ALiVE - Advanced Light Infantry Virtual Environment 1.0 (GA)

[ALiVEmod 123]

ALiVEmod.com
The next generation dynamic persistent mission addon for ArmA3
Release 1.0.7

 
 

After more than 3 years of development we are proud to release version 1.0 of ALiVE!

 
It's a huge moment for the ALiVE team to announce the 1.0 release. ALiVE represents thousands of hours of volunteer time from a small team working every evening, weekend and holiday available. Our vision for ALiVE was to create a dynamic, persistent and credibly realistic battlefield environment that brought ArmA3 missions to life. Our aim was to do deliver this with an intuitive, modular mission framework that required minimal technical expertise for mission makers yet provided everything that players needed to set up and run military operations in almost any scenario, including command, combat support, service support and logistics. Critically, we wanted AI Commanders that automatically planned and directed missions for all AI forces across the Area of Operations, identifying strategic objectives and reacting to changes in the tactical situation. To make all this happen with minimal impact on performance, we needed a Virtual AI Profile system in order to support thousands of units continuing to operate across the map when players were not present. We are delighted that we have been able to deliver on all our objectives and more!
 

Please note that as with all updates, if you have an issue loading a mission made with a previous version of ALiVE, delete and replace the modules in that mission.

Download

Grab the latest version from ALiVEmod.com

Also available from PlayWithSix, ArmAholic and Steam.

(Please allow a few hours for these sites to catch up)

Join the War Room Now!

Note for server admins that this build requires the new @ALiVEServer package. The old one should not be used and in most cases won't work (or will crash).

 
 
Manual
Please refer to the ALiVE Wiki. All the info you need is there. If anything is missing or unclear, please let us know.

Support Forum
For direct support and feedback from the ALiVE dev team, join us on our forum at http://alivemod.com/forum/

Acknowledgements and Thanks
We wanted to take this chance to thank the following key people for their support and recognise the efforts of those that have dedicated so much time to this project:

• Wolffy.au - One of the original developers of MSO and helped kick off the MSO Next Gen vission that later became ALiVE
• Tupolov - A key contributor to MSO and one of the driving forces behind development of ALiVE, in particular the cloud-based persistence system, sitreps/spotreps/stats, IED system, ALiVE War Room and more.
• Highhead - Another former MSO developer and driving force behind ALiVE, building the AI Command & Control including the Operational Commander, Insurgency, CQB and so much more. He also implemented support for headless client and player logistics support.
• ARJay - ALiVE would not scale without the immense Virtual AI system created by ARJay. This system has been interwoven into many aspects of ALiVE and ARJay has contributed across pretty much all of the ALIVE codebase as well as being a lead developer of the ALiVE War Room, C2ISTAR and lots more.
• Friznit - We could not get anything done without a key focus on how ALiVE is used, implemented and simulates modern warfare. Friznit brought focus and organisation to the team along with his military experience, unique brand of PR and of course documentation!
• Jman - Our release master and general all round good bean who has contributed to the original persistence system and many admin and player helper systems.
• Gunny - Shepherded much of the ported combat support system (thank you Neo!) into ALiVE and assisted with a number of other systems.
• Secure - In our desire to remove dependence on .NET and Windows, Secure completely rewrote the plugin/extension system to make it multi-platform and faster
• Hazey - Helped with testing and support as well as custom compositions and the original insurgency mission for ALiVE
• SpyderBlack - Has been a huge help in supporting the community with his expertise as a mission maker and has written add-ons to ALiVE that have since been incorporated.

The following people have supported us either during the life of the project or contributed at certain times - we thank you for your contribution and support!

• VRCRaptor, Sacha Ligthert, Cameroon, Naught, Rye, Singleton, SavageCDN, Kremator, WobbleyHeadedBob

We want to take this opportunity to also thank everyone for their support and in particular:

• CBA Team
• VOLCBAT
• Kelly's Heroes
• VRC
• Bohemia Interactive for the incredible military sandbox that is Arma 3

What's Next?
After the release of 1.0, ALiVE development will be making a strategic change in direction. We kept the source code private during development in order to maintain control and facilitate support and error fixing. It is time to change that! With the widespread adoption of ALiVE, we believe that the mod will benefit from the combined resources of the community to allow it to continue to develop and flourish. There is still so much more that could be done with ALiVE both as a mod and a platform and we hope this will give the community the opportunity to take it to the next level. We will announce the details and support for this approach in the near future!

Disclaimer
ALiVE is now GA. However, we may need to prune the persistent database data from the War Room, eliminating data that is older than 6-12 months. The ALiVE War Room database is run on a voluntary basis at a cost to the ALiVE development team. No guarantees can be given on the mission data stored or the availability of the service. We apologise for any downtime that may impact your MP persistent missions.

License
ALiVE 1.0 is release under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND). Full details are included in the download.

ALiVE has transformed my Arma 3 experience, how can I thank you?
Please feel free to donate! It costs us about $65 per month to run our War Room website and ALiVE Database servers. Donate here http://www.alivemod.com/#Donate

Special thanks to everyone here for supporting us with donations to the ALiVE mod development effort.

Have fun!

[ALiVEmod 123]

https://github.com/ALiVEOS/ALiVE.OS.git

ALiVE.OS - Open Source 
We kept ALiVE closed during dev to facilitate source management, version control and support for what we knew was going to be quite a complex beast.  However, we always intended to open up the source code once we had achieved a stable, feature complete release.  We are now largely content that we have achieved that, notwithstanding the bugs that we are still working on and new features that we would like to include.
 
So as of May 2016 we changed the licence from a restricted Creative Commons to an open GPL v2 for all builds after 1.0.5.1605051 (the latest official release) and put ALiVE in a public git repo for everyone to fork as you wish.  There are some caveats and everything is explained in the licence file but in short:
 
1.  ALiVE is free software and may not be monetized in any way (that includes servers that try to get around it with "donations for perks")
2.  You may release forks of ALiVE but please make it clear that it's not an official version to avoid confusing everyone.
3.  We strongly encourage everyone to help develop the official Master version using git Branches and Pull Requests.
 
 
Not So Frequently Asked Questions

• Why GPL v2?  It's an older licence but many of the other big mods like ACE use it, so it'll facilitate code sharing.
• What about ALiVE Plugin?  The War Room and its API Plugin (ALiVEPlugIn.dll and ALiVEPlugIn.so) remain on the closed Creative Commons licence for now.  There's a lot of propriety stuff in there and licensing is a headache but there's nothing to stop a clever person getting funky with sys_data and exploring local DB options.
• ALiVEClient.dll used for map indexing and some future advanced features is also closed source. However, if you wish to contribute to either of these plugins please contact us and we can arrange access to the repo.
• Mikero's Tools? They're needed for building and indexing maps but the ones we include are an older freeware version.  We strongly encourage everyone to buy the latest from Mikero's site.  Without his genius, ArmA modding would not be possible.

Have fun!

[caboose816 38]

Congratulations on the release Alive team! Defiantly one of the best mods available for Arma.

[A3_Melle 40]

Congrats on the 1.0 release!

Send with mobile

[SavageCDN 231]

Finally they let me out of my cage!!!   :D

 

 

In all seriousness it's been a great experience working behind the scenes with this group.  I'd like to thank all of them for allowing me to annoy, pester, poke, prod and ramble on incoherently.... and occasionally help out.  I've been a fan of their work since MSO and hope that they will continue to cook up stuff for the community.

 

 

edit:  anyone looking for HC setup instructions please refer to this post by dixon13:

 

http://alivemod.com/forum/863-headless-client/p1#p1954

[autigergrad 2034]

THE single most innovative, game changing mod for Arma 3. And it's not even close.

[Spartan0536 189]

Thanks for continuing to support the community ALiVE team, we greatly appreciate all the hard work and dedication; congratulations on 1.0 Release!

[Incontinentia 339]

THE single most innovative, game changing mod for Arma 3. And it's not even close.

Well said!

[ligthert 21]

Congrats on the 1.0 release. This is an achievement! :)

[bux578 65]

Gratulations for this release!

[Moon_chilD 200]

Hey guys, 

Congrats on Version 1.0!
I was very excited to finally test it with the problems I had before (Mainly Combat Support not working and crashes when using with MCC or ACE).

Good news is, the server did not crash for me while I was using the same mission, where it crashed last week. I'll give it more tries though! Just to make sure!
Sadly the Combat Support is still not working.

1. When Calling in Artillery they still keep saying they fire, but they don't!
2. When Calling in Chopper to "Land" (with Engine Active) they Land and immediately go in the air again.
3. When using Insertion with a Chopper they just hover at the destination. Is that intended...do I need to do something? (Didn't it throw out ropes before?)
4. CAS's still not working (either Plane or Chopper) with a SAD Order!
5. Something new that happens now: On mission start the CAS Planes taxi to the runway and lifiting off by themself. When they respawn they wait with the cockpit open.

I think thats all that happens. I'm pretty sure that at least number 5 might be caused by another mod (MCC?). 
Does the rest not work due to Werthles' Headless Module because we are using 3 headless clients in our mission? 

Thats all for me now. I'll test some more later.
Many Greetings
Moony

[angelsgate 10]

Awesome! Congrats on the release guys!

[Incontinentia 339]

 

When using Insertion with a Chopper they just hover at the destination. Is that intended...do I need to do something? (Didn't it throw out ropes before?)

The insertion behaviour is intentional as far as I know; it's designed for people with fastrope scripts in their missions (like Shuko's excellent one - just search Shuko Fastrope). The helo hovers at the designated altitude, giving you time to deploy ropes and go. 

 

Also, never had an issue with arty, so maybe a mod conflict somewhere? Have you tried it vanilla? Same for CAS helicopter... always seemed to work fine (CAS planes I've definitely had issues with!). 

 

I've had the issue with helicopter landing with engine on jumping straight back up again, wasn't sure if it was a mod conflict or not! 

[Moon_chilD 200]

The insertion behaviour is intentional as far as I know; it's designed for people with fastrope scripts in their missions (like Shuko's excellent one - just search Shuko Fastrope). The helo hovers at the designated altitude, giving you time to deploy ropes and go. 

 

Also, never had an issue with arty, so maybe a mod conflict somewhere? Have you tried it vanilla? Same for CAS helicopter... always seemed to work fine (CAS planes I've definitely had issues with!). 

 

I've had the issue with helicopter landing with engine on jumping straight back up again, wasn't sure if it was a mod conflict or not! 

 

Okay, if thats intentional thats cool for me! ^^

I already have been told, that the issues where caused by the Headless Client. But they stated they fixed it. 

[Incontinentia 339]

Okay, if thats intentional thats cool for me! ^^

I already have been told, that the issues where caused by the Headless Client. But they stated they fixed it. 

Good news! Cheers for passing that on. 

[Moon_chilD 200]

Good news! Cheers for passing that on. 

 

You might have missunderstood me. 

When I said they told me its been caused by HCs I meant like some time ago. (Some month)

With "But they stated they fixed it." I meant that they wrote in the Changelog they fixed it while it is still not working for me. (Again, that might be a mod incompatibility. I'm still testing around)

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

You might have missunderstood me. 

When I said they told me its been caused by HCs I meant like some time ago. (Some month)

With "But they stated they fixed it." I meant that they wrote in the Changelog they fixed it while it is still not working for me. (Again, that might be a mod incompatibility. I'm still testing around)

So is it just not working with HC or is it not working in general for you?

I haven't tried HC yet, but without it, I have no issues at all with CAS support using SAD.

[friznit2 350]

@Moon_Child - are you using any AI mods (e.g. VCOM)? That kind of behaviour is often caused by AI mods taking over. Most AI mods have a setvariable option to disable them, which you can apply in the CS module init line.

[Moon_chilD 200]

Thanks for the response.

 

We actually use ASR AI. I'll now switch over to VCOM because 1. I can't find an appropriate code and 2. I'm not 100% satisfied with ASR anyway. 
One question though. Do you mean the "Code" field or the "Initialization" of the Module? Because if you mean the First, the Artillery does not have such a field!

[S.Crowe 142]

@Moon_chilD

 

You have to turn VCOM AI off on all Combat Support Units. Look on the VCOM forum for how to turn that stuff off. As a quick test, remove VCOM and try the mission again. I bet you will see those "bugs" disappear.

 

@ALiVE Developers

 

Congrats on the release. I am happy to hear that you are going to let the community help out in designing ALiVE. I think ALiVE has a lot more potential with the upcoming Eden update. I can think of a few ways to integrate the two.

[Guest]

New release frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

ALiVE - Advanced Light Infantry Virtual Environment v1.0

Community Base addons A3

** Armaholic now supports authors with donation button/links. When you have any donation/support links please contact me!

[Moon_chilD 200]

@Moon_chilD

 

You have to turn VCOM AI off on all Combat Support Units. Look on the VCOM forum for how to turn that stuff off. As a quick test, remove VCOM and try the mission again. I bet you will see those "bugs" disappear.

 

Yeah, I already understood that.

The question is where does that code go. In the "code" field or in the "Initialization" field on the CS. I ask because the Artillery CS does not have a "code" field.

(Will test it without Vcom soon)

[friznit2 350]

I have just uploaded ALiVE to Steam. This is the official Steam release of 1.0 from the dev team so please don't flag it!

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

I have just uploaded ALiVE to Steam. This is the official Steam release of 1.0 from the dev team so please don't flag it!

Nice.

Do all of these downloads include the latest @aliveserver or do we need to still get it from War Room, as alluded to in the first post?

[Megiddo 73]

Very nice work!

 

Congrats on the release guys, and thank you.