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Athena - An Arma 2nd Screen Application

***BATTLEEYE COMPATIBILITY***
As of 2017/11/15, this mod is BattleEye compatible.


***GENERAL***

At it's most basic, Athena is an application that you can run on your 2nd screen that provides a very highly accurate representation of the in-game map and displays icons for friendly units in real time: a 'blufor' tracker that runs outside of arma on a 2nd screen whether that screen is literally a 2nd monitor, a laptop, a Windows tablet or a Microsoft Surface but that's an oversimplification of what Athena offers.

-Athena supports multiple instances. Building a cockpit and want several map screens? Athena will let you do that without any additional performance impact on ARMA.
-Athena supports the automatic import of any ARMA map and that's both vanilla and custom. No ExportNoGrid here.
-Athena supports the generation of shaded 'height map' views for any ARMA map and again, that's both vanilla and custom.
-Athena supports the private sharing of 'ink' or 'map drawing' with other members of your communities, again, in real time and with a great degree of control that exists outside of ARMA.
-Athena displays and updates an ORBAT in real time: one of your units picks up an MG, it updates their representation to indicate that they're an AR. They pickup an AT weapon, their label is updated to indicate that they're now "AT". Know which of your team members fills the important roles at all times.
-Athena provides a convenient list of locations for the current map: "Requesting evac at Mike-26!" Don't know where it is? Look in the locations tab, click "Mike-26" and click "Locate" and there it is.
-Athena provides a way for you set custom locations, known as anchors, on the map that are important to you. Someone calls requesting a pickup and they provide you with their grid or coordinates, type them into Athena and have it create an 'anchor' for you. This is especially handy for pilots.
-Athena lets you 'track' the positions of a unit, a group and an anchor at the same time by way of tracking lines that are drawn from your unit to the chosen unit, group and anchor. It also tells you the bearing and the distance.
-Athena lets your record your own sessions and play them back later.
 
But Athena also runs 'outside' of ARMA so even when you're not playing ARMA, Athena still has something to offer you and your community by way of the Athena Community Server (ACS).
 
-Collaborating on a mission design? Have both you and your associate connect to the same ACS and mark up the map from across the Internet without ever having to fire up ARMA and join a server.
-Have a big op coming up? Connect with your associates and plan out your op prior to game time.
-Expanding on your training regimen and want to introduce some tactics discussions? Connect to the ACS and mark up the map and demonstrate the concepts behind the tactics

Athena is not just a 'blufor' tracker. It's a system that will directly contribute to better coordination and communication across your entire unit.

***ALL COMMENTS, BUG REPORTS, COMPLAINTS, I HATE YOU'S, I LOVE YOU'S SHOULD BE POSTED TO THE BIS FORUM***

I'm active on the forum and I'd like to keep the bug reports in one place. PM'ing me is fine. Posting in the thread is fine.

https://forums.bistudio.com/forums/topic/171846-athena-an-arma-2nd-screen-application/

***THE APPLICATION WILL START AUTOMATICALLY WHEN ARMA STARTS***

When Arma starts, it will start the Athena mod and the mod will attempt to start two executables: Athena Relay (relay.exe) and the Athena Desktop application (athena desktop.exe). Technically, the mod and the executables will be loaded when the first mission is run in Arma. By default, when Arma starts, it will load a mission in the background and it will play while you navigate the menu. Some players disable that particular feature and so, for them, Athena will start at the beginning of the first mission they play. If, for some reason, you stop either of the executables, you will have to re-launch them manually. They will only attempt to launch automatically when the first mission runs.

When Athena Desktop is started, it will grab 'focus' from Arma. This is not by design. This is just a side effect of launching another process. If you run Arma full screen, you may wonder what's happening. Everything is ok. Remain calm and alt+tab to bring focus back to Arma. Before doing that, you may want to click "Start" in Athena just to have it connect to the Relay. It will then populate when the first mission starts.

***WHEN YOU RUN A MISSION ON A NEW WORLD, YOU WILL HAVE TO IMPORT THE MAP***

If you've never used Athena before, you probably don't have any of the maps imported yet. The process 'should' be seamless. Start a mission on the world and Athena Desktop will prompt you to export/import (depends on your perspective) the world. Depending on the size of the world, this can take a little while. On my PC (i7-4770k), Stratis takes less than 5 minutes and Altis takes around 15-20. After a world has been exported, Athena will save it and you will not be prompted to export/import it again. Very soon, there will be a publicly available "Athena Community Server" to which I plan to upload many maps. Through Athena, you will be able to connect to this server and download them saving yourself a great deal of time. I will update this when I'm ready to make that server public.

***TO CREATE A DESKTOP SHORTCUT TO ATHENA SO YOU CAN USE IT OUTSIDE OF ARMA***

1. Go to the Mods tab in the Arma 3 Launcher
2. Click the down arrow next to "Athena - An Arma 2nd Screen Application" to show the details for the mod
3. Click the "..." button in the bottom right corner
4. Click the "Show folder in Windows Explorer" option
5. When prompted, click the "I understand" button
6. Open the "@Athena - An Arma 2nd Screen Application" folder
7. Open the "app" folder
8. Right click on "Athena Desktop" (or "Athena Desktop.exe" if you show file extensions)
9. Go to "Send To"
10. Click the "Desktop (Create Shortcut)" option

You now have an icon on your desktop for Athena Desktop.

***IF YOU INTEND TO RUN THE APP ON A 2ND PC***

If you're like me and you prefer to run the Athena Desktop application on a separate PC (Microsoft Surface, a touch enabled laptop, etc.), you can copy the "app" folder mentioned above to that PC. From there, you can run the Athena Desktop application but remember to:

1. Edit the !WorkShop\@Athena - An Arma 2nd...\AthenaExtensionSettings.txt file and set "ath_launch_app" to "false" to prevent Athena from auto launching Athena Desktop on your Arma PC
2. Open Athena Desktop on your 2nd PC and go to File->Settings and set the ARMA PC IP to the IP address or computer name of your Arma PC

You may run into firewall issues running Athena Desktop on a separate PC. If you need to modify your own firewall, the Athena Relay listens on TCP Port 28800 and it is the only port you need to allow on your Arma PC.

Also, keep in mind that it really doesn't matter how many computers you run the Athena Desktop application on. Each Athena Desktop instance will connect to the Relay and receive it's information from there. Apart from CPU contention, Arma will still only provide a single feed to the Relay. Also somewhat related, the Athena Desktop instances you run will share 'ink' between them automatically if they are all connected to the same relay.

***ADDITIONAL NOTES***

This software is still actively under development. Please report all issues to the forum thread.