Swat 3 Bluelight

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Vannessa Rataj

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Aug 3, 2024, 11:45:37 AM8/3/24

to horncatchwortcam

I have checked tons of places and still can not figure this out. I went as far as downloading and trying to reverse engineer a .pbo file for the ARMA3 Swat 4 style game. This is on the workshop. It basically attempts to turn ARM3 into the older SWAT 4 game. All im trying to do is get the lighting on downloaded and default police and ambulances to work by AI. I wanted to create an atmosphere of chaos where police have barricaded off many streets of the town for a mission. In the swat mission mentioned above they have vans and the offroad truck with flashing lights. I checked and they had this in the init field:

"CIV action ["lightOn", this]; " I tried this in the init of the van and it did nothing. I even changed this to the name of the van example van_1. I cant figure out why this does not work. I looked at the different scripts and could not find a script that dealt with the lighting in the mission.

I looked online and found a youtube video showing codes used in an addon car that should work but for the life of me i can not figure out where the car pbo file is in the steam folder or ARMA3. Also cant find the exact truck used in the video. I did notice that the van that the SWAT mission is using is apparently one that is a DLC van. I placed it in an empty VR map and when i walked up to it it said that i could not get in it. Not sure if that makes a difference in lighting or not. I tried also with the default ambulance and offroad truck with light bar.

vehicle animate ["BeaconsStart", 1]; in the init field of multiple vehicles but it did nothing. I replaced vehicle with the vehicle name Van_1. I tried this on the vans and the offroad trucks etc. I must be missing something simple. It can not be that hard to simply get flashing lights on vehicles.

The only other though i had was to try and use lighting effects and attach them to the vehicle or another object nearby just to give the scene a red and blue flashing effect. I'm not sure what i would do in that case. I downloaded an editor that works in conjunction with eden editor that should allow me to place effects but when the editor first starts "eden editor" I get error messages referencing the effects editor. I also can not add anything to even after reading the manual. Im still trying to work through that as the editor seems like an awesome tool and idea.

Asking for help in explaining how to get the ambulance van, trucks, and police cars lights to work in a SP mission used by the AI. These vehicles are parked, they do not need to move at this point. If this is not possible can some explain how to get a light source to flash red and blue pattern on the scene or buildings so it at least "looks" like there are a ton of emergency vehicles on the scene.

Thanks again. i know that the information is a little vague but im not at my computer right now to get all the codes i have tried or the name of the program that allows editing of lightsources and emitters.

this animateSource ['lights_em_hide',1]; This one does not work and results in a message that says "INIT" with a large exclamation mark in a triangle. I can not enter it. I tried changing this to the vehicle name like van1. Results were the same im not sure what the INIT error is for.

The video above is pretty much exactly what Im trying to achieve with different patterns. The second line of code worked even when copied and pasted. I did however write that in manually. It shows and works correctly. I did notice that it simply seems to flash lights or textures but does not have any surrounding affect. So no matter what it looks like i will need to add light sources to light up the surrounding area. How would i go about taking light sources to work similar to what i see in the video above. I'm assuming it would have to be coded.

I wanted once again to say thank you for the help. What i thought would be a simple process is apparently harder then what i thought. It looks like the script you put in is basically turning on a or spawning a light-source and then deleting it using a sleep command between to regulate the pattern. Adjusting the sleep time seems to make things go faster or longer depending on the time set. I never though that you would have to spawn and delete just to make this work. I'm assuming this would make simulating all the different light sources from cars very hard on the computer and frame rates, because it has to constantly spawn and delete.

It also appears that these are not attached to the vehicle and therefore will not move with the vehicle and if the vehicle is destroyed they remain working. Is there a way to attach the light-sources to the vehicle so that when the vehicle moves they would also move. what i tried to do did not work and the global attach with 3ditor does not work and causes a CTD. Really sucks because that looked like the easiest way to do things.

The other question i had was about shutting the siren down. I noticed that you set the vehicle to "combat" when it switched to combat it shut the siren down and also the vehicle headlights. Is there a way to simply shut the siren off without causing the vehicle to go into combat mode, or should i simply add a sleep command and then set the vehicle back to safe or careless.

The red, and blue light sources are placeable lamps in the editor. I placed the lamps, named them rl1, and bl1, I'm not spawning, and deleting them, I ran a simple script to show, and hide them. Click on rl1, and bl1 to see the simple script I put in their init fields to make them show, and hide. I don't think using several sets of red, and blue lights would be all that cpu intensive.

Unfortunately attaching light sources causes problems in Arma, the lights lag, and flicker when you move, and the attachto command does use computer resources, so it's not recommended in this situation. I was under the impression that you wanted static lighting effects to create immersion at a "crime scene" for your mission. I would recommend that you just use the vanilla beacon lights for moving vehicles, and the red, and blue lights for static lighting effects.

No what you did was perfect for ambient lighting, i was just wondering what it took to get the lighting effects attached to a vehicle. Thank you once again, i will look into the attachto command just to try it and see how it performs.