Controls and actions

*Guide last updated for Ravage 0.1.38*

Ravage is built on ArmA 3 and the ArmA series are famous for their complex keyboard controls and non-standard actions. Ravage also has extra functions and actions that can be unintuitive for new players. This guide covers most aspects of controlling Ravage (and its derivative missions) and the actions that can be used. If there's anything missing or badly explained, leave a comment below (does not require registration or log-in).

Obviously, all of this applies to ArmA 3 and other mods as well. Whilst it's not necessary to understand every control to play Ravage, by learning the billions of keys, you'll massively improve your ability to play ArmA. When playing in a large group of people online, you don't want to be asking what the full auto switch is, especially in the middle of a battle. And it's even worse if you didn't even know there was a switch for full auto. You can get by in Ravage just knowing about the inventory, basic movement, basic shooting and a bit of driving. Once you learn how to use the action (mouse wheel) menu, you'll find most extra stuff for yourself. You don't really need to know how to get into every crouch position. But in an ArmA game where you're in a group of twenty people all firing from cover, it's quite handy to know how to lie down and swing your weapon round from behind a rock. Ravage is good practice for playing ArmA 3 games but the DayZ standalone is not.

If in doubt, **double-tapping** can be handy. Stuck in a combat pose? Double-tap C. Don't know how to use an item in your inventory? **Double-click** it. Try double-tapping or double-clicking whatever you did to get stuck in the first place.

## Re-mapping keys

Try not to do this until you're really experienced with the game. You can re-map every single control in ArmA games. You'll even find if you look at the controls list that some aren't mapped, by default. ArmA games use a heck of a lot of keyboard controls, so it's very difficult to re-map a key without interfering with other mapped actions. So cool it with the re-mapping until you really know where the stuff you need is.

## Movement

Movement is for the most part pretty straightforward. **W, S, A, & D** move you forwards, backwards, left, and right like most first and third person games. **V** is used to vault - to climb over low fences, rocks, etc. If you get stuck in an object, V is what will probably get you out.

   You can move at different speeds. Either walking, running or sprinting. Running is the default movement speed. Just hold one of the movement keys in any direction and you'll run. Hold down **Shift** to sprint. Note that sprinting affects your fatigue level and its effect is proportionate to the weight you're carrying. So if you've got a pistol, a bottle of water and nothing else, you can sprint for a long time. If you're carrying a heavy machine gun with a Bergen backpack full of stuff, you can't sprint very far without becoming fatigued. If you **double-tap C**, you will move at what ArmA calls 'combat pace'. This is faster than walking and slower than running, but you keep your gun up, ready to fire (you'll see the crosshair stays on the screen). Finally, you can press **Left CTRL + C** to switch to walking speed. Press it again to go back to normal running speed.

A common problem is for players to accidentally **double-tap C** and get stuck in combat pace. So watch out for that when you suddenly get ambushed.

Note: Some other mods can affect the way you walk and run. For instance ACE (incompatible with Ravage) requires you to hold **W** and tap **S** to switch to walking speed. So if you're using other mods with Ravage, check to see if they affect the controls.

## Crouching

ArmA 3 (and thus Ravage) has a very complex crouching system. **X** will make you go prone. **C** will cause you to crouch. But there are many

    different stances in between. Hold **Left CTRL** and press **W, S, A**, **& D** to move through the different stances and leans. Using these stances, you can, for instance, lie on the ground behind a rock and peek out to lay down some fire. Most of the time, you'll only need crouching and going prone, but it can be very handy to peek out from behind a wall without exposing the main part of your body.

You can also sit down, through a completely separate key. This one's a little tricky because it's one of the keys that tends to change on international keyboards. On a UK or US keyboard, it's the **;** (semi-colon) key towards the right side of the keyboard. If you're in a non-English speaking country, this key may have a different purpose, but it's in the same place. Anyway, pressing that key will cause you to sit cross-legged on the ground with your rifle across your lap. Very nice for screenshots round the campfire. Attempting to raise your weapon or open your inventory will cause you to stand back up.

## Looking

It may not be apparent, but there's more to looking around than you'd think. Obviously you wave the mouse around to look about the place, but there's more that you can do. **Hold down the right mouse button** when looking around to zoom in. Think of this as squinting at something. When you let it go, you will go back to normal vision. This can be a bit disorientating as the field of view changes. You can adjust field of view settings in the options, but I really don't recommend it.

If you play in third person, **Alt** is the most useful thing in the world. If you **hold down Alt** whilst looking around, you'll be able to continue in the direction you were going but look in any other direction. **Alt** is what moves your head around. You can still zoom in and out and do everything you'd normally do. Let go of **Alt** and you go back to normal. **Double-tapping Alt** will toggle this view, keeping you looking in whatever direction the mouse is pointing. Maybe you're running away from a zombie horde, but you'd like a cigarette and you're recording a game play video, so you don't want to pause. Wedge a penny under the **W** key, **double-tap Alt** and look back over your shoulder. Then you've got all the time in the world to light that cigarette whilst keeping an eye on those zombies.

There are also other keys that you can use for looking about. If you press any of the **arrow key equivalents** on the **numeric keypad** (**2,4, 6, 8**, etc), you'll look in a specific direction. Very handy when in first person and you want to take a quick look back over your shoulder. This also works in vehicles, allowing you to glance around quickly, whilst still maintaining focus on the front.

You can also zoom in and out with the **plus** and **minus** keys on the **numeric keypad**. **Double-tapping** them will lock them in, just in case you want to remain focused on a certain spot for an extended period of time (moving downhill on an enemy held town, spotting for a sniper or ambush time from an elevated position, scanning distant terrain for movement,) or want to remain zoomed out (good for having a wider look around you, works with vehicles [First & third person], can be used for more cinematic but broad sighted patrols) until you tap either of the buttons to return to normal.

It's possible to use head-tracking devices, like TrackIR, with ArmA games and it'll take care of most of the 'looking' stuff for you. I've tried it and it's a very fluid and intuitive experience. If you're going to do any flying, it can really be a massive help. Personally, I don't really like it - some people have difficulty adjusting to it and I guess I'm one of them. There are free programs out there that you can allow you to use your webcam to track your eyes. You've seen those video chat filters where you can add a hat or glasses to your face - well it works about as well as that. Which is fine really, but you might find it lacking in the long term. And it depends on how cheap and shitty your webcam is and what your lighting is like. But it's a good way to find out if you'd like stuff like TrackIR. I imagine VR will work in a similar way when it happens. But I'm never going to sit at my computer with a bloomin' visor on my face. I already feel like Captain sodding Scarlet wearing an audio headset.

## Wayfinding

   Open the map (**M**). Select a point on the map by **holding down Shift and left-clicking** on the map. This

    places a marker point. You can only place one of these at a time. Outside of the map (depending n the difficulty level) you will see an indicator showing the direction and distance to the point. Handy for finding your way around, but you must have a map.

It can be quite hard to see the waypoint indicator depending on the lighting and weather conditions. Also note that the marked location may be at a different altitude to you, so you might have to look up or down a bit to see it.

You can also place other map markers. **Double-click** on the map and it will place a marker which you can name. When going looting, I mark on the map where I've parked my vehicle. Saves a lot of hassle. I also like to mark vehicles that I plan on recovering later.

## Inventory

The inventory marks a change from ArmA 2. In previous versions, you pressed **G** to access your gear. Now you press **I** for the inventory. **G** is now the grenade key. Often in online games, when everyone's gearing up, some bright spark will accidentally press **G** and drop a grenade at everyone's feet. Hilarity ensues. Sometimes you're the genius concerned. Consider changing the grenade key mapping if you keep doing this.

    When you approach a body on the ground or a loot container, you'll notice the cursor changes. When this happens, if you open your inventory, it will also open the inventory of the dead body or loot container. If you **Right-click** on an item, it will be transferred to your inventory. You won't be able to choose where it goes, it will just get stuffed in a suitable place. If that item replaces something you already have (eg picking up clothing), it will just swap places.
You can instead drag items into your inventory. Drag them over a suitable container (clothes, rig/harness, backpack) and you'll see a small brown gauge will fill up. This indicates how much space in that container will be taken up. If it's too big (or the container id too full), you won't be able to complete this action. You're not going to be able to stuff a heavy machine gun in a shirt pocket.

One aspect of the inventory can be a bit confusing. Objects that are item containers (clothes, backpacks, etc) need to be accessed specifically. **Double-click** on an item container to open it and transfer items in the normal manner. To close the item container, you need to click on the heading in the top left. It will almost always say "Ground". That takes you back to the general inventory view.

If you want to drop an inventory item and you're not currently at a looting inventory screen, just **right click** it and it'll drop to the ground. If you are looting, it will attempt to put the object into whatever you're looting at the moment. If you're rifling through some guy's pockets, you might not be able to stuff a surplus rocket launcher in there. You might have to come back out to the initial level of inventory.

Tip: Guns are usually loaded. You can pick up a gun (swapping it for the one in your hands) to remove magazines, attachments, etc. This is easily overlooked, yet can double the amount of ammunition you find. It can be a good idea to wait until an AI runs out of bullets and reloads their gun. They're not shooting at you whilst this happens and it means there will be a fresh magazine in their weapon when you pick it up (after killing them). The AI only carries one or two magazines at most, so ensuring their weapon is full when they die, gives you an extra magazine.

## Shooty bang bang

Guns pretty much operate on a point and click interface, just like real life. You aim with the mouse and you fire with the **Left mouse button**. Clicking on the **Right mouse button** will cause you to look down the sights. You can also **click and hold the right mouse button** to hold your breath, steadying your shot. Note that you can only hold your breath for a short time and when you stop, the sight will sway around a bit until your breathing settles down again.

With many guns, you can zoom in an out a bit by using the **plus and minus keys** on the **numeric keypad**. Some gun sights have multiple zoom levels. **Double-tap** the **plus** and **minus** keys to toggle the zoom on or off.

    Some gun sights have multiple modes. In the example picture on the left, I'm using an ARCO sight (not

    present in Ravage). I'm looking down the telescopic sight. Note the metal hoop on top of the sight. In the picture on the right, I'm looking through the backup metal hoop sight on the top. Press the **/** (forward slash) key on the **numeric keypad** to switch between the different sights. Note that equipping, un-equipping or doing just about any action with the gun will reset back to the default sight.

Many guns have multiple firing modes. Usually you can toggle between single shot and full auto. On some guns, there is also a burst fire mode. Press the **F** key to switch between them. Notice that the display on the top right will change to show you the mode the gun is in. Again, the firing mode tends to get reset as a result of other actions. Make sure you know which mode your gun is in before you find out the hard way.

You chuck grenades around using the **G** key. It's just a matter of pointing and chucking. Note that the grenade throwing animation may be shorter than you expect. So be ready for that.

**R** of course reloads your gun. It'll also reload weapons in vehicles or emplacements (if you, or the equipment itself, has the right kind of ammo at hand). Take note that reloading doesn't fill your magazine; reloading swaps your current magazine for the largest magazine of the same ammo. So if you're got ten shots left in a magazine, you're putting a magazine with ten shots left into your inventory. You are then loading the largest magazine of the same ammo type. So if you don't pick up any more ammunition, sooner or later that 10 round magazine is going to be the one going into your gun. You probably don't want to ever have a magazine with one round in it - it's especially funny to find this fact out in the middle of a firefight. You can't ejects rounds and refill magazines manually like you can in DayZ.

Oh and you can have different kinds of ammo and different kinds of magazine for the same gun. Many guns can at least use tracer ammo. Anything chambered to accept NATO (or some other faction's standard ammo type) will likely have tracer ammo variants. Some guns can even fire explosive or armour-piercing ammo. You can specifically switch ammo type by using the action menu. Open it with the mouse wheel (or the square brackets keys) and you'll find down the bottom there's options for changing ammo type. Bear in mind that this is still switching magazines - it doesn't exchange your current rounds for the other ammunition type.

Rarely, a weapon can use magazines of different capacity. Some pistols (I think the Rook does this, but don't quote me) in 9mm can use magazines for 9mm sub-machine guns. So you can have a pistol with a 30 round clip. Again, you switch between them using the action menu. Sometimes not every variant of a rifle model can take every magazine that other guns of the same type can. 'C'-shaped magazines holding way more rounds than usual may fit in one rifle of a type, but not another, even though they share all other magazine types. Usually, high capacity magazines require a gun designed to run that many through it. A rifle designed for high capacity magazines may well have a heavier barrel or sport barrel modifications designed to mitigate the extra heat of running so many rounds through it.

And if you're making a game play video, don't call a magazine a clip, whatever you do. It doesn't matter how few views you get, you'll definitely get comments from gun people. There is a legitimate distinction between the two terms so, worse still, they're right. People who actually carry weapons professionally (e.g. the military) don't seem to really care, but they ain't the ones commenting.

## Eating and drinking

    Most eating and drinking actions are straightforward. To eat non-canned food, open your inventory and **double-click** on it. Drinking works in the same way. For canned food, you need a can opener in your inventory, but it's otherwise the same procedure.

You can of course fill some water containers. Plastic bottles and canteens can be filled from water sources. Position yourself next to a water source and then open the inventory and **double click** the container. There's an animation whilst you do this. Empty cans can also be filled in the same manner, but cannot be transported. You'll probably never need to do this though. When refilling any water container, if you're not close enough to the water source, it will say something about there being no water in the area. Get closer; or consider that it might not be a suitable water source (you want to drink sea water?).

    Water purification tablets initially work in the same manner. **Double click** them to use them. You'll now see that the action menu has opened in the top left of the screen. Choose what water you want to purify. It takes one tablet per container and there are a limited number of tablets in a pack.

Some food items contain more than one serving. Oh and different types of foods have different effects on your hunger statistic. Rusty cans are radioactive and impart a small amount of radiation poisoning. Learn to judge the risk.

You can hunt for food. Hunt rabbits that is. When you have a gutting knife, approach a dead rabbit (you have to be very close) and **double-click** on the knife in your inventory. After a brief animation, some (uncooked) rabbit meat will appear on the rabbit's body. Rabbit meat needs to be cooked on a fire prior to eating it. It doesn't spoil and you can store it indefinitely.

## Fires

To light a fire, you need a fuel and some matches. Notebooks, documents and banknotes (note: is an alternative use for money on some maps) are all suitable for burning. **Double-click** the matches in your inventory and your man will build a fireplace and light it. Once the fire is going, you can control it with the action menu. Get close enough to see the fire icon and then open the action menu (**mouse wheel** or **square brackets**). You can then extinguish the fire or add more fuel to keep it going. Fire can hurt you.

Consuming food or drinks next to a fire provides a boost to their effects. Not much of an effect, but enough to be worthwhile.

## First aid and health

Healing yourself is pretty straightforward. Food and drink have health effects, so you'll find you don't need to treat yourself with medical items very often. But a first aid kit will have you up and about nice and quickly. Although Ravage removes a lot of the injury-caused movement restrictions normally present in ArmA 3, you can get hurt to the point where you can't run.

If you have a first aid kit in your inventory, when hurt, you can use it to heal yourself. Open up the action menu (that's the official name for the menu that appears in the top left of the screen) by either using the mouse wheel or the square brackets ( **[** & **]** ). Select 'Treat yourself' and you'll go into the healing animation.

Note that first aid kits normally only heal you to 80 health (you need to be tended by a medkit-bearer to get full health), but in Ravage they heal you to the full 100. First aid kits are relatively rare and they spawn in many different places. Note that they only cover general health and will not heal radiation poisoning or other health effects.

## Radiation

    There are two aspects to radiation: the Geiger Muller counter and anti-radiation tablets. If you find a Geiger counter, it doesn't matter where it is in your kit. It can be in your backpack or in your pocket - it doesn't affect its functioning in any way. Turn it on by double-clicking on it. You'll get an on-screen message telling you it's on. When it's on, you hear an audible clicking whenever there's the slightest radiation. There's no reason to ever switch it off as it doesn't consume resources, but you deactivate it the same way.

Anti-radiation pills are used to lower radiation poisoning levels. Open your inventory and **double-click** them to consume one. Notice that containers of pills have a capacity - shown as a white bar on the left side of their inventory icon. When you **double-click** on them, you take one. There is no numerical readout of how many then are remaining. The pills act over time. It takes maybe a minute for them to stop. You can take multiple pills at a time for a cumulative effect. If you're going to do this, then learn to recognize how much radiation poisoning one pills takes off - so you don't waste any. If you don't have a Geiger counter, it can be hard to know how much radiation poisoning you have, so just take one pill at a time until you no longer show as poisoned in the inventory status readouts.

## Giving orders to recruited friendlies

    This is a bit of a big topic, so have a look at the article on this. It's all about the function keys and the action menu. You recruit friendlies by walking up next to them, pointing at them and choosing "Recruit unit" from the action (**mouse wheel**) menu.

Recruited friendlies will generally follow you around, shooting at anything hostile, unless you tell them not to. They have infinite ammo when they're alive. If they die, you'll just find the usual amounts of AI ammo on their corpses.

If they're using a mounted gun (like on the back of a technical) they will fire without warning (which may surprise you) and they'll burn through all the ammo without a care in the world. They do not have infinite ammo to use with mounted guns.

## Fixing vehicles

    You need a toolkit to fix a vehicle and you may also need some spare parts. If a vehicle is lacking a wheel, you will need a tire to be able to fix it. With the right bits in your inventory, approach a vehicle and open the action (**mouse wheel**) menu. Select "Repair whatever". At this point, nothing happens. You need to go back to the action menu and choose which bit to fix. If the part is red, it's very damaged, yellow less so. Note that part names do not necessarily correspond to the names in the pilot's readout. So the ATRQ (tail rotor) will be called something like the VRotor.

Toolboxes have a limited number of uses. You can see white bar on the left of their inventory icon showing how many uses they have left. It's not numeric. You should be able to get three uses out of a full toolkit.

Refueling takes place using a jerry can. Double-click it from your inventory to pour the contents of the jerry can into the fuel tank. A full jerry can holds 20 liters.

You can siphon fuel from other vehicles. With a hose and an empty jerry can (can't be half full), approach a vehicle and open the inventory. Double click the jerry can and you'll fill it with fuel. The same goes for pumps at petrol/gas stations. Both contain limited amounts of fuel, so you may not get a full jerry can as a result.

## Driving

Driving is easy. You use the **W, S, A** & **D** keys to move. You can also use boost/turbo to speed up a bit by holding down shift. As soon as the engine starts, it begins consuming fuel. It doesn't matter how fast you're going, the fuel gets used at the same rate. Using boost does increase fuel consumption. Some vehicles benefit from boost more than others.

There is an action menu when you're in a vehicle. If you open the action menu, you'll find you can change seats, turn the engine on or off, get out and eject. The option to get out will only be displayed when the vehicle is stationary. Getting out will turn off the engine. If you eject, you will immediately exit the vehicle, regardless of its speed and the engine will keep running.

Vehicles can hold huge (compared to your backpack) amounts of loot. Stand next to them and open the inventory (**G**) or use the action menu and choose "Inventory". When a vehicle runs out of room for loot, it'll start dumping stuff on the ground.

## Flying

There's a lot to this, so it's got its own article .

## The space bar

Use of the **space bar** takes some getting used to. Pressing space performs whatever the default action is in your current context. If you're standing in front of a closed door and the door icon is showing, pressing **space** will open the door. If the door is open, then **space** will close it. If you're standing over a body and the inventory icon is showing (like the first picture in the inventory section of this article) then **space** will open the inventory.

You have to be careful with the **space bar**. It can save you time fumbling for the right key or it can be an absolute pain when the default action is not what you expected. Use of the **space bar** need practice and careful timing to be of use. It can also lead to you forgetting what the 'real' key for an action is. Using it is down to personal preference.

On Tanoa, I was unarmed and running from a patrol. An AI unit ahead of me was killed by a large group of zombies. There was no way I'd be able to run up to the corpse, open my inventory and transfer his gun. I'd either get mobbed by zombies or shot in the back. But by using the **space bar**, I was able to grab the gun whilst barely breaking out of my sprint. I had to aim for his gun (not his body) and wait for the 'pick up' icon to appear, then hit **space**. It could so easily have gone wrong and left me stuck in an inventory screen whilst getting beaten to death by undead hands.

## Wacom graphics tablet users

If you use a Wacom graphics tablet, you will have trouble with the mousewheel. I've been using one (with a mouse) for many years now. It took me forever to find out why the mousewheel works in all circumstances except certain games. The ArmA games (and most shooter games) don't like Wacom graphics tablets. This is because the mousewheel on a Wacom mouse (or stylus) does not work in the way that it does on a normal mouse. The action is instead emulated. For some reason, there's more than one way to address (or at least read) mousewheel functions in Windows - or at least in the way that games can poll hardware. So if you've got a Wacom mouse on a Wacom tablet, in some games using the mousewheel will cause you to look at the sky or the ground instead.

In Ravage and the ArmA games, you can use the **square brackets** keys (on the right of the **P** key on English keyboards). These replace all mouse wheel functions and are more precise anyway. No re-mapping.