman next to you (make
sure he is not Grouped to you).
Select [F4] Waypoints with your mouse on the right hand side of the screen or press F4 on your
keyboard.
With the Rifleman selected double-click on a nearby spot and the Waypoint Dialog Box will pop up.
The default Waypoint is, thankfully, Move, and so just click OK for now. Your Editor should look like
this.
Let's go back to the Editor now and double click the Waypoint. Just like
editing Units the Waypoint Dialog Box will pop-up, allowing you to edit
it.
Our Rifleman, although pretty chilled, still stops at one point. Let's
create two new Waypoints - a second Move Waypoint for him to
move to after the first, and then a Cycle Waypoint which will have
him loop back and walk between prior Waypoints.
First, create another Move Waypoint, and then create another Waypoint, nearer to the first
Waypoint and change the Select Type to Cycle in the Waypoint Dialog Box. You will notice handy
arrows that show you the direction of travel, very useful if you have dozens of waypoints going
around the map. Note that the Cycle Waypoint is not actually
a Waypoint that the Unit will go to, it instead instructs him
what Waypoint to go to once he has reached the prior
Waypoint creating a loop.
This is how your Editor should look. You will notice I have
purposefully placed my Cycle Waypoint out of the way,
forming a triangle, but the Rifleman will just walk back and
forth between the two initial Waypoints forever.
There are lots of other Waypoint Types but Move and Cycle is all we really need to know for now.
As mentioned earlier, if you assign a Waypoint to a Group Leader, the Group will execute the
Waypoint, which saves a lot of time and Editor clutter in assigning individual Waypoints to individual
Units.
Triggers, Tasks, Modules, Variables and Syncing (just the basics)
You should now know enough to place a mix of units, group them together and get them to move
around the map. It's time to learn some more interesting stuff - let's create a mission!
In the Editor, due to the richness and complexity, there are often many different ways to do things.
The methods shown below are by no means the only way to achieve the desired outcome and are
instead the most self-explanatory, easy to remember, simple ways I've found to effectively create
Triggers, Tasks and the like.
Before we begin, if you haven't already done so, Save your Mission. Some
of the stuff you will be doing now is a little bit more difficult to replicate so
you want to make sure you Save as you go.
Select [F3] Triggers with your mouse on the right hand side of the screen
or press F3 on your keyboard.
Double click in some empty space on the airfield to place a Trigger. The
Trigger Dialog Box will appear, don't change anything and just click OK at
this stage. One of the most basic Triggers is a 'Once Present' Trigger which
is the default. You should now see the Trigger in the Editor symbolised by a
blue flag with a blue circle around it reflecting the default 50x50 radius.
Right now, the Trigger does nothing. However, Triggers are very versatile - they can be used to Win a
Mission, to Lose a Mission, to complete, fail or assign a Task, to trigger AI to move to a new
waypoint, to call in reinforcements, to play a sound, to show a hint, to display some text, to change
the weather, to change a variable, to.... you get the idea.
Now click Preview. Drive towards your Trigger. You probably notice that there is no visual
representation of the Trigger in game, not even on your Map. Hopefully you remembered where you
put it - otherwise go back to the Editor and put it in an easier place to reach. If done correctly you
should get Mission Completed.
Well done, you just completed your first Mission! However, if all A3 Missions were like this you'd get
bored pretty quickly!
Also, you may be wondering what would happen if another BLUFOR unit was to stumble into the
Trigger area while you were out doing heroic duties - would that also trigger Mission Complete?
(Yes). And if you didn't know the Trigger was there - how would you know where to go? (You
wouldn't). What if there were multiple triggers in a mission? (Just imagine!)
We are now going to step up the level of complexity by using Triggers, Tasks, Modules, Syncing and
Variables all in one step! Don't worry, I'll hold your hand.
Delete the old Trigger and create 3 new Triggers - one to the
North, West and East of the Player. Make sure that the Player is
not in the Trigger areas - if you want you can play with different
Trigger areas and shapes in the Trigger Dialog Box. However,
change the Northern Most Trigger to a 0 area.
We want to give the Player two Tasks - one to arrive at the West Trigger and one to arrive at the East
Trigger. Once the Player has done both of these tasks we want the Mission to complete. We are
going to use a simple and useful technique rather than just the "Once BLUFOR present" we used
earlier - and it actually uses the [F2] Groups mode we learned about earlier. Switch to Groups mode
and Group the Player with each of the two West and East Triggers by dragging between them.
However, if the Unit the Trigger is Grouped with is part of an actual Group, there are some other
great options like having to have the Whole Group present in order to Activate the Trigger or Any
Group Member for a mission where some casualties are acceptable. Let's leave this on Vehicle for
now - the Trigger should Activate Once the Player Unit it is Grouped with is present in the Trigger
radius. Do the same with the other Trigger.
Creating Tasks Using Modules
There are a variety of ways to create Tasks including hard coding. The best
way I've found is to use the Tasks Module.
Select [F7] Modules with your mouse on the right hand side of the screen or
press F7 on your keyboard.
FYI Modules exist in the Editor to simplify things that you would do
quite often but would take much more time or skill than just
simply using the Modules feature.
As you can imagine, this Module will Create a Task for us. Let's fill
in a few more details as below.
Great, so now we have a task with an ID of task1, and the Title and Description will be visible to
whoever owns this Task, in this case entire Groups of synchronized objects. Click OK.
You have probably already guessed the next step - we need to synchronize our
Player with the Module in order to give him the task. Exciting! We finally get to use
[F5] Synchronize! You know the drill, click on the Synchronize mode or press F5 on
your keyboard. Synchronizing (or Syncing) works just like Grouping, just drag a line
from one item to another, in this case the Module to your Player.
!!!
You will notice the Sync line is dark blue, whereas the Grouping lines are
light blue. This is important to distinguish as Grouping and Syncing have a
completely different effect and if mixed up it can break a mission (more on
that shortly).
Click Preview, and then once in-game, press J to check your tasks.
You will notice that by default the Module is Grouped (a light blue line) to the Create Task module.
This is not what we want and is just an unwanted default feature of the engine (it may be fixed in
future builds). Now, (1) DeGroup the two Modules (2) Sync the two Modules and (3) Sync the Set
Task State Module to the Western Trigger.
Let's test this out - jump in to the game, and drive due
West towards the trigger. If you have followed all of the
steps above correctly you will get a nice little pop-up
animation like this. Good job!
Let's now set a Destination for the Task that will display to the
Player on the map and in-game when set as the current Task
so you know where to go. Create another Module and set the
Module field to Set Task Destination and the Destination field
to Module Position. Sync the new Module with the original
Create Task Module (not the Set Task State Module - this
won't work, and don't forget to unGroup). Now move the new
Module where you want the Task to be - somewhere in the
Trigger area is a good idea. Click Preview, and once in-game
press 'J' to view Tasks and click Set as Current Task - you should now see a Task location arrow and
distance on screen making it much easier to find.
Now I'm going to stop holding your hand and ask you to replicate everything we've done above but
for the Eastern Trigger, calling the Task ID task2 - ready? Go!
In-Game you should now be able to see two Tasks when pressing
J and hopefully you remembered to change the second Task ID,
Title etc if you used a copy & paste method. You should be able
to separately complete each Task (in any order) and you should
also be able to switch current Task between the two to see the two different destinations. If so, well
done! If you are having issues make sure you read back over the steps before proceeding.
But wait, we don't have a cool MISSION COMPLETED screen like before... and if we change one of
the Triggers to a Win Trigger then it will just end the mission regardless of what else needs doing.
This is what our third Trigger to the North is for, don't tell me you forgot about that one! Let's
change it to an End #1 Trigger (and from now on I'll call it End Trigger). But, it has no area and is not
grouped with any units so how can we have this Trigger end the Mission? Like many things in the
Editor there are multiple ways of going about it by using scripting, I'll show you a few.
This is an easy way, simply open your West and East triggers and give them a name in the Name
field, let's call one simply westtrigger and the other easttrigger. Then let's open our End Trigger and
in the Condition Box, delete the text 'this' and insert the following code.
Code
triggerActivated westtrigger && triggerActivated easttrigger
So instead of the Trigger requiring a standard condition like BLUFOR or Vehicle present or not
present, it instead will activate once the code becomes True. It uses boolean maths (1s and 0s) or
logic and some basic Arma-specific scripting language. This is a fairly simple snippet of code but your
syntax has to be perfect or the Editor won't recognise it.
The script 'triggerActivated' will check whether a named trigger i.e. westtrigger has been activated If
activated it will return True (or boolean 1). The && in the middle (you need two &s) means the
Condition is only True if both snippets of code return a value of True. Try it now!
Way No. 2) Checking Task States
This is a very similar method to Way No. 1 but using taskCompleted instead of triggerActivated and
the two scripts should work identically. However, unfortunately ATTOW this doesn't appear to be
working with the Task Module in A3.
This is another fun and quick way to trigger stuff, we can use variables. Open the West Trigger.
Currently the On Act Box is blank and typically you don't need to put anything in here. However, you
can get Triggers to do a whole load of cool stuff once Activated by using this field. Let's create a
variable called 'westdone' and set the value of the variable to true as follows;
Easy, huh? Notice the semicolon (;) afterwards? This is not mandatory here but will denote the end
of the scripting line, and allow you to put multiple lines in here (each with ; after it). Do the same for
the East Trigger but call the variable 'eastdone'.
So now, when each Trigger is activated they will do two things, complete the synchronized task,
and create a unique variable which is set to True.
Try it out, the mission should complete just like before when
both variables become true. Although, the problem here is
A3 is so fast that it may complete the mission before the
Trigger even completes the Task!
A quick fix is to open the End Trigger and edit the Timer
section in the bottom-left. Make sure its set to Timeout
not Countdown mode and fill in the three fields Min, Mid
and Max. The units are seconds and there are three fields
in order to introduce an element of randomness. If you
have them all set at 5 seconds, the mission will complete
at exactly 5 seconds after both Triggers/Tasks/Variables
have been completed. If you use 1, 5, 10 like I have the final End Trigger will complete anywhere
between 1 and 10 seconds after the Activation conditions have been met at an average point of 5
seconds. This will give A3 time for the Trigger to complete the Task before Mission Complete!
FYI The Countdown Timer Mode means that the Conditions have to be met for that length of time
before the Trigger is Activated. In this case it doesn't make a major difference. An example of when
that might be useful is having a Trigger cover a key area with a Condition of OPFOR Not Present - you
might want OPFOR to be kept out of that area for a set amount of time in order to win the mission
so the Countdown mode will work well.
Well you are now a basic mission making machine.
You should now be able to play with the Editor and do everything you need to do to make a cool
basic mission. Try experimenting with different Units, Triggers, Conditions, Tasks - get as
complicated as you dare but remember to test your mission for bugs regularly.
So far, I hope you have been able to easily follow the examples and guides without too many issues.
After all, this is still sproyd's Simple Arma 3 Editor Guide, but from here on in I'm not going to hold
your hand as much and things may be a bit more complicated. I would strongly advise going away
for now and experiment by making a few missions of your own for you and your friends.
Bye!
You are still here aren't you... Well okay then, here is a sneak peak of what's to come.
A3 has a specific mission file format called '.pbo'. Once you export your mission,
all the complex commands, scripts and everything will be contained in one neat
little pbo file, making publishing and distribution a cinch.
Then click the Save As button in the top toolbar or press Ctrl + Shift + S.
User mission: This just saves another version of your mission in the Editor. Useful if you are working
from a template, or if there are two complex parts to your mission you might want to work on them
separately and merge them later.
Export to single missions & Export to multiplayer missions: This is what we want - it will create a
pbo mission file in your Arma 3 folder. Note that mission Editor files are generally saved under
Send by e-mail: This doesn't seem to work ATTOW. May take some setting up.
In order to distribute, you simply need to email the pbo file to your friends and they can place it into
their Missions folder. It is considered good practice to bundle the pbo into a zip file with a .txt
document that has basic mission information, version number, changelog and any known issues and
upcoming changes.
Plublish on Steam Workshop: This lets you publish your mission directly on Steam! However, I
strongly suggest posting it online or with friends for testing before you do this, otherwise Steam
users may be less forgiving and downvote your mission before its up to speed.
Where to publish and get feedback?
You can publish your mission on any website but the most popular
places are the BIS forums and Armaholic.com. If your mission is
WIP and very buggy, make sure you upload it to the 'In Progress'
part of the forums for testing. There are generally lots of
community members that are willing to help test your missions if you are open and honest about the
shortcomings. If you publish a mission full of bugs as 'finished', then people will be less likely to test
out your missions in future.
FYI Publishing on Steam is great for players as it makes downloading and updating missions easy.
However, as a mission maker be aware that you lose a lot of your ownership rights when doing this.
Simple: You can quickly change TOD and weather using the top-right
toolbar.
I will often jump in and out of my mission while adjusting weather and TOD to get things feeling just
right. If you want to put added time pressure into the mission you can set the Forecasted weather to
poor conditions so the player is forced to rush to get things done before the weather gets hairy.
Customising Unit Loadouts
One of the coolest things about A3 is the sweet gear that comes with the game without needing to
add mods. DIfferent Unit types have different gear equipped by default but if you really want to
spice up your mission then you can create a custom loadout for your Units!
Unfortunately, ATTOW there is no really easy way to edit loadouts like in other games (like BF3). I'll
show you the most effective way I've found to do it - using dslyecxi's 'Paper Doll' gear selector.
http://dslyecxi.com/shacktac_wp/shacktac-mods/dslyecxis-paper-doll-gear-menu/
which is a pbo file in the Editor format. Insert the folder into your My Documents / Arma 3 /
Missions folder and open the mission in the Editor.
Click Preview.
Once in-game you should see yellow text saying 'Character Customizer'. Press space to activate the
paper doll gear selector which should look like this;
On the right hand side you will notice a range of sliders. Play around with them and you'll notice
your player character magically changes his loadout. The rest is fairly self-explanatory. Once you've
found the loadout you want, click the COPY button on the bottom-left which will copy the loadout
with scripting commands to the clipboard of your PC.
If we now alt-tab to windows and open Notepad (or Notepad++ which is what I like to use, its free!)
and press paste (Ctrl + V).
You should now see some lines of code looking something similar to the below. I've put red crosses
next to the fields that are blank. In this case you can see that I added new headgear, uniform,
weapon, scope but did not change the vest, backpack and other fields.
Huh? Wondering what all this gibberish means? Its scripting! 'this' refers to the Unit in question,
'addHeadgear' etc is a scripting command instructing the engine to... you guessed it, add headgear
and the last part is called a string (you can tell because it's in quotations) and refers to items in game
using what are known as "class names". The semicolons ; denote the end of the scripting line.
I am going to delete the blank fields (with red X's) to tidy up the code and prevent script errors.
Much better! Now I'm going to copy and paste this into my Unit's init field back in my mission in the
Editor. Let's alt-tab back to the Editor and Ctrl + V to paste.
The formatting is a bit messy but should work fine. Now Preview.
http://browser.six-
projects.net/cfg_weapons/classlist?version=67
30_Rnd_45ACP_Mag_SMG_01
The unit that the script applies to. If you are inserting the script in the unit's init field you can just
type 'this' like with our loadout script above. Easy!
Don't forget the other syntax like [square brackets], commas and always end with a semicolon!
So in order to add the ammo to our unit lets put this script into his init field
Pro-Tip Always place an addMagazines script before an addWeapon script in the init field, that way the
weapon will already have a magazine loaded. If you do it the other way around you will end up with
a weapon that requires reloading in-game before it can be used, and that's just not cricket!
Click Preview and your Unit should now be loaded up with 5 magazines of your chosen ammo!
Markers, Briefings and Finishing Touches
One of the many greath things about the Editor is that it's BIS's tool for creating official A3 missions.
This means that the professional looking briefings that you see when starting a mission can become
a feature of your missions too!
Markers
Select [F6] Markers with your mouse on the right hand side of the screen or press F7 on your
keyboard.
This mode allows you to create Markers which are visible to the Player when viewing the Map or a
briefing. This is an absolutely critical way of conveying intel to the player that he/she will need to
complete the mission.
I'm now going to place our quad1 Unit at the NE corner of the Stratis Air Base.
I'll set a Marker for him to rendezvous with a contact in Agia Marina, near the beach. As before,
placing Markers is easy, just double-click on the map to place and open the Marker Dialog Box. You
will need to select the Icon (displays on the map), Colour, Name (important for briefings) and Text
(displays next to the Marker on the map). Remember, Markers have to be named. If you try and
create a Marker without a name you will get a pop-up error message. Try and keep track of your
Marker names for later. Let's call our first Marker 'marker1'.
Your Editor display should now look something like this.
Click Preview. Then press 'M' to open your Map and you should be able to see the Marker that you
placed.
Briefings
Briefings are critical intel to your troops on the ground which they should receive before embarking
on their Mission - what do they need to do, where do they need to do it and what tools do they have
at their disposal to do it.
In addition to Briefings displaying text and the map with the Markers you have set, they can also
interact with your Marker names via a hyperlink.
Unfortunately, Briefings require a bit of light scripting. Alt-Tab from A3 and open your Mission
folder (i.e. in My Docs / Arma 3 / missions/ MyFirstMission.Stratis) and create a new file called
briefing.sqf.
Open the document in Notepad (or Notepad++) and type the following;
Code player createDiaryRecord ["Diary",["Briefing Info", "It's vitally important that you drive to <marker
name ='marker1'>the beach </marker> "]];
This will create a line of code for your briefing. You also need to create a file called init.sqf in the
same folder, open it with notepad and insert the following to launch/execute your briefing upon
mission start;
Preview the mission and press 'M' to check your map. You should see a Briefing tab, click this and
within the Briefing Info (or whatever you named it) sub-tab you will see the description. If you click
on 'the beach' you should see the Map center on your marker1 you created earlier as below.
If you'd like for the Briefing to display upon Mission start without having to enter the map (I always
do) then place another file in the mission folder called mission.html but leave the whole thing blank.
This will tell the Editor to launch the briefing prior to starting the mission. Note that this doesn't
have any effect when Previewing with the Editor but when your mission has been exported or
published this will make the Briefing display before the Player is launched into the Mission.
Pro-Tip You can create multiple briefing entries in briefing.sqf by inserting multiple 'player
createDiaryRecord' entries. Try having one entry describing the main objectives, one describing the
weather, one describing the opposing forces etc.
Finishing Touches
Firstly, let's add some basic flourishes to our mission by adding the following code to description.ext
with notepad. The text after // explains what each line of code does, and you can even insert this
explanation in the document as the // tells the A3 Editor to ignore the text. This might help with
future editing.
Let's do some more fancy stuff with description.ext. This time we'll create multiple debriefings and
do so with BIS's cool graphic interface. Insert the following code into your description.ext file.
This script creates multiple endings and debriefings for the Player to achieve using the 'title',
'subtitle' and 'description' fields. As you can see End1 is set as Mission Failed with a rude comment
about cheating - this is because most mission win cheats involve invoking End1 so this will strip them
of their satisfaction!
As for the Mission Failed debriefing - let's have a strict 60 second time limit for Mission completion.
Create a new Trigger and in the Condition field simply enter;
time is a script command based in seconds and can be any length you'd like. In the On Act. field
enter;
Launch the Mission and see what happens after a minute. Great! This seems to work. Of course, you
can have the Lose Trigger set to activate from whatever you want, such as death of a VIP, alerting
guards or a convoy reaching a destination. Get creative!
Useful Scripting Commands & Mission Tricks
Well, we've done some quite cool things in the Editor you and I, and by now you should be starting
to appreciate the power of Arma's native scripting language. I've compiled a list of some trusty
scripts that should stand you in good stead for your basic mission making aspirations. And without
further ado I give you;
Alive
This is a boolean script so only can have two possible values True/1 or False/0. Its used to check
whether an object is alive. You can also switch it with an ! exclamation mark to mean not alive. So
for example if I had a VIP who was named in the Editor Unit Dialog Box as 'vip' I could have the
following Trigger.
Which means with the VIP is dead, end3 would be called from description.ext.
If I had multiple vip's (i.e. vip1 and vip2) I could also use the or and (&&) modifiers so that the
mission finishes if one or both of them die.
This is a very fun trick and very useful. Just make sure
you place the Trigger area over the object or it won't
work!
joinSilent
This is a useful script that will join a Unit or multiple Units to a/your Group. The key thing to note is
that the first part of the script has to be an array which means it needs to be in square brackets. An
array can contain any number of items, in this case units, or just one if you like. You can then have
these units just joint the player's Group - the most common usage - or any other group by specifying
(group _x) where _x is a member of the group.
When might this be useful? In a hostage situation you might have hostages join your group (and
hence your control) once you get near to them.
Creating Patrols
Military patrol routes are common in real life as well as in games and A3 is no different. Set up an
enemy patrol with any number of waypoints but make sure you set up a cycle Waypoint so the
patrol keeps going backwards and forwards on its route.
Below I've set a patrol of two OPFOR to walk a long route along a ridgeline, back and then cycle.
Make sure you set the first Waypoint to have the correct
Formation, Speed and Behaviour that you want. The most
common is of course Column, Limited and Safe. Subsequent
Waypoints can be left as No change.
Pro-Tip You can set TimeOut times for WayPoints just like
Triggers. What this does is make AI Units wait at
Waypoints before moving on. By varying your
Min and Max fields you can create an element of
randomisation in patrols as AI will wait at
Waypoints for a random amount of time, putting
players off their game.
Random Spawn Points
You can easily randomise spawn location of Players and AI using a simple trick with invisible
Markers.
Place a Player Unit on the map and then place two Markers
at different ends of the map. As mentioned above, you have
to name all Markers, but in this case it doesn't matter what
you name them. However, make sure you select the Marker
Icon as Empty.
You now need to [F2] Group the Empty Markers with your Unit. This is a little tricky as once you
press F2 to switch to Group mode, the Markers disappear! Make sure you remember where you put
them and if you can't find them just switch back to [F6] Markers mode to find them.
Now, everytime the Unit spawns it's start position will be randomised between the Markers and its
placement position. This means if there are two Markers Grouped with the Unit it will have 3
possible start positions. Try it now - keep restarting your Mission until you see all 3 start points to
verify they are working. The same applies to AI units which can be used to create an element of
randomness.
Another mission making trick of the trade is to set units to captive state. In plain English this means
that these units cannot be seen by other units so can go about their business without affecting their
behaviour. As you might have gathered this makes it quite a powerful scripting tool so should be
used sparingly.
I mainly use this script when testing missions so I can run around watching behaviour without
getting shot at.
So for example, the most basic application would be to make your player effectively invisible to
enemy AI. You could insert the following code in your player's init line;
Try it out now and see if you can run circles around an enemy and even shoot at them without them
flinching. This is also useful for mission atmospheric elements - you might want a helicopter to fly
overhead but without invoking enemy fire... just simply set the heli to captive and forget about
complex A3 AI consequences.
Mission Examples