Changing all Opfor from "GUER" to "EAST" in WordPad

[desertjedi]

I've been doing some minor editing to the "CoopPack Multi-Purpose Training" mission pack on and off since I started playing Arma about six months ago. It's one of my favorite mission packs and I've done several things to it making it easier for solo play or two players (with AI mates).

After playing a lot of Evo and Domination, I went back to this pack for some vanilla, "standard-pace" gameplay. So, I'm the last guy alive in a barn-like structure with big openings at both ends running back and forth pasting Opfor with the SAW while they try to flank me. Finally I see one point blank and prone and I light him up and then I notice...he's wearing a RACS uniform?!?! How many times have I played this mission and not noticed that??? I guess I just never got that close to them before!

So I look in the mission.sqm file and all the Opfor are set up as SIDE="GUER". My question is...can I use WordPad to do a global change of SIDE="GUER" to SIDE="EAST"? I'm guessing it would work fine for the enemy soldiers but am I going to get tripped up by some vehicles or equipment that might have that attribute? Or does "SIDE=" only apply to soldiers?

BTW, I noticed that one of the scripts has RACS as not friendly to the West so I can change that as well. It's used to set AI skill levels based on whether the force is "friendly" or not.

[Spooner]

You can do this, but be very careful of any direct edits to your SQM as if there are errors in it then ArmA will crash like a drunken tiger on roller-skates. However, just changing the side of a man won't change the uniform worn, which would require a change to the class as well.

Rather than using Wordpad, I can recommend just about any other editor, such as Notepad++ (which has a nice SQF syntax module) or ArmAEdit (which is a a dedicated Armascript editor). I mean this for general editing rather than sqm editing, which, as I said, is not encouraged.

[kju]

You can use SVN with a local server on your PC to save the history of each change
to avoid breaking the mission and have hard times get it working again.

[desertjedi]

However, just changing the side of a man won't change the uniform worn, which would require a change to the class as well.

Thanks for saving me from making a big mess! 

I will probably just do this manually in the editor. I want to cut way back on the number of enemies (77) located in the 700x500 AO anyway because the odds of me completing the mission alone (with AI) are just too low.

I do use ArmAEdit and like it.

[desertjedi]

Okay, just for kicks I figured I'd go into the mission map and changes RACS soldiers to East but for some reason, each enemy player is locked to "Independent". I've never seen this before.

Can anyone tell me why this is so? And maybe how to unlock them?

[Spooner]

For some reason, anything, once placed, can't have its side changed. This means you have to delete and recreate it if you want to change the side. Annoying, eh?