Changing factions with the .arena files
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Have you ever wanted to change up the factions that are on maps? Well I've found a way to do it, but it's not 100% working. Maybe someone who's more experienced with MW3 modding can figure it out, but I'll give a short tutorial on how you can change factions on maps.
First you need to locate the .arena file of the map. I can only find this on custom maps. They are located in the iw5/mp folder, as you can see here.
Use notepad or similar program to edit .arena files.There are several factions in MW3. However, only a few seem to work, and I don't know why.
The factions are:delta_multicam (Delta Force, Works)
sas_urban (SAS, works)
opforce_air (Spetsnaz Paratroopers, works)
opforce_snow (Spetsnaz Snow troopers, works)
opforce_henchmen (Inner Circle, works)
These are the working factions. Simply enter their name, not the things in ( ) into the allieschar or axischar section:
These are the additional factions I found from this searching github. The factions do not work, so it's possible that these are not the correct names of the factions. I should note that the above factions do have files in iw5/zone/team_(team name).ff while the factions below do not.
gign_paris (GIGN, does not work)
pmc_africa (Private Military Corporation, does not work)
opforce_urban (Spetsnaz Urban troopers, does not work)
opforce_woodland (Spetsnaz Woodland troopers, does not work)
opforce_africa (African Militia, does not work)Once you have the working faction in .arena file, save it and load up Plutonium. Pick you map and start a match. Once it loads you should see the two selected factions:
Even if the two factions are on the same "side", they can still fight each other, which is pretty cool.
I do apologize for picking a map with no color, this was just done as a simple showcase. If anyone is more advanced with MW3 modding, it would be nice to see the additional factions like GIGN work using this edit, as well as the locations of the stock and DLC maps .arena locations.
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I agree, it would be great to be able to swap the factions around on custom maps seeing as most people just have Delta Force multicam vs. Spetsnaz paratroopers set and it gets really annoying listening to the same commentary/music on every single custom map.
Something to note: swapping the factions willy nilly will create substantial lag problems and potentially trigger the "AimTarget_GetTagPos: cannot find tag[j_head] on entity" crash with Bot Warfare on some custom maps. I think something has to be set in the map files to allow factions to be swapped, otherwise the mod's script will throw an error. For instance, I was able to switch factions on Bog (opforce_air to opforce_henchmen) without the problem arising, but doing so on Wet Work (mp_cargoship) or Scrapyard (mp_boneyard) will cause the game to lag tremendously or even crash during the pre-match countdown.
Note that I've only encountered this problem on a local game. I haven't tested it on a server to see if it will also cause the problem.
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I also agree, being able to swap around factions would be a great addition.
The issues that Tifosi 92 mentioned are valid - I've experienced the same issues trying to casually swap them around. Sometimes it works with caveats - specifically, Ally/Enemy models that are used for Snipers will bug out horrifically or produce that goofy looking "FX" text. Any other model that is used, besides the Snipers, seem to work fine as is. Changing around the "environment" line doesn't seem to do anything to fix the issue, but I figure it's more complex than that.
Maybe switching around factions will be a possibility in the future, or not. C'est la vie.
