Mission editing is great fun

[PZ]

At first I thought "yeah, what a pain to have to do mission editing..." and I was just going to download missions created by others.  But as of this morning, I've completely changed my approach to the simulation. 

First, like gvse, I cannot more highly recommend that you do this download which consists the best (IMHO) of  the ARMA1 maps ported to ARMA2.  It is huge - 2 gb compressed, and 3.8 gb on your hard disk.  The ARMA2 maps of Utes and Chernarus are bland and rather boring to me, but these islands, particularly Sahrani contain terrain that varies from desert, to mountains, to jungle - very muck like FC2 in variation.  Sahrani is huge, and you could spend a lifetime creating missions in the various towns and cities.

Back to the main point, I'm playing in Porto, a desert-like island, relatively small, and much like a Middle Eastern town.  As I'm adding items to the map like vehicles, squads, IEDs road blocks, headquarters, etc., etc., it struck me that I'm enjoying the game more than ever.  It is kind of like a combination of SimCity and if you were ever into it decades ago, the board-based strategy games with huge maps (5x6 feet sometimes) and hundreds of playing pieces.

Here I am, adding a piece here, creating an IED there, establishing an enemy headquarters on the far hillside and creating the triggers that cause things to happen on-screen.  I'm sitting as a sniper on the top of a rusty water tower and I can watch the action unfold or I can join in the fun.  I've basically set up the scenario so that the goody guys (my side) are defending the bad guys (insurgents and Russians "advisors") battle it out over control of the town. This is what I've managed to accomplish so far:

• Put in a Colonel as high commander of each side complete with a headquarters and troops.
• Have a medical unit available, with an ambulance
• Set vehicles throughout town equipped with IEDs so that any enemy coming in range will trigger it.  However, my guys can get inside and drive.
• Put one of the Opel WWII trucks at the enemy headquarters and have it drive into town.  if it passes by an un-detonated car bomb, it will trigger the explosion.
• Snipers on rooftops
• Flares that shoot off into the night sky if it is dark.
• Figured out that even though I'm just a lowly sniper on a rusty tower, I can activate the command mode (Ctrl-space) and send units anywhere to do my bidding - useful if I see a sneak attack that the commander doesn't see)
• This is a cool one - added ambient combat which means that other combat units will spawn on the battlefield automatically - you never know what will come up to your assistance.  These combat units will join you in the fight against the enemy.

This is turning out to be almost like a game of chess in developing the strategy, and it is marvelous fun to watch the scenario unfold - the respective commanders know what to do, and I can be nothing but an observer if I want.  The best part is that the battle is never the same when you reload the map.

In summary, if you like developing strategy, you'll become an Armaholic. :-X :-X :-X :-X

[PZ]

ARMA Script Editor

Here is a little gem - it generates scripts for you, or you can look at the scripts others have created and see how they w@&k.  I just used it to create a player unit on the map with exactly the load out that I wanted - all in a wizzard.  All I needed to do was put the script in the mission folder and call it in the init box of the unit's properties.  The whole thing took all of about a minute and a half, with absolutely no knowledge of scripting.  Unfortunately briefing has changed for ARMA2 so that wizzard won't w@&k in ARMA2.  Here are some of the details of this editing tool:

File Wizzards

• Briefing Wizzard - Use this wizard to create your mission briefing (ARMA1 only).
  
• Overview Wizzard- Use this wizard to create an overview for a single player mission (ARMA1 only).
• Description Wizzard - Use this wizard to add unit respawning, mission gear, and custom sounds.
• Custom Unit Wizzard (this is the one I used) - Use this wizard to quickly create custom unit weapon combinations.
• Crate Builder Wizzard - Use this wizard to create custom crate load-outs.

... and under the tools help file:

• About Scripts - More specific help on how scripts w@&k. Also a couple of sample scripts to look at.
• About Variables - A little bit of help with understanding variables.
• Script Syntax - The different types of lines available in scripting.

The tool was designed for ARMA1, but the script works fine in ARMA2.

ARMA1 Script Editor download link