Note: it is my intention to eventually include this as a fully-fledged github page to help acclimate potential Arma devs with sqf best practices code optimization.
As I've started to work on projects to extend the replayability of Arma, I have come to several conclusions:
- Arma is a game that rewards those who can stomach an hour so of initial setup time
- While there are pockets of individuals who hail from a technical background, much of the development community surrounding Arma (and FPS games in general) don't always articulate their discoveries through the same channels as other developers (i.e. GitHub).
- The official BIS wiki is an excellent resource, but a required reading list will help alot with limiting any time spent ramming one's head into a hard metaphorical surface. -- I wasn't able to really appreciate the site until I found others referencing articles related to the core materials of sqf scripting really. Could be user error though ;)
Therefore, I have started this collection of useful sqf scripts and guides, most of which I have streamlined and provided examples to.
Disclaimer: please note that I am not the original author of many of the scripts discussed here. I do however modify, clean, or otherwise streamline the scripts extensively to ensure that I fully understand them during the corresponding discussion, and to ensure they integrate well with the my own scripts. Adding a little commonality does great things for helping people understand something abstract, and I've tried my best to ensure that the contents of this project are as accessible as possible.
I've tried to acknowledge the original authors as I've found them, but if I've left you out, please drop me a message on twitter or my blog, I'm happy to engage everyone, and I'll probably learn something from the encounter. ;)
I've only recently started writing sqf scripts for Arma, and while it's been a fairly easy process, I've had trouble really hitting the ground running. I feel this could be improved for others with a few quality resources, and therefore I will be including a series of tutorial posts on my blog.
As I use community scripts in my projects, I will post the cleaned up code here, along with documentation explaining the use of each script along with examples.
These scripts are largely from resources I've used while working on sqf projects of my own. To see a "bigger picture" example of these concepts and scripts in action, check out my dynamic world generator project.
Unsure of where to start? Be sure to scrutinize the following official functions from BIS, as they add a ton of functionality and make scripting appear much less daunting (much of the heavy lifting of creating Arma projects has already been handled by BIS in one form or another, especially now that the series has built upon so many iterations):
- BIS_fnc_param - input validation and set default values
- BIS_fnc_3Dcredits
- BIS_fnc_infoText
- BIS_fnc_saveGame
- BIS_fnc_AAN
- BIS_fnc_inv
- BIS_fnc_sandstorm
- BIS_fnc_crows
- BIS_fnc_invAdd
- BIS_fnc_selectRandom
- BIS_fnc_customGPS
- BIS_fnc_invRemove
- BIS_fnc_spawnCrew
- BIS_fnc_customGPSvideo
- BIS_fnc_invSlots
- BIS_fnc_spawnEnemy
- BIS_fnc_destroyCity
- BIS_fnc_invSlotsEmpty
- BIS_fnc_spawnGroup
- BIS_fnc_dirIndicator
- BIS_fnc_invSlotType
- BIS_fnc_spawnVehicle
- BIS_fnc_dynamicText
- BIS_fnc_invString
- BIS_fnc_spotter
- BIS_fnc_findSafePos
- BIS_fnc_isInFrontOf
- BIS_fnc_supplydrop
- BIS_fnc_flies
- BIS_fnc_locations
- BIS_fnc_taskAttack
- BIS_fnc_halo
- BIS_fnc_music
- BIS_fnc_taskDefend
- BIS_fnc_help
- BIS_fnc_playVideo
- BIS_fnc_taskPatrol
Additionally, here are the built in commands I found most applicable:
Official BIS content:
Other resources:
- Forum thread on interactions between support modules and sqf scripts
- Forum thread on initializing a support requester