This tutorial will take you from having just downloaded Arma Reforger and wondering where the mission editor is to having created a COOP mission where players have to assault a small building, clear the building, defend it against an enemy counter attack and finally move to an extract point, taking contact at the extract.
1. SETTING UP TOOLS AND FRAMEWORKS
WHERE TO MAKE MISSIONS
There is no in-game mission editor for Arma Reforger like there is for Arma 3. There’s the Game Master mode, which is similar to Zeus game play, but the actual scenario editing software is in the Arma Reforger Tools. Whilst this will be a bit more complex to learn, it also removes all of the barriers that the mission editor had in Arma 3, so the possibilities are genuinely endless, and with the Night Operations frameworks, making a working mission is relatively straight forward.
So lets get started by installing the tools:
To download the Arma Reforger tools go to your Steam library and select the tick box “Tools” in the top left drop down menu. Find Arma Reforger Tools in the list and download it:
SUBSCRIBING TO FRAMEWORKS
To use the frameworks you need to first download them. This is done via the ingame Arma Reforger workshop, like any other mods. The three frameworks are the NightOps DynamicSpawnFramework, the NightOps-DynamicTaskFramework and the NightOps_CustomModesFramework. Though the task and dyanmic spawn frameworks work indepdently, for this tutorial we will be using all three for the easiest path to a coop mission! N.B. the Custom Modes Framework requires both the Dynamic Spawn Framework and Dynamic Task Framework.
If you search for “nightops” in the top right, the mods you’re looking for are the three with the red banner. The NightOps – Everon 1985 is the showcase mission by Zeal, which you can also download and play to see what is already possible pretty easily with these frameworks!
Once all of that is downloaded, we’re ready to start looking at missions!
2. ORGANISING FOLDERS
CREATING PROJECTS FOLDER
Using your addons folder for all of your editing can lead to some unintended consequences, so we recommend creating a new folder called “projects”. Your addons folder can be found in your documents folder: “\Documents\My Games\ArmaReforger”. For a start, you will probably only have the “addons” and “profile” folders. The “publish” folder is where bundled missions will go automatically when you publish a mission to workshop – so don’t worrk too much about this. Create a new folder called “projects”:
We’re going to need to copy the frameworks from the addons folder into the projects folder so that we can use them as dependencies. This does mean that every time the frameworks are updated, you will have to manually update your projects folder by deleting the existing framework folders and copying the updated version over from the addons folder.
Addons downloaded from the workshop will appear in your addons folder as a code. Find the three folders with these codes, and copy them into your projects folder:
- 598ABCE21D6DE27D
- 598B131A58C0F13F
- 59872DC34F427384
ADDING FRAMEWORKS TO TOOLS
We’re now ready to actually open the tools – very exciting! Open them up and you should get a screen with your empty projects window.
We’re going to add the three frameworks first, so that we can then add them as dependencies for our new mission. Click on the “Add Existing” button:
Navigate out of the “addons” folder and into the “projects” folder, go into the first of the three framework folders and select the .gproj file:
Once you’ve added all three, your launcher should look like this:
SETTING UP A NEW PROJECT
To create a new project, you firstly click on the “Create New” button:
Which will open this menu:
Call the project whatever you want, I’ve called mine “The Battle of Godfrey’s Cottage”, change the location to your projects folder and select the three frameworks as dependencies:
Click “OK” and the tools will start. Your screen should look like this, with a different project name (unless you also chose the depict the epic struggle for Private Godfrey and his sisters’ house):
If you look in the top left of the resource browser, you can find the three framework folders as well. As well as ArmaReforger, core and profile, you will find any dependencies you add in this top left hand corner.
Within the project folder itself, we need to add two new folders, one called “Worlds” and one called “Missions”. If your project is a campaign or a game mode with several missions for different factions or islands, you’ll need an additional folder inside the “Worlds” folder for each mission. To create a new folder, click on “Create” at the bottom and then “New Folder”:
When you’ve created a “Worlds” folder and a “Missions” folder your screen should look like this. N.B. Your missions folder MUST be called “missions” and not “mission”, otherwise Reforger won’t know where to find the config file later!
If you’re at this stage, we’re now ready to start making missions!