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====== ArmA 2 Custom Keypoints and CfgLocationTypes ======

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**ArmA 2 Custom Keypoints and CfgLocationTypes Tutorial** by Bushlurker.

Here's a quick guide on how to define & implement them on your terrain.

Main types of keypoints... broadly speaking, some are "Names", some are "Symbols" (or a combination of both) and some are completely invisible, but serve some "Strategic" purpose - like "CityCenter" for example.

Let's make a simple custom symbol one which can be named or not as we like.

The first thing we'll need is a symbol to use... this one from Google Chat will do nicely.

Now we need to add a suitable keypoint type name to "keypoints.dat" - here's mine.
<code cpp>
BorderCrossing
VegetationBroadleaf
VegetationFir
VegetationPalm
VegetationVineyard
NameMarine
NameCityCapital
NameCity
NameVillage
NameLocal
RockArea
ViewPoint
FlatArea
FlatAreaCity
StrongpointArea
FlatAreaCitySmall
CityCenter
Hill
Name
Mount
Airport
Strategic
SteamingPile
</code>

As you can see, I've named my map symbol suitably in my kptypes.dat file and dropped it back in my Visitor 3 install directory, ready to use...

Into Visitor 3, load a demo terrain and we're ready to place those new Steaming Pile indicators.

{{ https://pmc.editing.wiki/images/custom-keypoints-01.jpg }}

Here you can see I've placed a normal keypoint, and in its Properties Window I've defined a classname and chosen the Keypoint Type "SteamingPile" from the list.

If you really want to name your Steaming Piles individually and, lets face it, who doesn't... then you could type a "Display Name" at this stage too.

* At this point it's worth remembering how these keypoint definitions work in Visitor.

As you define these keypoints, they're stored in the .pew file - it's only when you're at the viewing-in-buldozer while saving the .wrp stage, that they're written to the "yourterrain.hpp" file, ready to be #included in your main config.

So the next stage is to open buldozer, view the terrain and save a .wrp file... At that stage you can have a peek in your "myterrain.hpp" file and you'll see the new keypoint definition... mine looks like this...
<code cpp>
class SteamingPile_01
{
	name = "";
	position[] = { 3043.26, 2006.69 };
	type = "SteamingPile";
	radiusA = 100;
	radiusB = 100;
};
</code>

If you'd defined a name for your Pile then it would appear in the name = ""; section.

Now we need to tell the engine precisely what a SteamingPile is.

The default Location Types are defined in a config section called, unsurprisingly, "cfgLocationTypes", so the next thing we need to do is add our definition to that.

We'll sneak a little "patch" section into our main terrain config... Here's the opening section of the demo terrain I used.
<code cpp>
class CfgPatches
{
	class AfghanValley
	{
		units[] = {"AfghanValley"};
		weapons[] = {};
		requiredVersion = 1.0;
		requiredAddons[] = {"Takistan"};
	};
};

class CfgLocationTypes
{
	class SteamingPile
	{
		name = "";
		drawStyle = "icon";
		texture = "Bush\AfghanValley\data\icons\steaming_pile_ca.paa";
		color[] = {};  //<--- uses icon colours or define RGB values in usual 0 > 1 format
		size = 32;
		shadow = 0;
		font = "Zeppelin33";   //<--- or try Zeppelin33italic
		textSize = 0.2;
	};
};

class CfgWorlds
{
	class CAWorld;
	class Takistan: CAWorld
	...etc, etc, etc ......
</code>

Right here at the beginning of the main terrain config is fine - or, if you were planning on doing a lot of these, you could define them all externally in a "mykeypoints.hpp" and just #include it at this location to keep your main terrain config less cluttered.

Finally, as you can see from the definition above, I'll need to drop my icon file into a directory called "icons" in the "Data" directory of my terrain... that way the icon will be included at the binarizing stage and be available in-game to be used on the map.

{{ https://pmc.editing.wiki/images/custom-keypoints-02.jpg }}

Try to keep icon sizes small and square, preferably ^2 and as you can see from the "_ca" suffix, alpha channels work nicely.

Have fun!