About

ShackTac Map Gestures (STMG) is a mod created to solve a simple problem – in a virtual environment, it’s impossible to simply point at a map or trace a path for others to see. This tends to slow briefings and is a purely artificial limit, so… this fixes that!

After adopting this mod, ShackTac saw a significant increase in briefing clarity and efficiency. It became significantly easier for a leader to talk through a plan and show exactly what the intent was via gestures, and anyone with questions could easily ask them and show exactly what they meant on the map via the gestures.

Usage

Map gestures are enabled automatically a few seconds into a mission. To use, simply click and drag on the map to activate – as long as you hold down your left mouse button after dragging, your point will continue to display.

• Map gestures are visible to others within a 7-meter radius and are tagged with a subdued name to the left of your pointing dot.
• Map gestures are visible within a vehicle, but not between vehicles or between dismounted and mounted units.
• Group leaders will have brighter pointers, while subordinate members will have slightly dimmer ones, to help differentiate more easily between pointers.

Notes

• In the past, sending updates through the server was a bandwidth concern and could potentially cause performance issues – fortunately, A3 has introduced new methods, and STMG solves this problem by using a client-to-client transfer method that avoids the server entirely. Instead of going through the server, clients send their “map gesture” data directly to other clients within a short range of them.
• This mod is designed to be used in an all-or-nothing fashion, which is to say, as part of a core modset and not as an optional aspect. All clients and the server must have it. Using it in any other fashion will likely cause issues, as well as defeat the purpose of it (why gesture if you don’t know if someone can receive it?).
• As stated in the intro, this is released as-is and is not guaranteed to work with other modsets. Test it before you use it in your community.
• Issues can be reported to our GitLab tracker
• This mod requires Community Base Addons (CBA)
• This mod uses a unique server key, not tied to the existing STUI key, making it something that must be deliberately allowed on a server.

Technical

Color-coding of pointers uses standards from the ShackTac framework to determine the color of your pointer. This is done by looking at your group’s groupID variable, which is the shorthand for any given element – such as “ASL”, “A1”, “B1”, “PltHQ”, etc. There are several arrays for groupID color matching, so if you’d like to use your own designations, simply add them (as strings) to the following arrays as needed, and ensure that your groups have their groupID variable set to match:

  dsl_MapGestures_GroupColors_Red
  dsl_MapGestures_GroupColors_Green
  dsl_MapGestures_GroupColors_Blue
  dsl_MapGestures_GroupColors_Yellow
  dsl_MapGestures_GroupColors_DarkYellow

Known Issues

• Does not support Cyrillic alphabet

Video

A video demonstration of basic functionality:

Download

ShackTac Map Gestures can be downloaded here: 

Version History

• 150731 – Initial release, v1.0
• 150731 – v1.01, slight update to custom color technique