[Tutorial] Weapon proxy handling on Planes & Choppers

[[FRL]Myke]

Hello everyone.

Recently i realized that even these days there are planes released that uses some fancy object hiding and setObjectTexture methods to have different weapon loadouts. Basically the same methods as Franze has used on his F/A18 back in Armed Assault. While at that time, this was just a work of genius, today it is not necessary anymore as the weapon proxy system has been massively improved in ArmA 2.

The only explanation i have for this is, that people aren't familiar with all possibilities the reworked proxy handling allows today. So i decided to write down what i know about and also how i actually do use it.

Be warned, you shouldn't be absolute beginner although it isn't rocket science either.

Required knowledge:
- basic modelling skills
- basic knowledge of O2
- basic knowledge of config files
- creating ammo in cfgAmmo
- creating magazines in cfgMagazines
- creating weapons in cfgWeapons

So don't expect a modelling tutorial, this topic is already pretty well covered. It really focus on how the proxy system works and what's possible with it.

Hope it is of any use for you out there. And please forgive me, i'm not that good at explaining things and english isn't my native language but i tried my best.

Download:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9367994/proxy_tutorial.pdf

[jagheterjan]

Thanks Myke, much appreciated

[[APS]Gnat]

Nice! Thanks Myke.
I had most of this aready figured, but the "invisibleMag" trick was probably a much better way of managing the "flexibility" than what I was trying, which was using the HIDE animation to disappear the whole proxy.

[T_D]

Great, always good to see new tutorials. For the problem of weapons that are fired appearing at the model center instead of the proxy position: This is probably because of missing cfgNonAIVehicle class defining it as missile proxy. BIS shapes of course should have these classes and that's why your fix works.

[[FRL]Myke]

@T_D

already tried to solve this problem to no avail. However, it isn't a critical problem as it can be easily solved by using BIS proxies. Although if you have further info about it, feel free to share them here.

[T_D]

I have no hard facts about it, but I know that cfgNonAIVehicles class is for proxy definitions and the classes seems to follow some naming conventions(which I dont know) like islands objects need to start with Land_ or CfgModel classes needs to use the p3d name.

[[APS]Gnat]

Myke,
TD's onto the link I think, I also use cfgNonAIVehicles and have no such issue.
I recently noticed the Missilebox was missing these definitions.

[Gnome_AS]

Another great read there Myke, thanks again for sharing and putting this together. Very much appreciated.



.

[PuFu]

nice one Myke. Thanks for taking your time to wite it down

[[APS]Gnat]

Myke
Think I can see now why your CfgNonAIVehicles is not working for you.
If I'm not wrong, the class name must = the word "Proxy" plus the exact name-of-the-p3d file

Hence an example, your missilebox p3ds;

    class ProxyGLT_KAB500L_proxy : ProxyWeapon
    {
        model = "\glt_missilebox\GLT_KAB500L\GLT_KAB500L_proxy"; 
        simulation ="maverickweapon";
    };
    class ProxyGLT_KAB250L_proxy : ProxyWeapon
    {
        model = "\glt_missilebox\GLT_KAB250L\GLT_KAB250L_proxy"; 
        simulation ="maverickweapon";
    };
    class ProxyGLT_FAB500 : ProxyWeapon
    {
        model = "\glt_missilebox\GLT_FAB500\GLT_FAB500"; 
        simulation ="maverickweapon";
    };