Alpine Level Design

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Revision as of 13:44, 18 December 2024 by Goober (talk | contribs)



This page lists all major differences between normal Red Faction level design and level design for Alpine Levels, as featured in Alpine Faction.

Compatibility

Alpine Levels are playable only using Alpine Faction.

Due to features unavailable in those clients, Alpine Levels are not playable while using older client versions such as any version of Red Faction (official builds), Pure Faction, or Dash Faction.

Lighting

Lightmaps

In Alpine Levels, the game does not apply lightmap clamping. This means that the full range of available colors is available - including fully unlit (black) areas. Put another way, the way your lightmaps look when you calculate them in the level editor is how they will look in game.

Dynamic Lights

Alpine Levels can utilize dynamic lights - configured via the "Dynamic" checkbox in light properties. Using the Anchor_Marker event (described below), you can also move dynamic lights using moving groups.

Note: Dynamic lights are far more taxing on game performance than normal (static) lights. You should keep this in mind when designing, and use dynamic lights only where necessary to achieve your desired effect.

Skyboxes

In Alpine Levels, while you can still make static skyboxes as you always could before if you wish, through the Set_Skybox event (described below) you can enhance your skyboxes. The key differences are listed below.

Note: When making an enhanced skybox, while you still do need to place a Room Effect in the room that is to be your sky room, you should not select the "Sky Room" type on the Room Effect - instead, leave "type" set to "None", or set it to "Liquid Room" if you wish to have a liquid surface in your sky room. The UID of the Room Effect is the skybox room UID you will specify in the properties of the Set_Skybox event.

Eye Anchor

When setting an enhanced skybox via the Set_Skybox event, you can specify an "eye anchor" UID. This must be the UID of an Anchor_Marker event that is inside the skybox room you are using. If you specify a valid "eye anchor" UID, this will be the position from which the sky room will be visible when projected as your skybox. You can also place the Anchor_Marker in a moving group and move it with keyframes if you wish.

Caution: Moving the "eye anchor" with keyframes can be very disorienting and take away from your level if you are not careful. In general, you should avoid quick movements.

Relative Position

When setting an enhanced skybox via the Set_Skybox event, you can turn on "use relative position" and specify a "relative position scale". If you do, players can move around "inside the sky room" as they play your map. The position of your camera in relation to the world origin (position 0,0,0) is mapped to the "eye" position in the skybox, relative to the "eye anchor" position in the sky room. The position is scaled using the scale.

  • A "relative position scale" of 1.0 maps camera position relative to world origin to eye position relative to eye anchor position at a ratio of 1:1 - every 1m moved in the world is 1m moved in the skybox.
  • A "relative position scale" of 0.25 however, means every 1m moved in the world is 0.25m moved in the skybox. Using this, you can make your skybox much smaller than your actual level.

Note: Relative position requires you specify a scale and an eye anchor (and of course a skyboox room UID). If you do not specify each of these, ticking the "use relative position" option will have no effect.

Triggers

In multiplayer, unlike levels made for other versions of the game, triggers in Alpine Levels can activate events directly. This includes stock game events and Alpine Events (described below).

The following events are not supported in multiplayer and will not function if triggered:

  • Load_Level
  • Endgame
  • Defuse_Nuke
  • Drop_Point_Marker
  • Go_Undercover
  • Win_PS2_Demo
  • Play_Video
  • When_Picked_Up

Items

In single player, unlike levels made for other versions of the game, Alpine Levels allow the player to pick up the Multi Super Health and Multi Super Armor items.

Events

Fixes

Outside of Alpine Levels, using the delay parameter with the following stock game events leads to that event breaking - it's effect will never apply. In Alpine Levels, the delay parameter can be used on these events without issue - just like any other event.

  • Play_Sound
  • Cyclic_Timer
  • Make_Invulnerable
  • Alarm_Siren
  • Unhide

Enhanced Functionality

In Alpine Levels, some stock game events have been improved in various ways:

  • Headlamp_State - If not linked to any specific entities, applies to the player. Can be used to toggle the player flashlight.
  • Holster_Weapon - Could always be turned on to holster the weapon of linked entities. In Alpine Levels, can also be turned off to force those entities to unholster their weapons.
  • Holster_Player_Weapon - Could always be turned on to holster the player's weapon. In Alpine Levels, can also be turned off to unholster the player's weapon.

Dash Faction

Additionally, the following events had functionality added in Dash Faction 1.5.0. This functionality is not specific to Alpine Levels - it is available on any levels when using Dash Faction 1.5.0+ or any version of Alpine Faction. On other client versions (including all official client versions), although levels that use this functionality can be loaded, the events will have no effect.

  • Set_Liquid_Depth - Had no effect in the stock game. Can now be used to smoothly change the depth of a liquid room.
  • Switch_Model - Used to swap the mesh used by linked clutter objects to a specified file. Could be used in stock game as long as the specified mesh file was a stock game file. Can now be used to specify custom meshes distributed with levels.

Alpine Events

The following Alpine Events are completely new and are only available for use in Alpine Levels:

AF_Catalysts

Icon Event E.png

AF_When_Dead

Upgraded version of the stock "When_Dead" event. Does not require a slot in the savegame file, so there is no limit on the number of "AF_When_Dead" events that you can use in a single map. Also supports repeated activations unlike the stock version.
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When_Picked_Up

Fires a message to all linked triggers, movers, and events whenever a linked item is picked up by the player. Works in single player only.

AF_Flow

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Sequence

Each activation of this event routes the message to the next link in sequential order. After the last link, the cycle resets and the first link is called. Note the order of links is determined by the order in which you add them.
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Difficulty_Gate

Tests if the game is set to the specified difficulty and forwards messages only if true.
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Valid_Gate

Tests if the specified UID is a valid object and forwards messages only if true. In the case of objects that have life values (ie. clutter and entities), "valid" means alive.
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Inside_Gate

Tests if an object (default: the player who activated the event) is in a specified area of the map. Forwards messages if true.
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Gametype_Gate

Performs a test on the gametype of the game. Forwards message to links only if test passes. Works only in multiplayer (test will always fail in single player)
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Switch_Random

Randomly select one of this event's links and send an on signal to it.
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Fixed_Delay

Identical to the normal Delay event, but cannot be retriggered. Will forward a message to all links after the specified delay. Messages sent to this event while a message is queued are ignored.
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Goal_Gate

Performs a test on a specified goal (integer variable). Forwards message to links only if test passes.
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Environment_Gate

Performs a test on the environment of the game. Forwards message to links only if test passes.

AF_General

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Clone_Entity

Creates a clone of the linked entity with the same properties and settings as its source.
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Set_Player_World_Collide

Control whether the player collides with level geometry.
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Set_Level_Hardness

Set the hardness for the loaded level (size of geo craters).
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Set_Difficulty

Set the difficulty level of the game.
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Set_Skybox

Set the room to project as skybox.
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HUD_Message

Display a green HUD message in the bottom middle of the screen (like the helper text when you pick up items).
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Play_Video

Play a .bik format video.
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Force_Unhide

Force unhide/hide an object with no conditions. Virtually identical to the stock "Unhide" event, except this one will do it regardless of player line of sight or any other factors.
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Set_Fog_Far_Clip

Sets the far clip plane used for distance fog.

AF_Utility

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SetVar

Reconfigure a variable on linked events. Only supports new Alpine Faction events. Supports "delay" (float) as a variable name to set event delay. Other variable names are as indicated on this page. Specify the name of the variable to be set in the script name for SetVar using this scripe name format: "SetVar_VARNAME" where "VARNAME" is the variable name.
Icon Event E.png

Remove_Link

Used to remove links. If "remove_all" is turned off (default), removes links between objects this event is linked to. If "remove_all" is turned on, remove all links between every object this event is linked to and any other objects.
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Goal_Math

Used to perform math operations on goals (integer variables). Applies the operation to any level (non-persistent) goals, as well as any persistent goals that are loaded.
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Clear_Queued

Clears queued message (if any) on all linked events. Queued messages are messages that are queued per a configured delay value on that event.
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Add_Link

Adds links from the first link in the link array to each other link in the array. Link array is ordered based on the order in which you linked this event to other objects.
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Anchor_Marker

Used to "drag along" some object types that can't normally be added to moving groups. Simply add the Anchor Marker to the moving group, then link the Anchor_Marker to the objects you want to bring. That object/those objects will have their position locked to the position of the Anchor_Marker event as it travels with the mover. Supports Lights (Dynamic only), Particle Emitters, and Push Regions