5 replies to this topic

[Delta38]

I had an idea to create an addon that would bring vehicle engine starting speeds to more realistic ones, especially for tanks, helicopters and airplanes.

Now the concept was to either change a single parameter in a few classes or change the default "engine on" action to add a delay to it (of course finding a way of making different delays for different vehicles shouldn't be hard).

The problem I have so far is that the only parameter I could find in the "APC", "Tank", and "Tank_F" classes, called "engineStartSpeed" doesn't appear to change anything (a change from 1.5 to 0.2 or 10.0 was impossible to notice and in fact there is no documentation I was able to find on that parameter so far). I was trying out the change on the Slammer tank, which I assumed would be a child of the Tank or Tank_F class, I wasn't able to find the actual Slammer tank class in the config viewer.

As for changing the "engine on" action, I was only able to find an entry in CfgActions defining its display name, priority, etc. but not what it actually did.

If anyone with some knowledge of configs had an idea where those actions are defined or some other suggestions, I'd be very thankful for the help.

[Chairborne]

There's a trick to find the name of most weapons and vehicles.

Put the vehicle you want in editor map with yourself as crew member (empty should work too though), then preview, as the game finishes loading and you can use the vehicles normally press Esc, then go in Config Viewer.

In the bottom left corner it should display the config entry for both the vehicle and the CURRENT weapon YOU are using (meaning horn for driver, main gun or coax if you're gunner, or commander gun if you are commander).

From here, if you double-click on one of the two entries the game will automatically open them for you in the scrolling menu on the left.

Also, super-fast way of checking classnames for vehicles is simply to select them in the editor.

When you are creating a vehicle in the top right corner you'll have its classname.

Then you have to open the config viewer and do the digging by yourself.

 

For the problem at hand, i don't know where you can find what you're asking for but i think that stuff is protected from writing, i don't know how BIS handled things in previous games but even some ammo and weapon classes are protected from writing.

I know for a fact the Kajman autocannon and 30mm ammo is one of them because i tried.

[Delta38]

Yeah I actually figured out that trick with the config viewer later, it seems like there is no config value I could simply change to achieve the desired effect.

 

I later tried adding an engine type eventhandler, which would set fuel to 0, wait a while (possibly playing some start-up sound later) and set fuel again to the initial value, however setting fuel to 0 would cause that same eventhandler to activate again and again, thus looping infinitely with the fuel set to 0.

 

I hand an idea about removing the eventhandler after it's fired and then adding it again at the end, but that would mean writing another eventhandler definition within the first one and so on, so it's impossible to do.

One idea I haven't got into yet was rewriting the default "engine on" action and adding a delay to it somehow, but I don't know how to actually overwrite it.

[Chairborne]

I gave a quick look at the allinone config but couldn't find anything related to the engine besides the CfgActions entry you found already.

The rest is all related to sounds or smoke effects.

My scripting skills are rather limited, sorry i couldn't help you.

Have you tried looking into the BIS boards? Often times these questions have been asked before, maybe they can point you in the right direction.

[Rambo2]

Ya, as Chairbone said, UO forums are less than optimal place to get help with mission making issues, let alone with addon modification. I had a lot better luck when needing help with the official Arma editing forums, but in your case I would check http://forums.bistud...s-amp-Scripting

From the looks of it, someone there will most likely reply to you quickly on whether this can be done and how or not. Good luck!

[Delta38]

Yep, looking through existing topics first, which takes a while. Was hoping someone here might know a solution but I suppose my problem is a bit different from common scripting knowledge.

Thanks for the help and suggestions still, I'll update the thread if I make any progress with this.