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ALiVE.OS · ALiVE 3 Development

Index a Terrain

Paste a terrain's Steam Workshop link and ALiVE's indexing server builds the index for you. Check what it made, then send it in.

New · in testing

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

Index a terrain from its Workshop page

Indexing a terrain yourself means installing DeWrp, setting ALiVE up by hand and sitting through Arma's indexer. Here a server does all of it: it downloads the terrain and whatever it needs, reads its objects, sorts them into ALiVE's categories and runs the indexer. You can watch each step as it happens, check every object when it's done, and send the result in for review.

Live

The indexer right now

Checking the indexing server...

Indexing now

Last finished

Waiting

Pending

Start

Index a terrain

The terrain's own Workshop page. Anything it lists as required is downloaded too. Creator DLC terrains can't be read this way, but ALiVE supports them already.

Decides which compositions ALiVE places on the terrain (camps, HQs, roadblocks and so on); it doesn't change the index itself. Pick by the terrain's overall look. Urban unless you pick another, as with the in-game indexer. More on this setting

Log

Indexed terrains

This is not the full list. Every terrain ALiVE supports, and the index version each one has, is on the Terrain Compatibility page.

Version is the ALiVE 3 index format a terrain was made with. The newest, v3.1, shows in green and is current; anything older shows in amber and is worth indexing again. v3.1 measures every building's positions in the game and lists trenches, bunkers and towers as fieldworks. v3.0 was the first ALiVE 3 indexer.

Columns
Files

How it works

What the indexer does

  1. Download

    The server fetches the terrain from the Steam Workshop, then every item its Workshop page lists as required. Any DLL files in them are deleted, since a terrain doesn't need them.

  2. Find the terrain

    One mod can hold several terrains (CUP Terrains - CWA has five), so the server reads the mod's config to find them and asks you to pick one if there's a choice.

  3. Read its objects

    DeWrp reads every object placed on the terrain and where it sits.

  4. Sort the objects

    Most objects are already known from the terrains ALiVE supports, so they take the categories those terrains give them. Objects with telling names are sorted by matching them against those, and an AI model suggests categories for the few that are left. Every answer is kept, so no object is ever worked out twice.

  5. Index

    A headless Arma server runs ALiVE's own indexer on the result: sector analysis, then military and civilian objectives, just as the in-game indexer does.

  6. Check and send

    You get every object with its categories and where they came from, the index to download, and a button to send it in for review.

Worth knowing

Good to know

  • One terrain is indexed at a time, so your job may wait in a queue. The page shows how many jobs are ahead of yours.
  • A big terrain takes a while. Downloading its mods can take longer than indexing it, and the indexer itself runs for anything from two minutes to an hour.
  • The index is made with no player in the game, the same way a dedicated server would make it. If something looks wrong in game, say so when you submit.

Something here wrong or missing? Please raise it on the ALiVE issue tracker on GitHub, with your RPT log. Say which terrain and include its Workshop link.

Changelog

Updates to this page

  • First published.