(EASY) Customized Esseker Mission

[Uncle Boom 6]

Hi everyone,

This morning I was cruising the forums and I found some posts about people wanting Esseker.pbo for their server. Someone mentioned the file I used this last weekend, saying "...it has no traders..." and instantly people just moved on, needing a complete file for their server. Creating a custom mission is pretty easy to do, and wow- it feels great knowing when someone comes to your server - they are gonna see a piece of your work. Your Traders, your props, your locations... I made this post and I thought I would doctor it up and re post it here in case it could help anyone who might be interested in trying the recipe.

/// Here it is:

I thought I would share what I learned over the weekend. I wanted an Exile Esseker server for my friends in my community.

I started with that blank .pbo with no traders. I wanted to learn, and learn I did, now I have my own custom version of Esseker WITH Roaming AI for my friends to play on - more importantly I know a little bit more about how this is done. It wasn't too difficult

Here are my links that I found very helpful. All of my links will be for this Exile forum, no other sites.

First I started here:

(You'll need a tool to unpack/repack .pbos... I think Arma 3 tools on steam can do it for you, I use Pbo Manager to Unpack and Eliteness to Pack... You can get pbo manager from armaholic/BIS forums I believe, and Eliteness at a DevWith6 link, just google it...)

Esseker.pbo (amateur version) ... Our friend posts a simple mission. Loot is spawning, but no traders.

Off I go: Trader Setup Tutorial

Using m3editor, I got a crash when I tried to save. Try it first, place an object and try to export .sqf .... if it crashes look for my post in that thread about ARMA2NET.dlls ... you'll need to locate the .dlls in the @m3editor folder and right click>Properties>unblock>apply for each file...

Got the traders looking swagged out, all my own work placing the objects and stuff around them - making them look cool... Now the copy/paste work in the code. No Big Deal!

In the video here on How to build custom trader zones we can see exactly how and where he edits the code... he uses a placeholder object for the Trader itself that you remove by following his steps here, just remember - in code its got to be PERFECT, watch the caps and punctuation.

After that - he even shows how to add safe zones... That's as far as I have got. (Using A3XAI for the Roaming Baddys, it works flawlessly)

Next I am working on a vehicle store, shouldn't be too hard. The vehicle stores use some sort of function to determine a safe place to spawn the vehicle, so assuming you put the trader in the right area, there should be no problems X]

Good Luck, Hope this Helps!

Remember...It's easy to ask, but you take away from the community if you do it too much. Everyone is asking on some level! You start asking for every question, waiting for a notification, others asking the same questions over and over - needing hand holding - its selfish and burns people out. - Yes there should be more quality info, no forums are not organized for a new reader to get around effortlessly... It's not that way, WE have to all work together on some level to get the information out there!

Edited November 11, 2015 by Uncle Boom
ERRORz

[hieve 42]

good post.

I still ask myself why are missions packed? 

what is the advantage of packing?

does it bring size advantage?

is it only for saving your data from beeing viewed by others?

[Uncle Boom 6]

Thanks for the feedback. They don't pack .pbos for secrecy... You can sometimes log into a server, load in, disconnect - and use the file you just downloaded on your own server - hence the images and watermarks sometimes... Even those can be removed. It isn't for size either I don't think, the contents are usually .txts and the size of the .pbo is comparable... All I know is that it's the way Arma does it - so we must do it too!

Once I found tools that work for unpacking and repacking I kinda just stopped thinking about it. 

[Diggz 16]

will be trying my hand at creating some safezones and traders myself tonight... hopefully all goes well, thanks for the mission file to get me started

 

[Thomas [ T.K.O ] 57]

Nice, step by step 

[hieve 42]

Thanks for the feedback. They don't pack .pbos for secrecy... You can sometimes log into a server, load in, disconnect - and use the file you just downloaded on your own server - hence the images and watermarks sometimes... Even those can be removed. It isn't for size either I don't think, the contents are usually .txts and the size of the .pbo is comparable... All I know is that it's the way Arma does it - so we must do it too!

Once I found tools that work for unpacking and repacking I kinda just stopped thinking about it. 

i dont use packed files at any, these process of unpacking and packing seems to me a bit useless...

[RX-777-BAO 11]

Nice and easy tutorial to follow. I was about to make a full guide about making an Esseker map server for Exile but you've done most of it already  It sucks at the beginning there was no tutorial until a few people got to learn by themselves and scavenge information from multiple places to make a fully functional server.