Enabling Debugging Information

ALiVE presents debugging information in many ways, but it is primarily by:

Map Markers

Chat Messages / Alerts

As the mission builder, you have a huge amount of flexibility in what debugging information gets displayed; each module in the ALiVE set has a simple “Yes/No” setting for Debug to enable or disable the display of information.

The following modules will simply show you various chat messages or alerts as they make updates. I will not cover these in more detail here as the messages themselves will be pretty explanatory:

ALiVE (Required)

AI Commander

Player Multispawn

ALiVE Weather

I was unable to discern what debugging information the following modules provide:

C2ISTAR

Player Options

Player Logistics (Disable)

Military Logistics

AI Skill

Note this does not mean these modules don’t provide any info; it just means I’m not aware of it yet.

Module Debugging Info

The rest of the article will cover the modules that provide a little more detailed information.

Virtual AI System

The VAIS module is responsible for virtualizing the AI units; as such, it provides debugging information on where AI units are and whether they have been spawned or virtualized.

Units are represented by markers on the map, which is placed at the position of the Group Leader. If the AI group is currently virtualized, the marker will be faded, as you can see in the bottom left of the screenshot with groups e12 and e9. If the AI group is currently spawned in and active, then the marker will be solid and bright, as you can see in the top right of the screenshot with groups e0, e4, and e11.

When each group receives a task or is moving, their next waypoint is marked on the map as an X with a number that corresponds to the group number.

This is one of the more important debugging aspects when building your missions as it will help you identify where ALiVE is placing your units and where they’re moving to.

Admin Actions

This is a good segue into ALiVE’s Admin Actions, available through the ALiVE Menu when you are playing a mission and are logged in as the admin of the game. The Admin Actions give you several different options for toggling debugging information.

In addition to turning the VAIS debugging on and off in the editor module, you can also toggle these map markers using the ALiVE Admin Actions. While in the game as the admin, open your ALiVE Menu > Admin Actions > Activate Profiles Debug.

The Admin Actions are:

Enable Ghosting — Makes AI units completely ignore all game admins.

Enable Teleporting — Allows the Admin to left click on the map to teleport their unit

Teleport Units — Allows the Admin to left click a unit’s marker on the map then left click again to teleport that group

Activate Profiles Debug — Toggles the VAIS debugging map markers

Activate CQB Debug — Toggles the debugging map markers for the CQB module (more on that later)

Activate Units Marking — Marks every unit in the game on the map for 15 seconds

Profile non-profiled Units — Adds all AI units in the game to the ALiVE profiler so that ALiVE commanders will take control of them

Military Placement Objectives

We’ve seen that with the VAIS debugging, we can see where our units are and where they’re moving to. Probably the next most important thing to identify is the objectives that our Commanders will target. Enabling debugging on any of the Military Placement modules will create a map marker like this at every single objective identified by a Military AI Commander: