Sinews of War

Sinews of War is a team of individuals that are dedicated to expanding the capabilities of the various titles provided by Bohemia Interactive Studio. Sinews of War is most noted for its discovery and exploitation of the saveStatus command in Multiplayer. Utilizing this exploit, SOW was able to create a project that allowed the saving of logistical and other data between missions in MP games much like the original Resistance campaign. The Sinews of War Team has since moved forward to try and provide assistance to the editing community in general.

Meaning

The Sinews of War name was created from the quote:

The sinews of war are five - men, money, materials, maintenance (food) and morale. - Bernard Mannes Baruch

Originally, it was meant to describe (figuratively) the data being saved in the original SOW projects. Currently, it has taken on the broader meaning (satirically) of what script/addon/mission editors don't have enough of.

The original logo featured a group of three parachutes (one for each letter of SOW) dropping five M's stacked much like boxes in a cargo drop (see quote above). The colors green, blue, and red were on the background and represented the Assignment, Management, and Administration sections of SOW 2.

The new logo is a streamlined version with a rust background instead of the three colors. The parachute remains to symbolize help arriving when asked and the rust/metal symbolizes the creation and erosion process projects can evolve through.

Purpose

In the past, the Sinews of War name was tied to a project involving the saving of data between MP sessions. This has since changed. In preparation for the release of Armed Assault, Sinews of War is taking on a more broad goal of supporting the editing community.

In months prior to the announcement of Armed Assault, it was felt at SOW that the editing community had given way to the add-on community. Theories were that editing had become too complicated for individuals and there was a significant gap between a startup project and a final release. Many projects (including addons) went Beta and never went beyond this stage. In most cases it wasn't because the projects were bad, rather most were abandoned because the horrors of Real Life always have say over when an individual can work on a project. If a project was lucky, someone with free time could come along and work on the project. Also, many projects with the same goal would overlap within the community and competition would render one the winner and the others a sad place in the virtual trash-bin on many hard-drives. Ultimately, there were may projects but few final submissions to sites such as [OFP.info] and OFPEC.

To address these issues, Sinews of War is providing the intermediate editing site: [Sinews of War:Development Center]

This new website will be host to a project development repository where individuals can deposit their projects and perform management of tasks and who can edit the project. By promoting this, startup projects will be more publicly visible and when a project falls behind, visitors can provide assistance or project leads can hand down projects to other developers for continuation. Since all project files and data reside in one place, it makes it much easier to manage. When projects reach the release stage, the SOW:Development Center can be a central hub for addon and mission distribution sites (such as [OFP.info]) where all project versions can be easily accessed by staff and redistributed publicly/reviewed/categorized via their own addon or mission site.

Features

• Project Management
• Automatic File Versioning
• Task Assignment to Project Members
• Collaboration
• Journals/Blogs and Photo Galleries for Developers

Note: We are still working on the software to provide the majority of these features. As of right now, most of these features are unavailable to the general public

Staff

• Administrator: CrashDome
• Lead SOW Project Developer: Rune (a.k.a. R)
• General Support and SOW Veterans: Fox2 (a.k.a. HurricaneJim), Randolf Mayhem, nubbin77, Genken, and others by association

History

SOW v1.0

Sinews of War v.1 Main Menu

Sinews of War v.1 Weapons & Ammo Screen

Sinews of War was initiated in late 2002 when CrashDome discovered that the saveStatus and saveIdentity commands exported data to a file in a temporary directory within the User's folder in Operation Flashpoint: Resistance. The data held in this Objects.sav file could crudely be constructed to represent integers and real numbers. Upon realizing this, CrashDome started a project to allow saving inventory of weapons, personnel, and vehicles between missions.

Access to the data was through an object such as a computer sitting on a table. Ideally, a weapon or ammo was pulled into a nearby crate when needed and vehicles to marker locations. Personnel were spawned nearby the players and mission details provided within the interface rather than the breifing (to provide random missions). Once several bugs had been worked out, 5 different missions were created using this new project idea. These missions used scripts which randomized the locations of enemy units or goals. This allowed the players to play each of the 5 missions without playing the same mission more than once in sequence. As players progressed through the missions, weapons and ammo accumulated as did money and vehicles. It was never a dull moment on the SOW server as the missions usually ended up where once enough had been accumulated, the players (CrashDome and Mayhem) turned on each other. Each player devising his own way to dispatch the other in a gruesome team-kill scenario.

At this time period, SOW's third member would join. Fox2 was high-school student very much interested in SOW. While he was unable to perform any scripting duties, he never failed to provide advice and ideas throughout the projects updates.

One of the major flaws with this project was that it took an enormously long time to syncronize the data between all players at mission start. It was discovered that the publicVariable command could not keep up with the data flow. Data was dropped during transfer and ultimately a delay between "data sending" had to be instituted. There were other nuances, but none as annoying as the publicVariable bug. The second most annoying bug was the inability to pull weapons directly to units. A player had to direct his AI team to pick up the pulled weapons from the nearby crate.

SOW v2.x

Sinews of War v.2 Loading Screen

Sinews of War v.2 Assign Equipment Screen

Sinews of War v.2 Manage Personnel Screen

In 2003, The Chain of Command released their Network Services product. The benefits of this product caused a complete rewrite of the Sinews of War code. The new version dubbed SOW 2.0 would undertake many changes. Deficiencies of the previous version would be addressed, dialogs would undergo a major face-lift, and features would be added. One of the biggest features was the seperation of functionality from data. This would provide and easy way to incorporate mods and addons to missions.

The features added included the ability to save weapons and ammo on the players themselves and pull weapons and ammo directly to units. Easy-to-use templates were provided to make the equiping of units faster. Group management was also provided such that at any moment, a team member could be transferred to another squad.

SOW 2 would attract a few more members and see growth in skill among existing members. Mayhem and Fox2 would dabble in scripting and mission making. Ultimately, Fox2 would go on to create his very own addons. At SOW's most vulnerable moment (CrashDome had given up on the project at its most final stage before first release), Rune had questioned about being able to finish some much needed script writing. CrashDome transferred all development and decision making to the newcomer. He maintained the website but had been hands off the project for some time. Not long after Rune had taken over, an original demo mission was released by Rune and the community gave notice to SOW once more. More members joined in support. The renewed interest brought many bugs out into the open and CrashDome rejoined to address the most serious of issues. Rune optimized the data structure and after 3 long years of development, SOW 2 was a finalized product.

At the moments leading to v2.2, SOW member nubbin77 created a six-part campaign utilizing the final product. Several conversions of existing missions had been made including a WGL version by WGL member, Q.

More recently, Vult has begun to undertake converting the old Resistance Missions to SOW MP compatible.

Note: Nubbin's Campaign and Vult's Missions can be found in the Downloads section of the SOW website.

Features of SOW 2

Features relating to Global Pool

• Save Global Pool Data at end of mission to carry over to next
• Assign AI Squad members which retain their skill and equipment
• Assign Equipment that you've captured or purchased to any friendly unit
• Request Vehicles or store captured/purchased vehicles
• Flexible system to include any mod
• Saved data is compressed and optimized for quick loading and synchronizing
• Different Pool for each side can be customized to suit your needs

Extra Features

• Group Management - pass units to and from other squads of the same side
• Quick Drop to Inventory - single command to drop everything a unit is carrying to Global Pool
• Smart Equipment Templates - single button to assign pre-defined equipment list to a unit (ignores items not in pool)
• Flexible Intialization to customize SOW behavior - add/remove options or change parameters
• Server retains Game Number such that a client can play on any server without transferring equipment accidentally

Other Projects

During development of SOW 2, many projects and protoypes would come out of R&D.

• Sinews of War: Dynamic Dialogs
• Fox2's High Dispersion Conversion Scripts
• Rune's MP Saving and Compression Functions
• Sinews of War: Mugs

External Links

Sinews of War Website