ARMA 3: STRATEGIC MAP TUTORIAL

By: the_Demongod (Steam & Forums) 1. INTRO/HOW THE STRATEGIC MAP WORKS 2. PLACING THE MODULES/SETTING UP THE MAP 3. OPENING THE MAP 4. ASSIGNING ACTIONS TO MISSION MARKERS

INTRO/HOW THE STRATEGIC MAP WORS If you've played the campaign, you've definitely encountered the Strategic Map. It's the map screen that comes up which allows you to select, say, where you are going to insert into Stratis ("Spoiler?"). The reason I like this so much is that it gives the player a choice, already a strong concept in arma, but is further enhanced with this tool. Anything that can be accomplished with a script can be activated by the Strategic Map, but the two things I will be teaching you to do with it are changing the player's location, and spawning units. PLACING THE MODULES/SETTING UP THE MAP To make the Strategic Map work, you will need to know how to use several modules and how to activate them: 1. The 'Strategic Map' module. This is the hub that all the other modules are tied to. 2. The 'Open Strategic Map' module. This module is synched to the Strategic Map module, and a synchronized trigger will cause the Strategic Map to open. 3. The 'Mission' module. This creates the actual Mission button when opening the Strategic Map, and when moused over, displays information about the mission. In addition, you will need: 1. A trigger you wish to use to open the map 2. Something you wish to happen when a mission is activated. This could be as simple as setting the player's position to a marker's position, or as complex as executing a script which spawns units. 3. OPTIONAL: A picture you wish to display under the Mission's description. PART I: OPENING THE MAP First, find the Strategic Map module under Modules > Strategic > Strategic Map, and place it somewhere on the map. It doesn't really matter where because its location doesn't change anything.

Next, place an Open Strategic Map module (Modules > Strategic > Open Strategic Map) next to it and sync them together. All this does it connects the Map to a trigger that you'll use to open the map. Before we continue, sync the Open Strategic Map module to your player. You can also select Day or Night to change the darkness of the map. Create a trigger, set its area to 0, set its activation to radio alpha, repeatedly; and place this in the condition: this && ready and make its onAct this: [] call BIS_fnc_StrategicMapOpen; ready = false; this will require a condition to be met as well as the radio activated to open the map. we will be doing this so that the map cannot be opened unless the current mission has been completed. when the map is opened, it will also reset the global variable "ready," allowing the cycle to be tripped again. Later, we're going to get into scripts. Only then will I explain how to set ready back to true, so the strategic map will be a one-time use thing for now. Everything else will still work. Preview your mission; when you activate Radio Alpha, the map should open. PART II: MISSIONS The next step will be creating the actual mission markers that your player will click within the strategic map. Find the "Mission" module, located in Modules (F7) > Strategic > Mission. Find the place you want the icon to display on your Strategic Map, and place it there. The location matters. Sync this to your Strategic Map module. This is where it's pretty much all up to you. In the Name field, type the name you would like to appear when you mouse over the marker. In the Description Field, type the text you would like to display under the name (could be a briefing, etc). The Activation field is where the magic happens. Here you will paste your code to determine what will happen when the marker is clicked on in the map. I am going to go over how to use a script to spawn enemies using a script. I will be using this to create a mission that can be played indefinitely, without any performance damage. If you already have a script you would like to run, click this button to skip the next chapter. PART IIIa: SPAWNING UNITS WITH A SCRIPT

For this next part, you will need to create a script. I highly recommend using Notepad++, along with the SQF syntax highlighting. Before you jump into your scripting, you'll need to place markers on the places you want your units to spawn. Make sure you give them each a unique name. I've created several here. Each name starts with "abatk" for the shortened name of my mission, followed by the name of the unit (in this case, "jet2"), followed by "mkr" just for clarity. The whole name of the marker is this: "abatkjet2mkr" This allows you to easily tell the different markers apart when you are using them to spawn units. Once you have placed a marker for every unit, or one per group, you're ready to start scripting. Open Notepad. Save your file into your mission directory, be sure it's set to .SQF. Name this file whatever you like. I'm going to call mine abatk.sqf, for air base attack. There are two main functions you'll be using to spawn your units. The first one is what you'll be using to spawn single units, called "BIS_fnc_spawnVehicle." If you plan on spawning lots of infantry or any other groups, you'll be using "BIS_fnc_spawnVehicle." We'll start with spawnVehicle because it is the most useful and common. the basic syntax is this: _var = [location, heading, unit classname, side] call BIS_fnc_spawnVehicle. in the context of our jet we'll be spawning here, it would look like this: _abatkjet2 = [getMarkerPos "abatkjet2mkr", 90, "B_Plane_CAS_01_F", WEST] call BIS_fnc_spawnVehicle; This will find the marker "abatkjet2mkr", and place an A-164 AKA A-10 at it's position, and turn it 90 degrees. We'll use this same line of code and copy and paste it as many times as we need, and just change the numbers. Now we have our planes done. They will spawn on the ground, but proceed to taxi and take off. What I want is for them to sit next to the runway like good little targets. Under each one I'm going to add another line, (_abatkjet2 select 0) setFuel 0; (_abatkjet2 select 0) references the vehicle we created, and setFuel 0 obviously depletes it of fuel. Now when they spawn, they won't move. Next, I'm going to want a squad of infantry standing near the aircraft. Because nobody wants to go through and enter createVehicle for each man, we'll use the BIS_fnc_spawnGroups function.

The syntax we'll be using is this: _name = [place, side, configfile name, [], [], [], [], [], heading] call BIS_fnc_spawnGroup; so in our situation, we'll have this: _abatkinfgroup1 = [getMarkerPos "abatkinfgroup1mkr", WEST, configfile >> "CfgGroups" >> "West" >> "BLU_F" >> "Infantry" >> "BUS_InfSquad", [], [], [], [], [], 230] call BIS_fnc_spawnGroup; This references the config file for the Blufor Rifle Squad, and places it at the location of the marker, saving us the trouble of scripting them in. The last thing we'll do is create a waypoint at the location of the base. This will be a global variable without an underscore, because we will need to reference it in a different script. We'll create a new objective with these lines: missionwaypoint = pgroup addWaypont [getMarkerPos "abatkwpmkr", 0]; abatkwp setWaypointType "SAD"; for search and destroy. We'll need to create an init.sqf file and place this in it: pgroup = group player; pgroup setGroupID ["Havok 1"]; This ensures that this waypoint gets added to the player's group. Havok is just the name of the group, you can change this to whatever you want. PART IIIb: CLEANING UP The next script we're going to create will check if the enemy are all dead, and then clean up everything generated by our scripts. The first thing we'll do is check to see if all BLUFOR are dead. Enter this code: waitUntil {sleep 15; ({(side _x) == west} count allUnits) == 0 }; Every 15 seconds, it will check to see if any units from the side west are alive. If not, it will wait 15 more seconds and check again. If it detects that all units are dead, it will progress in the script. Let's continue. First of all, we'll add a simple hint to tell us that the mission has completed and the script is about to run cleanup.

hint "Mission Complete"; And we'll add a line that deletes the waypoint. deleteWaypoint "missionwaypoint"; Because we'll only have one at a time, we can reuse the name for all the missions. The next line will delete all dead units: { deleteVehicle _x } forEach allDead; Finally, we'll set our "ready" variable to true, meaning our strategic map can once again be opened. ready = true; Now, we're going to move on to implementing our new scripts into our mission. PART IV: IMPLEMENTATION This step is fairly simple. Open ArmA, go to your mission, and find your Mission modules. Go to each one and paste the following script: nul = [] execVM "missionscript.sqf"; nul = [] execVM "check.sqf"; Now when the mission marker is clicked, it will run the script that will spawn the enemy for that respective mission. Additionally, it will begin our check.sqf script. Once all the enemy is dead, it will delete all the bodies and vehicle husks, remove the waypoint, reset the value that allows the map to be open, and end. The mission can be played repeatedly, without any negative effects on performance. Additionally, you can have as many of these missions as you want, and it will only increase loading time. Because the only script constantly running is the cleanup (and only checks once every 15 seconds), there is not much load on the game. PART V: IMAGES The last part of this tutorial is optional, but is a nice visual enhancement. Place a folder within your mission folder, and name it images. Take an image you would like to show up when you mouse over the marker, and place it into the folder. Enter Arma, edit your mission marker, and under image, enter this: images\name.jpg Save your Arma mission, and preview it.