ALiVE.OS · ALiVE 3 Development
Civilian Command
The behind-the-scenes brain that decides what each ambient civilian does next
In development · ALiVE 3
ALiVE 3 is in active development. This briefing describes work in progress, and the behaviour it covers is subject to change as testing continues. Check the changelog at the foot of the page for what has moved recently.
On this page
Overview
What Civilian Command does
Civilian Command has no Eden module of its own and nothing to place or configure in the mission editor. It is the background system that picks and runs the actual activity for every ambient civilian: wandering around, doing housework, sitting by a campfire, sleeping, gathering in groups, or (depending on the area's tension level) fleeing, going rogue, or turning into a suicide bomber. Mission makers do not interact with it directly, it works automatically whenever ALiVE's civilian population is running.
Every few seconds each civilian rolls the dice against a set of behaviors, weighted by time of day and by how hostile the surrounding area currently is. Calmer areas favour everyday activities like random movement, housework, and campfires. As local hostility rises, the odds shift toward turning rogue, slipping away to become a suicide bomber, and simply standing and watching. Fleeing is not part of this roll, it is a reaction to gunfire nearby, and civilians only arm for sabotage when the insurgency campaign sends them to. When a behavior finishes, or a civilian is invited into a nearby meeting or gathering, the system quietly hands them their next activity.
Capabilities
What it handles
Ordinary daily life
Covers the mundane behaviors: wandering the area, doing housework, sleeping indoors at night, sitting at a shared campfire, and observing surroundings. These are the default behaviors in low-tension areas.
Meetings and gatherings
Civilians can start or join small meetings and gatherings with other nearby civilians, giving crowds of civilians a more natural, grouped feel instead of everyone moving independently. Both drop out as an area's tension rises: meetings stop forming above low tension, and gatherings stop forming once tension is high.
Panic, rogue, and sabotage
In more hostile areas civilians are more likely to turn rogue and become hostile, or slip away to become a suicide bomber. How likely this is rises in steps as the tension level of the surrounding cluster of civilians moves through five bands (under 10, 10 to 39, 40 to 69, 70 to 99, and 100 or more), rather than with one fixed chance. Fleeing isn't part of that roll, it's a reaction to gunfire nearby, and civilians only arm for sabotage when the insurgency campaign sends them to.
Recent work
What's changed lately
- Civilians share a campfireA civilian who picks the campfire first looks for a fire another civilian has going within 30 m and sits down by it. They only light a new fire when there's none nearby, so a town no longer gets a fire on every doorstep. A fire goes when the civilian who lit it does; a mission maker's own fires are never joined or put out.
- Civilians sleep indoors, at nightA civilian only lies down to sleep at night and only with a building over them. Before, some lay on their doorsteps, in daylight too; now they go on to something else instead. Sleepers get up as soon as night is over.
- Campfires no longer burn civiliansThe night-time campfire activity used to spawn the fire exactly on top of the sitting civilian, so they slowly took damage and could die while resting by it. The fire now appears a couple of metres in front of them instead, so campfire scenes no longer quietly kill the civilians using them.
- Rogue civilians stay hostile during a chaseA bug could flip a rogue (attacking) civilian back to a friendly side mid-chase, causing them to stop being treated as a threat. This has been fixed so rogue civilians remain hostile for the whole encounter.
- Suicide vest gear is now configurableThe vest used by suicide-bomber and sabotage behaviors was hardcoded to one specific item. It now reads from a configurable list (the
ALIVE_civCommandSuicideVestmission-namespace variable), so mission makers can vary or override the gear those civilians spawn with by setting it in the mission's init.
Status
Where it stands
Full behavior set active
All of the everyday, social, and threat-response behaviors described above are implemented and run automatically as part of ambient civilian population.
Tension-aware behavior selection
Behavior odds shift automatically as local hostility rises or falls, without any mission maker setup needed.
Recent bug fixes verified in code
The campfire damage issue and the rogue civilian side-flip issue are both fixed in the current version.
Testing
How you can help
There is nothing to configure, so testing means watching ambient civilians in a running mission. Confirm civilians cycle naturally between activities like wandering, housework, sleeping, and campfires without dying or freezing. Raise local hostility and confirm some civilians start going rogue, and that a rogue civilian stays hostile until dealt with rather than reverting to friendly mid-chase. Fleeing is a separate reaction to nearby gunfire, and civilians only arm themselves for sabotage when the insurgency campaign sends them to, so neither confirms the hostility roll on its own. Specifically check that civilians sitting at a campfire at night survive the full duration instead of taking damage, that civilians in one area gather round a shared fire instead of each lighting their own, and that nobody is lying asleep outside or in daylight.
Spotted a problem? Please report it on the ALiVE issue tracker on GitHub, with the map, rough location and what the units were doing so it can be reproduced.
Changelog
Updates to this page
- 2026-10-30A civilian who turns suicide bomber or rogue now joins the insurgents' own side, so in a GUER insurgency against BLUFOR he shows green, not OPFOR red.
- 2026-10-15Civilians share a campfire: one looks for a fire another civilian has going within 30 m and sits by it, and lights a new one only when none is near. A fire goes when the civilian who lit it does.
- 2026-10-15Civilians only lie down to sleep at night and only with a building overhead. Before, some lay on their doorsteps, in daylight too; they now go on to something else.
- 2026-08-06Corrected which behaviours the tension roll actually picks: fleeing is a reaction to nearby gunfire and sabotage is ordered by the insurgency campaign, neither is chosen by the roll.
- 2026-07-27Page first published.