¶ Introduction
Using the Arma Reforger tools, you can:
- Create your own version of Overthrow with different settings and values
- Change the prices
- Create a compatibility mod that makes another mod work with Overthrow, or sets the prices for the mod's items in stores etc
- Add a new faction that is selectable on game start with a different set of gear, soldiers, flags etc
- Add/Remove/Move bases or towns
- Port Overthrow to a different map
- Change the composition of "prefabs" such as roadblocks or buildings
- Add items that can be placed at houses, FOBs and bases
- Add buildings that can be built at bases/FOBs
- Add jobs
- Change who walks the streets of a town, and what they wear
- Change almost anything else about your Overthrow experience
- Port an existing map to work with Overthrow (see Custom Maps for full guide)
You are free to post your own versions, modifications, compatability patches etc to the Arma Reforger Workshop, and we support anyone to do so via our discord. If your modification becomes popular we may request that we include your changes in the base Overthrow, but this is completely at your discretion. We will not do it without asking you.
¶ Questions and guidance
Please use the #reforger-dev channel on discord to ask about customizing Overthrow. Someone there should be able to help you. If your question is about general editing of Arma Reforger or the use of Arma Reforger tools, you may get more response from the ARMA discord: https://discord.gg/J7V4y5xk
¶ Setup
First, install "Arma Reforger Tools" from the tools section of your Steam client. You must own the Steam (PC) version of Arma Reforger, it is not possible to create content on Xbox. Make sure the Overthrow mod is also installed into your game and is up to date before continuing.
¶ Copy Overthrow into your workbench folder
Copy the following folder from your My Documents\My Games\ArmaReforger\addons into My Documents\My Games\ArmaReforgerWorkbench\addons:
- Overthrow_59B657D731E2A11D
As of v1.4 Overthrow has no mod dependencies. The EnfusionDatabaseFramework_5D6EA74A94173EDF and EnfusionPersistenceFramework_5D6EBC81EB1842EF folders were required by earlier versions and are no longer needed.
¶ Create a new Workbench Project
- Open the Arma Reforger Tools, in the Enfusion Workbench Launcher click on "Create New"
- Give the Project a name, location and choose "Overthrow" as a dependancy. Use a name that describes what you want to do in case you want to publish it. ie "Overthrow:
Your server name" or "Overthrow: Cheaper guns" etc
¶ Adapting an existing project
Only do this if you already have a workbench project created. If you created one above you dont need to do this. For an existing project you can add Overthrow as a dependancy
- Open Workbench > Settings
- Add
59B657D731E2A11Das a dependancy, this is the ID of the Overthrow mod in Reforger - Restart workbench to load the dependancies
¶ Basic Customization
Most of the values you may want to tweak are located in "config" files and prefabs. These are very easy to customize using the "override" feature of Reforger modding. When your mod is active, it will use your "overridden" versions of the files.
¶ Config/Prefab customization
- Find the config file or prefab you want to override
- Right click it, and choose
Override in <your mod> - Make the changes to your override file
¶ Changing soldier loadouts
If you want to equip the spawned soldiers with specific gear (ie from another mod) then you use the above method to override the soldier prefabs and change their loadout. If the mod comes with it's own soldier/group prefabs you can replace the vanilla ones in the faction configs under Configs\Factions
¶ Creating a new faction
If you want to add a whole new faction to Overthrow that can be selected on game start, its a little more complicated.
- Create a
FactionName.confconfig file or copy an existing one, make it the typeFaction. If you are adding a faction from a mod this file may already exist, and you can just use that in step 4 instead of creating one - Create a
FactionName_OverthrowData.confconfig file or copy an existing one, make it the typeOVT_Faction. Make sure it has the same "faction key" as the above config - Override the
Prefabs/GameMode/OVT_OverthrowFactionManagerprefab in Overthrow - Add both your configs to the faction manager, the "Faction" config goes in the factions section, the "OVT_faction" config goes in the "Overthrow Factions" section
- If you want your faction to be the default occupying faction when your mod is loaded, you can override
Prefabs\GameMode\OVT_OverthrowGameModeand setm_sDefaultOccupyingFactionto the faction key
For an example of a custom faction you can look at https://github.com/ArmaOverthrow/Overthrow.Arma4.RHS
¶ Town civilians and other ambient spawns
The people who walk around a town, and the civilian cars parked along its kerbs, are declared in a single config file: Configs/Civilians/CivilianAmbience.conf. Override that file and you can change who inhabits a town, how many of them there are and how they behave, without writing any script.
The file is a registry of ambient sources. Two are shipped: town_civilians is the crowd, town_vehicles is the parked cars. Each is registered once per town when the campaign starts, and the game spawns and despawns it as players come and go.
¶ Adding a civilian type
Add an entry to the town_civilians source's list of types. Each type carries:
- Type name. Matched exactly, and case sensitively, by a town's own list of allowed types (see below).
- Roll weight. How often this type is picked relative to the others a town allows. A weight of zero or less is never picked, which is how you switch a shipped type off without deleting it.
- Minimum town size.
VILLAGEmeans anywhere,TOWNkeeps the type out of villages,CITYkeeps it out of villages and towns as well. - Loadout config (optional). A clothing set for this type, and the main way a type gets a look of its own: the shipped types all spawn the same civilian group and differ only in what they are wearing. Copy one of the files in
Configs/Civilians/Loadouts/as a starting point. A clothing slot your file does not fill is left as the prefab had it, so you can override just a hat if that is all you want. - Group prefab (optional). Leave this pointing at the stock civilian group unless your type needs to be more than differently dressed, for example its own components or its own inventory. If you do point it at your own prefab it must be a one man group prefab, never a bare character: the spawner tracks groups, and a character authored here would spawn with no route and never be tidied up. Your character also needs the same Overthrow components and user actions as the stock civilian, or it cannot be recruited, converted or sold to.
¶ Density and behaviour
On the town_civilians source itself:
- Civilians per head of population, plus a minimum and maximum per town. Server owners scale this further with
civilianDensityMultiplierand cap it withmaxCiviliansPerTown, see Overthrow Config. - Building placement chance, the share of civilians placed at a doorway or point of interest rather than on a road. Set it to zero and nobody is placed at a building, and the world query that finds those spots is never run at all.
- Behaviour archetypes, each with a weight and a range of pause times:
PINGPONGwalks between two points,WANDERdoes a circuit of several, andLOITERstands in one place for a long time. The point count only means anything forWANDER.
The parked car source works the same way, with a pool of vehicle prefabs and separate counts for villages, towns and cities, plus a lateral offset from the road that decides how far off the tarmac a car ends up. If cars are sitting in a driving lane on your map, raise it; if they are in the hedges, lower it.
¶ Curating a town
Each town in the world editor has its own list of allowed civilian types. Select the town's controller in your world and fill in its civilian types list with type names to say "these are the people who live here", for example dock workers only in a harbour town. An empty list means "anything this town's size allows", which is what most towns use.
Both rules have to pass: a type must be in the town's list and the town must be at least the type's minimum size. That means naming a city only type in a village's list does not put it there.
¶ A whole new ambient source
Adding another entry to the registry declares another kind of ambient spawn. Something still has to register that source at a position, which for the two shipped sources is done per town when the town activates, so a genuinely new source (roadside wrecks, wildlife, boats at a jetty) needs a small amount of script alongside the config: a subclass of the ambient source config for its own rolling and cleanup rules, and something to register an instance of it at a position. The shipped civilian source is the reference implementation to copy.
¶ Tweaking other values
Most of the values Overthrow uses are in the "Game Mode" prefab located at Prefabs\GameMode\OVT_OverthrowGameMode. Override this file and change the values in the various "Manager" components on that prefab.
¶ Advanced Customization
¶ Script customization
If you want to customize the code in your Overthrow, you will need to "mod" the scripts.
- Find the script you want to change
- Create the same folder structure in your mod, add a "Modded" folder within that folder and put a script there with the same name
- Use
modded classat the top of your script and the same name for the class - Override the methods you need to and alter their functionality
See the BI wiki for more information on modding classes: https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_Reforger:Scripting_Modding
¶ Map Customization
If you want to change the map, add/remove/move bases/towns etc. You will need to create your own "world" that inherits an existing official Overthrow world
- In the Workbench, navigate to
Overthrow/Worlds/MP/OVT_Campaign_<Map>.entand double click it (The default Reforger map is "Eden") - In the world editor that opens, click on File > New World
- Choose "Sub-scene (of current world)"
- Go File > Save World As
- Put the new world into a folder within your project, you should see a folder (ie "MyOverthrow" or whatever you called your project)
You now have your own version of the mission that inherits from Overthrow. If we make any changes to the base world they will be reflected in your version as well. You can now add bases or change the map however you want in your sub-world.
¶ Creating your own mission
If you have created a sub-world, you will need to make your world an option from inside the actual game so you can play it outside of the Workbench. To this you create a mission config:
- Click on your mod folder, or create a "Missions" folder if you want to
- In the workbench, bottom left, click Create > Config File
- Use the name
24_OVT_<Map Name>_<Your mod name> - Choose "SCR_MissionHeader" as the base
- At the top, select your world
- Enter the other details ie name, add images if you want (see Reforger docs)
You should be able to now see your mission as an option when you open your game and make sure your workbench mod is loaded. If you want to use it on a server or in multiplayer you will need to "Publish" your mod to the Reforger workbench.
¶ Third-Party maps
See Custom Maps for full guide on porting third-party maps