ALiVE - Advanced Light Infantry Virtual Environment

[oktyabr 12]

Oktyabre -not possible with the way ALiVE is designed. If there's nothing there for the map analysis function to read, it can't read it, so it can't tell anything to spawn there. You'll have to come up with a different method of spawning units there if that's what you want to do.

Thanks for the reply friznit2. I know it's not easy to do but surely there must be some work around? For instance I know that shrinking a TAOR marker will help concentrate the profiled units to a higher density, in a smaller region, and yet the opposite is not true. Once the TAOR is scaled to a certain size (one sector it would seem) all the profiled units will spawn there, regardless of how much larger the TAOR really is. Even if this was somehow tweaked I could get what I want by simply making a large enough TAOR, making certain that at least one (or both) strategic and regular markers were found within it.

Being able to use a game logic, or combination of things with perhaps a manually placed FOB, insurgent camp, field hospital, aircraft crash location, etc., in lieu of having a predetermined spawn marker would really open up the mission making with Alive. This would also be essential for maps not containing *any* existing civilian or military locations, where the mission editor is expected to place temporary type structures himself.

Another for the "wish list" I guess..

[delta99 34]

Thanks for the reply friznit2. I know it's not easy to do but surely there must be some work around? For instance I know that shrinking a TAOR marker will help concentrate the profiled units to a higher density, in a smaller region, and yet the opposite is not true. Once the TAOR is scaled to a certain size (one sector it would seem) all the profiled units will spawn there, regardless of how much larger the TAOR really is. Even if this was somehow tweaked I could get what I want by simply making a large enough TAOR, making certain that at least one (or both) strategic and regular markers were found within it.

Being able to use a game logic, or combination of things with perhaps a manually placed FOB, insurgent camp, field hospital, aircraft crash location, etc., in lieu of having a predetermined spawn marker would really open up the mission making with Alive. This would also be essential for maps not containing *any* existing civilian or military locations, where the mission editor is expected to place temporary type structures himself.

Another for the "wish list" I guess..

There is the custom objectives in this current release that I asked for. I haven't tried it yet but it seems it only uses these for objectives and not unit placement according to someone that has tested it. I haven't had chance to test it yet. However, given what they developed so far for these custom objectives it might suit your needs.

[friznit2 350]

ALiVE Map Analysis reads map objects - such as Military Building, House, Barracks - and works out which ones are military targets (Military Building, Barracks) and which are more likely to be Civilian (House). These are used for both start locations (military units live in military bases, right?) and Objectives (cos military bases make good strategic targets). On a large map like Altis, this can take around 45 mins on a good day. If you include flat area, hill, river, road, this would not only take a few days to analyse but there'd be no way to realistically determine where to spawn units and create objectives without doing it manually. So...why not do it manually in the first place. Seeing the logic?

TAOR markers are simply drawing a boundary around a set of predefined Start Locations/Objectives. MP (in Occupy mode) will start by placing AI groups at the closest first and work outwards until it runs out of groups, so making the TAOR bigger won't necessarily change the start locations even if it includes more Objectives.

I think you're asking too much of ALiVE to do very specific things that it's not designed to do. Great that you're pushing the boundaries but you will have to rely on manually placed (or spawned) units. You can still have them profiled, and the manual gamelogic Objective placement will have OPCOM recognise that location once it fires up after Init.

[oktyabr 12]

ALiVE Map Analysis reads map objects - such as Military Building, House, Barracks - and works out which ones are military targets (Military Building, Barracks) and which are more likely to be Civilian (House). These are used for both start locations (military units live in military bases, right?) and Objectives (cos military bases make good strategic targets). On a large map like Altis, this can take around 45 mins on a good day. If you include flat area, hill, river, road, this would not only take a few days to analyse but there'd be no way to realistically determine where to spawn units and create objectives without doing it manually. So...why not do it manually in the first place. Seeing the logic?

TAOR markers are simply drawing a boundary around a set of predefined Start Locations/Objectives. MP (in Occupy mode) will start by placing AI groups at the closest first and work outwards until it runs out of groups, so making the TAOR bigger won't necessarily change the start locations even if it includes more Objectives.

I think you're asking too much of ALiVE to do very specific things that it's not designed to do. Great that you're pushing the boundaries but you will have to rely on manually placed (or spawned) units. You can still have them profiled, and the manual gamelogic Objective placement will have OPCOM recognise that location once it fires up after Init.

Thanks again fritznit2. That's why I said it was another one for the "wish list". And I'll add that this is on more wish lists than just mine. Regardless I hope I don't sound unappreciative or anything. I really, REALLY like Alive (I liked MSO and Hetman in A2 also!) and that you guys are making this publicly available for free is simply outstanding. The entire rest of my game library could quietly go away and I'd never miss them, seriously.

So let's try this from another angle? I see I'm not the only one having trouble getting an OPCOM to make use of a synced game logic containing "this setVariable ["priority",50]; this setVariable ["size",150];" Like others I see this marked on the map, the logic actually produces a tiny yellow dot on the map too, which is in some way comforting. But, like others here, it seems the opcom does nothing with the location. I've tried both "invasion" and "occupy" and troops move through the area but treat it like any other unimportant section of the map.

If this really does work the way it has been suggested (with priority of 50 being the highest) shouldn't we see profiles attempting to gather at that location or something?

Thanks again, in advance ;)

EDIT! This is curious. I ran the same simple mission a couple of times and the opcom seemed to ignore the game logic. On the third try troops moved right to the center of the game logic and hung out there! I went back into the editor and placed a second game logic a ways above the first one. Previewed it again and now I've got units swarming to both of them (they put down way point markers almost instantly).

If I can figure out why it worked this time but not that time then it should be possible to make good use of them, even as a work around for my particular situation.

Basically I created a very long, narrow TAOR running pretty much up the middle of Altis between the main base and the northern coast... I set the OPCOM to "occupy" and bumped the MP force size to 1200 (thinking about what you said earlier about them starting at the nearest and working out, until they run out of units). I placed both of these game logics *inside* that TAOR. While the units do *not* spawn at the logic points, profiled units move there very quickly at the start of the mission. In theory this might make it possible to fortify a "front", for example, by setting up a string of these game logics inside an existing (very long and narrow) TAOR and making sure the MP has enough man power to occupy all of them. Sprinkle on some templates of forest outposts and FOBs and you have an occupied front, stretching across (at least a part) of the map. :)

---------- Post added at 05:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:58 PM ----------

PS This was the clue I needed ;) "MP (in Occupy mode) will start by placing AI groups at the closest first and work outwards until it runs out of groups,"

Edited January 25, 2014 by Oktyabr

[reaper lok 82]

Not sure if anyone has encounter this issue. After creating a few Tasks (user made tasks - not ALiVE Tasks), and testing their functionality in the editor (worked and fired exactly as designed, triggers etc)........now these same tasks in the same exact mission will show as already completed on mission launch on our dedicated server, very strange!! Anyone?

[oktyabr 12]

Test mission, if anyone is interested. How to get units to "spawn" outside of towns and bases? Put the game logics in an existing TAOR (make the TAOR larger if necessary!), make the force size of the MP big enough to "populate" all of them... the included example is one MCP set at force size of 400 but I tested it with 1200 too ;) If the locations are in very difficult to reach areas it may take them a minute or two to move there and I have not yet seen what happens when you have a second OPCOM and opposing force on the map; i.e., other TAORs that the OPCOM might wish to "invade" or otherwise "occupy". More experiments to come. YMMV!

Altis with six game logics, one MP and one OPCOM.

Here is what it looks like in the editor:

http://i40.tinypic.com/2d6rsw7.jpg (151 kB)

Here is what it looks like in the game, less than a minute after previewing the mission in the editor:

http://i43.tinypic.com/2ivy547.jpg (214 kB)

The test mission on Altis in case you want to play with it yourself! :) (Must have ALiVE and CBA loaded! Have only tested on Stable 1.10, not DEV)

http://www.filedropper.com/logictestaltis

[alexsegen 17]

Test mission, if anyone is interested. How to get units to "spawn" outside of towns and bases? Put the game logics in an existing TAOR (make the TAOR larger if necessary!), make the force size of the MP big enough to "populate" all of them... the included example is one MCP set at force size of 400 but I tested it with 1200 too ;) If the locations are in very difficult to reach areas it may take them a minute or two to move there and I have not yet seen what happens when you have a second OPCOM and opposing force on the map; i.e., other TAORs that the OPCOM might wish to "invade" or otherwise "occupy". More experiments to come. YMMV!

Altis with six game logics, one MP and one OPCOM.

Duuude, you are the man! Thanks for posting the example. I will give it a try.

Also I would like to know why I cant spawn drIrregulars? It worked for me using SUD_RU, but not with drIrregulars. They just don't respawn. No group found.

Here is what it looks like in the editor:

http://i40.tinypic.com/2d6rsw7.jpg (151 kB)

Here is what it looks like in the game, less than a minute after previewing the mission in the editor:

http://i43.tinypic.com/2ivy547.jpg (214 kB)

The test mission on Altis in case you want to play with it yourself! :) (Must have ALiVE and CBA loaded! Have only tested on Stable 1.10, not DEV)

http://www.filedropper.com/logictestaltis

Duuude you are the man! Thanks for sharing that info. I will give it a try...

Also, i would like to know why I cant make drIrregulars respawn. It's working with SUD_RU but not with drIrregulars. It says something about

"No group found"..

Can anybody help me pl0x?

[terminus 0]

Not sure if anyone has encounter this issue. After creating a few Tasks (user made tasks - not ALiVE Tasks), and testing their functionality in the editor (worked and fired exactly as designed, triggers etc)........now these same tasks in the same exact mission will show as already completed on mission launch on our dedicated server, very strange!! Anyone?

I get the same thing with all my alive missions now. All my custom tasks showing succeeded or failed. They are ok if I host the mission, but when placed on a dedi server, all broken ever since this recent update.

No idea how to fix it either. I'm hoping the devs can look into it.

[hlfritz 1]

I get the same thing with all my alive missions now. All my custom tasks showing succeeded or failed. They are ok if I host the mission, but when placed on a dedi server, all broken ever since this recent update.

No idea how to fix it either. I'm hoping the devs can look into it.

I can confirm this. I have a mission that worked fine before on several aspects, and since the ARMA 3 and mod update a few things are wonky. I have stated this one already, probably got lost in all the flurry here:

-For Combat Support, that entry now shows up twice in the menu on dedicated server. it only has one entry on preview in editor.

-I can confirm that tasks are shown as completed when the mission starts on dedicated server. however, I have 3 tasks and 2 of them get completed with the third one left to complete.

-Military Intel module might be broken, not sure yet. before update I do recall seeing the side chat intel messages, and now I get nothing. in editor preview I did get color coded sector display for enemy only at beginning of mission, but no side chat intel. after the initial sector intel faded due to time it never was refreshed. playing mission on dedicated I got nothing, but I may have just missed it.

-I also noted I have a unit set with ambient animation at base where players start and in editor preview all is fine. when running mission on dedicated server the animation goes away although the script still takes away the weapon (had it set for NONE for equipment). this was working before update as well.

my mission is here if you want to test with it or depbo to see if I have mucked something up.

http://files.rlgaming.com/ARMA3/CO6_BotE_prologue_@Alive_RLG.Altis.pbo

let me know if I should create anything in the tracker.

Edited January 25, 2014 by hlfritz
added mission link

[highhead 20]

hlfriz!

-For Combat Support, that entry now shows up twice in the menu on dedicated server. it only has one entry on preview in editor.

--> Tested and can't confirm! Ensure you haven placed the module twice!

-I can confirm that tasks are shown as completed when the mission starts on dedicated server. however, I have 3 tasks and 2 of them get completed with the third one left to complete.

--> We don't do anything with user made tasks. PLEASE, before you suspect ALiVE in this thread do some searching - its BIS.

Actually the only tasks that work are the ALiVE tasks.... http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=17010&nbn=2

-Military Intel module might be broken, not sure yet. before update I do recall seeing the side chat intel messages, and now I get nothing. in editor preview I did get color coded sector display for enemy only at beginning of mission, but no side chat intel. after the initial sector intel faded due to time it never was refreshed. playing mission on dedicated I got nothing, but I may have just missed it.

--> Intended and not broken. No more sidechat cluttering. Only markers.

-I also noted I have a unit set with ambient animation at base where players start and in editor preview all is fine. when running mission on dedicated server the animation goes away although the script still takes away the weapon (had it set for NONE for equipment).

--> also not ALiVE, open a tracker on the ArmA3 Feedbacktracker please!

Thank you, Sir!

HH

Edited January 25, 2014 by highhead

[d4ni3l3 10]

Yes it is something we are working on.

Thanks, I'll wait for this feature, I love this mod, very useful.

[gunny1979 3]

In case you have not seen it Ohally has some great new factions in the go, that will work with ALiVE as he correctly configured them.

Go check 'em out!

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?172069-Arma3-AGGRESSORS

Edited January 25, 2014 by Gunny1979

[zuff 10]

Excuse me if I've missed it in this massive thread, but search hasn't given me much results.

Could someone give me a rundown of the Opcom "Occupation" and "Invasion" modes?

What I'm trying to do is have two nearby towns assault each other in a TvT scenario. I have two Civilian Military Placements for each town's marker. I have a CQB synced to both of them. I have two Opcom modules synced to each of the Civ Mil Placement modules. One Opcom controls Nato the other Iran. I have the Profile System synced to the two Civ Mil Markers as well.

What happens is a lot of units stand around. I keep switching between Occupation and Invasion but I don't see any difference in the units orders.

So to sum it up:

1) What is the difference between Occupation and Invasion and what would be best for my mission?

2) For Player Tasks, are they always supposed to be the same objective?

Thanks in advance.

[serjames 357]

Anyone got Faysh Khabur to work ?

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?143335-Fayshkhabur-Release-thread/page3

[Gattobuono 10]

It's working with SUD_RU

Please tell me exactly how you did this, thanks

---------- Post added at 11:34 ---------- Previous post was at 11:24 ----------

I am not an editor expert, hence my question: what is the best way to use templates for Alive modules? Because for every island, repeatedly I need to load req. Alive, profile system, ai skill, dyn weather etc. etc...

Okay, here's what I did: Make a mission on any map, setting up all the ALIVE modules that you want to use. Check that the mission works. select EVERYTHING that you've placed on the map (I hope you know how to do that?). Press left control+C to copy everything. Open a new mission in the editor on a different map and press left control+V to paste all the info on that map. You may need to resize your TAOR markers or move stuff around a bit to suit the new map. The you can put yourself on the map as player ... and off you go. You can repeat this for every map that works. Let me know if you need any more help :-)

Gatto.

[1para{god-father} 105]

trying to work put the CQB module i have it placed and linked to my TOAR but they seem to spawn well outside and do not really go into the town and pop the buildings ?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/85udhqa789opthy/2014-01-25_00002.jpg

[highhead 20]

zuff, Occupation / Invasion chooses objective priorities and amount of attacking/defending/reserving troops. The units will attack each others if you set up the mission correctly. Otherwise they will just patrol around!

hlfritz, i invested 3 hours in analysing your mission! Actually you use BIS_fnc_AmbientAnim with call in init fields and that leads to some strange behaviours like, items of the UI duplicating! Not happening otherwise! I changed all BIS_fnc_ambientAnim calls to spawn in your mission and its working without a hitch (BIS needs to sort out their tasks though). Download it here!

Enjoy comrades

---------- Post added at 12:48 ---------- Previous post was at 12:44 ----------

trying to work put the CQB module i have it placed and linked to my TOAR but they seem to spawn well outside and do not really go into the town and pop the buildings ?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/85udhqa789opthy/2014-01-25_00002.jpg

Hey, check your skype ;)

There is actually no CQB at all (if you enabled debug there will be green/red markers)!

If you want to limit CQB to a certain TAOR, you either sync the CQB Module to the MIL/CIV PLACEMENT module (!) of that TAOR or you can use blacklist markers! I also added a whitelist option (but thats in the next update)!

and check your skype ;)

[1para{god-father} 105]

Sorry i did mean i sync it to my placement modules - i just wanted to pop a few buildings in a town , and oppss i will set skype to auto start :)

I thought the CQB would place inf into buildings towers etc.. as you can see from my image i get no inf in any building that was after 10 min running

Edited January 25, 2014 by 1PARA{God-Father}

[kavoriken 1]

Since ALiVE is designed from the ground up to be a MP game, saving is not supported in the normal sense. You'll have to wait for mission persistence to come along, which will be done soonâ„¢, just about when it's ready. Even that won't be a traditional save game though but will store location states of mission critical assets, so it'll be the next best thing.

Just a heads up that saving is indeed possible in a very hacky way using PStools which is a tool developed by Microsoft to freeze Windows processes. This allows you to freeze your client and dedicated server processes and lets you resume them at any given time. I found out about this a while ago when looking for ways to save my Warfare Benny Edition game in A2 which had the client and dedicated server running on my quad core machine for maximum performance with that many AI's. The drawbacks are of course that both processes stay in your ram and you cannot shutdown your computer without losing both processes, putting it in standby will work though. I have not tried this in Arma 3 yet, so i cannot guarantee that it will work, but if you are really desperate to save your SP progress when using a dedicated and client on the same machine, this is the only way right now.

Heres a link to the tools: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896649.aspx

Freezing processes works like this: pssuspend.exe arma3server.exe

resuming works like this: pssuspend.exe -r arma3server.exe

For some reason the time between freezing the client and the dedicated needs to be very exact. Just writing a batch file to suspend and resume both at the same time will result in the client dropping from the server. To get my client to not disconnect, i wrote a small batch file which uses the ping command to get a pause between the 2 suspend commands (it tries to ping 1.1.1.1 100 times, unfortunately there is no better way to include a custom pause in a batch file). If the client gets disconnected you might want to lower or raise the number, that might depend on your CPU speed.

suspend.bat:

pssuspend.exe ArmA3.exe

PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 100 >NUL

pssuspend.exe arma3server.exe

resume.bat:

pssuspend.exe -r ArmA3.exe

PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 100 >NUL

pssuspend.exe -r arma3server.exe

As mentioned before, i have not tested this yet for Arma 3, but it worked flawlessly on my machine (2500k@4.4; Win7 64bit) for A2.

Edited January 25, 2014 by Kavoriken

[redarmy 422]

Redarmy, i just tested it! its fine, please remove 3rd party mods, and make a ticket on our tracker, please attach the mission then! Make sure you redownload the mod from alivemod.com too please, if you havent yet.

Thanks

Yeah its hit and miss,

sometimes its ok,others its not.

Redownloaded and same issue.As you said its prolly another mod.Is MCC in conflict with this does anyone know?

[vengeance1 50]

Arty- How does the player actually call in Arty using the Combat Support? I have it sync'ed with all the other CAS etc and it shows available but I can't seem to figure out how to mark map and get it to fire? Selecting the available unit does not seem to give anymore directions?

Thanks

[Jackson Snow 10]

Arty- How does the player actually call in Arty using the Combat Support? I have it sync'ed with all the other CAS etc and it shows available but I can't seem to figure out how to mark map and get it to fire? Selecting the available unit does not seem to give anymore directions?

Thanks

Select the unit in the menu, choose which ammunition type (HE, Smoke, etc), choose fire rate, choose number of rounds, click on map and click the green button (forgot the label). Hope this helps...

[delta99 34]

Excuse me if I've missed it in this massive thread, but search hasn't given me much results.

Could someone give me a rundown of the Opcom "Occupation" and "Invasion" modes?

What I'm trying to do is have two nearby towns assault each other in a TvT scenario. I have two Civilian Military Placements for each town's marker. I have a CQB synced to both of them. I have two Opcom modules synced to each of the Civ Mil Placement modules. One Opcom controls Nato the other Iran. I have the Profile System synced to the two Civ Mil Markers as well.

What happens is a lot of units stand around. I keep switching between Occupation and Invasion but I don't see any difference in the units orders.

So to sum it up:

1) What is the difference between Occupation and Invasion and what would be best for my mission?

2) For Player Tasks, are they always supposed to be the same objective?

Thanks in advance.

1. I think what you want is Invasion OPCOMS for each side. Then you link each one of them to both their own MP module and the other sides MP module. What this does is use the units that are placed in their own MP area and have them "invade" the MP of the other side.

2. Unfortunately the way they have coded things you always get the same objective. Hopefully being changed. This was brought up a long while ago but their main focus is not the player task stuff.

---------- Post added at 16:48 ---------- Previous post was at 16:38 ----------

TAOR markers are simply drawing a boundary around a set of predefined Start Locations/Objectives. MP (in Occupy mode) will start by placing AI groups at the closest first and work outwards until it runs out of groups, so making the TAOR bigger won't necessarily change the start locations even if it includes more Objectives.

I think you're asking too much of ALiVE to do very specific things that it's not designed to do. Great that you're pushing the boundaries but you will have to rely on manually placed (or spawned) units. You can still have them profiled, and the manual gamelogic Objective placement will have OPCOM recognise that location once it fires up after Init.

I'm not sure if this is directed at the many number of us that asked for custom objective's (and or placements).

I think what we are asking for is pretty basic from a mission makers perspective and completely in line with what Alive is designed to do. All we are asking for is some customization of objectives (done - thanks) and start locations that Alive will use. This is pretty imperative if you want mission developers to actually have any sort of semi-control of the entire battle Alive is creating for us.

I know that there must have been a massive amount of work that went into Alive automatically analyzing and determining military and civilian areas etc. and that is a great thing. However, it not being able to recognize our own custom FOB's, military areas, civ areas, camps, you name it really takes away from a mission makers creativity and custom setups. It also gets boring to those playing the same maps and having to attack well known established areas that they've been to time and time again.

I would even take things a step further and have an option to have Alive ignore any static/pre-determined locations and only consider a mission makers custom objectives and placement areas.

And, yes we can certainly manually place units in the editor etc etc. but who wants to do that for 60-100, 1000 units when Alive is great at doing that right now except for where we want them?

I think once you have this in Alive you will see a LOT of missions being created with Alive.

[friznit2 350]

Oktyabr posted a good method for doing this. Use MP to spawn the units at a nearby Military base and custom objectives set to high prio so they immediately move to attack/occupy your editor built locations. Coding it any other way is currently not practicable - not because we don't want to but because the VR engine simply can't handle it.

[oktyabr 12]

I'm still interested in even a sideboard script, separate but from but compatible with ALiVE. I'm no scripter so you'll have to bear with me here... mission maker places game logic and/or marker that trips a script call from init or description or whatever, that can simply randomize a unit/group selection from a given pool and then spawn the units so they can be profiled by ALiVE on mission launch. What this would hope to create is some randomness to the unit/group type and their location within a given area, injecting a little uncertainty over just placing groups manually for profile... That's the reason I liked the somewhat lame work around I posted earlier. If you have the MP/MCP set on "random" you are never quite sure what units are going to end up at that game logic... something I value quite highly for SP or coop missions that I plan on playing as well as composing. :)

If someone can point me to some fairly stripped down AI spawning scripts that might be easily incorporated into a game logic I'll see what I can do. Ideally such a script could also spawn coordinated structures so if you place a few of them in wilderness areas, for example, you might end up with a field hospital in one sector, a guarded weapons cache in another, or an insurgent camp... different every time you played it, with semi-randomized units and location(s).