ALiVE.OS · ALiVE 3 Development
Startup Screen
What ALiVE shows while a mission is setting itself up
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 Startup Screen does
Starting a mission holds every machine until the server has finished placing units and setting up the commanders. On a large mission that is minutes of black screen saying nothing at all, and it reads as a crash rather than as work in progress. ALiVE now puts up its own screen for that wait.
It carries the terrain and the faction you are playing, which modules are still working, a progress bar and percentage, how long the wait has taken, and how many groups and vehicles have been placed so far. Escape still reaches the pause menu while it is up, so Abort and the rest of the menu stay available throughout. The screen takes itself down when startup finishes, ending on a short Ready frame.
Capabilities
What it handles
Where you are and who with
The terrain, the nearest named location, and your faction and side. This is worked out once when the screen appears, so it costs nothing while the wait runs.
What is still holding things up
Names the modules the wait depends on that haven't finished yet, up to three at a time, alongside a bar and a percentage. Several of the same module show once, with a count beside the name. A module that hasn't started yet is named too, even when a module the wait doesn't count is the one running ahead of it. The elapsed time and the count of groups and vehicles placed keep moving even while the percentage sits still.
Modules starting and finishing
A running list in grey underneath, showing modules as they begin and complete. It holds at most three lines at a time, so a line can be pushed off by newer ones well before its twenty-second age limit is reached. A slow module can leave this area empty for minutes at a time, which is expected.
Anything that went wrong
Red where a module stopped, amber where it carried on regardless. Faults stay listed rather than scrolling away, but the list holds at most five: once a sixth distinct fault is raised, the oldest drops off. Repeats of the same fault are shown once.
Overhaul
What changed
- It stops waiting, and tells you what it was waiting forIf a module stops part way through startup, the screen now gives up once the percentage has sat still for fifteen minutes, instead of waiting half an hour. A startup that keeps finishing modules always comes down after about 30 minutes. It names the module that never reported in, and no longer says the mission is ready when it isn't. Giving up only removes the screen; the modules carry on setting the mission up.
- Replaces a silent waitBefore this there was nothing at all during startup on a large mission, which is where the reports of ALiVE hanging on load came from. The screen cannot cover the engine's own mission loading or the briefing map, so a mission quick enough to finish while its briefing is still being read may never show it. The long startups it exists for run well past that point and are spent standing in the world, which is where it appears.
- Faults are visible to players, not just in the logWarnings and errors raised during startup used to reach the log only, which nobody reads while sat waiting. They now appear on the screen as they happen, told apart by colour so that something slow does not look like something broken.
Status
Where it stands
A screen during startup
Appears automatically on every machine present while the mission is still setting up. Nothing to place and nothing to configure. A player who joins a mission that has already finished starting up does not see it.
Progress from the modules that gate the wait
The percentage is the share of gating modules finished, counted from the same list the server itself waits on.
Faults surfaced as they happen
Errors and warnings shown in colour, kept up to five at a time; a sixth distinct fault pushes the oldest off the list.
Testing
How you can help
Start any ALiVE mission with enough placed for startup to take a while. The screen should appear once you are in the world, stay centred as its contents change, and clear itself when startup finishes.
Worth reporting: text running off the top or bottom of the screen, the block sitting off centre, a bar that never fills or fills instantly, a percentage that reaches one hundred long before the screen clears, ordinary progress shown in red as though it were a fault, or the screen failing to clear at all and leaving you looking at black. If that last one happens, Escape still opens the pause menu.
On a light mission startup can finish while you are still reading the briefing, so you may not see the screen at all. That is expected and is not worth reporting.
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
- 2026-10-29The ALiVE logo on the loading screen follows the calendar: a Halloween logo on 31 October, an Easter one for a week either side of Easter Sunday, and a Christmas one from 18 December to 1 January. An Outbreak mission has its own zombie logo. The standard logo is a new stone version.
- 2026-10-08On a terrain ALiVE has no index for, the startup screen now says so, and that the Map Indexer module can make one. It used to go to the server log only, so thin objectives and camps had no visible reason.
- 2026-08-18Missions on maps with airfields start faster: about 160 seconds off the wait on a Khe Sanh dedicated server. That's a different mission from the Cam Lao Nam figures above, so don't add the two savings together.
- 2026-08-17Dedicated startup is much quicker: 536 seconds down to 347 on a Cam Lao Nam dedicated server, waiting at the briefing map throughout. Repeat runs of the same build vary by about forty seconds, so smaller differences than that don't mean anything.
- 2026-08-16Missions set themselves up faster. The airfield survey, the widest sweep ALiVE does, no longer repeats itself for every position ALiVE tries to build on.
- 2026-08-16A cluster that sits wholly inside an airfield skips its first search pass there, instead of trying six hundred and sixty-seven positions and being refused every one. The wider retry that follows still runs if it's needed.
- 2026-08-16Measured on a Cam Lao Nam dedicated server, holding at the briefing map throughout. Treat it as a modest improvement rather than a figure: repeat runs of the same build vary by about forty seconds, wider than the change itself.
- 2026-08-16On a dedicated server the screen now tells you what it's waiting for. It used to say only "Getting started" from beginning to end, and name "something that did not give its name" if it gave up.
- 2026-08-16The running commentary and any warnings now appear too; on a dedicated server everything but the bar used to be blank. Where a mission carries several of the same module, the number still going is shown beside the name.
- 2026-08-16The screen no longer calls a healthy mission failed. It used to come down after fifteen minutes however well the work was going; fifteen minutes now means fifteen minutes with nothing happening.
- 2026-08-16A machine that was never told anything gets different wording from one that watched the work stop. Expect warnings here that a dedicated server never showed you before; they were always happening.
- 2026-08-15The screen now gives up after fifteen minutes instead of half an hour and names what it was still waiting on. It says plainly that parts of the mission may not be set up, and the modules carry on behind it.
- 2026-08-14The screen now names what's actually holding startup up. It used to sit at 92 per cent naming Player Options while the Air Component Commander ran for seventy seconds. Worth reporting any point where the named module and the log disagree.
- 2026-08-14Page first published, covering the new startup screen: what it shows, how progress is counted, and how faults are told apart from ordinary progress.