Open-source life and roleplay for Arma Reforger

Real cash.
Real keys.
A fine on paper.

Life Framework is a life/RP framework where the things that matter are objects in the world. The money in your pocket can be taken off your body. Your car key is an item someone can steal. A police fine is a ticket you carry to the station desk.

We prove it on a 1989 Everon server we run ourselves. It is not out yet. We are building the M1 playtest town now; private playtests with friends come next, then the public Workshop release.

Follow the roadmap Join the Discord

The main street of the playtest village: a narrow asphalt road between old plastered houses with tiled roofs, yellow lamp posts, a bus shelter, and a parked sedan. — The main street of the M1 playtest village, built from vanilla Everon buildings. Every site in the loop sits along this road.Work in progressPlaytest village, dedicated-server client8 Nov 2026PR #137

Playtest village · in progress

Status notice · 8 Nov 2026

In development

M1 Playtest Town

A signposted test town where a stranger can play the whole loop on a dedicated server with nobody helping. Then two or three private playtests with friends, the fixes they turn up, and the first public Workshop release with a showcase video.

26 of 29scopes done

See every scope

M0 · doneFoundation
M1 · you are herePlaytest Town
M2Living town
M3Framework release
M4Flagship live

What makes it different

Three rules we build by

In the world, not in a menu
Cash, keys, ID cards, a fine ticket, goods on a shelf, a notice on a board. Feedback comes from the world first: an item changing hands, a sound, a door that opens. A screen shows up only where it beats walking around, like typing an amount, and then it looks like a paper form or a terminal.
The in-world rule
A framework, proven by a flagship
Server owners host it, configure it, and add jobs and shops without forking. Our own 1989 Everon server is the proof that it plays. The core knows nothing about 1989. Everon is a content pack on top, so a modern setting runs on the same systems.
For server owners
Open source, built for agents
MIT on GitHub. The repo is set up so an AI agent can pick up a scope cold and finish it, and a person can read every line it wrote. Nothing counts until it is proven: tests that can fail, a check on every pull request, and a harness that walks the street in the game and takes screenshots.
How to contribute

The ambition is the most played and most built-upon mod in Arma's history. We get there by being the most playable, the most provable, and the easiest to contribute to, in that order.

From docs/direction.md

Captured in the game

From the playtest village

Work in progress

Until 8 November our test world was a white grid with the sites in a row. Now it is a small 1989 village built from vanilla Everon buildings, with every M1 site on one street and the test fixtures fenced off to the side. The sites still need their signs, sounds, and polish. Every picture here is a capture from the game, linked to the pull request it came from.

A cobbled village square with a stone fountain, two large lime trees, green benches, and houses beyond. — The square at the spawn: cobbles, a fountain, the pub, lime trees. A new player starts here.Work in progressPlaytest village8 Nov 2026PR #137

A grey two-storey post office with a yellow post box on the porch, beside a pink-roofed building and a lamp post. — The post office, where delivery jobs start: a counter and a post box on the porch.Work in progressPlaytest village8 Nov 2026PR #137

A white three-storey police station with a forecourt holding a desk, crates, and figures in uniform. — The police station forecourt: duty desk, armory, and the whitelist check.Work in progressPlaytest village8 Nov 2026PR #137

A road past a weathered apartment block towards a red and white fuel station canopy, with a yellow till counter in the foreground. — The hospital till and the fuel station till, the two small robberies on the street.Work in progressPlaytest village8 Nov 2026PR #137

A cork notice board in the old grid test world with a paper sheet that reads MINING AREA. Soldiers stand at tables and a spoil heap in the background. — A sign board with its site name printed on the paper. The game draws the title onto the sheet; nothing is added afterwards.Work in progressDebugWorld before the village8 Nov 2026PR #138

Before the village

A wide shot of the old test street from above: cars, desks, crates, a garage and jeeps in one row on a white grid. — Before the village: every site in one row on a white grid.Work in progressDebugWorld before the village8 Nov 2026PR #138

The bar for M1

One loop, start to finish

A stranger joins a dedicated server and gets through this without asking anyone. Every step gives feedback in the world and is checked from the player's view. Then we restart the server, and what they earned is still there.

01Arrive: register at the town clerk, get an ID card, read the town board. Everyone starts civilian; whitelisted players clock in as police at the station.
02Earn: take a job, gather or process, get paid in cash.
03Spend and save: shop, bank at the ATM, buy a vehicle.
04Crime: rob a till, a bank, a hospital; carry contraband.
05Consequence: police respond, arrest, fine, jail.
06Ownership: an organization, a hideout, a garage.
07Restart the server: everything a player earned is still there.

Devlog

Lately

The whole devlog

Merged

8 Nov 2026 · #215website: serve from life-framework.org.
Automated ship from worktree domain-cutover.
8 Nov 2026 · #213Car lot rows say what is missing in one short line.
docs/playtest/rc-2026-11-08.md: the M1 release-candidate QA pass. Each journey step is marked works / fixed / known / not seen, with the evidence, the PRs it produced (#198 #200 #204 #206 #209 #210...
8 Nov 2026 · #212Playtest characters own a garaged and an impounded car.
From the maintainer's playtest: a test player should already own a car in the garage and one at the impound lot, so both flows can be tried right away.
8 Nov 2026 · #211Test pool: reclaim dead-owner and hung slots, re-read config per poll.
Stale remote slot. A remote holder can outlive its owner. On the real box, a holder whose local ssh had been killed kept server-2001-s2 locked.
8 Nov 2026 · #210The police kit carries the station car key.
From the maintainer's playtest: the police kit should include the keys to the cop car.

Decided

8 Nov 2026 · decisionWe take leverage from community open source, within its licence
Permissive work (MIT, BSD, Apache, CC0, CC-BY, OFL for fonts) may be copied and modified. We keep its notices and credit it in the README and in THIRD_PARTY.md or assets-source/LICENSES.md.
8 Nov 2026 · decisionA very small number of Workshop dependencies is acceptable
A dependency must be maintained, widely used, on terms that allow depending on it, and carry something we cannot reasonably build (for example thebonbon's animations, under evaluation in docs/ecosystem.md).
8 Nov 2026 · decisionThe Workshop build is APL; the GitHub repo stays MIT
The build we publish on the Workshop is licensed under the Arma Public License (APL). The source on GitHub stays MIT.
8 Nov 2026 · decisionThe framework is always free; the flagship may take cosmetic donations
The framework is never monetised. The 1989 Everon flagship may take donations for cosmetics only, within Bohemia's server monetisation policy.

Where to go from here

Three ways in

Players
There is nothing to download yet. Join the Discord to hear about playtests. The first public build goes on the Workshop after the private rounds.
Join the Discord
Server owners
What the framework gives you, what the flagship adds on top, how it is configured, and which licence covers which copy.
Read the brief
Contributors
Every piece of work is a GitHub issue with its files and its acceptance proof. Pick one, prove it in the game, open a pull request.
Pick a scope

Life Framework continues the Everon Life framework by Arkensor (MIT). The EL_ class prefix is that heritage. See the README for credits.

Real cash.Real keys.A fine on paper.