SPON Recognise v0.4.0 (ACCEPTED)

[Spooner]

SPON Recognise v0.4.0
Anyone playing the game properly will have friend (& foe) tags off since they are very gamey, however, there needs to be some way to recognise your comrades without telepathy!

Allows players who have friendly tags turned off to manually recognise their allies (infantry, corpses and vehicle crews) when they are very close.

* Available as mission-script or client-side addon.
* Requires SPON Core and XEH (latter only if using addon version).
* Online Manual
* Report bug or make suggestion
* Download SPON Recognise v0.4.0

Features
    * Press TEAMSWITCH (which defaults to "T" key) to activate recognition for whatever you are looking at (based on weapon direction if you are using a hand-weapon, but centre of screen if unarmed or in a vehicle).
    * When used as a client-side addon (that is, without it being configured from inside the mission), infantry are recognised up to 40m, vehicle crews to 2m, corpses (all sides) to 3m.
    * Option for which types of people can be recognised: own group, own side, allies, friendly or everyone
    * Option to recognise infantry at a specific distance.
    * Option to recognise corpses at a specific distance.
    * Option to recognise vehicle crews at a specific distance.
    * Option to recognise all corpses at a specific distance, regardless of whether they could have been recognised when alive (think: dogtags).

[Mandoble]

Might you add a bit more info about how to test it or how to check and verify Recognise effects in the included demo?

[Spooner]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. You know it is working when you get a descriptive action in the action menu when looking at the appropriate person/vehicle.

The demo mission is provided configured to recognise vehicles, players & AI, and to recognise friendlies, and that there is a west/independent alliance. If you are running it in the editor, you could try it on various settings by altering the parameters passed to "SPON\Recognise\initRecognise.sqf" script, which is called in "init.sqf". The exact configuration used is displayed as a hint for the first minute, or so, of the mission.

On the other hand, I think the demo could be a lot better - I should have players able to spawn on all 4 sides to allow for all the combinations of recognition. The other thing I forgot was that the crew of the M1A1 is slowly killed off at the start of the mission, in order to show that the vehicle recognition is updated with the current "owner" of the vehicle. I'll fix these issues in a later version since they are not critical; I'd rather not get into releasing new versions too often for minor things.

[Mandoble]

That is what I'm missing, no action menus there. Should I keep watching the appropiate unit for long time?

[Spooner]

Nope, they should be there for all initial units from the very start of the mission. The only thing is that when things change, they might lag a little (e.g. up to 15 seconds to correct recognition label when a new object spawns or player "possesses"/"unpossesses" an AI).

Just rechecked the demo I shipped and things are fine for me (in editor and MP). I realised that when you spawn into the demo, you are looking directly North at the OPFOR troops, which are the only ones that you can't recognise with the default demo configuration. Perhaps that could be the problem; alternatively, you could look at the debug log (control-`) but you wouldn't necessarily know what to look for?

[Spooner]

Thanks, Mandoble, for accepting this script for OFPEC. Hope I can add a few more decent scripts very soon!

I hope the slight problem with delayed appearance of actions for some people doesn't put anyone off from trying this (The few people I've tested it with, including myself, have never had this problem; Must just be Mandoble's hamster-driven PC  ). This script is already saving my squad from continually asking me to, "Wave your gun in the air if you are Spooner!", so I'm happy enough whether anyone else wants to use it or not!

[Spooner]

Update v0.2.0
- Totally redesigned and rewritten. Now with swishness on multiple levels and available as a client-side addon, yada, yada, yada.

And yes, I only just managed to sort out this old script within 365 days of the last release. I may move as slow as a mountain flows down to the sea, but...Meh! Hope you find it useful, even if you found it a bit clunky before now!

EDIT: Left out a "key" fact! You press TEAMSWITCH (which defaults to "T" key) to activate recognition for whatever is in the centre of your screen (not based on weapon direction, so fine with free-look or in vehicles).

[Dr Eyeball]

Very nice. Works well with other RscTitles.
Will be using this in current project. Had to change it to 'U' key, since 'T' is for my menu system.
Wouldn't mind an option to allow it to display the crew member names too (even just the first 8 or so). In the meantime, I can use Team Status Dialog to get around that.
Good work.

[Spooner]

I intentionally chose not to display all the cargo passengers. Really, you just want to know who the crew are before you get in a vehicle and whether there are spaces in it for you. If you want to know who all the cargo are you can just jump in and use SPON Status *cough* or, as you say, just use your Team Status Dialog (partially the inspiration for SPON Status, since I liked the idea but thought it a bit too complex for quick reference). I've already had complaints that the window is too wide (I'd rather have a constant width window than one that has an erratic right margin, since we can't measure the width of a string accurately and, since names and groups could be very long, I opted for a keeping the window always to the edge of the screen) and don't want complaints that it is too tall as well (though configuration options are always an option ;P).

Yeah, I expected people might need to change the keys (and yes, something that probably needs to be an option). Teamswitch was actually only a temporary choice, then I realised that although a lot of other people used the same key, they didn't use a shared key event handler, so it was mostly irrelevant This reminds me that I need to get around to posting a code snippet that allows people to use SPON key handlers if they are available, or take sole control of the key handlers if SPON Core is not being used (which maximises compatibility if SPON Core is used, whilst also not demanding that SPON Core be used).

[Dwarden]

manual seems to include incorrect init lines la
"SPON\Map\initRecognise.sqf"
instead
"SPON\Recognise\initRecognise.sqf"

lil detail ...

ok i guess i do something wrong no matter what i can;t get it to work (the core is loaded the inits too (rsct/strings too)) ...

it's like fighting over the actions (i tried change to different actions no go)

[Spooner]

Oops, yes, I just used the Map readme as a template. Good spotting!

If you are using any other mission-scripts or addons that use key-press events then it won't work. First, try running the demo mission (that has the scripts included, so you don't need the SPON addons to test that) without any addons loaded.

[Dwarden]

i was told to use http://www.ofpec.com/forum/index.php?topic=31384.0

to get around this limitation but for some reason i don't get it (not messed with anything related to DEH and KP yet)

so if i myay ask could you do it if possible ?

[Spooner]

You are quite right, Shole's display event handler addon does for key handling what XEH does for config event handling. One of the reasons I don't use it directly is because SPON key event handlers, which predate Shole's by about six months, both allow for managing individual keycode events, rather than just multi-plexing the base event handler, and allows mission-script versions of SPON components to work without having an addon dependency.

Nevertheless, Shole's system was the first addon-based key event handler available and has been adopted by other authors (or existing addons have been "fixed" by Shole). I am going to keep SPON Core key events as they are, but, should Shole's addon be loaded, then they will act as wrappers for Shole's system, which will be transparent for users and mission-makers, while also not absolutely requiring Shole's DEH. Expect a hot-fixed SPON Core for this issue, hopefully later today (SPON Recognise wouldn't need to be updated, since it just asks Core to deal with its key handling).

(Note: Shole did ask whether I planned to release SPON Core as an addon, but at the time I was taking a long break from ArmA editing. Since then, I've returned to serious work on ArmA, including releasing addon-versions of several scripts that were, up until then, only available as mission-based scripts. I've tried to contact Shole by email, but gained no reply in the last couple of months, since I wanted to try to cooperate with him on this issue. I must apologise to users, since I had intended to make SPON compatible with Shole's system before I released an addon that, by default, used key event handlers).

EDIT: For some reason, I was referring to Schuler, when I meant Shole!

EDIT 2: New version of SPON Core released, which addresses issues of compatibility between SPON Key Event handlers and Shole's DEH.

EDIT 3:
v0.2.1 released
- Modified
    * SPON Recognise now required SPON Core v0.5.1, in order to be compatible with other key event handlers.

- Added
    * New corpse icon (skull).
    * AI icon for living AI, but only in MP games.

- Fixed
    * If SPON Recognise addon is loaded and SPON Recognise mission-scripts are run in the mission, then everythings gets in a mess.

[SPhoenix]

Hi Spooner,
I'm currently modifying my mission, War Machine (the one that uses your Status script) to include the Recognize script.
I'm having trouble with it: this is what I get when I press "T".



And it is the latest version.
I checked the recognize.hpp and nothing seems out of order.
Any idea?

Thanks,
SPhoenix.

[Spooner]

SPON Recognise and SPON Status require SPON Core. However, SPON Status is pretty old and so only requires an old version of SPON Core. Your current mission release includes SPON Core 0.1.2, which is fine for SPON Status, but the current version is Core 0.5.3! I advise you to update Core, which should resolve your issue.

Coincidentally, here is a brand new version of SPON Recognise for you all!

v0.3.0
- Modified
    * Default maximum range to identify infantry increased to 40m (was 20m).
    * Recognition now follows the line of your current weapon, if armed and on foot (still aims at the centre of the screen when in a vehicle, when unarmed or not actively using your weapon, such as when in medic or reload actions).

- Added
    * SPON_Recog_showBackground variable to allow user to disable the solid background behind the pop-up text (defaults to false). Text is now shown with a shadow if background is not shown, so it is still visible regardless of the background colour.

- Fixed
    * Recognises own vehicle, preventing recognition of other vehicles and infantry outside.