RED
RED is the Red Faction Level Editor. RED is usually assumed to mean "Red EDitor".
Levels in Red Faction are comprised of BSP brushes and meshes exported from 3D Studio Max 4.2 or 5.0.
Purpose
The purpose of RED is simply to produce levels (maps) for the PC and Ps2 game "Red Faction".
RED can also be used to test various edits when developing Mods.
Functionality
- Brushes: BSP Brushes make up the bulk of a level. They define rooms and objects within those rooms. Brushes are often used in custom levels as a substitute for static meshes because RED does not support adding additional meshes without developing a seperate mod. Brushes can be edited in several ways. The 2 most useful ways are vertex editing and face editing.
- Textures: Textures are what you see on the polygons (faces) in a level. Textures are applied to all surfaces of a polygon in RED editor. When calculating/adding lightmaps, another texture map (called a lightmap) is added to each surface of your level. This is a grayscale image which tells the surface how illuminated it should be.
- Objects: There are many objects available to be used inside of RED. All objects in RED can be classified into the following categories:
User Friendliness
RED drew on elements from all the other level editors and 3D applications that Volition's level designers had used in the past. They had RED designed the way they wanted.
History
Customization
A few years ago, RED-FROG released his own custom modified version of RED, called RED-Optimized. This version saw enlarged important buttons, removed help strings and removal of the splash screen.