sproyd's Simple Arma 3 Editor Guide v0.7

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.

What Can I Do?

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.

Abbreviations Used in This Guide

ATTOW = At the time of writing

(this is important as Arma 3 ATTOW is in Beta phase and there will be a lot of changes to the game

as it goes through development and final release. I will try and keep this up to date as best I can, so

check back online to make sure you have the latest version of the Guide)

BIS = Bohemia Interactive Studios (the developers of Arma)

A3 = Arma 3 (all versions)

A2 = Arma 2

OA = Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead - a standalone expansion for A2

DLC = Downloadable Content (expansion packs)

Editor = Arma 3 Editor

Guide = sproyd's Simple Arma 3 Editor Guide

SP = Single Player

MP = Multiplayer

Co-Op = Co-Operative (MP with friends playing together against the AI)

AO = Area of Operations

TOD = Time Of Day

Getting Started

1. Buy Arma 3.

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.

3. Launch the Editor.

Click Editor in the Main Menu.

4. Choose a Map and click Continue.

ATTOW the only map (AKA an island) available in A3 is Stratis. This is the map we will be

using for the purposes of this guide. However, thanks to A3's iterative engine, it is possible

to play A2, OA and user created maps in A3 with almost no glitches. Refer to the BIS Forums

for guides on that.

5. Change to Traditional Layout.

You should now be in the Editor, viewing a map of Stratis. The default A3 editor layout is a

new layout called 'Streamlined'. We are going to change this to the 'Traditional' layout which

I think is more user-friendly. Click the button indicated below.

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.

6. Ta-Da! You are now ready to create!

Familiarizing Yourself with the Layout

There are 3 key areas of the Layout that you will be working with.

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.

Special: This had to do with a sub-element of placement. Selecting

None will put your unit exactly where you placed him in the Editor.

Selecting In Cargo will place your unit in a friendly vehicle he is

Grouped with (more on Grouping later), selecting Flying will place

your unit flying in mid-air (aircraft only!), and In Formation (the default) will place the unit instantly

in formation with the Group leader, even if they were placed on opposite ends of the map. Leave

this on In Formation for now.

Control: This is quite important. Your first unit by default will be Player. Only

one unit can be designated as Player and this is who you will control in SP

Missions. Units designated as Playable can be selected by players in Co-Op

or MP missions. Non Playable is self-explanatory I hope! Other options are

available when placing vehicles i.e. Player as Driver or Playable as Gunner.

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.

Azimuth and Elevation: I recommend adjusting unit Azimuth

(direction) directly on the Map by holding down Shift + Click. If you

want to have multiple units facing the exact same direction you can

manually enter the Azimuth in the dialog box. Elevation is useful for

determining height of flying aircraft and is also useful for placing Units at the correct floor in multi-

floored buildings. Default is 0 which is ground level.

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.

Description: Displayed if the unit is a Playable unit.

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.

Condition of Presence: Ignore for now.

Placement Radius: Another element of randomness - this will randomise placement within a set

radius from where you place the unit on the map.

That's it for the Unit Dialog Box!

!!!

Groups and Grouping

The Group functionality of A3 is fully accessible via the Editor. Select [F2]

Groups with your mouse on the right hand side of the screen or press F2 on

your keyboard.

With Groups selected you can do 2 things - place Groups of Units, or Group

existing Units together.

Placing Groups of Units

Placing Groups of Units is a quick way to create multiple Units in the Editor. You could do this

manually via [F1] Units but it would take a while to create each Unit that you want one by one.

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.

Click Preview to see what you've done.

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.

This is where the second part of the Grouping mode

comes in. Drag a line from the Squad Leader to our

Player Unit (or vice versa) while still in Group mode. This

will join the Quadbike to the existing Group. Once you do

this you will notice that the Grouping lines now all lead

to the Player as the Group Leader. This is because we

earlier changed the Rank of the Player to Lieutenant,

which just happens to be the highest Rank in this Group.

Click Preview again to see what's changed.

Well as you can see you now look like a badass on your Quadbike with your 10 man Group flanking

you in wedge formation. What's more, as the Group Leader you are now in control of the Group and

should see an icon for each Group Members at the bottom left of the screen.

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).

Waypoints are assigned to specific Units, although Waypoints assigned to a

Group Leader will be executed by the Group.

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.

Click Preview to see what the Rifleman does. He should be legging it

towards the Waypoint you set. This isn't very natural behaviour and

once he gets there he is probably just going to stop and look dumb.

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.

Let's change the Speed field to Limited and Behaviour to Safe.

Click Preview and lets see the difference. Our Rifleman is now walking

at a natural, casual pace with his weapon down and one hand free.

This much more realistically reflects how a soldier would act in a non-

combat situation (unless being yelled at by a CO of course...).

Subsequent Waypoints will follow the prior Waypoint settings if you

leave them set at No change.

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.

Remember, Triggers are designed for one thing - to be Activated.

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.

Let's have this Trigger Win the Mission upon

Activation. Double click the Trigger flag to bring

up the Trigger Dialog Box. Change Type to End #1

(which is equivalent to Win #1 - there can be up

to 6 different endings & 1 Lose). The next 3 fields

read (sort of) in order - so by setting Activation to

BLUFOR we get "Once BLUFOR is Present" the

Trigger will be Activated. Condition 'this' just

means that the above condition applies. If you

want a custom condition for activation you can enter it under the Condition field.

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.

A light blue line should now run from each Trigger to

your Player like the picture to the left. Now open the

Trigger Dialog Box for one of the Triggers. You will

notice that the Activation field should now read

Vehicle. Let's check the other options by clicking on the

drop-down box.

Vehicle means the Unit that this Trigger is Grouped

with - whether that be a lone soldier, an empty car,

a man on a quadbike, a helicopter etc. It is not

restricted to vehicles per se.

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.

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.

Just like before, double click on the map to place a Module. It

doesn't matter where you place this module - but make it easily

accessible. Let's change the Category field to Intel and Module

field to Create Task.

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.

Woohoo we have a task!

FYI

!!!

Create another Module nearby,

and set the Module Field to Set

Task State and the State to

Succeeded. This Module will be

use to set our Task to Complete

once fulfilled. Click OK.

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.

Your Editor should be looking like this.

Synchronizing here has two different effects.

Synchronizing the two Modules basically just links

them together so A3 knows that they relate to the

same task in this instance.

However, synchronizing the Set Task State Module to

the Trigger is a different yet very important concept

which once you understand will give you a lot of

power and control over mission elements.

We are saying that only once the Trigger is

Activated, can the Set Task State Module proceed.

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!

No peeking on the next page until you're done!

Welcome back :). Hopefully, your Editor should now look a little something like this and you didn't

get too lost without me.

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.

Way No. 1) Naming Triggers

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.

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!

Code

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.

Way no. 3) Using Variables

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.

Now open the End Trigger. Delete whatever is

in the Condition box and simply input

westdone && eastdone.

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!

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.

FYI

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.

Custom Loadouts // TOD // Co-Op // Briefings // More Scripting

The rest of the Guide is for those of you that want to get more involved and create missions that

are of a high quality - good enough to distribute publicly, have critiqued, play with friends and

have all the finishing touches and polish that you would expect from a BIS-made mission.

Publishing and Distribution

So far, we have been testing our missions with the Preview button in the Editor. However, if we

want to share these missions with friends and the A3 community we will need to export the missions

from the Editor.

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.

Open the mission you'd like to export and

firstly, make sure your mission is named

under Advanced Intel (click the button in

the top-right or press Ctrl + W). Any name is fine. Click OK.

Then click the Save As button in the top toolbar or press Ctrl + Shift + S.

Click the Save As dropdown box, the options are as follows:

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

My Documents / Arma 3 / Missions

Whereas pbo files will be saved under your core A3 directory

Program Files / Steam / steamapps / Arma 3 / Missions or MPMissions

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.

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.

Weather and TOD Conditions

The Editor has some powerful yet simple tools for editing weather and TOD for your mission. You

can also even change the date of the mission which should adjust for sunrise, sunset and sun and

moon position.

Simple: You can quickly change TOD and weather using the top-right

toolbar.

Advanced: By clicking Advanced Intel You can adjust windiness,

cloudiness, waviness, foginess, raininess (ATTOW rain has been disabled

pending an overhaul) and lightning...iness. As illustrated below the sliders on the left are the

conditions upon mission start, the sliders on the right are the forecast weather and the slider the

bottom is over what time period the conditions will change from 'Start' to 'Forecasted' - in this case

3h 33mins.

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.

FYI

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.

Download the 'Paper Doll' gear menu here:

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.

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.

Wow, this unit now looks great with a custom loadout.

However, he probably doesn't have any ammo! You are

going to have to find out the class name of the ammo

for each particular weapon and add it in. You can

search for it here, although the list isn't exhaustive.

http://browser.six-

projects.net/cfg_weapons/classlist?version=67

In this case I know the ammo class name is

30_Rnd_45ACP_Mag_SMG_01

Which translates in English to a 30 round magazine of

45ACP ammo for SMG_01! Now how to add it...

Huh?

There is a great scripting command called addMagazines which simply adds magazines to your Unit's

inventory. Each scripting command has a very particular syntax which must be strictly followed in

order for the script to work. Here's the one for addMagazines.

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!

the Script command (it must be in this order)

magazineName is a string so must be in quotations

count is a number, not a string, no quotations

unit addMagazines [ magazineName , count ] ;

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

this addmagazines ["30Rnd_45ACP_Mag_SMG_01",5];

Make sure there are still semicolons

separating each script line.

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!

Pro-Tip

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

Let's learn about Markers first.

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.

You can also place Markers over zones. Place

another Marker West of Agia Marina. Like Triggers,

you can select shapes of Rectangle and Ellipse.

Select a shape and play with the axis sizes. You can

orientate the Markers the same as Units, by holding

down Shift and clicking and dragging from the

center point. Below I have placed a red, vertically

filled 50x100 zone. I can then place another 'filled

arrow' marker next to it to label it, in this case

Enemy AO.

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;

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;

execVM "briefing.sqf";

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.

Code

Code

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.

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

If you want to look fancy then you'll

need to add some finishing touches

to your mission. Here's how to do it.

Let's create another file, this time

called description.ext in your

mission folder.

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.

author="yourname"; //appears as author in the overview and loading screen

overviewText="A Simple Mission"; //text that appears in overview and loading screen

onLoadName="My First Mission"; //mission name for loading screen only

overviewPicture="overview.jpg"; //mission picture for overview screen, file in mission root folder

loadscreen="loadpic.jpg"; //mission picture for loading screen, file in mission root folder

respawn=5; //allows Team Switch and respawn to next playable unit on side

onLoadMissionTime = 1; //shows mission time on launch

debriefing=1; //defines if the debriefing is shown at the end of the mission.

A full list of description.ext scripts and their possible values is available at

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Description.ext

Let's save our mission to our SP Missions folder and

see how it looks when players load it.

Okay, Operation Sand Castle is looking pretty official.

Remember, the overviewText field has a character

limit so keep the description short. The Briefing is to

be used for more detailed instructions to the

Player.Get creative with your loading screen or just

display a screenshot. Up to you.

Pro-Tip

Code

More Fancy Stuff

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.

class CfgDebriefing

{

class End1

{

title = "Mission Failed";

subtitle = "You Cheated";

description = "Cheaters fail at life";

};

class End2

{

title = "Mission Accomplished";

subtitle = "Well Done!";

description = "Congratulations, you won the mission! Well done chap.";

};

class End3

{

title = "Mission Failed";

subtitle = "";

description = "Expect a demotion and some time to think.";

};

};

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!

End2 we have set as the best outcome and End3 is

set as failure of the mission. We've only really done

two but you can set many different ending and

debriefing texts to match!

Now we need to do some minor scripting in the

Editor to bring up these debriefings.

You will remember that we earlier created a mission

win Trigger when the player achieved westdone &&

eastdone variables. Let's open that Trigger and

change type to None, we will then instead insert the

following text into the 'On Act.' field

"end2" call BIS_fnc_endMission

Code

Code

Now, once we complete a mission we should get some cool text, in line with the appropriate ending

in the description.ext file like so;

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 > 60;

time is a script command based in seconds and can be any length you'd like. In the On Act. field

enter;

"end3" call BIS_fnc_endMission

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!

Code

Code

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

Syntax: alive object

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.

Trigger activated once building destroyed

You can have a Trigger activate upon destruction of a

building. Simply create a Trigger with a radius that circles

the building then press the ID tab to display static object

IDs, then [F2] Group the Trigger with the static object.

Make sure the Trigger Activation is set to 'Static Object'

'Not Present' in order for the Trigger to activate once

the static object/building is destroyed. Condition can be

left as this and you can put a variable into the On Act.

field as well as syncing it with a Set Task State Module

for full effect.

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

Syntax: unitArray joinSilent group

i.e. [unit1, unit2] joinSilent (group unit3)

or [unit1, unit2] joinSilent player

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.

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.

Pro-Tip

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.

Captive Units (setCaptive)

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.

Syntax: unitName setCaptive status

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;

this setCaptive true;

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.

Intros and Outros

Mission Examples

TO BE CONTINUED, PLEASE POST FEEDBACK ON BIS

FORUMS IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE SO FAR AND WANT

MORE CONTENT

Code