Uniform Compatibility

[arc7r7]

Does anyone know if its possible now with 0.3.8 to change the uniform configs so all uniform's can be worn now and used, like CUPs and Tryks uniforms.

[Grahame]

Seconded if not. Though I think Tryk's has armour value problems since 1.52

[arc7r7]

i thought running the CPC tryks patch fixed the armor value issue.

 

[Grahame]

Oh, I'll check that out. Now that CUP has added loads of new gear (especially BAF) I want the uniforms to be persistent. 

I also get a few requests from my players for new uniforms, and together with the fact that I don't use ARMA 3 weapons (other than sniper DLC) on my server (set in 2025) I would really like this functionality

[arc7r7]

I'm still looking for a solution to this. I would also like a little clarification on how the uniform system works in Epoch. The player slots look like they are classed as Civilians, but I've also read that Males are Blufor and Females Opfor.

If this is true how is that males can use several of the Opfor Uniforms like Hex fatigues but not the Nato Uniforms. I've been using RHS for awhile now on my server and all the uniforms work fine. What is it that allows this but mods like Tryks and CUP Units, the uniforms are red when trying to equip them. I'm hoping this could be resolved in 0.3.8 with the ability to change more things about the game mode. If someone has any help on this I would appreciate it.

[Grahame]

Okay, after some digging, here goes. I'm sure that this is probably old hat for the regulars but it's fairly new for me. If I've missed something or made a fundamental mistake anywhere if someone can let us know I would appreciate it.

So, first things first. ARMA defines four sides in the game:

OPFOR - 0

BLUFOR - 1

INDEPENDENT - 2

CIVILIAN - 3

The relevance of the numbers above will become apparent in a moment.

Now, Epoch uses all four of the sides in the game. OPFOR is used for male characters, BLUFOR for females (standard ARMA doesn't have female characters), Independent for AI enemies and Civilian for all items and vehicles so that as in the standard game all characters and AI can use them. The reason for the separation of male and female characters is to specify which type of uniforms they can wear, since the uniform definitions in CfgVehicles have an array called modelSides that can contain any of the four numbers*

For example, the uniform definitions for female clothing items have this limitation:

modelSides[] = { 1}; // only available for female characters

ARMA's basic definitions for uniforms similarly limits uniforms to one or more sides. So, males (being OPFOR) can only wear gear that has OPFOR (0) defined in modelSides and females can only wear gear that have BLUFOR (1) among the values in modelSides.

(* An aside, helmets seem to use the setting of modelSides[] = {6} which I assume but as yet don't know for sure, is a helmet specific setting since I've not seen it used elsewhere)

Anyway, these definitions are part of the CfgVehicles definition which is loaded at server start and can not be modified by the mission. Server side PBO addons can patch the CfgVehicles definitions which is how you add extra gear from mods like CUP and RHS, but you cannot simply override it with changes in your mission file.

The way the @Unlockuniforms mod works is by doing exactly this. For a number of uniform definitions (or base model classes in the case of RHS) it overrides the original ARMA or mod (Niko, RHS, etc) definition with this one instead:

modelSides[] = { 3, 2, 1, 0};  // available for all sides

So for standard ARMA uniforms and RHS uniforms the use of the @UnlockedUniforms mod should see you straight. Unfortunately at this time Haleks's not been updating the mod for a while and CUP uniforms are not added (and they are, for example with the BAF ones) explicitely defined (above the base ARMA class) with specific side. E.g. the individual BAF uniforms inherit from a CUP class that has:

modelSides[] = { 3, 1};  // available for BLUFOR and CIV

Which sucks!

In my copious free time I think I'll search through CUP Units and see which classes have modelSide definitions and send the to Haleks. Hopefully he'll put out an update with them, thus freeing us from Bohemia's ARMA mind-think tyranny!

Hopefully this all makes sense. Let me know if I've misunderstood anything or made any errors in interpretation.

[arc7r7]

I understand the limitations now, males are Opfor and in pretty much every gear mod the uniforms are classed as blufor. I did a little testing on my server earlier with the VSM gear pack mod. Females were the only ones able to actually equip the uniforms. It seems to me we wouldn't have any of these issues if males were Blufor and females were Opfor.

[Grahame]

LOL, but whoever coded that obviously thought that men were the enemy

The "right" way to fix would be making males and females both BLUFOR and using the "isFemale" (can't remember its actual name offhand) flag only to determine the base model, male or female for the character. Of course, that would then mean that OPFOR uniforms couldn't be worn. Using CIV wouldn't work since CIV is by default friendly to all other sides and correct me if I'm wrong but if you just made the AI hostile to CIV then they couldn't get in a vehicle?

Of course a solution to the OPFOR uniform issue would be politely asking Haleks whether you could use the code (with attribution of course) from his standard PBO in Epoch's CfgVehicles.hpp. Given that you now release Epoch with an APL-SA license he might well be accommodating, though he's not a supporter of Steam Workshop so that might be a problem. The mechanism for increasing the number of sides a model can be used by is not a secret thought - the solution simply being popularized in the @UnlockedUniforms mod. Haleks does very good work though and if Epoch was to go this way it should definitely be done with his knowledge.

The biggest advantage of this change, apart from the easy access to a vast array of equipment, would be the ability to have two AI factions thus finally allowing Ai and Zombies to fight each other or have easy ambient war zones on those servers that are not so apocalyptic