#Alpine Faction
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ahh yeah i see, I need to tweak the autogen for ladders a bit so they it doesn't generate waypoints immediately on the edge of the region
yeah they were kind of spinning on it
yeah that makes sense
much better

shoved the updated grid on the bots in the dm pub
havent tested yet but it should work better at least
No, that's actually cool. If you want to make bots good, they should know how the strengths and weaknesses of each weapon and use best available appropriate weapon for a particular encounter.
they will probably have individual preferences and skills for each weapon
so like you could have a bot that really prefers rail but sucks with it
the bots know how to unlock geo secrets now lol, one of them decided he wanted the fusion
did he win 
killed himself in the process but he got a kill i think lol
attabot
funny thing is im pretty sure he used the fusion intentionally to unlock the hmg secret
big brain
dude was like "fuck getting kills, I want that hmg" and just got a kill accidentally
update: one of them also decided he wanted the PR, and another one decided he didn't want to drop off the ledge the normal way and would rather geo through the floor to drop down
lmfao
Haha. Seems like the bots are shaping up though.
I can't wait to run a botmatch for 20 years unattended on a spare PC connected to a backup power supply until they achieve sentience.
they better not act like real people to even talk
bad audience for new arrivals. ๐
I have a plan for that (but yes the server will be able to disable bots talking if they want to lol)
bots talking would be good
they've been running for the past 40 minutes, nice to see their scores are relatively similar lol (they all have the same configured skill values, so that should be the case)
do that thing natalie did back in the day
chain something
Could program some bots that are only interested in distorying props & dacor. Cause thers always that one player ( me ) who just like breaking stuff ( glass, lights, furniture, etc )
mentally ill bots come later
:p
also @brave crown as im sure you're aware, even though these are middle of the road bots their aiming stuff is still going to need a lot of work. right now they do sometimes just hit some insane/impossible bullshit because they seem to have full 360 for target acquisition and no like... minimum threshold either
can confirm they are definitely more whack on that regard
that has been improved somewhat since the last ones you played with, but yes absolutely
so don't be surprised if they just randomly delete you right now lol
they also don't really undersand the macro of the game yet
like i watched a bot get a 4k with the HMG in under 2 seconds and then switch to the grenade and walk around in circles for 15s
wait... that's not what you're supposed to do? ๐ฎ
Can confirm ive watched goober spin around in circles and throw c4s
i have a handful of small behavioural tweaks I want to make later today, and then I'll put some updated bots on the DM pub
I do that too. Mostly in tight hallways with less than 6 entranceways
๐
It fun in to do that in halo with the neddler
XD
do the bots that you are working on need a client or are you able to load them through the server? tried running client on my VPS in the past, did not work well at all.
& with the existing bot software need to have a extra pc on just to run bots.
Coul you shine some light on how you do this? anyways, epic work you are doing ๐
they do run as a client - the client is launched with the -bot command line switch. However, they are controlled by the server. The bot client will authenticate to the server with the bot shared secret and after that it takes its "orders" from the server as it were. Server decides its personality, name, character, skill level, etc.
So, the only actual configuration that normally will need to be done on the client is running
AlpineFactionLauncher.exe -url x.x.x.x:xxxx -bot
I've seen @prisma monolith do that multiple times in ctf
so satisfying to see the autogen make geomod targets lol
added the current iteration of the bots to the ff dm pub
they certainly like geoing open the secrets in dm01 lol
havent quite gotten them smart enough to go for the fusion yet but they'll get there
having tons of fun with these new bots. really good experience
Awesome!
Yeah, they definitely still need some work, but I'm pretty happy so far
Can't wait exploring the maps on my TDM Server with bots.
Are the bots defined in the server-configuration or are the defined by some extra configuration on the server?
Is there need to prepare each level on the server?
... and are the new options already maybe on the github repository available for testing?
Are the bots defined in the server-configuration or are the defined by some extra configuration on the server?
Currently neither - the serverside control of the bots is the intended design, but it's not implemented yet. I don't know exactly what that config process looks like yet, other than it will be controlled by the server
Is there need to prepare each level on the server?
On the server, no. Waypoint grids are used by the client (the server doesn't even know about them). They do need to be prepared ahead of time, and we're working on a distribution method that makes sense (also unconfirmed yet what exactly this will look like). During gameplay, the waypoint grid is updated as players take routes that weren't accounted for in the waypoint grid file loaded at the start of the map, and at the end of the map, the bot saves the updated copy, so it will learn more and more every time it plays the same map with other players
and are the new options already maybe on the github repository available for testing?
Currently the waypoint generation branch is on github, though I wouldn't suggest you use it (there's no real point). The bot itself is not
Well, his ability to avoid walking off ledges when taking corners certainly needs to be improved... but he does know how to play ctf now ๐
lol
here you go, now he is better at navigating around walls/ledges
would be amazing if he used strafes instead of mouse turning
microfaction has a lot of floorspace lol
oh jesus fuck
exhibit A shows a map I am absolutely not manually making a grid for lol
it'd take a month
autogeneration is great though :p
I mean for maps like micro's
its better to autogenerate and then let people fill in the blanks
itl eventually resolve to a happy medium
yeah, the idea is that most maps will be fine with a fully autogenerated grid. There are a handful of very niche things I've found so far where some manual tweaking of an autogenerated grid provides value, but it's very specific
I mean things where it's really not practical to automatically detect it
they came so close to getting the fusion secret open lol
So seems when i new level is loaded the get stuck. ill play for 5 mins and most are still stuck. ill leave the server and come back and they become unstuck and running around
ill hop in
they seem to be running around currently
but it is lobby - was it on a custom map ?
ok thats funny
you taught them to crouch now they're just crouch walking ๐
@brave crown
ok so
when they die - it seems they refind the grid
but sometimes they periodically get stuck again
yeah they defo borked

sec fixing another issue too
@desert crown try them now
im assuming this is just because u didn't waypoint the generators ๐
no they are still getting stuck
wtf
i see
what is it o-o
ok yeah will fix but will take me a bit
file access
there's 1 in now
that one should work fine
hang on
computers are hard
lol
should be fixed now
๐
seems to be a minority situation now
they are getting a little caught at the jump pad
but nowhere else
well and there
they weren't properly loading the waypoints before
i think they just got stuck on that generator cuz of lack of path node
idk if u auto'd for this
ive walked all over it
hope it helps 
OH there's a spawn point there lol
yeah
makes sense, I was tyring to figure out why that bot jumped to there lol
yeah
i think we hadn't jumped to it naturally yet
so ive walked all over it
see if it works
๐
Whoops, I totally forgot to teach the bots how to use ladders
next time the bots are updated, they will know that lol
Its all good, I cant use ladders either
yeah they suck ๐
Ladders are scary irl they just feel dangerous
I'd rather play around on ladders all day irl than 5x on RF
irl jumpads>ladders ๐ค
In Australia, we call them trampolines
RF ladders are incredible
The bots agree too, now that they know how to use them
still needs some tweaking (especially its routines around finding health/armor when it has the flag, it freezes sometimes) but the bots can effectively play warlords with eachother now
is there a way to lock off edits for bots? so that once theres a path that is structurally sound (in cases for CTF where u don't want them runnin gat walls in the tunnel) it cannot be edited by player pathing
locking off edits isn't a good idea for many reasons, but the bot already in all cases strongly prefers taking routes with waypoints that were loaded from the waypoint grid file - it usually only considers waypoints dropped by human players when there's no better path to where it wants to go
Hm?
well if its in CTF does its priority change to focus the flag route and therefore focuses waypoints more aligned with getting to the flag
The bot constantly tracks its goals and decides based on weighting what to do, then does the same for the possible routes to achieve that goal
You can see in the video that when the goal is to steal the flag, it's finding a good route to the flag
I have it so when the bot is navigating around, the waypoints on its current route are highlighted
So you can see the route the bot is planning to go
That might change before they get there based on the evaluation the bot is constantly doing and what happens to it along the way but ya
no i did note that yah
Like in dm, if it's going for a powerful position and someone shoots at it, it might decide to retaliate and chase that player
In ctf if it's killing players and it's flag gets stolen it prioritizes killing the flag carrier
And returning the flag
gotcha
Just to be clear on this -goals are different from routes. The bot's goal in most cases in ctf if both flags are at base is going to be to steal the enemy flag. How it decides to go there comes from it's evaluation of the available options
So it knows about all the routes, it just decides which one it wants to take based on that assessment, which incorporates it's personality etc
fair enough
also i left the bots in the server overnight and they seem to be working fine this morning, so seems like I did solve that issue with them not loading waypoints
๐ฅณ
woohoo!
Just noticed I seem to be taking a huge performance hit in MP vs SP in DX11 mode. On my map, in SP in DX11 I get 350FPS, however if I switch to MP and stand in the same spot I'm only getting 225fps. The only difference I can think of that could affect performance between SP and MP is items spinning VS static but I don't think that should make a 125fps difference.. In DX9 mode the difference is 95fps vs 90fps. So something funky is happening in DX11. ๐ค
There's definitely a lot more happening in MP on a static map than SP on the same static map - gameplay logic, networking, etc. Though I am surprised to see such a difference compared to DX9
This is just hitting "play in multi (camera)" vs "play (camera)" in RED so as close to the same as they could get. Are items lighting calculations happening in real time in DX11 vs static in DX9? What else could be causing the big performance hit only in DX11? ๐ค
NVM, doesn't appear to be dynamic on items in DX11, just looked on another map with more directional lighting and its not changing as the items spin, so I'm out of ideas haha. How do you uncap your fps on a listen server? I want to check if there's a huge change on other maps too or if its unique to this one, but fps is locked at 240 on others so I can't tell. ๐
its to do with particle emitters, we discussed this recently when i was building Blade Runner map
I don't think uncapping FPS on a listen server is (realistically) possible - but also listen server performance is basically irrelevant - testing performance on a dedicated server as a client vs. single player would be the valuable test, and you can do that by uncapping the FPS in the dedicated server config
I am somewhat surprised that listen server performance is worse on average on DX11 compared to DX9 than SP performance is - but I'm not surprised for listen server performance to be bad compared to SP/MP client performance in general
did you have alook at the particle emitter distance activation in mp yet goober ?
i should put it on git hub...
you should yeah
bots almost know how to play KOTH now
or - rather, they do know how to play KOTH now, just very poorly, lol
don't say it, don't say it, don't say it, don't say it
๐
what the people want to know it, can the bots activate the secret button to open the door on the big book on rts mothergoose
and can they spam flame canister on dm02 these are important cobra features right @desert crown
the bots also need to auto do RED FACTTION when someone does it
eventually you will be able to enable bot_braindamage which will give it support for playing with large geos, homing bullets, flamethrower, etc
with a timeout so cant spam
also need one way rail wall glass support
it does support hitting use to activate things, idk how practical it will be there because I can't remember how it works. But the answer is probably
can they spam flame canister
The bots know that the flame can is mostly useless so will use it extremely sparingly
bots also need to auto do RED FACTTION when someone does it
๐
also need one way rail wall glass support
Technically they'd already have this since they know how to use the rail lol. But they won't seek out those positions or anything
I totally forgot active distance didn't work on listen servers. But that doesn't seem to be the issue. I just deleted all the emitters to check and now it goes from 510fps in SP to 235fps on listen server. So only gained 10 fps on the listen server but now the difference is even more extreme. ๐
i think i replicated this on dm02
it was something like 4300fps in sp vs 3800 in mp
but would need more than 5 minutes to really confirm bc a swing at those framerates can be a bunch of factors
Just tested on a dedi and it is much closer to the SP fps. Only dropping like 10fps now vs SP instead of 125. I didn't know there was such a huge difference between dedi and listen server performance.
well, the thing is
when you are running the listen server
your client and the server are running combined and it's all on one thread (process)
so anything that taxes one will drag both of them down, in a rough manner of speaking
when you run the dedicated server on your system, that is using its own thread at any given time
its a standalone process
your OS can give that to any core that's free and it will run unimpeded by the client and vice versa
this is a MASSIVE oversimplification
but that is theoretically why you will always see a difference in this case
hypothetically if you ran one client as a listen server and limited its framerate to something like 30fps, and then connected to that from a separate client on the same computer you would probably see the a similar situation because RF uses so little GPU that it would be a similar perf cost
Ah guess that makes sense.
@crude oyster @prisma monolith @fast crescent @earnest iron @green cobalt @desert crown
@split sleet @slow yarrow @obsidian warren @thorny pumice @nimble sierra @burnt parcel @boreal ether @zinc quiver
I am seeking feedback on a potential PR for Alpine. This feature would give the client the option (with the server's approval) to render colored outlines around players. By default these would be white or red in DM and red or blue in team modes but they would be customizable in terms of color, opacity, and thickness (the latter to a much lesser extent). For reference, they would be functionally identical to player outlines in games like Overwatch and Quake Champions.
I do not see this as being that great of an advantage for visibility or aiming compared to full bright models which are already a client option. But what this would be is a huge benefit to colorblind players in particular - you would not need to mess around with texture swaps or client mods to be able to see people. People could also use some neutral colored skins (like just the normal DM skins) in team modes and only have colored outlines around enemies and teammates to distinguish them. Aesthetically it's maybe a nicer way to get the perks of full bright models without losing the visual fidelity/graphics of non-full bright models as well.
This video is a rough demo of what these would look like in something like ctfwldark. The first half has outlines + full bright models and the second-ish half has full bright off. There's no ETA for this either. Non-pinged folks are welcome to chime in I just didn't want to ping entirely everyone here.
i think all of us would like that
Feedback as in: i am indifferent, I want this, I hate this and it should not exist, etc.
For me it wouldn't make a difference, but i can totally see players like Ghost/Romek etc getting alot of value out of this
Net positive no reason to not let it through 
A PR for alpine? We already have a PR, what does it stand for here?
I think it looks cool, sure go for it
push request
pull request
I'm on the fence. As much as I like the idea, I do have a little nag in the bacm of my mind saying that it's not true to the RF experience.
Equally, I don't play RF as much as others, so I don't think my opinion holds much weight.
ok
good idea to make colors customizable
im imagining it to be a console command - @gaunt lotus ? so you can turn it off if u don't need it
I am indifferent. I only care about things that affect mapping haha
this is my hesitation as well
Another consideration, is instead of having completely customisable colours (as nice as that is), have 3/4 presets that represent the most common colourblind options and the default Red/Blue.
Again, I'm neither for, nor against the concept, just playing Devil's advocate.
I love the idea of customising the colours, but I don't know.
Full bright already breaks that distinction imo
I see no reason not to do something like this in the fullbright spirit. You aren't exactly turning them into bright green blobs like QL has..
green blobs is something you can do already with texture mods and fullbright FWIW
but it's not a 1-click thing from in-game
I do know that Romek has always struggled with the colours even with fullbright, he had to play on red whenever he could
Unless he wasnt using them, I suppose
one thing I'd want to do for this is be able to set an enemy outline color that is always applied regardless of what team you're on - so that your enemy is just always whatever color you want
and then it doesn't matter what team you're on
historically red was always kind of an advantage on a lot of maps
especially with how the screen flashes red when you're shot
Yeah and I like that, because when you're switched between teams 10x a night I occasionally lose track of which colour Im supposed to be shooting
god its so nice not having the red flash
i only need the dmg indicators
that flash is toxic as fuck ๐ญ
"I want this"
for beatonators concern
i genuinely think if it was handled with a console command and can be turned off
people can opt for the OG Vanilla exp 
@brave crown Just played the FF DM server. If they're the new bots, they don't seem very aware that somebody is behind them, even when getting shot
when i looked the bot was putting down like 5 c4 at once without blowing them up
Im a bit on the side with Beatonator. Its just not quite the RF experience, and I still hold that visibility is on the mapper. The accessibility for colorblind is cool, but I also grew up learning how to snipe and be sneaky in this game, and highlighting your snipers is definitely a huge shift for that role
You can argue fullbright, but that's still a mappers choice, and at the moment I feel like changing that is actually removing that control for the mapper. If we have visibility issues currently, I can tweak lighting and colors. Otherwise, im just stuck with the color outline in all my maps
fullbright is actually a client/server negotiated option right now as well as the mapper's choice
like, you can tell your client that you always want fullbrights, and if the server allows it they render that way
So players who don't have that on have a disadvantage visibility on some maps?
this would likely be a similar thing, although I think it would be good if that supported being a per-map option
correct, if the server allows it
I don't love that either ๐ but that's my opinion
I probably should qualify my "I want this":
- I think outlines for your teammates in team gametypes (ideally through walls) is a net positive for information flow in team games
- I feel less strongly on outlines for enemies, but I still think in a case where players want it and the server allows it, it's a net positive for visibility. If a server wants the "vanilla experience", they disallow it, and no players can use it in their server (same as screenshake and bright skins now)
Of course players should have the ability clientside to turn it off, but I see this sort of thing as a player customization preference and accessibility feature, and from both perspectives, a nice to have
Accessibility features that offer buffs end up becoming more of a standard to games. Its true that it is a positive in that direction, but it's also a big shift in overall mechanics if it's the easiest way to spot enemies. Allies I can see this being a huge win, but enemies... ngl, I quit playing games that just tell the opponent where I am if I kill them. Sneaking dies with enemy highlights
Im mostly against enemy highlights
i think bigger shift could be properly addressing 'sneaking' would be fixing the footsteps in this game . so when u run they are always audible... not only with pistol / jumping on certain textures
crouching would be silent
that's something ive brought up as well
as for player model halo's - i need to think about it for a bit
if its serverside setting
then i see no problem
all respective playergroups can make that call
personally i dont see it even that big of a diff in forcemodel/comp setting
would be good for ghost and romek though as they are colourblind
it would be for afacfion black fucking suit parker realm
please dont bring accessibility feature here.
this word is overutilised
we need to think about all players
if it hinders the gameplay
or bring positive to ALL of them
you go from ghost being able to see colours better to aimbot? ๐
in your opinion
in every gamer who has ever played games who is colourblind and has no colourblind accessibility features, opinion
are you ? im not
this is why im not speaking on behalf of others . nick asked for individual opinions yes/no
Obviously
lets not complicate it :p
but to deny it being a positive is just ... idk, strange
to be clear, if this feature is implemented in any way, it would absolutely always be subject to a serverside allow/deny
clients also would have one (or more) enable/disable settings, but it would always be disabled for clients (regardless of their individual setting) if the server hard forces it off
Thanks for this btw. They shouldn't be aware that someone is behind them unless they turn around, but if you shoot at them they are supposed to respond to that, so if they are not, that is a bug that I need to handle
I've also noticed this. Needs to be dealt with
Also sound though... We tend to be able to tell if somebody is close-ish, by footsteps, a reload, etc... Them having no clue was weird
detecting players based on footsteps would be dicey for a few reasons, but reload/fire sounds for sure, that would make sense
in most modern fps games colorblind pallette settings are a thing.
but brightskins/ halos are only allowed in some. usually fast paced arenashooter games like quake.
In more tactical games ranging from EFTs/armas to CS - this would be big no-no.
Red Faction pace and gameplay wise lies closer to arena shooterd obviouslu but doesnt have exact same metrics .
there are headshots and shit, slow movement, r_lightmaps and brightskins were brought and 'legalised' recently-ish
this is why its good that halo's are getting same treatment rn
Vel has made good points too tho
I definitely don't think outlines (talking specifically about enemies here) are near as cut and dry as red flash removal from the POV of accessibility, or as bright skins from the POV of being "good" from a competitive perspective
is intensity and width of halo customisable ?
Tbh, in some way brightskins are an accessibility feature for mappers lol
They mean a mapper no longer has to choose between environmental ambience using meshes and shadows as they want, and players being able to see other players ๐ They shift that decision to the player themselves (and the server host)
Ok the bots now have an alert system with weights.
Bot got shot: high
reload within 10m: medium
shot within 20m: medium
in each instance the bot learns about the player when those things happen, and the high/med/low is the amount it cares about it (which will lead it to do an assessment against its other goals and determine whether to retaliate)
will bots be ladder flying soon? more importantly, will cheeseborgor bot be back better than ever?
i hadn't planned on making an actual cheeseburger mode since these ones actually play the game ๐ but having such a mode available after the fact is trivial so if it's desired I can do it
oooh its desired! ๐
@crude oyster can you make some cheeseburger gibs? all the ingridients pleaz ! dont go light on the ketchup
Tbh I really want someone to make a clientside gibs mod that emulates TF2's silly gibs lol
I think this is a mod, but the stock ones are basically like this
lol I can't model. Would be easy to make though if you were to come across a pre made cheeseburger model that has all its ingredients as separate meshes. ๐
Why don't you make it? ๐
I barely have enough time to do all the stuff I already have on my plate ๐ I would love to but I know myself well enough to know I won't be able to find time ๐
Not like it would take much time. Just find 5 free models of random things. convert them to v3m, rename, done. 
@brave crown @burnt parcel i have responded to your feedback re: outlines in a gigantic gist because discord doesn't have sub-threads and posting this much as a message here would be unsightly
https://gist.github.com/nickalreadyinuse/714c9ec6e4593dae78fdb38928ec95e0
@gaunt lotus You can mark me down for "I want this" (not so much for me but for others that play RF and want it) ๐ After watching your video and reading what others have said, it seems like an option with all pros and no cons, especially considering the way it would be implemented - "This feature would give the client the option (with the server's approval)"
good read, the only minor points I'd make in response:
Or if you were using voice chat, you could just make calls for this
Agreed entirely on this point, however given that voice comms happen virtually never these days in competitive play, having that information available just seems like it improves the gameplay. It does remove an element of skill from the equation without doubt, but I think the net +fun and +approachability makes it worth it
It may make the game easier for newer players though, so maybe the compromise is worth it considering how small the playerbase is
I agree here as well, and I think it does make it worth it. Again, should be a server option - maybe even break out enemy outlines and team xray outlines into separate server-controlled options - but IMO at least it just makes the experience more enjoyable and approachable, and both of those I view as significantly more important than skill intensiveness (within reason of course)
spectator mode by default though
This one I think is a straight no brainer, it's just better. And if a spectator doesn't want it, they can turn it off
@gaunt lotus just read your post on github and I agree with this 100%, especially for CTF match servers, "Being able to see your teammates' outlines through walls in-game would further erode that aspect of the game and I think is pretty bad idea because of that. It may make the game easier for newer players though, so maybe the compromise is worth it considering how small the playerbase is, but it's not something I'm terribly comfortable with. The labels are already a decent compromise there."
@brave crown What are your thoughts on x-ray outlines for the CTF match server?
Oh we're talking about seeing people through walls? I didn't get that from the original video.. That, I like less.
I disagree sometimes. Most of the time I would say its a positive, but if we also dont look at how that balance affects the overall gameplay, they no longer become accessibility addons, they become pillars of gameplay that offer advantage
IMO it would make gameplay more approachable for new players, and compensate somewhat for the reality that match players virtually never use voice comms
It is worth decoupling these two topics though - xray outlines for teammates is something people can have different views on than non-xray outlines for enemies
In fairness I think they can be both, and that them becoming effectively requirements doesn't take away from their value on the accessability front (assuming for the purposes of this comment of course that they had that value)
I do agree with the core of your point though. It is important to look at how things like this impact gameplay not just potential benefit to accessability
that was just somehting goober brought up in his response to nicks post i think
For example, BF6 has features for colorblind and visibility issues with a light halo around character models. Now if I dont have that feature on at all, I cant see people lying down in the dark. If I turn it on, I can see everyone. Its off by default, leaving only those that know of the setting to activate it for an instant gameplay advantage. Net negative for new players coming in, and not having that advantage
the only instance where you'd see people through walls with this would be potentially teammates
I love the idea of x-ray teammates though
it solves a lot of problems with coordination in multiplayer
I talked about this in the gist, but x-ray teammates is almost certainly a much bigger gameplay change than enemies for team games, at least
Which we basically do now anyway with the names, though not what condition theyre in.. crouching/strafing is different to running, for decisions.. Im on the fence but probably more no
Right, this wouldnt be a conversation otherwise. We would just pass every accessiblity feature without seeing its impact for the whole userbase. Hard to get that information easily until we try it out
Could these features be rolled out temporarily to get feedback on how it affects users outside of hypotheticals?
yeah, this isn't well designed. BF6 has many problems, this among them lol.
this would technically always be the case, becuase if they are rolled out, the servers would be in control over them
and i know that this is kind of a dorky thing to say becuase in most cases we (as in FF) kind of are the servers, but like, if people really don't like them we'd turn them off
true, but our server is enough to try it out with and get a sample from
to avoid the BF6 situation, I think we'd have them on by default client-side in alpine (with some vanilla colors/minimal defaults), and easily turned off from the menu. outlines would be simultaneously a bigger visibility benefit than the fullbright skins are right now, while also not changing the "stock" visuals quite as dramatically
the demo video from earlier is just the result of me messing around a bit so these are nowhere near alpha or beta quality right now for testing purposes, and no ETA. this is all exploratory to see if it's even worth it. it's the most gameplay-affecting visual change alpine would have introduced, so we need the vibes
working on an in-game GUI for managing waypoint grids for the bots
End of the day, Im sure if anything that we pushed out didnt have good feedback from it, the feature could always be rolled back.
continuing to build out the waypoint editor
The idea is that this will be used to tweak waypoint layouts as needed
getting better, they now very rarely get stuck on actual map geometry. Still get stuck sometimes after geo craters, but that's very difficult to fully eliminate... the more important thing there is that they realize when they're stuck and reroute
Ok, so a thought about the outlines... that came to Me overnight, will they be visible at all distances? I feel one option would be to have it only apply within a specific distance? I think I'm leaning more against if I'm honest, despite it being nice.
Equally as I said, I don't play as much as you all.
that should be possible yeah, similar to how apex recently implemented them
it would take some work to figure out what range makes the most sense
but a dowsing rod for that might just be the rail scanner's distance ~30 meters
this is a little pet project for myself so I'll explore that if i can get the rest of the reqs working
Bots should be in a good place now. If anyone wants to try them out in the DM pub overnight do feel free ๐
One more thing I would do here is that if they are stuck in geo and don't manage to get out even after trying to reroute, then they should use explosive weapons to try to get out, even if it risks dying.
that's a good idea as a last resort, if they have explosives anyway
currently the bots don't have any knowledge of the splash damage radius for explosives so they have no issue rocketing the wall right next to them ๐ but once they do know that (which they will), that's a good point
Oh yeah, the bots have a very low chance to send a taunt when they kill you now. And over the past few hours I've seen a few people get into taunt battles with them 
they are a huge upgrade i'd say
they still move like noobs but they can at least play the maps
I wonder how the bots would handle my 4v4 3d chess map (star trek chess)
Good question lol
It's not exactly a traditional type of layout. My gut is telling me that they'd be awful at it because spread would make them unable to hit very much lol
I, love you, for that.
What server are they active in?
Oh neat, okay. I'll be around since my internet is working okay.
If you want to run some hands, let me know.
(I love you Goober.)

@jovial mulch Want to run hands in the FF DM pub?
Bet, after I make lunch
I just had a very funny exchange with another player. I hope Goober reads the chat logs later.
Someone named Ayla keeps joining with two clients and getting kicked. I have no clue why.
I pieced that together once you called him "BotTest"

@brave crown Is potat you or is someone trying to make aimbot work or something?
He asked me to circle around him with anything but a pistol, I did, and then said his shit wasn't working.
Oh, okay. Good to know.
wait
was it actually
i wondered why i was dying so much when i was TRYING TO LOOK AT THE BOTS 2 days ago
you have to look with your gun and click
@gaunt lotus working?
ok the bots are back now @wraith comet lol
finally got that issue sorted
this is what the bot's client window looks like now. No rendering (unless you drop into debug mode, but that's mainly just for me). They should be much more lightweight than running a full client with rendering and everything
Neato. How do you set up bots yourself? Can they be run on a listen server?
That logic flow still needs some figuring out. Technically yes there's no reason they can't join a listen server, but there are some moving parts that need to be in place
Currently the bot is just launched with
AlpineFactionLauncher.exe -game -bot -url SERVER_ADDRESS
the idea is that the server controls it after that - personality profile, skill settings, etc. That server control part isn't done yet. RIght now it just has the default settings
which is why all the bots are evenly matched and act exactly the same way currently :p
Thank you Goober, very cool. So having LAN/Offline botmatches should be doable?
It's certainly doable, how to best do the UX is the big question mark
Bots are staying in the server overnight, feel free to play with them and let me know how it goes ๐ฅณ
@split sleet keep your ears open
oh lmao i didnt check
may need to adjust the falloff distances for those sounds :p
ya i am sure that in a fullish server this will also be a clusterfuck audio wise
pistolers were always loud though
RF characters are all heavy walkers with the pistol out
you know where they're coming from a mile away
holy shit that will be HUGE change
reactionary flickers will loose on this tho ๐ข
its interesting if it wont be cacophony of footsteps in bigger player formats
yeah, i'm not sure yet
will probably test that with bots lol
i am concerned that with a high player count the footsteps might overwrite other audio because the game has a limited number of sound sources that can play at any given time
Do you think that volition may have did it on PURPOSE due to those limitations? not as an error
i think they did it on purpose but not for that reason
apparently this bug is because the animation files for the pistol contain timing references for footsteps (so that the sounds are timed according to the walking/running animation's foot landings)
but none of the other weapons have those references
so the game doesn't play footsteps for those weapons
so the on purpose part is that someone did not want to or forgot to or did not have time to go through the animations for every weapon's walk/run/crouch animations and time the footstep audio
it seems like even in singleplayer only pistol guards make footsteps so...
it's just unfinished
i tried it with 32 bots and it's noisy af, but not much noisier than normal game nights. sounds get dropped too but doesn't seem like more than usual with high player counts.
the funnier thing is that my brain interprets footsteps in RF as like... prey. because for years we've known that footsteps = pistol guy. but now you can't be so sure lmao
it's so weird hearing footsteps and peeking into a fucking shotgun
This is exactly it. Thank you. I knew it was something like that but couldn't remember what.
How did you fix this?
(It's been way too long, so I forgot precisely where this was defined.)
What are they?
the approach that we are probably going to settle on is injecting the triggers into the animations at runtime
in the short clip before, we were just playing footsteps from the entity when they exceed some m/s velocity
the third option would be to actually update the animations directly. not fun or worth it - that's like 60+ animations
It could possibly also be a new entity.tbl but doing so would break a lot of stuff - injecting them when entity.tbl and the anim files are loaded is the cleanest way to do it
๐ฅณ
lmao
oooh you dirty devil thank you. cloudy with a chance of meat balls coming to a red faction near you!
๐
so I did get RF2-style geomod mostly working. I say "mostly" because I'm still having some math errors with the crater interior faces. But I think it'll get there.
This is something that probably means way more to me than it does to anyone else, but I've strongly felt for many years (since 2002 basically) that RF2-style geomod would make geomod far more useful for multiplayer level design, and a lot safer and easier to use
nice. looks cleaner
RF2-style geomod has specific brushes that are designated as geoable, rather than regions or anything
ahhhhhh
Which means that you're not rebuilding the entire level (or room) after each crater, you're only rebuilding those detail brushes that were affected. Also means that because geo can't spill over, it can be tightly constrained without needing to worry about it breaking unrelated areas of the map that just happen to be next to the geo region
RIP 100% hardness bugs

TBH and i say this unironically
If RF2 geo was an option id be more inclined to do it in a map like my Dwarven map
people want geo but i think RF1 geo would just destroy it
this is what I mean when I say I've wanted it since 2002 ๐ This implementation of geo makes using geo a lot more viable in a lot more instances
idk where i'd put it mind you
i guess geoing the centre box and opening it up more maybe ๐
hmm looks like a good map
Question. Can you use both types of geo in a map, or would this be a hard map setting where you choose one or the other?
my plan is to make it so level hardness is ignored if rf2 style geo is on, but geo regions can still be used for rf1 style geo in areas
i hope that plan will work
Neat. That sounds like it could open up some interesting doors regarding map design.
I will be watching this with interest.
would be nice if goober releases the map :>
hm? ๐ฎ
This will be a literal game changer ๐
Imagin the re-coding that could be done to RF1 if we only had the source code ๐ค ๐คฏ
honestly it really wouldn't make too much difference
I'm imagining other stuff we could add or remove with source code access. Such as
Being able to add new weapons with custom secondary alt fire
Player abalities like deus ex or bioshock
Aliens that can walk on walls & ceiling
Tru total conversions.
A compleat vr port for pcvr & standalone hmd's.
none of that is outside the realm of possibility now if someone wanted to make it ๐ Those aren't things I really have any interest in implementing personally, but Alpine does accept PRs so if another developer out there wants to work with me to implement enhanced mod features or such, I'm totally up for that
secondary alt fire? like... alt alt fire? :p
which is 100% doable, but it'd be something a TC mod would have to take on of course
It would be very helpful for an RF2 mod, just sayin'
In RF1 the smg can fire 2 diffrent types of ammo. In the weapons.tbl its listed as "alt fire" this is how the smg grenade launcher mod is possable.
As of now the smg is the only weapon in RF1 thats coded this way.
ahh ok I get you
I just wish it was possible to use the already existing altfires in MP lol.
well i think the only other one is the lock on RL?
it would be cool if AR SMG was usable, but i'm pretty sure they cut it from MP because they already have a weird/awkward balance going on between the AR/SMG/HMG, it's another weird thing to keep stateful tracking of and it would need to just be a worse AR with a smaller mag
it would just be kinda ass
Gonna be honest with you, the only reason I really want it is just to make MP in the PS2 mod more accurate to the original experience lol.
ohh yeah, fair enough
i didnt say any of that to say that we should not make it work at some point down the line
Oh, yeah, no worries lol.
just I think volition made the decision to not have it with some consideration
Since it's pretty unlikely that anyone is going to be running a server with that mod unless they want the nicheness of it in the first place, I am considering just going all-in on making it as close to the original as possible.
But that's sort of impossible to do completely unless the altfires work. So it's in a weird sort of between state where I don't really know what I should do with it.
Granted, the likelihood of a server being run with it in the first place is astronomically low. So MP is my last priority. But I still want to actually do something with it, just in case.
I didn't really touch it in prior releases.
Once Alpine supports auto-downloading and switching to TC mods, the likelihood of a PS2 TC server being run is... well, probably still very low, but at least a little better than it is now. So you could consider this a future proofing of sorts in case any nerds like me come along.
Especially since once I finish the 2026 release of the mod that uses the Alpine stuff I needed to make it more accurate, I don't intend to update it again. It's intended to be a final release.
(Turns out, working on a PS2 TC for going on 7 years makes you a little sick of working on it.)
So I want to give it the proper sendoff that I wanted it to have years ago, and then be done with it for the most part.
7 years..๐คฃ
__Just be glade ur not me. I'm such a huge procrastinater its taken me close to 25 years (off & on.. mostly off) to finish my star wars tc.. and there no new levels.. Just new weapons / force powers, charactor models, & item pickups. With some new weapon / charactor animations
It wasn't supposed to take 7 years, but uh, well, I'll just say that it's nice Goober doesn't intentionally make my life harder by telling me to go kick sand and allows other people to contribute also. So we can usually end up getting something implemented in a way that helps me and is also useful to other people. Like the AR ammo counter color being changeable.
I'm not entitled to things being implemented just so my niche little mod can be more accurate, but when it happens, it does make me happy to know people care.
That's why the mod now primarily supports Alpine Faction. Alpine has implemented things that it simply needs to fulfill its intended purpose. I do intend to have compatibility with Dash Faction for anyone still using it that played my mod before, so they can also benefit from whatever tweaks will work there. But DF isn't supported anymore and compatibility with it is on a best effort basis.
AKA: If it works, neat. If it doesn't, not much I can do about it.
no longer adding geo-regions? ๐
it's for RF2-style geo mod (ie. geoable brushes instead of regions), yeah
and emits steam? wtf
It's completely working now. Still some edges I need to tidy up - like the "ground shake" effect from a geomod happening in maps that use rf2-style geo even if the explosion doesn't actually subtract anything. But those are easy to deal with and not super critical. All the core mechanics are functional now
now a brush can emit steam like particle emitters ?
? that has been in the editor since rf 1.0
CSG brushes make up the geometry of each Red Faction level. Generally, level designers will create at least the basic layout of their map with brushes before moving on to placing objects or developing scripted sequences. Level design in RED is somewhat unique in the arena FPS genre due to GeoMod technology. Because GeoMod uses the boolean carve ...
i really.. haven't used it at all, nor even noticed it.
OH
yeah - anything that has a penetration value sufficient to go through them
so rail or sniper/HMG for thin brushes
definitely on any pipes
The only time I don't use that flag on pipes is if the pipe is in an area important to gameplay, because the steam also hurts players lol
and it's annoying to play around it
by default it hurts ?
it always hurts
how bad is it
actually maybe it only hurts without armour like outside, not sure
it's not much damage but the red flash is the more relevant thing
i swear in my years of mapping, i never actually used that flag
you should ๐ it adds good atmosphere
if i wanted steam that hurts, i always used particle emitters
certainly one of the more subtle environmental details for sure, but it does add atmosphere
noted.
๐ฅณ yeah rf2 style geo (with "Is Geoable" brushes) is working perfectly now. Super pleased with this
case-by-case basis (but probably yes)
awesome ๐
This could come in handy whenever i update my 3d chess map
Honestly, I think it's just better, especially in MP, for any use of geo that doesn't involve tunneling
I've thought that for a long time ๐ just never before have been able to actually design around it
I will definitely be keen to adapt this
Ill probably leave dominoes the way it is but i might update Temple of War for those brushes, and Abkhin to let the middle thing be geo'd better ig
if you have a really big RF2 style brush, can you tunnel through it?
Like a chonky fat brush?
You could in theory yes lol
is the size of the geo related to the level settings since its no longer tied to the box?
Yes
Level hardness when rf2 style geos are enabled controls the size of the rf2 style geos instead of the overall hardness of the map
No you need to switch it on in level properties
"is geoable" does nothing unless that switch is on in level properties
understood
i was thinking the use case could be like, big rocks and things that don't neatly fit into a typical geo region
Yeah absolutely
I guess thats partially why Volition got stricter as the games levels went on
trying to be neat with geo boxes is.. not it
Geo brushes is much much more flexible for design
well vol 100% for RF2 sat down and actually designed the game around their tech from first principles
for the target platform... like, unquestionably it's an incredibly solid product in a technical sense
they just didn't end up designing around tunneling through anything significantly for RF2 with geo brushes because that was never in their design language
As much as i don't like it for SP (RF2 included here anyway) I do think for MP maps it avoids so many edge cases of brushes that weren't meant to be geo'd cuz sometimes you just can't always line it up properly
yeah you can definitely incorporate it more into a map design when you have precise control over it like that
Yeah 100% it solves many of the issues volition indicated they were having with the tech and many more issues that I'm confident based on my experience with the engine, they also had
Mostly around wanting to allow destruction for exploration but needing to actually control the player
With this geo, if you were to have a platform on top of supports that are geo brushes, would the platform still fall when the supports are taken out or would it just float? ๐ค Also does this work for air brushes as well or just solid? like if you wanted your main air brush geoable but nothing else in the map geoable.
It would float
Solid brushes only (actually technically, solid brushes that are detail and geoable only). Air brushes being geo would just be normal geo ๐
Air brushes don't exist in game - RED during the build process merges all normal (ie. non-detail, non-mover) solid and air brushes into one big mesh, and that's what RF1 geo normally cuts out from
does this mean that there's no air in the game?
No air on Mars 
Ah kk.
testing how geo regions interact with geoable brushes lol
exactly how you'd expect
the geoable brush is also a detail brush, so it's unaffected by the geos made within the geo region
Geos made outside the geo region though, only affect the geoable detail brush and not any normal world geometry
(not that I'd recommend ever shoving a geo region on top of a geoable brush, but I just wanted to make sure the logic worked properly lol)
So yeah, you can use both standard RF1-style geo and RF2-style geo in the same map, just use geo regions for areas where you want RF1-style
@desert crown because you were asking before how it's configured
(I need to make this advanced section look better eventually but it's functional at least)
Dude, very nice. You're on a roll lately.
I have to get back to the audio encoding mines. I just wanted to pop in to say hi and see what was going on.
last thing before bed - I split out the limits for normal geos (affect the world) and rf2-style geos (affect specific geoable brushes)
I probably should have had a different count for each when I took that screenshot in retrospect lol
but either way, they're tracked separately and evaluated against a different limit
what I think is the last major component of rf2-style geo. Isolated chunks turning into physics objects and falling (just like normal geomod)
wut ๐ญ
plink plink
thanks to this video's sponsor primary arms
for sending us out this glock silencer that breaks legacy clients
lmao
You know you could have just modded the pistol to sound silenced like you did for my PR sounding pistol, right?
ok but thats not as fun as having the actual thing on it
but like its definitely a waste of time in MP :p
On a roll, man. I swear. Good work!
โ
Also, when you died, your health was 1 (not zero)
afaik thats a common numbers bug
it says 1 but its technically 0
spectator in 1.3 will have the correct fp weapon animations, hitsounds, kill sounds, and damage notifications
nice i like it
@gaunt lotus (The joke here is that since it's a silencer, my reply was silent. This wasn't a slight lol.)
the second part of what I'm cooking for RF2-inspired mapping features. Breakable detail brushes that are not glass.
Excuse the very very rudimentary destruction effect lol, but this is a breakable brush with material type rock
(the panel needs to look better than this, just temporary)
i totally forgot they had materials for the breakables that felt like particle fall offs
yeah in RF2 brushes can be destroyed, you don't need to use clutter for things like this
That's super neato. I'm honestly looking forward to using RF2 mapping features when I finally am not too lazy to make a proper map.
I imagine it's going to make several things way more flexible.
๐
goober is putting me out of business
Definitely a bad day for anyone that likes random pink faces ๐
What is a reasonable limit though, lol. I need to set something
67
๐
yes
static constexpr int max_face_lights = 1024;
static constexpr int max_scene_lights = 4096;
this is what im going with for now I think
which is plenty realistically
stock values were 64 and 1100
I think @crude oyster will enjoy that enough for all of us :p
you will need some brood war players to quickly adjust lighting values
the Propagate Lighting button will earn its keep for sure
pink faces can still be achieved you just need 1024 lights on a surface lol
I have come really close to the old 1100 limit before. Can't see me needing much more then that though haha. The more lights per face will be really handy though. So many times I've had to break things up needlessly to get around the evil pink face of death. ๐
kinda crazy how many lights this engine can support now lol
I went with:
Total lights per level limit: 8192 (up from 1100)
Lights affecting a single face limit: 1024 (up from 64)
and yeah I hear you - I've had to do some pretty wonky stuff on occasion to split faces for that reason too
like these bars on lava control lol
Had to do it recently in Blerd Runner map
yeah, not surprised ๐
Anyway you'll not have to deal with that anymore in the future ๐
Now just gotta fix the calculating lightmaps crash when a map has more then 45k faces. ๐
I think I have a fix for this too, would like u to test when u get a chance
I can test but probably not until next weekend. I have a shitton of video editing I need to get done by Fri, so probably won't have much time to play in RED until that's done. ๐
sure no worries ๐
for non-glass breakable detail brushes, I now have the game slicing up the brush the mapper provided into debris - this is all just from the brush in the map, no debris v3m or anything like that
(this is basically how UE5 does fracture meshes lol)
Yeah I think the RED geometry limits are much more reasonable now for the modern day ๐ I just shoved 3 RF2 imported maps on top of eachother and it builds fine lol (crashed the editor before these new fixes)
(and this is not with "Render Everything" either)
bigger editor limits is huge
https://github.com/GooberRF/alpinefaction/pull/274
This is what I'm looking at currently
- Raise level editor geo_cache limits: face list 16384 to 65536, batch count 512 to 1024, memory pool 8 MB to 32 MB
- Raise level editor detail rooms limit from 256 to 8192
- Fix level editor geometry rebuild sometimes reusing stale data from previous builds
- Fix level editor geometry sometimes not properly rendering after rebuilding
- Fix level editor crash when calculating lightmaps on levels with more than ~45000 faces
incredible lol
Entire single player campaign in 1 map when
entire there's really no point - the engine's load level sequences work extremely well
I do think that SP levels now can be much longer and more complex. Like, perhaps what would have been a full 3-4 level chapter in the current campaign could just be 1 map now
entire sp campaign as a big DM map
come fight me motherfucker im over here hiding in the reaper farm

All the progress @brave crown is making with alphine faction. Its basicly working with a whole new engine.
How long till we can import idtech maps? Any & all versions ๐ค ๐
looks good
especially that miner hovering over the ground
@wraith comet ^relevant to your interests
Neat! ๐
One concern though, RED had no problem rendering 50k+ faces before, even in portal mode, (although you often had to build geometry twice to get it all built at those numbers ๐) as long as you weren't past the per room vertex limits that cause dx9 to crash.
So RED crashing on build was annoying but a good indicator that you just added something that is probably going to break the map for dx9 players. So you know you now have to find a more efficient or alternate way to do what you just did or try to find more ways to portal the room or just have to stop with the details in that room.
So are the in game dx9 rendering capabilities also being increased with these upgrades or is it just gonna be a surprise now when we launch in dx9 and the map doesn't work and now have to back track to try to figure out what killed it? ๐ค
I don't think dx9 players are gonna be going away any time soon, so I'd like to keep my future maps compatible with both dx9 and dx11. ๐
are the in game dx9 rendering capabilities also being increased with these upgrades
possibly, unconfirmed
I will say though that as a general matter, full compatibility with both dx9 and dx11 for everything forever into the future isn't realistic - I'm talking about Alpine now, but it would be entirely reasonable for maps to be similar
DX11 will amost definitely be the "recommended" renderer in Alpine 1.3 - not that DX9 will stop being available, but looking at DX9 compatibility as a "nice to have" vs a requirement is a pretty reasonable stance IMO
the other thing to note here is that the dx9 renderer is not really "true" dx9 either - it's just dx8 being translated to dx9 calls via the compatibility .dll
so I think its safe to say that you are potentially bumping into DX8 limitations rather than DX9 limitations
yeah, sorry I use those terms interchangeably but yeah it's mostly all (if not all) related to the dx8 renderer rather than specifically dx9
it's just important i think to empahize how old the dx8 renderer actually is and what the limits of that API (within reason) probably are
Though that being said, the editor changes are all in the rendering pipeline which is common to both the editor and the game so in theory replicating these improvements to the game's default renderer (dx8/9) is probably practical
though it's never going to run as well as dx11 ever, and will always have limitations dx11 doesn't have
Can old computers on integrated graphics even use dx11? Cuz I feel like thats a big chunk of the RF player base. ๐
yeah, in most cases they should be able to
DX11 is not that new and most of the DX11 render is actually DX10 anyway
also RF isn't using any of the "super modern" DX features anyway. It's all pretty standard stuff
looks like ivy bridge and llano were the first onboards to support dx11
that's 2011-2012 era hardware
Too bad we couldn't prompt everyone for a hardware survey like steam does, so we could see how many players are still using comps older then 14 years. ๐
yeah but even if we knew in this case, it would be difficult to change course or change what actions are taken if we want to raise the limits for maps
like maybe you can reduce the limits to just the edge of dx8 compatibility, but then you're holding everything else back for the sake of computers that may not continue to be in service for many more years regardless
and those computers are likely already not able to run some of the content that's been made currently at above a tolerable framerate... so, i doubt they have much more room to give
but it would be good info to have in terms of content creation, like you would be able to determine how far you want to go there
in theory there's nothing stopping us from integrated hardware analytics like steam's into alpine, and just collecting them on FF
and "nothing" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here
I guess. Would probably make me really ponder though if I want to make a map dx11 only, if we found out like a third of the player base can't even run it. ๐ I think goober can tell who is on 9 and who is on 11 at GN. So once 11 is set to recomended for next alpine, might be useful to track for a while, how many players use 9 vs 11 to see if keeping maps compatable with 9 is worth while.
could swap the default to 11 and if people have problems drop back down to 9
I can't tell that without asking them
Or I guess unless they send crash logs lol
also I'd add that there are definitely a lot more people running dx9 than need to be (or, arguably, should be) just because it's the default, because dx11 for so long was not fully-featured, and because dx9 is still labeled as "recommended"
so, knowing what they are running isn't really the important part. Knowing what they ideally would be running is
DX11 should probably become the default and prompt and/or reset old configs if they were using DX9
that was my plan, yeah
maybe do that for AF 1.3 ye
if we wanted to the launcher could use dxdiag to figure out which DX level is supported
or theres probably some powershell query
popup on a new AF 1.3 install that says like "You have DX9 selected. We recommend DX11, do you want to try it?"
(not exact wording obviously lol)
i would just default it on if their gpu supports it
ah yeah maybe
either way, the method needs to be determined. But AF 1.3 definitely needs some way to either default or encourage the majority of players to move to dx11. It's just better for 99.9% of players at this point
runs better, more features, less bugs lol
it just won't be compatabile with some retro pc setups for sure
Oh, coulda swore at one gn when dx11 was new u were saying how many ppl were on it. But maybe that was just looking at beta players vs full release players.
But yeah set it as default for next release and see what happens.
i think DX10 was the limit for WinXP? or was that 9
right, but there's a very limited audience of players that both:
a) can run alpine; and
b) can't run dx11
oh i think they did some shit like vista would be the only DX10 OS, then backported it later after nobody installed vista
lol
alpine doesn't support anything before win 7 (or well, maybe vista, but I haven't tried)
very, very , VERY limited audience out there would be running win 7+ and have hardware that doesnt support dx11
I'd be very surprised if that's more than a handful of players
ya and its not like the old renderer is going away
just might not be able to play some newer stuff
it's a wash
yep, correct
i have 0 plan to remove the legacy renderer, but it's absolutely true that as time goes on there will be less and less people with any reason to actually use it
chunking works much better now
obviously a little dorky for the huge brush but this isn't intended for such large brushes
that was just to make it easier for me to see the mechanics lol
amazing me to mthat a pistol can split rock like that 
right?
anything is possible in fuck1aaaaa.rfl
little experiment
this reminds me of when someone puts their finger half covering a camera lens
it is a good idea to make directional damage indicators that are less shit than the stock game's though
some sort of vignette perhaps, with a more heavily shaded side to show the side you took damage from?
what you have already is far more useful than the stock though already
what you describe is what im going for
what's above is what i have lmao
we have vignettes at home
lmao
lol
Using & or still have in storage (mostly intact, missing the hdds)
My laptop is too old to support win 11 & now that win 10 support ended im thinking imstalling Lubuntu or Q4os ( lightwight version of debian)
Does anyone know if alphine faction works on Linux via ProtonDB Proton? If not i still have my gaming desktop.
Honestly, the big brush, while kinda dorky, still works really well for this game actually lmao.
Looking very good. ^^
I noticed that the bob sometimes ever so briefly reverts to the old behavior before correcting itself, but only when bumping terrain when jumping, so that's probably a velocity related thing.
So I'm pretty sure the Gaussian Spread affects enemies in SP too. I notice a marked increase in their accuracy, and the game's difficulty, when I turn it on, at the cost of being more controllably accurate myself.
This is not a negative observation. I think that's a good tradeoff actually.
RF is fairly easy unless you play on Impossible, Hard is definitely Harder but also feels more random. When turning on Gaussian Spread, it feels like it sort of normalizes the wide discrepancies and makes even Normal decently challenging enough if you're surrounded.
it does yeah thats the intent
Ah okay, I wasn't sure if that was intended or not, but I wanted to say I liked it.
time to rerun Impossible with Gaussian ๐คฃ
@brave crown Would it be possible to add a CVAR to disable the detail textures that are only visible when you shine the flashlight that Alpine added? I think they look kind of strange since they're clearly unfinished, and all surfaces use the same rock-based detail texture.
It could actually be a neat feature for mappers, but the game only has one detail texture and it's a placeholder.
i think it would be neat if the flashlight just got its own prio-upgrade to behave more like a flash light
the way it works right now just doesn't feel like a torch, its just like a beam of circular light enhancement lol
no fade out or anything
This is a valid concern in my case as I am one of the few people who will have to stick to DX9. Not because DX11 doesn't run, but because I get better fps in DX9.
Whereas my fps drop dramatically when looking at translucent surfaces and underwater in DX11
Indeed, and I definitely understand the frustration there (and would love to fix it if there's anything I can do about it). That said, your system is the only system I am aware of where D3D11 doesn't perform notably better than D3D9 ๐
@glacial storm I may have asked this before, but are you using AA on D3D11?
If you are, you may want to try turning it off and seeing if that makes a difference
You can't run dx11? Flashlight doesn't appear to have the overlay in dx11 and looks like an actual light, not a bumpy colour blob decal. ๐
well @glacial storm I asked my friendly neighbourhood AI agent about your issue and this is what I got. I am definitely no professional graphics programmer but this at least sounds like it could be the issue
Think it only performs notably better with a decent dedicated gpu. When I was testing a while back on my backup comp with integrated intel graphics, it was pretty much identical to dx9 performance wise. Although never tested under water or translucent surface to notice if it had the issue reaper has.
DX11 @wraith comet
But I would prefer a more natural feeling torch like most other games have
get you a proper fadeout
Right, you're each describing a different thing - I agree that the rocky detail overlay doesn't look the best, but that is d3d8/9 only. D3d11 has a much nicer actual light, but it's still at the end of the day the case that the flashlight is moving around a point light
sorry I was just adding for my own request ๐ i was showing duke the dx11 light
it is possible to make that a better light though yes - like actually a spotlight like a flashlight should be ๐ rather than a moving point light
That is an example of a feature though that would absolutely be d3d11 only
for sure
๐ may have just solved a lighting issue that has been pissing me off for over 2 decades lol
before
after
just need to make sure there's no unwanted side effects, but the intended effect here (which is working) is that portals slicing through brushes don't create hard lightmap edges
wheres the portal in that map- i assume its there;
ahhhh
this is certainly not yet to a point where I'm happy with it, and it would definitely need serverside permissions... but something I'm experimenting with
@glacial storm if you're willing to try a test build, I have something that may be at least a partial mitigation for your FPS issues with DX11
With or without AA, I still had performance issues. I mentioned how going underwater tanked my performance from 200+ fps to 30-ish fps in DX11
I would definitely like to try it out, but it will have to wait until the weekend. I have a very busy week ahead of me
Also, character shadows? I just noticed now
Sure, I'll send you a build and just try it out when you get a chance ๐
Yeah ๐
anyone know of a map that breaks fpguns off the top of your head (big far clip)? i can't open RED for reasons
ice's br is the only one that comes immediately to mind
but I know there are some huge canyon maps that have it too, just cant think of any off the top of my head
is 1k the max far clip?
it starts to cut off fpguns at around 450 if my memory is right
may be different in dx11
hmm yeah i cant replicate on dx11
this looks way nicer now
the angle is too steep but ya
obviously no actual sunlight ๐ and doing shadowcasts from every light would be way too intensive but either way, will be a nice improvement from the blobs
Shadows 
Strange. To answer, I probably can, but I had some performance issues last time. So I'll see if it's any better now that Goober has done some tuning since the last time I did.
I can usually run DX11 fine, the RF1 DX11 renderer was just a problem specifically.
Wow. That already looks really good, man.
Huh. I just tested, why does the flashlight look so much better in D3D8/9 compared to 11?
Like it's actually useful in D3D8/9, but it's so faint in 11 that there's basically no point to it.
huh? O.o
(I'm uploading comparison screenshots now. Give ol' Bessie a second.)
Left is D3D8/9, right is D3D11. The flashlight basically doesn't even exist in 11. It looks way better in 8/9.
hard disagree that it looks "better", since in d3d8/9 it's just a texture shoved on the face and in d3d11 it's a projected light ๐
but what Alpine version is that? It was super dim a while ago but I thought that was fixed as of 1.2.2
When I say better, I mean actually visible lol. I hate to say, but the projected light isn't a very good flashlight.
1.2.2
if it's not visible enough, it just needs to have its intensity cranked up a bit
It really does, yeah. I can barely even see it. I don't think it'd be helpful in a dark mod right now.
it's a lot more visible in areas that are actually dark, for the record
but still pretty dim yeah
I'm sure it is, the light is just way too small and dim. Needs a bit of a boost and it'd be good.
The D3D8/9 one looks super washed out and not amazing, but I can see it being a lot more helpful in a dark area if you need a flashlight with its intensity.
Aside from that, though, it looks like you fixed my performance issues on D3D11.
I still think it needs to be stronger imo.
A miner's headlamp would be a lot stronger.
right
I take it back, Goober. I dropped from 240 FPS to 239 FPS. How could you do this to me.
It looks really good close up on a dark map in dx11. Intensity just fades pretty quick the further u get. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/483571374586331136/1469657727318888468/Red_Faction_2026.02.07_-_06.14.25.02.mp4?ex=69a6c76b&is=69a575eb&hm=e48d2c720f6603144074310ea65438c0d4a714106213abc69b9c0fc9377472bf&
That does look a lot better. The intensity should probably still be raised to prevent fading and make it more effective at longer ranges though.
got subcategory support working for custom textures in RED ๐ฅณ
another one of those long-term pain point I've personally had :p
[ 0.00] INFO: Alpine Faction Editor log started.
[ 0.02] INFO: Initialized extended_event_names with 135 entries
[ 1.19] INFO: Enumerating custom texture subdirectories: J:\RF\RF24\user_maps\textures\*
[ 1.19] INFO: Registered custom texture category: 'Custom - GooberPack1' (path_handle=10)
[ 1.19] INFO: Registered custom texture category: 'Custom - RF2' (path_handle=11)
[ 1.19] INFO: Registered 2 custom texture subdirectories (total categories: 47)
[ 3.88] WARN: Packfile: Skipping missing file: J:\RF\RF24\user_maps\textures\ff.tga
[ 3.88] WARN: Packfile: Skipping missing file: J:\RF\RF24\user_maps\textures\hhhhh.tga
[ 3.88] WARN: Packfile: Skipping missing file: J:\RF\RF24\user_maps\textures\fhfdhhg.tga
[ 3.88] WARN: Packfile: Skipping missing file: J:\RF\RF24\user_maps\textures\brdit.tga
this is what it does now. Doesn't error on packfile creation, just outputs errors to the log
Very nice ^^
That's going to be super helpful for organizing custom textures.
You're making me want to learn to map, man.
I just can't stand RED's control scheme. I know you guys like it, but I hate it.
It's not that bad, really. I just don't like it.
I really wish it was more intuitive to use for someone who hasn't used it for 20 years and has experience with other map editors.
I'll try though. Just wish I could remap the control scheme a bit.
i mean, adding an alternate control scheme is totally doable lol
full remapping is probably way overkill, but a switch to swap to a more "modern" control scheme is totally doable
like WASD instead of A/Z/Numpad1/Numpad3
I'd very much appreciate that. Though I am still going to try to learn the default, I'm not going to shy away from a challenge. I just find using RED more frustrating than fun.
I will probably never like it, so you'd have my eternal gratitude if you made a modern control scheme alt.
There's two main things that frustrate me with RED. The controls is the first one.
equally you can probably make ahk mappings to replace the controls you dont like much more easily
The second one is that it seems to have a mind of its own sometimes, something in my test map will fuck up when I try to do literally anything, and it gives me absolutely no accessible recourse or feedback unless I'm in the know. So I sit there just wondering wtf happeend.
Which loops back into the controls. I get so confused with them that I usually don't know what to do.
I am fairly certain part of it is skill issue, but I also don't understand some of the things that happen.
I was ripping my hair out once trying to figure out why this room I built would not align to the grid to save my life when it should have.
the biggest reason people run into stuff like that is that when you grid align with Ctrl+G it aligns the center of the bbox of your brush to the grid. If the brush itself doesn't have neat bbox dimensions (ie. aligned to a 0.25 grid MAX) it can get really screwy
Oh my god is that why? That was driving me insane.
for the record, I use Ctrl+G extremely rarely
it's far easier to just build on grid as opposed to build off grid and then grid align with a hotkey, most of the time
I tried Ctrl+G only because I couldn't get it aligned myself, and it made it worse, and I was just like wtf is happening.
Also when you rotate it also rotates around the bbox center, which can cause things to go off grid when rotating
Whenever I need to rotate something with a weird bbox size I just make a big grid-aligned box on top of it, rotate it together with the box, then delete the box lol
it keeps it aligned
If you do implement a control toggle, let me know. I might also use ahk as a stopgap, maybe, if it becomes a real problem for me. I'm going to try the defaults though.
Do you think the mesh to brush workflow is viable for me to use something like Trenchbroom or Blockbench to do some basic blockouts, then go into RED to flesh them out?
I think that'd really help me until I get used to it.
At least then I could blockout some basic ideas while I'm experimenting and trying to learn the editor.
(I promise, this time, it's not going to be a rickroll.)
It's completely practical for geometry
Where you run into issues is the difference between air and solid brushes
importing meshes for like... a statue or something. Or a door. Totally fine. Importing a room is an issue because you need an air (subtraction) brush before you can add anything to it
Of course making that air brush is probably pretty simple in most cases, you just need to keep it in mind
Hm. Alright. I will try doing it in RED first, though, just to be clear.
I feel like it's better to do as much in it as possible to learn.
Would someone mind testing out this subdirectory support feature? It should work fine - works fine for me, but sometimes these things are inconsistent between PCs
I'd rather have at least someone else try it out before it's merged into the main Alpine branch
in other news, this is way nicer now
I will. I'm on Windows 10.
Those shadow look insane, amazing how a shadow can make the graphics look better
It won't load for me, but I'm sure it's fantastic.
Hold still whilst I go vomit in the corner
Never used RED, but goddamn that default control scheme sounds like it was made by a deranged person.
i actually don't really like the shadows. maybe dm01 is not a good demo but idk
tbh i think it can look jarring cuz there is no defined sunlight value in RF (so they still look a bit stretched and buggy) but also im curious - are you just dictating 0,0,0 as the sun spot or
it's not even close to 0,0,0 ๐ but yes it's a static angle. It's too shallow of an angle right now though for sure
well by that i just mean
i should have specified, not on 0,0,0 just, aiming down at that
๐
static constexpr float light_dir_x = 2.0f;
static constexpr float light_dir_y = -1.0f;
static constexpr float light_dir_z = 1.5f;
currently - this should be closer to overhead though
gotcha
this is much closer to what I had in mind
yeah i prefer the soft local shadow than the one that stretches out
yeah here we go, I think I'm happy with this now
and reduced it down to 3 config options:
r_shadowcorpses
r_shadowquality
r_shadowdistance
quality and distance accept 0-4 (very low to very high). corpses is a toggle
I was wondering if the pickups can also get shadows.
that was to be phase 2 of this :p
d3d11 also now has gpu-accelerated skeletal mesh lighting
that looks really good
yeah im really pleased - far more performant too than the stock RF CPU-based vertex lighting method
(maybe not on an integrated GPU though, not sure)
tbh i had to go and look myself and god dam is that hard edge irritating me
is that anything to do with portal slicing or is it just a shit light ๐ญ
It's probably portal slicing but you can confirm that
The debug rendering options - there's one for show portal faces I think? Or show rooms in different colors
tbh unsure if it actually worked i turned it on then off so no difference ๐ญ
wait thats so cool wtf
im not sure any of them show me i can just open it in RED
oh the debug modes might not work in d3d11 actually
yeah RED works
l5s2.rfl for the record
nope its not a portal slice its just shit
its probably cuz its a ramp, and probably cuz it stands out due to being red, but yeesh
i deleted all the lights and its still there ๐ญ
(the lights up top are not point lights they are only lights for the obj)
like its not as bright without them but it do still just be red
probably needs smoothing groups
gpu lighting on static meshes too
martian light
only slightly more weird than mauritian light

ayyyy
And of course the VFX format is the pain that it always is lol
Need to put together a whole new shadow rendering method just for VFX because it stores mesh data completely unlike V3D/V3C (which are effectively the same format apart from bones)
time to finally make the blender plugin for vfx 
after I go through this process I doubt that will be super difficult lol
at least to make new ones
doing the circular pipeline
vfx->blender->vfx
might be more challenging
๐
pretty neat to see lighting on the items as they spin lol
the basic fact that things would be dynamically lit where they are instead of where they originate is huge
like i know technically thats already in
but like
all of its coming together ๐ญ
Aren't those screens supposed to be full bright? Does this break that flag? ๐ค
Oh are they supposed to be? ๐ฎ
It is, but you can specify full right on specific faces
This would actually totally break all the catan maps day/night cycle if it applies to static meshes haha. It relies on lighting not being updated as meshes move into the scene to cover all the geometry. Guess I'd have to re do them and find a new way, except if this is only dx11, then finding an alternate way that works for 9 and 11 would probably be impossible. ๐ perhaps an option in mapinfo table to disable it if thats the case? ๐ค
Yes. ๐
Fun fact, Romek actually already did exactly that haha. He just got working today a blender plugun to get custom blender models/animations working in RF as vfx. So far can only use em with a table mod though, so guess what we might need is a new event to allow them in mp maps without a mod? ๐ค
You should be able to switch model.to a VFX already I think, you would just need to switch from a clutter that is already a vfx
(like the water plant)
when are you gonna tackle auto mod download like auto map
That's neat though - I saw his project on GitHub the other day
Ah, wonder if he's tried that.
If I do something like that it'll be built into redux as a conversion flow of some kind but yeah a plugin is definitely cool
It is on the agenda - something we've wanted to take on for a long time. Probably won't be far into the future now. The biggest issue tbh isn't even the code part or the backend part on FF, it's figuring out versioning and such for mods that have never needed such a system. Much more complicated than it is for maps
Feel free to let him know - I know I did it that way for a rain effect in a map I was building a few years ago and it worked fine
It does indeed work on water plant! Guess no need for stop motion animation anymore in mp lol.
I still wouldn't suggest using VFX very much
They're very very VERY inefficient
I am planning to try to make them more efficient to render but so far that's just a concept
They do perform very poorly on dx8/9 though I know for certain
Though it may depend on which chunks within the VFX format are used, idk for sure
VFX has a lot of capabilities lol. Lots of different kinds of chunks can be included
I guess whenever it's released I'll just have to do some experimenting with it and see how it goes and if its too much of a performance hit.
I've also been considering if it's worth making a more "proper" way to put meshes in maps. Like a mesh object that you can set properties on and not have to switch model on a clutter object
Would also make it much much easier to handle animations on skeletal meshes in mp that way
That would be a nicer way to do custom meshes.
I tested that map with the new lighting and it seemed to work fine (honestly worked a little nicer if I'm honest :p) but yeah will need to test that one for sure and deal with it in some way necessary
Re: dx11 though just for the record - most graphics improvements and optimizations going forward are going to be for d3d11... Not because I wouldn't like to support the older renderers too but just because it's usually not practical
This improved lighting is 100% dx11 only
As the divide between dx9 and dx11 widens, might be handy to add to the scope_gate "dx9" and "dx11" so we can have 2 sets of things to make it look best/most optimized depending on the renderer. ๐ค
That is a good idea yeah
Like I'd already use something like that on graveyard to disable all the dynamic lights that glitch out in dx9 but look great in dx11.
Probably also worth having a level properties checkbox to restrict a level to dx11 only too - not that I'd suggest using it often, but there will undoubtedly be some maps down the road that just won't work at all without dx11
@crude oyster go to 2:30
looks broken? ๐ค looks like at night the meshes are getting the day light but the day light mesh amb light scale has been turned way down making em super dark during the day. Also the dynamic lights aren't working on the keyframe brush anymore. ๐
oh wait hang on, I think it might not be applying to meshes changed via Switch_Model
having the weirdest issue ever with shadows lol
it looks like it's multiplying the sniper rifle O.o
Well there it is people, the first weapon skin on the market. Called, Green Fade.


