Arma 3: Time Trials

This guide will describe how to design and implement a custom Time Trial Challenge as available in the vanilla game.

See also:

• Arma 3 Firing Drills (very similar setup and approach)

Terminology

• Time Trial (TT) - a simple vehicle race against the clock
• Competitor - the actor running the trial
• Marshal - the actor observing the trial and providing feedback / guidance
• Checkpoint (CP) - a navigation point within a course which a competitor must follow in a fixed sequence (1 consecutive CP may be skipped for a time penalty)
  • The first CP is the start.
  • The last CP is the finish.
• Time - the time from the start it takes to complete a trial (raw)
  • Time penalties are added to arrive at the final time.
  • The fastest / lowest time is the best and wins.
  • There are bronze, silver and gold medal times to beat.
  • There may be one special time to beat (faster than gold).

Setup

⚠

At time of writing it is not possible to add new Time Trials as independent (Workshop) scenarios; they need to be added as 'mods' with configuration. We do hope to allow this in update 2.02.

TODO

Common Additions

TODO

Configuration

description.ext

TODO

CfgTimeTrials

Trial

TODO

System

TODO

CfgMissions

TODO

Run-Time Tools

TODO

Colors

TODO

Tips

• Balancing a trial can be quite hard, since there is a broad range of skills in the playerbase.
  • You should set appropriate medal times.
  • It's recommended to start harder / more difficult, rather than too easy. It's better to nerf later than to go the other way (since you cannot easily undo recorded times).
  • Start by simply playtesting the trial a lot and determining your own best medal times (or invite other playtesters and record their runs / times - video recordings can also be helpful for spotting issues).
    • Real balancing typically starts towards the end of development, because even slight changes can affect times a lot, let alone adding / removing CPs.
  • Vanilla trials apply the following abstract goals per medal:
    • Bronze: achievable by doing a clean race (perhaps 1 small collision) but not taking many risks. For a typical user it should take 1-3 attempts.
    • Silver: achievable by doing a clean race and taking some risks (using maximum acceleration and cutting some corners). Might take 2-5 attempts for example.
    • Gold: meant to be hard. This needs to be a perfectly clean race, at full speed and taking risks. It may take more than 5 attempts.
    • Special: designed to be extremely hard. Some may never beat this.