Where do I start in developing?

[Ethos 3]

Hey guys first off I would like to apologize if this is in the wrong area. I understand this is the place to go with any questions with exile. I've played exile for about 6 months now and has progressed from the state of just a common player to being an admin on a server and while that's all fine and well, the developed for the community I am a part of seems to have his hands full when it comes to taking care of our server. I would like to be able to assist him with the management and maintenance of the server but i have absolutely zero coding/programming experience outside of a bs computer class back in my high-school days. So my question for you gentlemen is where would i begin? Is there a specific coding language I should be able to use? Also i understand this isn't something you can just pick up and roll with in a couple weeks but I would like to at least try. Perhaps you guys could point me in the right direction?

I appreciate you taking the time to read my post!

[Bridson 1]

Hard to pick any one area, I followed a similar path, there are some tutorials for bohemia, and wiki for the coding language for the game engine as helpers, the file relationships and mod uploading are a place to start, took me about 3 months to get it fairly down by myself. Start with things you want to learn to do, see if there's a video that teaches it, probably 75% or it can be picked up that way, but beware, alot of the info is out of date or not accurate, you will have to develop a good amount of patience, many trying days of wanting to chuck the laptop out the window, many...

[WolfkillArcadia 758]

1 hour ago, Ethos said:

Hey guys first off I would like to apologize if this is in the wrong area. I understand this is the place to go with any questions with exile. I've played exile for about 6 months now and has progressed from the state of just a common player to being an admin on a server and while that's all fine and well, the developed for the community I am a part of seems to have his hands full when it comes to taking care of our server. I would like to be able to assist him with the management and maintenance of the server but i have absolutely zero coding/programming experience outside of a bs computer class back in my high-school days. So my question for you gentlemen is where would i begin? Is there a specific coding language I should be able to use? Also i understand this isn't something you can just pick up and roll with in a couple weeks but I would like to at least try. Perhaps you guys could point me in the right direction?

I appreciate you taking the time to read my post!

Arma 3 has its own proprietary engine call Real Virtuality 4. This engine has it's own coding language that it understands called SQF. A lot of people compare SQF to C++, but frankly, and this is my opinion, it's syntax reminds me of JavaScript. It, however, handles nothing like either of those languages though. 

First off, if you've never coded any language before, I highly suggest reading up on variables, variable types, conditionals, arrays, etc, before you even start trying to learn SQF. The functionality of these are kinda the same across most languages, however, the syntax will change. 

But how people start with SQF is different, but I suggest spending a lot of time on here:
https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Category:Scripting_Commands_Arma_3
https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Control_Structures
http://killzonekid.com/

Not everything is documented, nor is always correct and working. I run into a lot of commands that just plain don't work anymore. One thing you will find yourself doing a lot is trying to find workarounds to make the engine happy. 

Some people learn from tinkering, so I suggest grabbing a script and reading it, trying to figure out what it does. Play around in the in-game editor, ask questions, etc. Use google for your advantage, there are some people out there that make guides and tutorials on how to do a lot of this. 

[Ethos 3]

Thanks a lot wolf ill get started there and see where I can go. appreciate the feed back!

[brawnkoh 29]

On 7/13/2016 at 5:41 AM, Ethos said:

Hey guys first off I would like to apologize if this is in the wrong area. I understand this is the place to go with any questions with exile. I've played exile for about 6 months now and has progressed from the state of just a common player to being an admin on a server and while that's all fine and well, the developed for the community I am a part of seems to have his hands full when it comes to taking care of our server. I would like to be able to assist him with the management and maintenance of the server but i have absolutely zero coding/programming experience outside of a bs computer class back in my high-school days. So my question for you gentlemen is where would i begin? Is there a specific coding language I should be able to use? Also i understand this isn't something you can just pick up and roll with in a couple weeks but I would like to at least try. Perhaps you guys could point me in the right direction?

I appreciate you taking the time to read my post!

Unlike most of these guys I wont recommend you start by reading BI documentation. That's not the way I would start if I were you. I started with HTML in 1996, and slowly worked through everything from PHP/SQL to C++. There's not one language I would recommend you start with because in the end, all languages are loops and vars. The only difference is syntax. You can read until your eyes are crossed, but if you don't understand what you're reading it's not going to make any sense.

I suggest setting up a small server, and taking stuff apart. Start playing with code, making small edits/changes to learn how the file structure works, the concepts of PBO's, SQL database functionality, etc. If you have no programming knowledge, reading a bunch of documentation on programming isn't going to teach you jack.

Tearing stuff apart/breaking it is a lot more fun that reading. This will give you an idea of how if/else statements, loops, db queries, vars, arrays, etc all work. Make sure you always create backups so if you break anything you can revert to the old copy. Good luck.