Animals: Override Default Animal Behaviour Via Script – Arma 3

Introduction

Animals in Arma 3 roam freely according to their FSM; they autonomously walk, stop, eat, flee etc. In order to control them fully you will need to override their default behaviour and manually guide them, all with a bit of scripting.

Animal creation

Animal classnames can be found on the Arma 3 CfgVehicles Animals page.

createAgent command

Spawning animals via createAgent is the best way how to have control over them in your mission.
An agent is a "light AI" that doesn't have all the abilities/intelligence of a "normal" AI unit created via createUnit; therefore, they cannot be controlled via commands such as doMove and doStop. However, low-level commands such as moveTo or setDestination will work.

For a basic example see Example script.

Animals module

The Animals module can be found in Eden Editor in the Modules page (F5), under the Sites category.

Insert the module in editor, set the desired parameters and you have animals in your mission.
Spawned animals will be for mission decoration purpose instead of heavily-scripted behaviour.

Disable animal's scripted behaviour

You can disable animal's scripted behaviour using the following:

_animal setVariable ["BIS_fnc_animalBehaviour_disable", true];

Animations

Animations can be played using playMove, playMoveNow or switchMove. Their names are quite self-explanatory.

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Animals will remain in the same animation cycle until manually changed!

Dog

_dog playMove "Dog_Stop"; 
_dog playMove "Dog_Sit";
_dog playMove "Dog_Walk";
_dog playMove "Dog_Run";
_dog playMove "Dog_Sprint";
_dog playMove "Dog_Idle_Stop"; // wandering, default behaviour

Sheep

_sheep playMove "Sheep_Stop";
_sheep playMove "Sheep_Walk";
_sheep playMove "Sheep_Run";
_sheep playMove "Sheep_Idle_Stop"; // wandering, default behaviour

Goat

_goat playMove "Goat_Stop";
_goat playMove "Goat_Walk";
_goat playMove "Goat_Run";
_goat playMove "Goat_Idle_Stop"; // wandering, default behaviour

Rabbit

_rabbit playMove "Rabbit_Stop";
_rabbit playMove "Rabbit_Hop";
_rabbit playMove "Rabbit_Idle_Stop"; // wandering, default behaviour

Cockerel

_cock playMove "Cock_Stop";
_cock playMove "Cock_Walk";
_cock playMove "Cock_Run";
_cock playMove "Cock_Idle_Stop"; // wandering, default behaviour

Hen

_hen playMove "Hen_Stop";
_hen playMove "Hen_Walk";
_hen playMove "Hen_Idle_Stop"; // wandering, default behaviour

Snake

_snake playMove "Snakes_Stop";
_snake playMove "Snakes_Move";
_snake playMove "Snakes_Idle_Stop"; // wandering, default behaviour

Example script

Simple example for a dog to follow the player:

// Spawn dog
_dog = createAgent ["Fin_random_F", getPosATL player, [], 5, "NONE"];

// Disable animal behaviour
_dog setVariable ["BIS_fnc_animalBehaviour_disable", true];

// Following loop
[_dog] spawn {
	params ["_dog"];

	// Force dog to sprint
	_dog playMove "Dog_Sprint";

	while { sleep 1; alive _dog } do
	{
		_dog moveTo getPosATL player;
	};
};

Dog example mission

• Example mission: download link
• YouTube video: video link