Fresh meat requires a little explantion and perhaps tutilage

Workshop for all Mission Engineer Comrades. Home of the FA Mission Making Template.
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SPECTRE
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Fresh meat requires a little explantion and perhaps tutilage

Post by SPECTRE »

Good morning,
I'm new to the Arma series, 600 hours of Arma 3 only.
With almost all of that time spent in the editor.
However, every-time I think I'm making a little progress something like this framework comes along to humble me, HARD.

So i guess I'll jump right into it and ask my probably inane questions.

First I suppose, the shock and awe.....
looking inside this framework folder is so many files and file types ive never seen its absolutely overwhelming. :shock:
Is this ALL genuinely necessary to make a "complete and well balanced" mission?

Second, If its indeed simply a framework and not a template, why are their chess pieces already on the board?
When I load up F3 in the editor war has already broken out, there's soldiers everywhere and enemies already invading the base. Chaos...

Perhaps I've completely misinterpreted the intent of this package.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that for something that I understood was supposed to streamline the mission making process, I'm awfully, awfully confused.

Explain it to me like I'm 5 if you have to, your not going to embarrass, or offend me anymore than I already have myself over this, lol.

Thanks all.
SPECTRE

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fer
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Re: Fresh meat requires a little explantion and perhaps tuti

Post by fer »

SPECTRE wrote:First I suppose, the shock and awe.....
looking inside this framework folder is so many files and file types ive never seen its absolutely overwhelming. :shock:
Is this ALL genuinely necessary to make a "complete and well balanced" mission?
No, there's not need to use every feature. The intent of including them all in the framework is that - typically - you just have to edit a line in the init.sqf file to enable/disable a feature. When compressed, the mission PBO files are still small enough that you shouldn't ever worry about 'bloat'.
SPECTRE wrote:Second, If its indeed simply a framework and not a template, why are their chess pieces already on the board?
When I load up F3 in the editor war has already broken out, there's soldiers everywhere and enemies already invading the base. Chaos...
The pre-placed units are there because all FA missions use the same ORBAT for player-controlled platoons, and these units have lots of supporting features (e.g. unit markers, gear settings etc.). When making a coop mission, for example, you would open F3 in the editor and immediately delete the pre-placed units and vehicles you don't intend to use. You can always choose to use none of the pre-placed units, of course. Note: Never delete the two men placed at 0.0 on the map.
SPECTRE wrote:Perhaps I've completely misinterpreted the intent of this package.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that for something that I understood was supposed to streamline the mission making process, I'm awfully, awfully confused.
Hopefully the responses above will make it clearer, but if not, you're in the right place to ask!

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fer
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Re: Fresh meat requires a little explantion and perhaps tuti

Post by fer »

... also, have you spent much time with the F3 manual?

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wolfenswan
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Re: Fresh meat requires a little explantion and perhaps tuti

Post by wolfenswan »

When I load up F3 in the editor war has already broken out, there's soldiers everywhere and enemies already invading the base. Chaos...
now imagine this happening with F2 where platoons for all existing factions are preplaced, which means about 188 soldiers per side ;) It's really not meant to be done but a nice test for your hardware :D

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SPECTRE
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Re: Fresh meat requires a little explantion and perhaps tuti

Post by SPECTRE »

I have indeed looked deeply through the wiki, and it does spell it out quite clearly. No doubt. But perhaps without that previous knowledge from A2 those discrete components that are included still present themselves as a tall cliff to climb for the uninitiated.I think thats all that I'm saying I think. :psyboom:
Its a ME problem, clearly not a framework thing/ I see that now.

Many of the external scripts and folders/files included are clearly tribal knowledge from A2,
of which I'm not familiar with at all {though I understand they share a similar or near identical syntax}

Soooooooooooooooooooo much to learn. :siiigh:

So being a non Folk ARPS member, what would/could I immediately gut out to at least to minimize the mountain of info and leave me with a smaller elephant to eat?

Thank you all who took the time to help explain. The curve is steep.

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IceRaiser
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Re: Fresh meat requires a little explantion and perhaps tuti

Post by IceRaiser »

Uhm, what are you trying to do?

If the point is to have a mission with BluFor troops - start off by box-selecting all the Red units and press Shift-Del. Do the same for the Green units.
Then delete any units/vehicles you don't want the players to have.

Place them at the starting location and start placing enemy units at the place where you want the battle(s) to be :jihad:

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SPECTRE
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Re: Fresh meat requires a little explantion and perhaps tuti

Post by SPECTRE »

IceRaiser wrote:Uhm, what are you trying to do?

If the point is to have a mission with BluFor troops - start off by box-selecting all the Red units and press Shift-Del. Do the same for the Green units.
Then delete any units/vehicles you don't want the players to have.

Place them at the starting location and start placing enemy units at the place where you want the battle(s) to be :jihad:

Simply build more dynamic missions like everyone else.

But, to the point and for example...The "f" folder...I have used Eliteness and the BI tool-set to decompress many a mission, and never have I come across any such thing.
Almost every file begins with the prefix F_, FA_ or FOLK_ {Shactac Fireteam Hud I know, even despite the wiki saying that vanilla is all that's needed for this build, Which is clearly no longer the case, especially with the addition of ACRE, unless again I'm confused. which is quite likely).
So is it safe to assume that anything with those prefixes are proprietary "folk ARPS" files for your particular orbat layout and therefore deletable?
I'm simply trying to pare this thing down to something I can swallow.
:eng101:
I've gotta join a group.
Its simply not intuitive to the uninitiated.





F3 Folk ARPS Platoons
F3 Folk ARPS Assign Gear Script
F3 Folk ARPS Group IDs
F3 Folk ARPS Group Markers
F3 Folk ARPS JIP Reinforcement Options

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wolfenswan
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Re: Fresh meat requires a little explantion and perhaps tuti

Post by wolfenswan »

But, to the point and for example...The "f" folder...I have used Eliteness and the BI tool-set to decompress many a mission, and never have I come across any such thing.
It is a way to structure things and to avoid clutter. In a nutshell:

Code: Select all

missionroot - init.sqf, briefing.sqf etc. - basic files required by the mission to be in the root folder
missionroot/f/ - all F2/F3 relevant files, most of them editable by the user
missionroot/f/server - script that exclusively run server-side
missionroot/f/common - scripts shared by all clients

ACRE is an option to enable but it is by no means required. If you enable the ACRE parameter while running vanilla you'll obviously get an error. The ShackTac fireteam member markers have nothing to do with STHud and require no addons.

All prefixes just indicate the context where the files come from f_ (the majority) was made specifically for the framework, fa_ was made with folk arps in mind or by members of FA and ShackTac_ were made way back when parts of the F development team were active in ShackTac.

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IceRaiser
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Re: Fresh meat requires a little explantion and perhaps tuti

Post by IceRaiser »

SPECTRE wrote:and therefore deletable?
No, don't delete files. The .pbo will be small enough anyways.
I've gotta join a group.
Its simply not intuitive to the uninitiated.
"No" to the first, "yes it is" to the second.

Ok, so let's walk you through this.
Download the latest F3 build, place it in C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\My Documents\Arma 3 Alpha - Other Profiles\YourName\MPMissions

Then open the F3 Main Page and go through the links form the top, starting with Naming Your Mission.

Place/Remove the units and create your mission (Enemies, Objectives, Markers, Triggers, etc)
Then exit/alt+tab ArmA3 and edit the Mission Header.
You can edit the Loading Screen, Respawn Setting and Respawn INIT or just move along to the Briefing Template (and then come back to the other three).

The F2/F3 framework is, hands down, the easiest way to create large(20+ players) scale missions. Just follow the links from the main page, do what it says and spend more time in the editor placing the units and stuff.

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fer
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Re: Fresh meat requires a little explantion and perhaps tuti

Post by fer »

Actually, what we need is an F3 tutorial that steps you through the process of going from downloaded 7z archive to having a fully-rounded mission ready to export to PBO and upload to your community's server. I am going to look at creating such a thing now, as once you have been through the process you'll understand that it's remarkably easy and quick (the longest part of writing an adversarial, for example, is deciding where to place the units and writing the briefing files).

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