The ADDONS section in MISSION.SQM files must be complete.

In OFP: Resistance, a mission that references addons, must contains an ADDONS section, listing all of the addons used by the mission.

In earlier OFP versions, using OFP's mission editor, addons were automatically added into the ADDONS section whenever an object or a unit from any addon was inserted using the mission editor. However, there were two cases in which an addon object's or unit's name was not automatically inserted into the ADDONS section by the mission editor:

  1. When addons were referenced via scripting commands, such as addWeapon.
  2. When an object or unit from an addon was referenced by a mission but the addon was not coded correctly and did not list the referenced object or unit in the CfgPatches units list.

The result of the above circumstances in older OFP versions was to frustrate a lot of players who downloaded missions that required addons that the players didn't have. When attempting to play such mission, older OFP versions did nothing but display vague and cryptic error messages about a missing addon.

OFP: Resistance has been improved in this regard, as follows:

  1. When you preview your mission and an addon is used via scripting, it is automatically defined in the ADDONS section. As far as keeping the ADDONS section up-to-date, saving a mission after previewing it is almost all that mission makers needs to do from now on. Manual editing of the ADDONS section should be a thing of the past.
  2. Any object or unit defined in any addon is recognized as belonging to that addon, whether it is declared in the addon's CfgPatches list or not.
  3. If an addon is not listed in the ADDONS section, the mission will not run. SP mission players and server hosts attempting to run such a mission will get a "Missing addon XXXXX" message displayed. There are a few rare cases where an addon will be missing from an MP mission and OFP will allow the mission to run. In such cases, the client player will see the "Missing addon XXXXX" message and will still be able to play the mission.

Positive Benefits

By introducing the above changes in OFP: Resistance, players can now more easily detect if they have all necessary addons to run a mission and, if not, they'll know the names of the addons that are missing.

Potential Difficulties

Many missions that worked without problems until now will cease to work properly. SP missions will display error messages and MP missions will not run at all.

Note for Server Host Administrators

Server administrators need to guarantee that the missions they use have all the required addons listed in their ADDONS section. For most missions, simply opening the mission in the mission editor, previewing it and saving it again should automatically update the ADDONS section list with all the referenced addon names.