Nicoman, this is Arma :-)
I hope they fix towing in Arma 4.

LOLOL. Thanks for the laughter. Don't be angry. I really mean it. Just played around 5 minutes in the editor, most time I laughed. Because the towed vehicle constantly tried to kill me. When I outsmarted the killer vehicle by steering, it found a new method: It drove in front of me and I was unable to avoid collision. I was a bit like a cat with an attached sticker to the hind leg :))).
Seriously. It feels nicer then Duda's version, where the vehicle is constantly replaced by another one. But I fear that Arma's engine reaches it's limits here.
I think that physics necessary to correctly tow a vehicle is.... complicated. A bit out of scope of the engine. This is why the rope comports like a rubber band. And why the towed vehicle overtakes the tow vehicle.

@Ranman, I have not looked into the source code of that mod, so I can not tell. Theoretically it could be done with an infinite loop of periodical checks, which IMHO reduces performance and adds micro freezes into an already slow game engine. It could also be an action attached to a player which was visible only when there are vehicles nearby. But doing so, would also use periodical checks for vehicles in vicinity and could lead to micro freezes. I can not say for sure.

@Pikachu I see. Out of curiosity, if this were to be the case, would you happen to know why this isn't the case for the Older Towing mod from 2016 that you linked this mod on works just from vehicle interaction?

Not trying to be rude or anything, just genuinely curious why that same functionality can't be replicated the way that mod works.

Ranman, this is a feature of the mod. It is possible to make the action attached to the vehicle, but doing so will require mission makers to add this action to each vehicle in the game, including those vehicles which are created by scripts. This would make mission creation much more complicated and the support for this mod would depend on the mission makers. So, the decision was to attach the action not to all existing and future vehicles in the mission, but instead to attach the action to a player. Doing so enables support for all vehicles in the mission independently of the mission scripts.

I love this mod, the only thing/things I wish was different is if the "Towing Toggle (On/Off)" action only showed up when looking at a vehicle, instead of always being there when you scroll, even if you aren't near vehicles.

Thanks for your honest and enlighting answer! :-)
I guess it's time to send a suggestion to Arma Reforger team, maybe they'll take all the recovery and maintenance seriously this time... but untill this will come - I still have a very nice and useful towing mod!
Cheers!

@Pikachu: Gotcha, thank you! Enjoying the mod!

Corona2172,
this mod ("Vehicle Towing") is a separate mod. It uses a new function which was added by BIS into game engine. The "Advanced Towing" uses some tricks to simulate towing and it does not use the new function because the function did not exists at the time of creation of the mod.

// Sorry, some kind of error has occurred: Comments must be less than 1000 characters in length.
// So ... I have to divide my text into parts ))
// And I have found a bug in Steam. My text is visible as "[]" instead of real text. OMG... )) So, do not pay attention to strange symbols.

[_PART_1_]

d.omeron,
I understand what you mean, I saw both triangles and bars, so no explainations are needed, thanks. The thing is that this mod was intended to be very simple, "one click" usage, so to say. To add new "rope" types it would take a lot of efforts to remake all the mod and create a GUI for "rope" selection. This would spoil the simplisity and the "single click" philosophy. But this is not the most serious part (surprisingly).

[_PART_2_]

Tow rope simulation is not good in Arma III. I tried a lot of combinations of settings and could not find those looking realistic. I also tried making rope as hard as iron bar and this experiment was quite contradictory. I mean, the towing function in game engine itself looks like some king of trick or magic, so ... well ... it is better to forget about realistic towing in Arma III, because it is bugged ))) Maybe, some one else knows how to tame this horse (Arma III engine), but I do not know, and there is no documentation about rope settings on the BIS website. I am sorry. :)

Hello Pikachu! As an avid user of Advanced Towing in the past, I saw your link on the comments section there. I've been noticing, lately, that when towing vehicles in Antistasi 3.3.3 they have a tendency to randomly...explode. I have chalked this up to that mod not being updated for 7 years or so...... My question is this: Is this roughly the same mod as advanced towing, but better updated/supported? Ie- does it essentially accomplish the same things as advanced towing, just in different ways? Either way, thanks for this!

Thanks for the answer! I'll try to add a request in the official Reforger site, BI are not making any core changes to Arma 3 anymore.
Can you make a towing bar or a towing triangle?
Towing bar is solid, so the distance between the towing vehicle and the towed one will stay the same. placed on the repair vehicles and managed only by repairmen. you can't push a vehicle with it.
Towing triangle is solid and heavy, connected to the towed vehicle at two anchored points (front or rear) so towing is safer. you can push the vehicle with this device, so it can go reverse (handled like a trailer).
for more towing info - PM on Discord, d.omeron. I'll explain everything. I promiss! :-)

Thank you for details.

Well ... I think this is too "heavy" for Arma III's game engine ... This would involve storing different anchoring points for different vehicle classes – where – I do not know, and creating an anchoring points manager with GUI and many more additional tasks. I think, such things should be done by Bohemia Interactive Studios, because this is too complicated for ordinary script makers.

General Kenobi! :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9VxDL0IBf4
First 20-30 first seconds.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=812477542132098&set=a.296247620421762As you can see, there are 2 towing vehicles. one is pulling and one is stablising.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=95560146505&set=a.95555416505
This one was pulled out with two towing vehicles, one from the front left (the closest to the camera) and from the rear left (as an anchore). there was a chance that this M109 will slip down if towed only by one vehicle.
(I commanded this recovery. went flawless)

Hello there ! Thank you for the response. Could you provide more details and a picture of what you mean ?

Hi! first - big thank you for this mod! it feels quite realistic! I have "some" knowledge and experience with towing vehicles, so I have two questions or requests:
1- towing requires a driver in the towed vehicle. it has to be under control or it will be dangerous for the surrounding and can hit the towing vehicle.
2. can you add more anchoring points for vehicles at the sides (front and back) and one at the back, for flipping a vehicle or turning it? with this, attaching for more than one vehicle will give the option to hold and stabilizing the vehicle while towing it. (yup, you need this IRL).

For some reason the [code] syntax highlighter mentioned in Steam's guide ( https://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/comment/Guide/formattinghelp ) does not apply to my text. But I think, you will get the idea.

[Part II]

If you don't want to run the command on any NPCs and want just to make towing work without any people (real or NPC), then you should read the script's source files and try to rewrite them for your purposes. This add-on initially was intended to be used by players, so it works only when a human operator is near the vehicle. So, you will have to modify it.

[Part I]

Hello Enzian,

well, this add-on works only for human players when they are near the vehicles.

If you want to do it for an NPC player, who is near the vehicles, you can try to run the same commands which are used for the player, see the MCA_fn_initPlayer.sqf file. I have not tested it with NPCs, but you can try and change the original

[code] [_caller] call MCA_fn_toggleTowingForNearestVehicle; [/code]

to something like

[code] [_YourNpcHere] call MCA_fn_toggleTowingForNearestVehicle; [/code]

https://github.com/neverwinter-nights/Vehicle-Towing/blob/main/source/code/Addons/MCA_VehicleTowing/functions/MCA_fn_initPlayer.sqf

Dumb question: I want an AI trawler tow three AI BTR-80 (amphibious APCs) in a row. How do I make that in my mission?
AI has to do this on their own, it should be scripted. The ropes should be released via script in a trigger when the APCs are near the shore line.

Hi Andy,
this is already done.

You can check it in the source code:
https://github.com/neverwinter-nights/Vehicle-Towing/blob/main/source/code/Addons/MCA_VehicleTowing/functions/MCA_fn_startTowing.sqf#L12


// Make sure that the towed vehicle is empty and locked.
{ moveOut _x; } forEach crew _towedVehicle;
_towedVehicle lock true;

@Pikachu

could it be possible to force players / ai out of the vehicle before it is able to be towed? unless you've already done that, my bad if so
arma physics being goofy as usual too

Hello there. Unfortunately I don't have a SOG add-on and therefore I cannot check. You can try moving objects further apart from each other and see what happens. You can also change the connection order to see if it fixes the issue. It is difficult to say without a screenshot or something like this.

ty for this,really helpful since the advanced towing is no longer working

I found a small problem : when I try to towing 2 M45 Quadmount from the SOG PF dlc,and only one of them were dragged and the other one remains where it is and rope disappeared.I cant tell if its occur by the compatibility issue from the other mods or the sog dlc itself for now

@nan
well, i doubt that it could be called towing then :) at least in my vision.
currently in this mod vehicle classes are configured to use air vehicles as towed vehicles only.
you can modify the mod's scripts to allow aircrafts as tows.
if you are interested, i can show you the file and approximate line numbers.

Can this be achieved on air? For example, I want to drag an unpowered glider with a fixed wing, because I want to do some World War II scenes about c47

by the way, Andy, there is a known bug in all Arma series games ... if a player is inside a towed vehicle, there is a great possibility of lag and desync which result in either vehicle crashing or game crashing, so, when one is towing something, the towed vehicle must be empty

really great mod, but seems to be causing some clients to crash upon towing - game freezes until it's unplayable

if i know what's causing it ill definitely post it here, don't think it's an error, just arma physics being janky maybe

Please Try and make a Trailer Hitch mod, would be fucking awesome.

Thank you for this mod, me and a few buddies have been using it to tow captured enemy vehicles on the Vindicta mission because we were tired of having to leave behind vehicles

The Future of Arma
https://twitter.com/ArmaPlatform/status/1524841971679907860

I hope they say something good about new physics and realistic vehicle gearboxes.

Hello GrandMasterApple. Thank you for your feedback. Could you be more precise about vehicles from other mods which have troubles with brakes ? There are a lot of various vehicle mods in the internet. Once when I was searching something in Arma's workshop I was shocked by the amount of content there. :-)

I know about difficulties with towing the same vehicles. This happens because B.I.Studios do not let us use the low gear mode in vehicles. This question is very difficult at this moment. There are several "workarounds" or better to say works around this issue but all of them have drawbacks. The best way to fix it now is to add a couple of new gears to the gearbox, but this will require to make mods for all the vehicle classes that exist in the world. Well, it will take some time :-) I will make some other experiments later.

Thank you.

Hey Pikachu, Super Excited to see this mod develope. I wanted to give you some bug feedback. My friends and I were experimenting with it and it appears to struggle with some vehicles from other mods, mainly the parking brake not disengaging.

I am not sure how you coded it and such, but it appears weight distribution is also a problem as the same of some vehicles cannot tow another vehicle the same weight.

I greatly appreciate the simulation this offers instead of rubber banded towing. I hope to see it develop further!!!

Best of luck,

Apple

Pt. II.

Well, if you want, I can make a selector for the addon which will read the variable value and use the selected simulation mode. For example, if the "simulation_level" is set to "sim", nothing changes, if it is "arcade", it will reduce the mass of the towed vehicle to, say, its 50% or so. So, if anyone wants to change the simulation level, he or she will need to set the "simulation_level" variable in the mission's init.sqf file. This will make add-on a bit more complicated, but if you want I can do it.

Pt. I.

Hello Nicoman. Thank you for your response. I also think that all this is related to how physics in Arma 3 works. I want to assure you that reduced speed during towing is a normal thing in a real life. An increased weight of the "train" of several vehicles puts a heavy load to the poor engine. Real life vehicles either use low gears for towing or switch to a low transmission mode if they have it. Many offroad vehicles have the "High / Low" selector. So this is fine. I think that "tweaking" the mass would be some kind of cheating.

Nice :). I tested this in the editor. My only complain: Towing vehicles are much too slow. Especially when towing on completely horrizonal ground. Playtests with towing a Hunter HMG towing anoter Hunter will let you only drive with 30 - 40 km/h. Top speed is something around 110 km/h. So towing another vehicle of the same weight cuts your top speed by 2/3. Not cool. But this is Arma 3 related. Not the fault of your mod. I fumbled around and tried '_vehicle setMass ((getMass _vehicle ) / 4)'. I set the mass of the towed vehicle to 25% of the original mass. Much better, but now the springs in the vehicles carriage push the vehilce up to the max length of the springs. Not cool either. Sigh. Don't know any other way to reduce the drag force on the rope. Maybe you got an idea?

Thank you, guys, for your words.

Bratwurst,
There is a peculiarity in this add-on. According to the documentation of the 'addAction' function, https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/addAction , its effect is local. The action menu must be added to each client locally, so this add-on must be used on each client. If the action was added by the server, it would be visible to all the players and it would be strange if somebody could use this action on other players :)

Rooster,
I hope that a new game engine will be much better than the current one.

Hello Pikatchu, thanks for the relatively quick response. Too bad that the script does not work only server side. I really appreciate your work and would like to thank you very much for your effort.

Well, keep up the good work. As far as I can tell, you're the only one making something with this new feature. I like that the wheels turn and rotate.

By the time they "fix" it, if they ever do, then we'll all be ready for Arma 4, and this game will be a ghosttown.

Oops. Of course, I meant brakes instead of breaks. It is a typo. Sorry.

Part II.

The low gear mode is even more difficult. I have experimented with vehicle configs and found that only a single transmission ratio is working in Arma 3 even if I put several transmission ratios into the car's config as stated in the "documentation" on wiki. The game engine simply does not have any hotkey to switch the transmission mode and currently does not even support a manual gearbox. (B.I.S., what a shame). LOL.

I understand what you are saying. I saw this trick in one of the mods I played many years ago, it looked like a magical vehicle change just to change its transmission ratio. It is a useful thing but it looks like a "hack" to me. It is good, but too complicated for me. I wanted to make this add-on as simple as possible and use only the simple built-in functions.

I hope that BIS will do something to change the game engine.

Part I.

Hello Rooster. Well, the situation with towing in Arma 3 is very difficult. Only in the patch version 2.08 we received a function to disable parking brakes, so I think we might see some additional updates (for the game) related to the towing feature. At this moment, Arma's physics looks very strange. Especially the rope's physics. I have tried dozens of possible values of parameters and a lot of combinations, and it looks like towing feature was not made for vehicle towing, I mean for towing vehicles with vehicles. At the moment it looks like towing of hard attached objects similar to small single-axle trailers.

The best way to simulate towing would be just to disable breaks and attach the rope. But ... arma does not fully support two vehicles connected to each other. There is a great possibility of vehicle collision due to a network desync with known effects :)

Hello Bratwurst. This script must be used both by a server and a client. The server can require the addon with the mod string, something like -mod=@<Mod_Folder_Here>. When the server has this add-on in the list of required add-ons, clients will be required to load this mod and everything should be fine.

Pt. 2

You could do two transmissions, but it would be very tricky. It's kind of already being done, but in a far more elaborate sense, in the vanilla Jets with ejector seats. When you eject, you get rid of your old plane, which uses a proxy for the seat. The proxy is hidden, causing the seat to instantly disappear, but you you don't see that because at the same time it spawns a new seat which you assume control of. The new seat is a vehicle itself, because you have some control of it (all controlled objects - even soldiers - are vehicles, but that's another story). Using this code you could turn your plane into a helicopter, or a rabbit, or a backpack... you get the idea. You could turn your high-gear car into a low-gear car. But this is all in theory. There is probably some kind of Arma3 nonsense that makes it work only under very specific conditions.

Rope towing isn't meant for a long range solution. It's usually to get a vehicle out of a ditch or mud, and can even be a one vehicle job with a winch and sturdy anchored surface. That being said, I think there are indeed rope stiffening and length parameters available, but I wouldn't know how to apply them. It would be great to see if this could be done such that the "Rope" was so short and stiff it can only be used as a pintle/hitch. In this case, the towed vehicle would also need to have brakes applied when the towing vehicle brakes. My mod already has a trailer-turret vehicle, which should only have mobility from being towed, and I am working on two halves of an articulated tank (like the BvS10 Viking or UDES 20XX) that would be great if they could move together.

Is it enough to load this script server-side? If so, how do I get the entries into the user action menu? I had the Advanced Towing Script before, this also worked, but now I have removed it completely and now I want to use the "Vehicle Towing" Script. Please help me to integrate it. (Translated with Google)

Whale, we have lost contact with you. If you don't know how to check hash sums, you can simply update your server with the latest addon taken from your Steam Workshop folder.

By the way, I have made a new add-on. It is called Cargo Manager. I wanted to make this add-on several years ago, but at that time there were so many bugs in Arma 2 that I didn't make it that time. Now that we have an updated Arma 3 engine, I managed to create a convenient GUI for loading and unloading stuff into vehicles.

Cargo Manager
https://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2789114342

I forgot to say one thing. To make sure that everything is fine, before checking hash sums of the files you should restart your Steam client, wait for any downloads to finish and then check integrity of game's files.