OFPCamera
A working Flashpoint Camera, made in Visual BASIC, using FWATCH
In Short : Checks for existance of Operation Flashpoint/fwatch/mdb/takePhoto.db (Created by FWATCH), then takes and saves screenshot.

To use (Non-scripter):

• Make sure you have the Visual BASIC 6 RunTimes, which can be found at
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7b9ba261-7a9c-43e7-9117-f673077ffb3c&DisplayLang=en
• Run the EXE
• Start Flashpoint (1.96 recommened, untested with others) using the FWATCH.EXE (You can use this like a normal OFP icon, by making shortcut to the fwatch.exe file, and adding -nosplash, -nomap, -mod etc)
• Go into the mission editor, and load the demo mission
• Click Preview
• Press H to take photo
• Exit Flashpoint
• Goto C:\ScreenShots, and you will see your "photos"

To use (Scripters/Developers):

• Make sure you have the Visual BASIC 6 RunTimes (Link in Non-scripter instructions)
• Run the EXE
• Start Flashpoint using FWATCH.EXE
• In radio trigger, script (anywhere code can be run), call
  call loadFile format[":file write takePhoto.db %1 %2", "take", 1]
  This code creates a file takePhoto.db in /fwatch/mdb/
  The VB prorgam checks for this file, if it exists, it takes a screenshot and saves it (And compresses/resizes if needed)

The Idea :

To make a fully working camera in Flashpoint, a camera, configed as a weapon, with fired event-handler. The fired script would check the weapon fired, if it was the camera. Force player into optics view (Clear screen). Take photo (by creating the takePhoto.db file). And switch back to last view. You could add shutter sound etc easily too. A flash is possible, as there is soldiers with lights, you could turn this on, take photo and turn it off again.

A while ago I had the idea of taking a screenshot of a cutscene, a quick fly-over of an enemy base. Then to save this to a file, and update a texture, inside a PBO, of a model projector screen. But OFP loads all PBOs at start up. People I talked to said "Nah, wont work", "Impossible" and similar..

Some time later, due to a typo by DaveP on a forum, this addaction ["VTOL","VTOL.exe"]. "Hmm, maybe I could make OFP run a program). I tried placing a program (A copy of the FLASHPOINTRESISTANCE.exe file, as it was near by..) in the root of the folder. And in the editor this exec "../../../scriptAccess.exe", and it worked! Well, sort of, it gave me an error, of random ASCII things, unexpected character (Like if you type "(£)*£$$"£$" in a .sqs file and run it)..
Hmm, so OFP doesn't need scripts in current mission folder to run..

So, I tried to make a VB program check if it has been accessed, if the last-access time is now. The script has just be called, so you can take the photo.. But windows doesn't seem to update the last-access tag on files, and OFP had no way of taking this photo.
I posted the idea on the BI Forum (This thread). And it got many replys, including Suma (OFP Lead Programmer), and more importantly Kegetys and vektorboson.
Kegetys idea "to hook the CreateFile function from kernel32.dll in your program. That way you could pass whatever info you want from ofp in the file name to your program, and then return the handle of whatever file you want back to OFP, like a script created by the program. That way you should be able to pass data to your program from OFP and then back to OFP again... ".
Which he and vektorboson both made versions of. The result was FWATCH.

This allowed a lot of scripting things never possible before to become possible. But noone seemed to have used it.. Maybe noone knows what to use it for? So thats why I decided to try and make a project around it. And in doing this, I managed "the impossible", so to the people who said it wasn't possible, ha!

Other Ideas :

• Use a webcam, and similar idea to current program, to take picture of it, save it into root of OFP folder. Then setobjecttexture (Or possible using dialouges) somewhere. Pointless, but if the OFP server had a server program running, which recivied this image from each player, and sent it to others, it could have it's uses I suppose.
• Sending stats to database via internet. Use FWATCH to create and write stats to a file, in the form
  player=dbr_onix
  rating=100
  misison=MyMission1
  Then to use a program to read of these stats, change the format to
  http://blah.com/handleStat.php?player=Ben&rating=100&mission=MyMission1
  And go to this URL. Then using PHP, enter these values into a database (Could be done in any server-side language, like Perl etc). You could then use this database to create stats for players etc. Or using dialouge ("Enter your squad name"-type thing), squad rankings on CTI servers, for example.
• Use a program to write values to a file, then use FWATCH to read these values into OFP. Or (an idea that I made a while ago, VB->OFP) directly write a script, using varibles from inside the program. I wrote a VB program that recived a message using WinSock, which displayed the message in GlobalChat. A similar idea could be used to get these stats sent to the database back, and display them ingame (A ranking number beside player info on a dialouge, for example)
• Use a similar idea, dynamicly create an image, download it to each client and use setobjecttexture, cutrsc, or similar.

These ideas aren't perfect, and have limited use. But the point behind this is not those ideas, it's showing how usefull FWATCH is. And hopefully "inspire" some other people to use FWATCH.

- Ben
-- DBR_ONIX
--- IRDF Infantry 2 Lead
-- www.dbrweb.co.uk
- forum.dbrweb.co.uk

<standard disclaimer>THESE MATERIALS AND INFORMATION ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. ULTIMATELY END USERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SOFTWARE RUNNING ON THEIR OWN MACHINES. NOT RELATED TO CODEMASTERS, BOHEMIA INTERACTIVE ETC ETC ETC</standard disclaimer>
OFPCamera (c)DBR_ONIX 2005. IF YOU USE THE IDEAS IN THIS FILE, ONLY REQUEST IS TO CREDIT DBR_ONIX