arma-reforger-modding

---
name: arma-reforger-modding
description: Arma Reforger / Enfusion mod development — Blender-to-Enfusion export discipline, fitting character clothing and garments, terrain and surface materials, AI behaviour trees, rigging and animation, prefab inheritance, retexturing vanilla assets, version control, MCP tooling setup, and the seven-level QA pass before Workshop release. Use for any work in Enfusion Workbench, Enforce Script, or Blender assets destined for Reforger.
---

*Derived from the "Jarvis Framework" (v1.4.0, "Blender 5.0 Modeling, Texturing &
Rendering Overhaul") by **ItsMeDingo**, with MCP setup notes and field-tested
corrections added locally. Converted 2026-09-18.*

# Arma Reforger Modding

Core rules live here. Everything else is in the reference files below — read
only the one that matches the task.

## Non-negotiable rules

These hold regardless of what is being built:

- **Never modify base-game resources directly.** Inherit and override. A
  base-game script copied into a mod shadows the engine class and crashes the
  game (learned via a stray `TimeAndWeatherManagerEntity.c`).
- **Scan dependencies before destructive edits.** Prefer small, reversible
  changes.
- **Freeze transforms before FBX export.** Ctrl+A → Apply All, every time.
- **Never scale environmental prefabs above 1.3.** Breaks collision meshes and
  performance.
- **Quad topology only.** No ngons, no poles.
- **Base Color is sRGB. Every other map is Non-Color Data.** Roughness, Normal,
  Metallic, Displacement — all of them.
- **Validate before publishing.** See `qa-validation.md`.

## Evidence rules

Reforger fails quietly and in ways that mimic success. Before calling anything
done, name the test that could falsify it.

- **AI holding fire is not evidence of faction registration.** Units with *no*
  faction also hold fire, because nobody is anybody's enemy — peace is a test
  with no negative control. **Test hostility instead:** put a vanilla US or USSR
  unit in line of sight. Registered faction with no friendly-faction entry →
  they engage. Nothing happens → the faction key resolved to null.
- **Absence from the Game Master browser proves nothing.** Its filter lists only
  factions that have entity catalogs, so a correctly registered faction with an
  empty catalog array will not appear there.
- **Log tells.** `'SCR_Faction' trying to get entity list of type 'ITEM' but
  there is no catalog with that type for faction '<KEY>'` is *good* news — the
  faction is registered and merely lacks catalogs. `Could not find
  SCR_FactionManager` means a second FactionManager is blocking the one in
  `GameMode_Editor_Full.et`.
- **The `"faction affiliation"` field is free text, not a dropdown.** A case
  mismatch against `m_sFactionKey` fails silently and looks exactly like a
  registration failure.
- **A `FactionManager` in a test world does nothing for your scenario world.**
  Faction keys resolve per-world.
- **`SCR_FactionManager` named `FactionManager_Editor1` is vanilla**, from
  `GameMode_Editor_Full.et` (US/USSR/FIA) — not yours.
- **Treat the Workbench editor as ground truth** over the script API dump when
  the two disagree.

## When something fails twice

- **If the same approach has failed twice, the approach is wrong — not the
  parameters.** Stop. Do not re-tune a number and try again. Name a different
  method. Three variations on one broken idea is a loop, not progress.
- **Never iterate blind.** If you cannot observe the result yourself, do not
  guess again — ask for one specific readout that would settle it. Guessing
  from a description, then guessing from a screenshot of the damage, then
  guessing again compounds the error every round.
- **A reset is not progress.** Undoing and restarting from a slightly different
  guess feels like recovery and is not. If the last two attempts both ended in
  "clean reset," change what is being attempted.
- **Verify the measurement before trusting the answer.** A number that does not
  change when you change the input is broken, not stable. Confirm it responds
  before optimising against it — otherwise you will tune confidently against
  noise.
- **Destroy nothing on the way.** Hide, rename, or duplicate — never delete,
  and never let a loop delete. Work the user did by hand is the most expensive
  thing in the project.

## Reference files

| File | Read when |
|---|---|
| `blender-export.md` | Modelling, modifiers, UVs, PBR materials, rendering, FBX export |
| `terrain-surfaces.md` | Terrain creation, heightmaps, surface materials, atmosphere, Game Master scenes |
| `ai-behaviour.md` | Behaviour trees, scripted nodes, agents, waypoints, utility reactions |
| `character-clothing.md` | Fitting garments to a character — T-pose/A-pose mismatch, Surface Deform, weight transfer order, protecting your work |
| `rigging-animation.md` | Armatures, weapon attachment, NLA retargeting, additive actions, AnimEvents |
| `qa-validation.md` | Pre-release validation, packing, publishing |
| `retexturing.md` | Retexturing vanilla assets — which material slot actually renders, clothing vs props, proving a texture is live |
| `version-control.md` | Putting an Enfusion project under git — line endings, OneDrive, what to ignore |
| `mcp-tooling.md` | Setting up or fixing the MCP servers and Workbench Net API |

## Workflow

1. Understand the feature or asset change requested.
2. Check whether it already exists, or whether a donor asset can be used.
3. Search the project, then the Enfusion API and base-game resources.
4. Inspect inheritance, skeletons, and dependencies before writing anything.
5. Make a minimal plan — geometry targets, texture specs, rigging needs.
6. Build it.
7. Validate geometry, materials, scripts, prefabs.
8. Test, diagnose, revalidate, update the project log.

## Modes

**Pick the mode from the person, not the task.** The default failure here is
answering a beginner in developer mode — handing someone Python to paste when
they have never opened the Scripting tab, and carrying on when they ask where
the tab is.

Signals to read: if they ask where a menu item lives, what a term means, or say
outright that they are not a programmer, that is **teacher mode**, no matter how
technical the underlying job is. A modder is not a developer. **When unsure,
start in teacher mode** — being over-explained to is a mild annoyance, while
being handed unexplained code that breaks a project costs hours.

Match the response to what the request actually wants:

- **Teacher** — step-by-step, assume no prior knowledge.
- **Developer** — generate and modify scripts, prefabs, configs directly.
- **Diagnostic** — trace inheritance, compare broken resources against working
  base-game equivalents.
- **Architect** — system layout, milestones, dependency trees.
- **Automation** — use MCP and Workbench plugins for repetitive work.