THE NIGHT OPERATIONS FRAMEWORKS ARE CURRENTLY NOT FUNCTIONINGI would strongly recommend using the Night Operations Frameworks, with the tutorial here.

I'll qualify everything I'm about to type with this: I don't actually know what I'm doing yet. Cool, let's jump right in!

Massive amount of thanks to Zeal, Dave_pilot, Naizarak, Cunnah, SneakyAzWhat and Ex0 for their help in the ArmA discord, Useless Fodder for his twitch stream showing the initial set up, and Damodredd for their support!

This guide takes you from having just downloaded ArmA Reforger wondering where the Mission Editor is through to having made a "Clear the town" style COOP mission.

Where to Make Missions

There is no in-game mission editor for ArmA Reforger like there is for ArmA 3. There's the Game Master mode, which is similar to Zeus game play, but the actual scenario editing software is in the ArmA Reforger Tools. Whilst this will be much harder to learn, it also removes all of the barriers that the mission editor had in ArmA 3, so the possibilities are genuinely endless, even if the way to get there is much harder.

To download the ArmA Reforger tools go to your Steam library and select the tick box "Tools" in the top left drop down menu:

Once its downloaded and you open it up, you have to create a new project - this is essentially creating the mission folder that the ArmA Reforger Tools will save everything. For this tutorial I've called this "My First Mission" and put it in a folder linked to this GitHub (the default should be fine). If, going forward, you have Mod Dependencies, you can add them here:

Once you've opened your project, click on the "World Editor" under quick launch:

So at this point, your screen should look like this:

Creating the World

Islands and missions are both now called "Worlds." Missions are what are called "SubScenes" of existing worlds, such as the Everon map (called Eden in the filepaths).

So firstly we need to open Eden, by clicking on the open symbol, the opening ArmAReforger>Worlds>Eden>Eden.ent:

Once you click OK and have waited for it to load, you'll be plopped in the ocean. Do not despair! You have not done anything wrong! But because Everon is an island, the square world map has ocean around all of the edges, and the camera defaults to the bottom left hand corner of the world. Either navigate to the island using WASD (scroll wheel changes the Camera speed, or you can click "Camera" at the top to set a speed) or open the "default" layer, select an object and press F to zoom to it:

if your camera refuses to move, try holding right click whilst you use WASD

Creating a SubScene

At the moment we have the Everon map open in the editor - so you are editing the game itself. So don't touch anything. To create a mission, we want to create a 'SubScene'. Do this by clicking on the "Create New World" icon and ticking the Sub-scene box:

Now it'll probably drop you back in the ocean at the bottom left hand corner, but don't worry, you can navigate back to the island in the same way!

Now one of the things we don't want to do is to accidentally move buildings around when we're trying to place things. So right click on the default layer under Eden and click on "Lock." You'll still be able to select objects on the Eden default layer, however you won't be able to delete or edit things.

When it's locked the layer should look like this:

Now we need to save our Sub Scene. First, we need to create a new folder in the project folder called "Worlds." (N.B. When writing this tutorial the first time around I did not do this bit before creating my Sub Scene so some of the screenshots may not match). Go back to the Resource Browser, it should still be open as a different window to the World Editor.

When in the Resource Browser click on "create" (ignore the files in my project folder, this is a mistake):

Select "New Folder" and call it "Worlds":

Now go back onto the World Editor and save your Sub Scene by going onto "File" and clicking "Save World As":

I'm just going to call mine "MyFirstMissionWorld", and select the worlds folder within your project folder.

Creating Layers

Now in order to keep things neat and tidy, we're going to need to create layers. I suggest three at the moment for a basic mission - System, BluFor and OpFor - but really it's entirely up to you. I don't think layers have a function other than neatness (layers also impact load order, however this is not relevant for this tutorial). To create a layer, right click on your world (mine's name isn't showing for some reason) and "Create Layer." You can also rename the default layer:

Mission Set Up

So far we haven't actually told the tools that we're making a new scenario. The first thing we need to do is to tell the game which GameMode we're using. By being able to make prefab game modes, we could see communities making a mod with their preset mission templates that can just be dropped in and are exactly how the community wants it.

For now, we'll use the Plain game mode PreFab already provided (We will be changing this later on). Everything we add to the mission will be added via the Resource Browser, whether that's system managers, AI groups or even waypoints:

Game Mode

The first thing we're going to add is the GameMode. You can either use the search tool for this, or navigate to it by going on ArmAReforger>Prefabs>MP>Modes>Plain, then add it by clicking and dragging the .ent file onto the map (make sure your system layer is active):

On the right you can see the "Object Properties." This menu is very important, and we'll be coming onto it later:

At the moment, don't change anything on here. One thing to note is that this gives unlimited player respawns, and we'll be changing later on changing this to a Game Mode with a respawn menu.

Factions

Unlike ArmA 3, factions are not preset in the game. Each mission can prescribe its own factions, with their own flags (and other variables). These are managed through Faction Manager modules. Again to keep things simple we'll use a PreFab Faction Module that adds factions for the US and USSR. This can be found in the Resource Browser under ArmAReforger>Prefabs>MP>Managers>Factions. The one we're going to use is "FactionManager_USxUSSR.et". Click and drag it onto the map as before:

If you check the Object Properties you can see that it adds two Playable Factions - the US and USSR, with callsign and arsenal configs already defined:

Loadouts

Loadouts are again managed by a Loadout Manager, and again we'll be using the prefab that adds loadouts for the US and USSR factions. This can be found under ArmAReforger>Prefabs>MP>Managers>Loadouts, and is called "LoadoutManager_USxUSSR.et":

Once you've added it, if you check the Object Properties you'll see 10 Player Loadouts, 5 for the US and 5 for the USSR:

Perception and HitReg Managers

Now in order for the game to work properly, you need to drop in prefab Perception and HitReg managers. Honestly right now I'm not 100% sure what they do, except that perception is to do with seeing things and hitreg helps manage hit registration in multiplayer.

The prefab perception manager can be found under ArmAReforger>Prefabs>World>Game and the HitReg manager under ArmA Reforger>Prefabs>MP:

OK, we're now ready to start creating a mission! Your hierarchy should look something like this: