hint

1.00

LELocal

Hover & click on the images for description

Description

Description:

Outputs a hint message to the right of the screen (left of the screen in Operation Flashpoint) with a sound (except in Armed Assault). Use hintSilent for soundless hint. To split message in multiple lines either use Structured Text or \n (in lower case).

Problems:

1.00 1.00 1.00 Hint messages that exceed the screen may lead to crashes.
1.00 The game would not crash but suffer FPS drop / temporary freezing.

Groups:

InteractionStructured TextStrings

Syntax

Syntax:

hint message

Parameters:

message: String or Structured Text - the message to display.

Return Value:

Nothing

Examples

Example 1:

// outputs the following: // Press W to move forward. // Press S to move backwards. hint "Press W to move forward.\nPress S to move backwards."

Example 2:

hint format ["Hello, %1!", name player];

Example 3:

hint str count allPlayers; sleep 10; hintSilent ""; // hides the previous hint display

Example 4:

hint parseText "<t size='2.0'>Large text</t>";// Displays text twice as large as the default one

Additional Information

See also:

hintChintCadethintSilentdiag_log

Notes

Report bugs on the Feedback Tracker and/or discuss them on the Arma Discord or on the Forums.
Only post proven facts here! Add Note

Notes

Posted on October 20, 2014 - 19:27 (UTC)

DreadedEntity

Be careful when using hints to visualize the effects of commands using the Debug Console. Hint can accept an undefined variable and neither the error nor the hint is shown, the command simply fails. Also notice how the hint command should be hint str _i;: for "_i" from 0 to 50 do { hint _i; }; tested in A3 1.32.127785

In a script, an "undefined variable" error will be shown as expected.

Posted on October 21, 2014 - 23:07 (UTC)

DreadedEntity

Contrary to previous games, Arma 3 will happily display hints that far exceed screen space.
However, as hints get longer, FPS suffers tremendously.
tested in Debug Console, A3 1.32.127785 with the following: hint str ((nearestObjects [player, ["BUILDING"], 100]) - [player]); [] spawn { sleep 5; systemChat str diag_fps; }; sleep 10; hint str ((nearestObjects [player, ["BUILDING"], 1000]) - [player]); [] spawn { sleep 5; systemChat str diag_fps; }; Results were: 59.7015 and 5.17297, respectively. Drawing a hint even longer than this, such as nearestObjects with a radius of 10,000 or 100,000 reduces your FPS so much Arma 3 appears to crash, though it doesn't.

Unrelated: Hints will stay on screen for 30 seconds, then fade away over the course of 5 seconds. Tested with: A3 1.32.127785

Posted on February 17, 2015 - 23:14 (UTC)

DreadedEntity

An open dialog will pause the 30-second hint fade timer. (A3 1.38.128937)

Posted on March 25, 2017 - 20:47 (UTC)

Feint

The hint sound is audible only when you have the music volume turned up above 0 in the audio settings. Otherwise, it seems to act the same as hintSilent.

This is important because if you are running a hint that fires at 30 fps or more, the hint will slow down machines that have the music volume turned up but won't slow down machines that have the music volume turned off.

Best practice is to use hint for an alert to the player and use hintSilent for a makeshift display of data to the player that is updated fairly often.