Arma 3 Editor Basics+Basic example mission

This is meant to be a short guide to help new users understand the Eden Editor by making an example mission.

What this Guide will be about

This Guide will help you create a mission in Arma 3 Step-by-step and will include:

1. Basic Controls
   
2. How to use Waypoints
   
3. How to use Triggers
   
4. How to use Supports (Artillary etc.) (Both Virtual and "Real")
   
5. How to give the Player a specific Loadout
   
6. And Much more (eventually)

We will also create a small mission as an example
The Mission will be:

1. Your Player driving a Vehicle to a certain piont
   
2. Your player then Leading a Squad of their own
   
3. to assault an Enemy position with Artillary support that they have called in
   
4. The Player winning the Scenario
   
5. Plus Soundtrack in the Background

The Basics

Step one is to open up the Eden Editor
For that you start Arma 3 and wait for it to Load, on the title screen you can either click the Box that says Editor, or go to Singleplayer and then down to Editor.
Then You will be asked what map you want to create a mission on.( For the Mission Later i recommend Stratis because i will mention names of locations for the mission later) Click on the map you want and click Continue.

The Controls are:
WASD to move around
Q/Y to move up or down
Holding the Right mouse Button (Mouse 2) and then moving your mouse to look around.
If you Press "M" it will open the Map and within the Map you can use Mouse 3 (pressing the scrollwheel) to move the camrea to where your mouse is.
Try moving the Camera to "Air Station Mike-26" in the Center of the Island

On the right side you can see a long list of things you can use in the mission.
At the top of the list you can see Lots of symbols,
The Colored ones are the "Teams"
(Blue is NATO Red is CSAT Green is the AAF and Purple is Civillian)
We will ignore the others for now.

Now the first object you place will always be the Player,
try it out by placing a Solider in the base and hit Play on the Bottem right of your screen.

You should Load in as that solider in the Middle of the Base.
Now hit Escape (esc) and click Return to Eden Editor.

Now to place some AI friends

To place a Solider that cant be Controlled by the Player, place a second Solider but with enough distance to the first one that there is no Blue line connecting them.
If you hit play again You can see the other solider nearby.

But we dont want one soider, we and a Squad
Look above the Colored Symbols on the Top right of the Screen and Click on "Compositions"
Then go down to the list of Soliders and Click on the "Fire Team" now you can place that Team near the Player.

There should be 6 Soliders on the Map now. Similar to this:

Lets get moving

So far we have placed down Soliders but they only Stand around.
To get Soliders to move they need Waypoints.
You can find Waypoints next to the Compositions at the Top Right of the screen.

Step 1:
Click on the Fire team from before
Step 2:
Click on "Waypoints"
Step 3:
Click on the Move Waypoint and then somehwere on the screen.

If you go into the mission Now the Squad will move to the Waypoint.

Time for some Enemy AI

If you want Enemys to shoot you can place them down by clicking on the Red Symbol And Placing down a Fire Team. If you play the scenario now The blue and red fire teams will shoot at each other as soon as they see eachother.

We dont want that yet so Delete the Red fire Team by clicking on them and hit Delete.

After that move the Camera to the Old outpost North of the Airstation Mike 26.

And Place an blue Fire Team there.

Cars

Now go back to the Base with the player and Place a Blue Car nearby
(a HMETT Covered works best)

Then Hover your mouse over the Blue Icon of the Truck then over the Driver AI just to the right of the Truck hit the delete button and the Truck icon should Turn Yellow.

After that Double Click on the Truck.
There will be lots of options but we only care about the Object: States within there is the Option Lock: Click on the List and select Unlocked.

If it all Worked out there should be only the Player and the Truck.

Alternativly you can place empty vehicles by un-checking the box in the bottom-right, above the play button

The Player joins a Squad

Click on your Player and Place a waypoint infront of them. Double Click that Waypoint. In the List Waypoint: Type select Join and Lead and click Ok.


Then move the Waypoint onto the Leader of the Fire team we placed before.
Your Mouse should turn to a green circle, let go of mouse 1.




If you walk to that Squad you would take Command of the Squad.

Objectives

While testing the misson you will notice that you have no Objectives, that can lead your players to get lost in the Mission.

to place an objective you go to the top right of your screen and Click on Systems.
In the List below search for the Catergory "Intel" open the list.
In the list you can see:

• Create Diary Record - Not Important right now
  
• Create Task - Creates and Objective
  
• Headquaters Entity - A Virtual HQ used for Radio Messages
  
• Set Task Description - Changes the Description of a Objective In-Game
  
• Set Task Destination - Changes the Destination of a Objective In-Game
  
• Set Task State - Sets the objective to be assigned/Flailed/Succeded etc.

We need the Create Task Module, which we place Near the Blue Fire team at the Outpost.

Double Click the Module.
Change the Owner to All Playable units (Pick the Faction in Multiplayer)
Change the Title to what you want your player to see (example: Join Allied Squad)
Change the Description the whatever you think is fitting.

Go down to Destination and Choose "Synchronised Object"
Keep the State as it is
Change the Task Type to what you think is Fitting.
Click Ok

Now Right Click on the Create Task Module and choose [Connect>Sync to] and click on the Squad Leader

Triggers

So, when the Player moves to their Squad we want them to see their Objective succeed as well as get a new Objective.

At first you take the Trigger at the Top of the List and place it down in the Area of the Old Outpost.
Place it Right on top of the Squad Leader of the Fire Team.

Then Double Click the Trigger and Change the Size from 0/0 to 3/3
Then go to the Trigger Activation and Change the Activation to 'Any Player'
Then it should look like this:









Then Create a Set Task State Module and Place it nearby.
Double Click the New Module and set the State to Succeeded and Sync that to the Create Task Module Like this:

Try it out

Play the game and see if you can

Get into the Truck
See where you have to go
drive the Truck to the Squad
Get out, walk up to the Squad leader and both 1 be command the Squad and 2 see that the Objective succeeded.

Minor Problems

While Playing you may have seen that the waypoint for the Player is Always visible, if you dont want that double click the Waypoint and Tick the Boxes you feel fit best










The Player is also not notified about their Objective, we can fix that by Placing a Trigger with the Condition changed to 'true' as well as give the trigger a Delay so that the Player has time to see the Message:










Now you need to Sync the Trigger with the Create Task module and it will work.

Realisim and Immersion

Obviosly driving a Truck on an Island filled with Enemys in the middle of the Day is unrealistic.
So we are going to change the time for the Mission to Early Morning. To do that you move your mouse to the Top of the Screen and find 'Attributes' and click on Enviroment.

Here You will be Presented with a lot of Sliders, to change the time you can either Click on a point on the top Slider or type the Time in the Boxes to the right.

Below you also see some other options like Fog Overcast(Clouds) or Rain with two sliders, one for the Current amount of Rain/Clouds/Fog and one for the Forecast which is the change over time
(From 60% to 10% Overcast) within a timespan of 30 minutes.


For the Mission i Changed the time to 4:30 in the Morning with 50% Fog (I recommend Playing with these values to see what fits best).

Context

The Player wants to know what happened up to this point.

We can Provide them with that info by giving the Mission

• A Name
  
• Situation - The 'Story' of what lead up to the Mission
  
• Mission - The Overall objective of the Mission
  
• Excecution - A list of things the Player needs to do
  
• Signals - Codenames for your player/Artillary/other units

Make sure that the Owner is set to 'All Playable Units' in Singleplayer
(You can change the Name so that instead of 'Situiation/Mission etc' You'd make a Dairy of sorts with Day 1;Day 2... by typing the New Name into the Title Box)

Here is an Example for the Excecution Box



(In-Game it doesn't look very good but i dont know how else to do it)





We also need Markers to Show our Player what is where (Like the Before seen Point Hotel)

To do that you can Simply Click on the White drawn X on the Top right of the Screen. Here You can add Symbols like NATO-Units (Infantry/Armor etc) by by clicking the fitting Arrow

(BLUFOR is Nato OPFOR is CSAT and Independent is AAF)
The Names are also Shown.

If you have Placed you Markers you can put Text to each by Double-Clicking and typing the Text in the Box text as well as swapping the Color.

Example: I used an Drawn 'Destroy' Marker as Point Hotel Colored it Blue (Blufor) and put the name 'Point Hotel' in the text box:










In the End it could look something like this

Onwards with the mission!

Here we will place more objectives, place AI Enemys and allow the Player to use supports

First we will create the other Objectives.
For the Example mission i am going for a Boat landing onto the Stratis Airbase, with the Player then killing Key Personell.

The Objective after the team joining will be Simply the Player driving to Point Hotel:
Create an 'Create Task' Module near the Point Hotel and set the State to 'Unassigned'
Then Create an 'Set Task State' Module near the new Objective,
and set the Task state to 'Assigned'.

Now Place an Empty Attack Boat on the Coast near the Objective Module and Sync the Module to the Boat. You can have Vehicles be Empty by Default if you tick the box at the bottom of the List of Objects.
After that Set the Destination to Syncronized Object.

Then Sync the first Trigger we created (the one that changed the Task state to Succeeded) to the new 'Set Task State' Module, and Sync that module to the New Objective Module.
Make Sure that the Player is the Owner or else it wont work.

Now when the Trigger gets Activated the Player gets the Message that they have Succeeded their first Objective and can Move to the Second one.

Discontinued

Big thanks to whoever decided to give me an award for an Unfinished Tutorial

If you have Questions Post them in the Comments Below
Alternativly you can contact me on Discord: BlackArrow#0724

[BlackArrow]

@Blitzkrieg dont worry you can avoid scripting and instead use modules.
Hit me up on Discord

[Blitzkrieg]

@BlackArrow Before I do that, I should probably tell you that if it involves scripting, I'm probably not going to bother. Please understand that I'm just not a programmer. Looking at bare code makes my eyes hurt, and just spending 2 minutes on Github is enough to put me in a bad mood.

[BlackArrow]

@Blitzkrieg please contact me on Discord because that is abit hard to explain here

BlackArrow#0724

[Blitzkrieg]

Another question. How do I make a spawn point that only spawns a specific unit, like only medics, or only modded units?

[BlackArrow]

If you want to edit the Loadout of a solider you select one or multiple and right-click on them and click "Edit Loadout". There you can edit the weapons, outfit, vest facewear etc.
You can also give the AI ammo/grenades via clicking on e.g. the vest and adding/removing stuff on the right side of the screen.

Bewear that if you Select multiple Soliders you will edit them all simultaiously.
You can also use that to change the camo on some vehicles but instead of clicking on edit loadout you use the "Edit Vehicle Appearance" Button
Some vehicles have lots of skins and parts while other have none.

Hope this helps

[Blitzkrieg]

How do I edit an AI's inventory?

[[PTRS] Bring a sack lunch]

Great guide thank you!

[Mr P 🏌]

Award given, big thanks for your time, very much appreciated