We specifically stated that 1.0.4 was broken due to Arma 3 1.58 regression. This issue meant that player persistence was broken.
That issue is fixed in 1.0.5.
We specifically stated that 1.0.4 was broken due to Arma 3 1.58 regression. This issue meant that player persistence was broken.
That issue is fixed in 1.0.5.
Hi Tupolov
We are currently in 1.0.5. :P
Then its likely your respawn settings are incorrect.
How can I put this :)
Persistence works, we test it daily/weekly. No doubt there might be edge cases such as:
If you think something is broken. Validate persistence is working with our ALiVE Quick Start (COOP 9) mission. If it works there, then its likely mission related. Feel free to turn on data debug and submit logs (RPT and plugin log) for your mission.
Hi Tupolev, reason for saving a state whilst 'in persistence' is so you can reboot the box on a schedule using Windows Scheduled Tasks and have it come up and load back into the same mission again, or if there is a crash (small chance but its been known) without any interactions at all. I can currently achieve this and I do - I don't touch the box all week, it loads an alive mission, reboots the box every night but cannot hold persistent maps. To do this I need to send a save state inside the mission on a scheduled time period. I've already asked for that enhancement and I understand that ALiVE can't do that currently. I could probably script something but I'm not sure how to either a) access the game scripting from outside in the Windows environment or b) access the Windows environment from inside the gaming scripting environment - I'm not sure these are possible as developers usually design safety mechanisms to prevent it as its a security risk.
You can't use ALiVE persistence without a server admin initiating a save so we are looking at organised group play, with a start time and an end time. That's a completely different style of gameplay to running a server 24/7 with restarts scheduled. These are fundamentally different approaches and solve different problems, just in this case not mine.
I hope this explains what i'm trying to achieve and why, i don't think anyone is really understanding it because they don't play in the same way. The benefit of this different style is leveraging persistence (proper persistance over days and restarts - unattended) with large scale conflict in order to have quite large ongoing full map campaigns that continue to play themselves out whether there is one player, a dozen players or no players. It allows a solo player to still do key things like moving supplies, setting up mortar pits and defences with ACE and marking the map with these new positions, then later perhaps the main group come on and log (after say a reboot) and then utilise whats been left behind. It allows reconnaisance and preparation to be done in a day/night cycle, sniper teams can attrit, we can have longer logistics resupply timings. And finally, it allows the admin (me) to take absolutely no part in it unless i want to, certainly not to have to turn up, save the map and close up the session when they are done.
If you can see a way to make that happen we can leverage ALiVE to run outside the gameplay session and extend into a proper war with logistics lasting some time without having to be logged into every four hours to manually save and exit form the game and then reboot it, clear up memory, patch server, check security software has latest definitions etc.
Now if I've missed something in my understanding on how to get this to work I would be delighted to be shown the way so I can achieve that.
We understand what you've been getting at :) You're right though, ALiVE does not support autonomous restart. Our whole design was based on the assumption that the admin would be available to login to do a save & exit. Our play testers for the last 4 years (groups like VCB and KH) run ALiVE ops for up to 5 days at a time then an admin logs in, does save & exit, carries out any server admin and restarts and reloads the mission.
The benefits of persistence that you mention are catered for with this model apart from the autonomous unattended restart and the edge case which is server CTD's. I can see the benefit of having an ALiVE server run fully autonomously and we've logged the feature request, but it's not possible currently.
Perhaps now we've released the code Open Source someone will have the time to look into it!
Its not that you can't do autonomous saves with ALiVE, we just haven't tested it.
There's a function you can call on the server. You can probably use something like RCON to call that and achieve what you are trying to do.
I tested it, it works, from the debug console anyway. I'll need to Google RCON and see what it is.
Useful tool that allows remote admin of servers, including multiple people to be admin at the same time. You'll find it invaluable given the use case you described above.
Will the server save always end the mission and be in the foregorund, can it never be automated to run silently? If not then i can stop trying to get the unattended server save and look at database saving instead via IniDB.
Unfortunately, Bercon and Rcon don't run Arma scripting commands, they integrate with chat or they can run a batch restart script (taskkill lol) but I can't seemingly parse the [server] command linked to me in another thread. Which is a shame. It's likely not a (commonly) requested feature.
Spent the morning looking at remote commands and https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Remote_Execution but its not the thing i need.
I think its a shame that the one use case of virtual AI that is really great can't be used unattended. What about working backwards the opposite way and providing the ability to save virtual AI to iniDB? I think I've given up with the server save, it's too restrictive to use.
@azrink Hi All
I believe I have the same problem with thebgpikester. In our server, When the mission is on, we are able to save Loadout, I mean "Player Exit", exit the game and join back, the save loadout load again. Single Player Persistence works. However "Save & Exit" did save and exit as intended however when we load the mission again, It reset to it original state. Even the "Reset to Original" State is blank out. I've been head scratching since 1.0.4. In 1.0.3 the persistence did work.
I can confirm. We have exactly the same issue. As long as the server is running, single players can player exit and return and everything works great. The minute we Server Save and Exit, everything is lost when we start it back up again.
This also breaks the sitreps/spotreps/patrolreps/advanced markers completely. The only way to get them working again is to export a new mission file with a different name.
All of this said, I still know it's half working because the in-game time is the same as when the game was saved. A bunch of the features are just fucked.