***best and easiest way to run mods***

[Ball0fire]

So a lot of players run clean arma2 with no mods and may want to know how to go aboot doing it . So I'm puttin this little thread together to show the basics and easy way to go aboot doing it

first things first yah need to know where yah arma2 game folder is located
retail should be in the standard location *:program files/bohimia/arma2 etc etc
and steam version is in yah steam folder
*: steam/steamapps/common/arma2

the next thing you want to do is download some stuff i'll start off with 3 things

1. an Arma2 mod launcher (start this instead of the normal arma2 launcher icon)
2. CBA mod (community based addons, its basically a mod that runs nearly all other mods and is needed for many mods to work)
3. the the mod we guna install (in this case CSM chammys sound mod)

http://www.armaholic.com is THE place to get many addons for arma here are the links


http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=6649 the download link is on the bottom left or right
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=6231 (link same place as the others)
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=9049 (same again)
chammys sound mod is 69mb quite small for a sound mod, HIFI is aboot 300mb

ok so once you download these you can unpack em, alot of armaholics downloads all packed ready to be installed, so the best place to unpack / unzip em is directly into you arma2 intsall folder. once you do that you'll see it unpacks as a @CSM or @CBA folder.


armaholics use a compression format called 7-zip? alot (some are rar or zip) i think not sure if winzip unpacks it or the standard windows based zip either, but i know winrar does , but you can get 7-zip here http://www.7-zip.org/

ok so you unpacked the CBA and CSM mods into the arma2 folder now unpack the arma2 launcher into the same arma2 folder, this unpacks as an application and this is what you run to start arma2 so make a shortcut to the desktop for this

now start the arma2 launcher, when it first starts it detects that its the first time its run and it'll either find the arma directory itself, or if it cant you might have to point it to the right place.
then once its done that it detects any @mod folders you've installed and selects them and will show up in yah main launcher window like so

this launcher is really easy to to use and figure out
you just tick the mods you want to run when you start the game and click on start arma2 button
i wont go into much detail aboot all the options on the launcher but i've taken screenshots of mine and will show em here

ok the paramatres page is fairly straight forward you dont NEEED to touch any of the options, ive got the disable splash screen (for obvious reasons) and win XP mode (it seems to make arma2 run much faster for me , try it if you runnin vista/ win 7 32/ 64 it might help yah fps
and the mods page lists yah mods in priority of enabling. with this list it doesnt really matter what order you have them in,
SO LONG AS CBA IS FIRST as it controls all other mods, if it doesnt start first then it might miss something



profiles page...easy to figure out
make diff profiles if you play on different servers that require diff mods
in my case i have ace profile GoN profile and default clean profile you can make the profies on this page, then go throo and change all the settings on every other page (mainly the first page ticking what mods you want) then hit the save disk button on the bottom on the front page next to the profile you want it saved to. and the settings page... well you can see what it does

so thats pretty much it fairly easy, tho a long post
im sure i've missed somethings, you can let me know and me or some one else can answer.

oh if you download a mod that isnt all ready set out the @mod folder way, you can just look at yah other mods and copy it, its fairly easy to see how its laid out.

Just a helpful bit of advice regarding extracting and folder naming for mods.

Mod folders all need to have the following file path.
rootarma2dir/@Modname/Addons

The folder name cannot have spaces or .'s in them or the game will not recognise them. Some mods will not come in a proper file setup so you might have to do it yourself.

edit: fail at trying to make the launcher pics side by side

[DarkMellie]

Great post and VERY helpful. Cheers for the effort Ball0.

[Goshawk]

Just a helpful bit of advice regarding extracting and folder naming for mods.

Mod folders all need to have the following file path.
rootarma2dir/@Modname/Addons

The folder name cannot have spaces or .'s in them or the game will not recognise them. Some mods will not come in a proper file setup so you might have to do it yourself.

[bishopoz]

yeah thanks alot ball0fire , really helpful post , arma2 is abit daunting for a noob like me, just never tried with mods , now i'll give em a go , cheers for the effort mate .

[southy1]

yeah thanks alot ball0fire , really helpful post , arma2 is abit daunting for a noob like me, just never tried with mods , now i'll give em a go , cheers for the effort mate .

Don't worry mate, Arma2 is daunting even for people who know how it works, sometimes you hit issues and just can't figure them out, well not for a while anyway.

@ball good work mate, always something I wanted to put together for people but never made the time for.

A big 'no no' is just to put addons directly into your addon folder in the Arma2 directory, yes they will work fine, but if you ever have two addons conflict you might spend days trying to find out which ones etc.

If anyone has any issues shout up I'm sure between the lot of us we can work it out, there are no 'noob' questions with arma2

[Freeborne]

Very good post, and ArmA II Launcher is a nifty program, but I would like to see mods handled another way.

GON should have it's own mods, grouped under GON naming convention. Everything else = BANNED.

Eg:

GON-EN (English mod for German users)
GON-LANDTEX (Landtex mod).

Then you will have your own unique server key and control over what mods are approved (and what version of mods)

1. Players can easily find and download approved mods from GON's FTP (or better yet, implement a YOMA server).

2. You can restrict mods and anyone who wants to use mods will know which ones they can load (anything starting with "GON-")

3. When mods are uploaded/changed, everyone will be running the same version. Otherwise you'll find 10 players using HiFi_SFX v1.04 and 5 people using the newer HiFi_SFX 1.06, etc. It's just messy. Same with Isla Duala for instance. You'll get people who update to the newer version because they play on another server, and then find GON hasn't updated yet to the newer version, causing issues for players. Or vice versa, where another server still uses the older version and GON has moved to most recent version. It's just much simpler if players keep mods for GON server separate.


Have a look at NZARMA for an example. They have their mods download-able via FTP or YOMA Addon Sync server, grouped under @NZARMA. OGN always had this when they were up and running and it kept things simple when swapping servers.

Also, please check out http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Crash_Files

I'm sure the crash log files will give some indication on what's causing the server to crash every 1-2 hours (it's really really frustrating). I'm betting you'll find particular players with mods clashing with the server/mission.

[Ball0fire]

oh yes totally agree, cept the server doesnt run with verifysignatures=1
just doesnt want to work

tried everything so i cant limit the mods at all, its either totally vanilla or anything goes. ive even made nermous posts on the BIS forums aboot it, everyone says it should work, cept it doesnt anyhoo i dont want to get OT in this particular thread, ive gone throo that in other threads

EDIT: ok so verify sigs is now running onthe server and there is a list of allowed mods in this thread
http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=207&t=181403&start=0

[IvanTSR]

Hey guys

1/ I'm running arma through steam and have been for a while. How do I get the launcher to work?

2/ Is there a launcher with a function to watch the server and join when a spot opens up?

cheers

[Ball0fire]

Hey guys

1/ I'm running arma through steam and have been for a while. How do I get the launcher to work?

2/ Is there a launcher with a function to watch the server and join when a spot opens up?

cheers

alpinestars launcher works with steam version i think, just put the launcher in the arma2 folder and run a shortcut to desktop for it

as for the other one , no

however we might be ableto get a 2nd server up, dunno yet , we just asked the question sorta

[Overit]

Hi guys,

Thought i would add that i found a solution to an issue i had. I bought Arma II Operation Arrowhead, played that then read on here i need to have Arma II to join the servers. So i bought that, now i couldn't get it all running together - i.e would say that i did not have Arma II installed. The launcher didn't seem to help with this, however i started looking around in folders for the documentation and discovered a few .bat files in my steamapps\arma directors.

Basically if you have not installed the combined operations package from steam, but like me have installed OA then realised you need ArmaII to join. Do the following.

Simple go to

Code: Select all

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\arma 2 operation arrowhead


Look for the file

Code: Select all

_runA2CO.bat

double click and it will do the things necessary, you are then on your way

If you have a look at the file, you will notice it attempts to find the relevant paths through the registry. If all goes well the following is the command executed.

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"%_STEAMPATH%\steam.exe" -applaunch 33930 "-mod=%_ARMA2PATH%;EXPANSION;ca"


This will load steam if its not already open and then present you with the following screen.


You then select combined operations and you should be good.

Now as for other mods, i assume that editing the shortcut you derive or directly editing the batch file and inserting the relevent modification, you can then subsequently load numerous mods.

The reason i have endeavored with this is simply because i enjoy having the steam interface during game, so i can communicate with friends and also browse the web whilst gaming.

[cyclobs]

also rather then putting all the mod in the arma2 directory with all the other game files making it all very messy.. you can create another folder and call it say 'mods' and place all your mods into it

the game will still pick these up fine and you'll have them all in a single place without the mess of all the other files

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%pathtogame%/arma2oa/mods/
@CBS
@blastcore
@JSRS

This worked for me but i'm not using arma2 laucher. You can also place a mods folder in your user directory.

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mydocuments/arma2/mods/
@CBS
@blastcore
@JSRS

but i haven't tried this yet to get you a definite yes or no. One advantage of putting the mods into your user directory is reinstalls / OS reinstalls wont require you to reinstall all of your mods

[DarkMellie]

Just want to add to this that I now use SixUpdater and find it the easiest of all methods. With Day Z, for instance, I just find it under the mod list, then instruct the Updater to 'install and update' and then right click and launch game from it.

Managed to install ACE 2 in its entirety with just a few mouseclicks which is the easiest time I've ever had with modding arma 2. Mind you, I did go out and buy it on retail after having so much trouble with steam installs.

[Instinx]

Just want to add to this that I now use SixUpdater and find it the easiest of all methods. With Day Z, for instance, I just find it under the mod list, then instruct the Updater to 'install and update' and then right click and launch game from it.

Managed to install ACE 2 in its entirety with just a few mouseclicks which is the easiest time I've ever had with modding arma 2. Mind you, I did go out and buy it on retail after having so much trouble with steam installs.

Only two things i dont like about sixupdater, the Beta is wayy outdated and the mod library isnt big enough

[Lokyi]

Just want to add to this that I now use SixUpdater and find it the easiest of all methods. With Day Z, for instance, I just find it under the mod list, then instruct the Updater to 'install and update' and then right click and launch game from it.

Managed to install ACE 2 in its entirety with just a few mouseclicks which is the easiest time I've ever had with modding arma 2. Mind you, I did go out and buy it on retail after having so much trouble with steam installs.

Only two things i dont like about sixupdater, the Beta is wayy outdated and the mod library isnt big enough

You wot? I assume that was sarcasm.

Six is the only way to go for serious players. You can also look up the server in the server list and it can auto-update you to the correct mods for that server. If they're not on the Six network it can download them directly from that server if it's configured correctly.

[sabretas]

for steam users where am i ment to put the mods in the arma2 folder or the arma2 oa folder?