Headless client

[BetterDeadThanZed]

I am trying to set up a headless client for A3EAI, but I'm having an issue. The old instructions that I found for A3EAI say to create an entry like this in mission.sqm:

class Item100
{
side="LOGIC";
class Vehicles
{
items=1;
class Item0
{
position[]={23605.094,3.19,17998.143};
special="NONE";
id=100;
side="LOGIC";
vehicle="HeadlessClient_F";
player = "PLAY CDG";
leader=1;
skill=0.60000002;
text="HC";
forceHeadlessClient = 1;
};
};
};

However, with Arma 3 1.58 that format has changed. I tried this:

		class Item105
		{
			dataType = "Logic";
			class PositionInfo
			{
				position[] = {4819.748,131.01006,6460.171};
			};
			name = "HeadlessClient_F";
			id = 0;
			type = "Logic";
			forceHeadlessClient = 1;
		};

The HC is connecting, but I'm not seeing anything in the log about it connecting. A3EAI is set to accept connections from an HC and I see this in the server log:

16:42:19 "[A3EAI] A3EAI is now listening for headless client connection."

The log for the HC isn't showing anything of interest: http://pastebin.com/9CY57CfG

Any suggestions?

[BetterDeadThanZed]

I should add that the HC window shows the HC connecting to the server:

16:49:32 Dedicated client created.
16:49:45 Client connected: 127.0.0.1:2302
16:49:46  > Player headlessclient connecting
16:49:46  > headlessclient uses modified data file
16:49:46  > Welcome to Esseker.
16:49:48  > Player headlessclient connected

*Edit* Looking at the rcon program, it looks like the HC isn't getting past the lobby.

[BetterDeadThanZed]

I've tried a bunch of different formats for the mission.sqm but nothing lets the HC get past the lobby. I am sure the mission.sqm is the key to the issue but I can't figure it out.

[82ndAB_Bravo17]

HC was broken in A3EAI just before it was cancelled, you would need to recode the HC code in the mission to get it to work.

[BetterDeadThanZed]

51 minutes ago, 82ndAB_Bravo17 said:

HC was broken in A3EAI just before it was cancelled, you would need to recode the HC code in the mission to get it to work.

I've seen people claim that before but no one seems to be able to explain how it's "Broken". They just repeat what they read somewhere else. I think people remember when HC's in general were broken with Arma 3, but that was fixed. I had it working with A3XAI (The Exile version of A3EAI). Since the headless client never gets past the lobby in my current situation, I don't believe I'm even at the point where I could say if a headless client works with A3EAI because it never has a chance to interact with it. I can't believe no one is using an HC with A3EAI. There must be someone out there that can share their mission.sqm where it relates to the HC set up.

[mgm]

I would drop a PM to Face. If he gets a chance he can clarify this in one post.

[82ndAB_Bravo17]

This is in a file called "# IMPORTANT - HC NOT CURRENTLY WORKING #.txt" that was in the last download that was available:-

Quote

HC not functional until further notice.

What more clarification is needed?

[BetterDeadThanZed]

19 minutes ago, 82ndAB_Bravo17 said:

This is in a file called "# IMPORTANT - HC NOT CURRENTLY WORKING #.txt" that was in the last download that was available:-

What more clarification is needed?

At the time of the release of those files, headless clients were not working with Arma 3. BI has fixed that since those files were released.  As I've said, I used a HC with A3XAI, the Exile version of A3EAI, which was discontinued around the same time as A3EAI, and it worked just fine. That was under Arma 3 1.56. 

Here's a wiki from less than 3 months ago from BI that tells how to use a headless client. Since this was published after the A3EAI files, I have to assume HC's work with Arma 3 now:

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Headless_Client

There's also a feedback thread on BI's forums for the headless client. Reading through it indicated HC's do work with Arma 3: https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/173767-dedicated-client-headless-client-feedback-dev-branch

But again, this thread is about my HC not getting past the lobby. If it got past the lobby, we might see that A3EAI's HC functions aren't working, but it's not even getting that far.

[82ndAB_Bravo17]

I believe that HC was working for A3EAI at one point, but stopped after some changes were made in Epoch.

[BetterDeadThanZed]

So you think Epoch is stopping my headless client from getting past the lobby?

[Ghostrider-GRG]

I believe that the issue was that at the time of the last release of A3EAI the HC feature of Arma 3 was not working properly. With more recent releases, I was able to get an HC to connect to the server and to transfer units to it. I never really went through logs to see whether the HC for A3EAI took control of units but based on looking at the CPU loads it appeared that the HC was doing calculations and running at about 50% of the load of the server. I had the same question as BetterDeadThanZed with respect to how to modify the mission.sqm to permit an HC to connect.  Still Googling ....

[Grahame]

In case it's not an HC issue I would note that the ID in your class item is a duplicate of item0's. IDs must be unique or the second one won't initialise. At least that was the original problem I had moving to Eden.