BIS Tools 2 page added to BIS Wiki

[Snake Man]

Today Maruk added BIS Tools 2 page on BIS Wiki.

Complete editing tool suite for Bohemia Interactive's game engine used in ARMA II (requires version 1.03).

This installer will overwrite previously released BI Editing Tools for Arma I (user made data are intact) and it can not be possible to pack and finalize content for Arma I using the newer tools. Despite it may be possible to configure your system in a way it will support creation for both Arma I and Arma II, it is not recommended.

The tool suite is consisting from:

* Oxygen 2 Personal Edition for Arma II - model editing and animation package
* Visitor 3 Personal Edition for Arma II - terrain and map editing
* TexView 2 - texture convertor and viewer
* BinPBO Personal Edition - packer
* Sound Tools - sound and lipsync utilities
* FSM Editor - tool to edit and compile fsms used in Arma 2
* BinMake - conversion tool
* Tools Drive - main working directory for tools with mandatory data files

Download: not released yet

I'm actually quite surprised that they are releasing the tools so quickly. Or it would be rather teasing to add this page there now and then release tools 8 months from now...

[DMarkwick]

I was going to note that the tools seem pretty much unchanged from the previous version, but I note the inclusion of an FSM editor in there.

Also, I hear from a little birdie that there is a Visitor 4 release possible in the future - but that it will be a pay-for release. And, it might be VBS2 specific, but that last is my own speculation.

[Snake Man]

I heard that in VBS2 there is some additional tool for terrain making, was it "land builder" or something, but even those or visitor4 I just don't know, are with additional cost. First you pay for VBS2 and then if you want you need to pay more for the specific tools. I might be mistaken but that's how I understood it.

Anyways bit offtopic

One thing was intriguing that why does the "Tools 2" overwrite the old ones... BIS doesn't want to ... well allow is too strong word and support is wrong word too.. but you know what I mean... ArmA editing anymore then?

Sure if we are cynical we need to cut our losses and move to ArmA 2 editing today, but I still have some projects to finish in ArmA ... so hmm

Let's just hope the tools will be released as soon as possible.

[DMarkwick]

I think it might be as simple as a slightly different binarisation/compression algorithm, that ArmA2 uses but which ArmA does not. I know that .paa files are compressed differently for example.

But ArmA2 seems to be backward-compatible with the old .paa compression so maybe there's no compelling reason to upgrade the tools just yet, unless you need the FSM stuff.