About The OFPEC Tag Database
OFPEC Tags were originally introduced in 2002 as a way of avoiding conflicts between different addons. The system was so effective that it was officially adopted by BIS. Today, every respectable addon maker has their own individual tag.
An OFPEC tag is simply a three to five letter identifier that is individual to each designer. Here at OFPEC we hold the listing of all 1223 of these tags, so that people can see who 'owns' each tag and to ensure that each tag is unique.
If an addon does not have a tag it could create a conflict with another addon: this may cause your mission (or even your whole computer) to crash. It's good practice for mission makers to use tags for global variables, but at present it is not compulsory.
When the Addons Depot re-opens OFPEC tags will be compulsory. In the future it is likely that the Missions Depot will not accept missions that use addons without tags.
OFPEC Tags must be used for all of the following:
- Global variables
- Global function names
- New classes (in config.cpp files)
- P3D names
- Addon PBO names
How to Make a Tag
To create your own tag, choose a combination of 3, 4 or 5 alphanumeric upper-case characters. The first character must be a letter. Check through the list here to make sure no-one else already has the tag you want.
Four and five letter tags must be followed by an underscore. Three letter tags may be followed by an underscore if desired. For example:
- SNY_MyAddon.pbo
- SNYMyAddon.pbo
- OFPEC_MyAddon.pbo
If you don't use an underscore after a three letter tag, you should not use any underscores in the following identifier. In other words, SNYMyVariable and SNY_My_Variable are fine, but SNYMy_Variable should be avoided, because someone may wish to register SNYMY as a tag.
PBO Signatures
In Armed Assault, there is a method of verifying addon integrity through signed PBOs, which uses a key system. Jerry Hopper added the signed PBO keys into the OFPEC tag system so there is a central location for all keys. We currently hold 66 public keys.
Once you have your OFPEC tag registered, you should create a Public and Private key. Use the DSCreatekey.exe to generate this. Once you have your Public key, upload it to your OFPEC Tag account.
With the Private key you can sign your addons, and the Public keys can be downloaded by server owners to ensure addons are 100% genuine.