ACE/ACRE Installation Guide
(Also covers JSRS and ST Movement)

This is a step-by-step guide to installing the ACE and ACRE mods from scratch so that you can play on servers such as 'The Wrecking Crew UK ACE/ACRE Public Realism' with absolutely no issues.

ACE (Advanced Combat Environment) is a military realism mod that improves the gameplay of ArmA II: CO in almost every aspect as well as adding hundreds of new features. It creates a more realistic and immersive experience in Arma and fixes many of the longstanding issues. After playing ACE, many playes simply wouldn't go back to the vanilla game.

ACRE (Advanced Combat Radio Environment) is a communications mod that links into TeamSpeak 3 (through a plugin) to provide high quality and realistic (calculating for volume & distance) direct voice chat as well as actual radio items in game with frequencies and settings (with proper GUIs) for long range communications. The quality is much higher than the vanilla VON, and the teamwork and co-ordination achieved through using this mod is greater than that of any other online game.

Pre-Requisites

1. ArmA II: Combined Operations Installed. Combined Operations mean that both ArmA II (paid, not free) and Operation Arrowhead are installed.

If you do not have Combinded Operations, you can puchase it here: Non-Steam | Steam

Please note that if you have the Steam version of the game installed, you must have run both ArmA II and Operation Arrowhead vanilla at least once to use mods.

2. If you have a non-Steam copy of the game, you must install game update 1.62 (Steam does this automatically).

3. TeamSpeak 3 client version 3.0.10, which you can find here (either 64 bit or 32 bit will work).

Step 1: Install and Configure Play withSIX

To install the mods in this guide, we will be using an application called Play withSIX.

Play withSIX (which is shortened to PwS) is an ArmA II mod installer, updater, and game launcher which turns the once time consuming and difficult process of installing mods and keeping them up to date (which once was a major barrier to entry in playing ACE & ACRE) into a simple, short process. After you have gone through this guide, you will simply be able to jump in and play any time you like, without thinking about the technicalside of things.

After 5 seconds on that page, it will begin downloading. Once the download has completed, run the downloaded file.
In the installer, keep clicking next until you are asked to confirm your installation, and click 'Install'.

When this has finished, click 'Finish', ensuring that 'Launch the Program' is ticked.

It will ask you whether you want to open a basics webpage. Click 'No' to this, as this guide will serve that role.

Now Play withSIX will launch. On your first launch, it will ask if you want to change your mods path. By default, Play withSIX installs mods to Documents for permissions reasons, however since ACRE requires the game to be run as administrator anyways, this doesn't matter too much.

> If you already have ACE/ACRE installed, click Yes.

> If you are installing ACE/ACRE from scratch on this computer, click 'No' and skip to Step 2 of this guide.

Upon clicking 'Yes', it will bring you to the Games panel of PwS and open the settings overlay for ArmA II: Combined Operations. Here, click on he ellipsis to the right of 'Mods Folder'. It is important that you click the right ellipsis, and do not change any other options here!

In the prompt that pops up, you need to navigate to your Operation Arrowhead game folder. This will be different by default for Steam and non-Steam versions of the game.

Non-Steam: C:\Program Files (x86)\Bohemia Interactive\Arma 2

Steam: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\arma 2 operation arrowhead

Once you see your game folder, click on 'Select Folder' to confirm your selection. Make sure that you have the folder itself selected, not something inside the folder.

Once you have confirmed your mods folder, you will be given a warning about it. Don't worry, just click 'OK' to this.

Click the Hexagon at the top of the Game Settings overlay to close it.

Under ARMA 2 Combined Operations, tick the DLCs which you own, but do NOT tick ACR, as ACE does not support it. This is very important.

Play withSIX itself has now been successfully installed and configured.

At this point, we can move on to actually installing the mods.

Step 2: Install the Mods (using Play withSIX)

Now we will install the mods using Play withSIX. To go to the Mods panel of Play withSIX, click on the image of the currently selected modset on the primary controller. This is DayZ by default.

In Play withSIX, mods are organised into 'Modsets'. Modsets are simply mods grouped together so that they can be installed, updated, or launched together conveniently. They do not represent actual folders of mods (ie, mods are not duplicated), they are just for convenience.

You will see that there are already a large number of default modsets existing which you can choose from. While it is possible to create a new modset, it will be easier for us to simply use the default ACE modset and edit it to our liking.

Click on the 'Advanced Combat Enviroment' modset at the top of the Mods panel. Once you have selected it, also click on the star on the left to make it a favourite modset. This will make it easy to find if/when you add other modsets.

Now, untick @ACEX_SM as we will be using a better mod for its functionality.

Now we need to add some mods to the modset.

To add mods, go to the top right corner of the application and type the name into 'Search Mod name...', then expand the appropriate group, and simply double click the mod you want to add to the modset. Here is an example for doing this with the ACRE mod:

Now that you know how to add mods to the modset, and have added ACRE, do this again for the following mods (the category to expand after searching is in brackets):

• JSRS - (Sound Mod)
• JSRS_ACE - (Sound Mod)
• stmovement - (System)

When you have added those mods to your modset, it should look like the following. If it does not, go back and check that you haven't missed something:

Now that your modset is set up (you won't have to do this ever again), you can start the download/install process for the mods. To do this, simply click the massive orange 'Install' button in the bottom left.

When it is finished, the button should now change to 'Select Server' in gray. This means that all ticked mods in your modset are installed and up to date, and you are in multiplayer mode with no server selected.

Step 3: Configure ACE

ACE is now installed, but the ACE settings need to be configured. In the display for the ACE modset, click on 'Settings' to open the mod settings overlay for the ACE modset.

With this overlay open, tick/untick the boxes so that they are exactly the same as the settings shown in the following image, and for the 'Identity' field select the profile that you use for ArmA. It is important that your ACE settings are set correctly, so please do this properly. Once you have finished, click 'Save' at the bottom of the overlay.

The out-of-game ACE settings have now been set, but there are some settings that are set from ingame that must be set, and certain keys must be binded. To launch the game with the mods of the current modset selected, and without joining a server, we put Play withSIX into 'Singleplayer mode'. To do this, click the orb between Multiplayer and Singleplayer on the controller so that it moves over to singleplayer.

The main button should now be green and say 'Launch', so click on it to launch the game.

Now that you are on the Main Menu of the game (with the mods loaded), click on 'ACE settings'.

The ACE Clientside settings screen will now be shown.

Change 'Weapon select firemode' to 'Selected' and 'Enable staying brass' to 'Yes':

Now you need to set your ACE interaction keys. Click on 'Keys' at the top left to bring up this menu.

ACE is a mod filled with features, and there are quite a few keys involved. All of the keys can be kept at their default, except for the most important new keys, the interaction keys.

There are two interaction keys in ACE. The interaction key, and the self-interaction key.

The interaction key allows you to use new interactions with other objects such as players or vehicles, such as attatching a towing rope to a vehicle, and the self-interaction key allows you to interact with yourself, to do things such as bandage yourself.

To change the keys for these to your preference, click on the name of the current keys.

Now hit the key you want. If you want to add the shift, control, or alt modifiers, click on them with your mouse so that they turn white. When you are done, click on 'Save'. Remember to do this for both 'Interaction' and self-interaction.

When you have set your keys, click on 'Save' at the bottom.

If you do not see 'Save' at the bottom, go back to the Main Menu, click 'Options', click 'Video Options', click 'Advance' and make sure that 'Interface Size' is set to 'Normal'.

At the Main Menu, click 'Options'.

In the Options menu, click on 'Controls'.

In the Options menu, click on 'Controls'.

Here, de-assign both the 'Voice Over Net' and 'Push to Talk' keys. ACRE does not use them, and while any good ACRE server (including ours) has the default ArmA 2 VON disabled, some might not, and also, it will show the annoying microphone icon every time you transmit on the radio, which we don't want.

Now that you are finished this step, go back to the Main Menu of the game and click 'Exit' to close the game.

Step 4: Configure TeamSpeak 3 for ACRE

As mentioned at the very top of this page, ACRE is a mod for ArmA 2: CO and a plugin for TeamSpeak 3 that interface with eachother.

Having TeamSpeak 3 was listed as a requirement for this guide, so you should already have it installed.

For ACRE to be able to connect to TeamSpeak, it must be run as administrator every time. Click on the Windows start orb in the bottom left of your screen, and type 'teamspeak'. When you see 'TeamSpeak 3 Client' in the results, right click and and click on 'Properties'.

In the Properties window, go to the Compatibility tab, and tick the checkbox beside 'Run this program as an administrator', then click 'OK'.

Now Open TeamSpeak by simply searching for it again and pressing the enter key.

For TeamSpeak to work flawlessly with ACRE, it must be configured correctly. Before you start configuring it, firstly make sure that TeamSpeak is at the latest version.

To check the version, open TeamSpeak 3, click on 'Help' and click 'Check for Update'.

Now that it is definitely on the right version, click on 'Settings' and click 'Options' to bring up the Options.

In the Options menu, click on the 'Playback' tab.

If you have stereo speakers or a stereo headset, set 'Mono Sound Expansion' to 'Mono to stereo'. If you have 5.1/7.1 speakers or a surround sound headset, click on 'Mono to surround'.

Additionally, make sure that 'Always set clients 3D positions when available' is ticked.

Now click on the 'Hotkeys' tab.

Here, ensure that the input mode for the Push-to-Talk hotkey is definitely 'Direct Input'.

Now click on the 'Capture' tab.

While TeamSpeak supports three ways of talking, ACRE only has full support for push-to-talk, so you need to use push-to-talk for ACRE. Click on the Push-To-Talk circle and then set your push-to-talk key. This is the key that you will use for direct speaking ingame in ACRE, so chose it and remember it.

At the bottom, click the checkbox to open 'Advanced Options'. Make sure that both 'Voice Activation while using Push-To-Talk' and 'Automatic voice gain contol' are UNTICKED. This is important.

Now click on the 'Notifications' tab.

Change 'Sound Pack' to 'Sounds deactivated' to disable the annoying audio notifications (eg "User Joined Your Channel!") from TeamSpeak that may play when you are ingame.

TeamSpeak 3 is now configured for ACRE, however there is one thing that you need to note about it. When TeamSpeak updates, ACRE does not always immediately support the new TeamSpeak version, so if you open TeamSpeak and get a prompt to update, do not accept this unless ACRE supports it. To find out the latest version that ACRE supports, come back to this page and look at the following line:

Current ACRE TeamSpeak Version Support: 3.0.10.1 (Latest)

Step 5: Joining Servers

As well as just launching the game with the mods of your modset, as you did when configuring ACE, Play withSIX is also a replacement for the outdated ingame server browser. The Play withSIX server browser is both more user friendly and more powerful.

If you don't have Play withSIX open, you can launch it by simply searching for it in the start menu and pressing enter. Or, if you made a shortcut on your desktop, just launch that. Every time you want to play ACE/ACRE you'll be launching through PwS, so you'll be relieved to see that the loading time is very small.

In Step 3 of the guide, we put PwS into 'Singleplayer Mode' since we were just changing settings. For joining a multiplayer server, switch PwS into 'Multiplayer Mode' by clicking on the orb between Multiplayer and Singleplayer on the controller so that it moves over to Multiplayer.

You can verify that it is in MP Mode because you will see 'Select Server' in the place of the main button.

When you switch to MP mode, the PwS ServerBrowser automatically opens and you will see a list of servers running ACE, ordered by playercount.

On the right of the app, you will see the filter. The servers you see now are running ACE, but there is no guarentee that they are actually running ACRE too. Also, some are locked, unreponsive, full, or empty.

To filter for working servers running ACRE, enter the follwing filter parameters into the filter:

With these filter settings entered, you should now see a list of proper servers. However, the experience that you have with ACE/ACRE will vary greatly depending on which server you play on. On some servers you will have the greatest gaming experience you have ever had, while on others it will be a frustrating and low-quality experience.

We at The Wrecking Crew UK are different from other groups, in that our primary focus is to introduce new players to ACE/ACRE with both this installation guide, and a high quality, realistic, and immersive public server, played on by our members who are happy to help out new players.

We recommend that you at least try out our server, and see if you like it. If you don't, you can go hunting through servers for a different one to play on. We dedicate a huge amount of time and effort to our server, so unless you catch us on a bad day, we think you'll really like it.

To filer for a specific server, go to the top of the filter settngs and type a keyword. For our server, type "wrecking".

To select a server, single-click on it. You can favourite a server so that you can easily find it later even when the 'Name' filter is blank, by clicking on the star on the left of the server, just as you did with the ACE modset.

The PwS ServerBrowser is "smart" in that it will automatically scan the server for any mods that it is running, and the main button will change to 'Install' or 'Update' so that you have these mods before joining the server. This is very useful if a server is running a custom map or unit pack.

For accessibility, performance, and quick joining, our server runs only the ACE and ACRE mods, so the main button will say 'Join'. If you click on this, PwS will automatically launch your game and join our server for you.

Both ACE and ACRE introduce a lot of new features and change many core game concepts. Before actually playing on a server, I highly recommend that you watch the 'Basics' video tutorials linked in Appendix B of this guide. If you have a fair idea of how to use ACRE and would like to just play though, I'm sure there will be someone on the server at base to help you out, so just ask!

Epilogue

The application that you use to install, update, and play ACE/ACRE, Play withSIX, is a application that required thousands of hours of work by its team, all for free. They also incur heavy server costs to host the mods.

Before Play withSIX (or SIX Updater which came before it), installing these mods was a very difficult and manual process, prone to errors and issues of all sorts.

If you appreciate the work that they have done, and will continue to do in updating and improving the application, consider donating a small amount to keep them going. Additionally, if you would like to help TWC keep this website, our server, and our TeamSpeak running, or if you found this guide to be very helpful, you can donate to us at the very top left of this page.

If you have any technical issues relating to ACE, ACRE, Play withSIX, or TeamSpeak, you can register an account on this website and make a post in the technical issues section of our forums, and we will deal with it as quickly as possible.