Alpine Faction

[brave crown]

actually here - center aligned the text within the line

also @boreal ether

[glacial storm]

@brave crown once the bots are ready, how will we be able to configure and play with them. Do you also have some menu/options made for it

[brave crown]

For this release, they will require you to run them via command line. In the future I plan to build a more seamless "botmatch" function into the in-game create game menu

[desert crown]

@boreal ether watch my latest game night video

do any of the freecam shots show undesired visuals

that was 1.3

[desert crown]

lol

I thought it looked nice, wasn't aware it wasn't your intention

really makes the train light stand out

[viral light]

better i think

[boreal ether]

why not like this:

[brave crown]

Hm, idk. I think it looks a bit more like a clan tag like this

[viral light]

kinda like that way better

[viral light]

this i mean

more immediately obvious

We need you to delay 1.3 release so we can further bikeshed the bot tag

[gaunt lotus]

the people are divided

i dont like bot prefix, team suffix

[wraith comet]

Goober and the gang trying to untangle the spaghetti pot of issues Red Faction has as they revolutionize the game and push forward a more modern rendering architecture:

https://tenor.com/view/will-smith-spaghetti-ai-eating-gif-2796300478009311884

[shut vector]

Hey @brave crown , I want to make a suggestion for RED in Alpine.
Was wondering if possible if you could make any improvements the texture selection window, such as the ability to drag the box bigger to make the texture selection screen bigger and show more textures at one time on the screen instead of the drop down to change the size of the view. People with bigger screens, like me with a 1440p screen find it difficult to see textures at 32x32 which displays more textures on the window. At 128x128 its fine but you then find yourself scrolling a lot more than normal. If the window could be draggable and the box that the textures appear in resizes to fit more textures in the grid for viewing would be a lovely feature to see. IF its possible?

[brave crown]

being able to dynamically resize the window would very likely come with a lot of complications, but it may be possible to resize it in code

For AF 1.4, one big thing I want to do is revamp the RED settings config, exposing a lot of stuff for configuration that is locked right now (hotkeys, for example). I think the ability to resize this window (to preset values) would be a good for for that

[shut vector]

Me when trying to scroll through my textures 😄

[brave crown]

you should really sit back dude, that'll hurt your back

[shut vector]

Ive got a good computer chair

Secret Labs

[brave crown]

why do I have a feeling that @crude oyster will be making boingy 4 with gas regions moving all over the place lmao

[boreal ether]

thats pretty

[brave crown]

in a practical sense, it's a lot better at adding a hazy effect to specific areas

[crude oyster]

Lol don't give me ideas. 👀 can the region size and density also be animated? Could be useful for simulating a fart... Or any sort of gas filling a room. 😛

[brave crown]

Not currently, though a Modify_Gas_Region event isn't out of the question

[boreal ether]

I know currently you cant have 2 transparent full screen images display at the same time? Any chance you could make this possible ?

[boreal ether]

That green one reminds me of aerogel (frozen smoke) that NASA use to collect dust in space

can you set the density of that smoke/gas ?

ah yes you can

[brave crown]

yeah it does look similar lol - like a hologram

[shut vector]

I can think of a few good pratical uses for this. Thinking Night Club and lights. Does this work in Multi do you know?

[gaunt lotus]

they do

[brave crown]

Yes it does

[wraith comet]

Very, very nice.

[boreal ether]

Does a dynamic light effect it in anyway ?

[brave crown]

no, dynamic lights dont affect the gas

[boreal ether]

kk

[brave crown]

Wow. I never realized how enormous the Alpine 1.3 changelog actually was until I started writing up the release highlights page 😮

https://www.redfactionwiki.com/wiki/Alpine_Faction_Release_Highlights#Alpine_Faction_1.3.0

[desert crown]

😛

[crude oyster]

Was just thinking, could you add a transition time property to size and density modify, so it can smoothly grow or shrink over time, instead of just jumping to the new settings? 🤔

[boreal ether]

@brave crown did you glaze past this? #1376930844597551146 message

[brave crown]

It's not possible with the way it's currently done - color and image can work together but not two images. It would require a bigger revamp of the implementation - I'm not against looking into it later but it would be after 1.3

[nimble sierra]

Awesome stuff, I can see many different uses for this

[boreal ether]

probably a bit late for this, but is it possible to make a "transition in" time and a "transition out" time?

[brave crown]

That would actually be far more challenging than it seems, and is why I did it the way it is. Events have 2 slots for float values (decimal values), and hold time/transition time are already using them

that said, you could do it as multi-part

have 2 events, both with the same color/image. One set to fade in, instant out
the other set to instant in, fade out

activate the first, and then when you're ready to fade out, invert activate the second

You can set different fade values on each and that should work no problem

[boreal ether]

ah, that should work out fine ! cheers goober

[brave crown]

Actually thinking about it, you could also keep it as Fade In, Fade Out, and just use Set_Variable to set the transition value while the color/image is being held 😛

it'd use the new value when it starts the fade

[boreal ether]

kk, well ill cross that bridge when its released 👍

[brave crown]

I have a few more tutorials I need to do as well - excited to see what people come up with once 1.3 is released 👀

should be this week

could you be more specific? What do you mean "how do they work"?

are you in dx11?

let me look, 1s

do you have the cvars turned off? if you search for flash in console youll see them

or dyn

the settings for them are listed around line 56 of gr_internal.h - do you mean objectboom2 for weapon explosions or clutter

I think that's what is causing the issue

Alpine has 2 lists of vclips that are used to spawn explosion lights, and they're separated by weapon and other

https://github.com/GooberRF/alpinefaction/blob/e161b9d8b760a375127f692aa827d567614fd2c8/game_patch/graphics/gr_internal.h#L44

it needs to use one of these vclip names if it's from a weapon explosion

from k_explosion_flash_vclip_specs_weapon

[brave crown]

not an especially valuable feature, but something that has annoyed me for a long time

Alpine now supports 8-bit greyscale tgas. These displayed corrupted data before

[nimble sierra]

How’s the side scrolling feature coming along?

[brave crown]

parked until 1.3 is out, and will be worked on for 1.4

it's basically working for MP/SP with most of what it needs. having some placement issues with the aim tracer because some RF guns have messed up muzzle positions that I need to override, and I need to make sure the SP AI can properly handle 2d movement

But other than that it's basically working already

[nimble sierra]

Sick

[split sleet]

Proximity voicechat in rf - when

excellent for micromap roleplays

"Heeeeeeeey anyone here ? "

[gaunt lotus]

in-game vc is doable

[viral light]

goober should slop steam audio

geometry occlusion

[desert crown]

writing here just incase its something goober can fix (also as a reminder)

When changing difficulty for SP with arrow keys - the difficulty does not change, only clicking the buttons actually impacts the change (Visually the difficulty changes when using arrow keys but it doesn't in the game)

[brave crown]

Alpine Faction 1.3.0 has been released 🥳
https://alpinefaction.com

[boreal ether]

yeh boi

[desert crown]

ok i didn't see this before cuz i was only playing proper SP with speedrunning atm but 😅 😂

extreme bright

[brave crown]

i think you have fullbright characters turned on + overbrightness

[fast crescent]

@brave crown is there some setting for flag glow that im missing with dx11?

[brave crown]

the glow through walls?

[fast crescent]

yeah

wasnt sure if it was fixed or not

[brave crown]

it's not "fixed" because it's not a bug, but what you're looking for is

r_dynamiclightndotl 1

1.0 = like d3d8 was

0.0 = d3d11 detauls, doesn't draw lights through geometry

[fast crescent]

oh ok cool let me check that out

[desert crown]

overbrightness? 🤨

never heard of that one before 😄

[fast crescent]

gamma looks great though

glad thats fixed

brb

[brave crown]

for SP youre probably going to want to just turn off fullbright characters

[desert crown]

yeah no value is fixing this 😄

if i turn it off in SP will it remain on in MP O_O

[brave crown]

oh lol wait

[gaunt lotus]

@brave crown i think this is the mesh lighting thing

[brave crown]

that section of the SP just has super fucking bright overhead lights

[gaunt lotus]

oh hm

[brave crown]

I believe that was a different issue which is now fixed - this only happens to these specific 2 entities

and I believe it's because of the lighting in this room

since even other entities in the same level look fine

[desert crown]

i turned off fullbright models and it did fix it though

[brave crown]

yeah

[desert crown]

but bleughhhhhh

[brave crown]

but if you turn off fullbright models, these guys still look super super bright lol

[desert crown]

no

[brave crown]

because the lights in the area are crazy

with fullbright characters off

[desert crown]

yeah looks fine

[brave crown]

im not saying its a problem, im saying they are still very very bright

compare to the corpse just outside the door lol

and him with fullbright characters on

[fast crescent]

@brave crown still cant see flag glow through WL roof with r_dynamiclightndotl 1

[brave crown]

sec

[fast crescent]

congrats on new release btw! 🥳 but u know what my priorities are and the first thing i checked heheh

[brave crown]

oh wait my numbers were wrong

use r_dynamiclightnotl 0

it will not look the same as d3d8 (d3d8 looked like total shit lol) but it will be quite visible

[fast crescent]

ok cool trying it now

[brave crown]

0 vs 1

[boreal ether]

yo @brave crown , you can display 2 alpha image at the same time. did you manage to fit that in? or is it just working anyway?

[brave crown]

I was forgetting that each event has its own unique timer instance - so no code change, just I was wrong when I said before it wouldn't work :p

[wraith comet]

Oh, hey. It's Red Faction but it came out on the Xbox 360.

[desert crown]

[glacial storm]

Okay so, I have AF1.3 installed and ready. How do I add bots?

I am assuming there is a console command to add them, but I can't find the command

[shut vector]

How to Add Bots
Type the following commands into the console:
• Add a bot: bot_add
• Add a specific amount of bots: bot_add [number] (e.g., bot_add 5)

Key Bot Console Commands
• bot_add: Adds one bot to the server.
• bot_kick: Removes one bot.
• bot_kick all: Removes all bots.
• bot_difficulty [0-3]: Sets the skill level of the bots.

Found this just by googling it 😅

[prisma dirge]

These commands are for CS2 or are they also meanwhile available for AF? 🥴
As far as I know, you need a dedicated server and the configuration needs to have a password-number
example:
bot_shared_secret = 123

Start dedicated server for example with port 7755
AlpineFactionLauncher.exe -ads myserver.toml -port 7755 -win32-console -min

Start another Alpine Process with command including port and bot_secret
AlpineFactionLauncher.exe -ads myserver.toml -port 7755 -bot 123 -win32-console

[glacial storm]

Yeah I wouldn't trust AI to know anything about this new feature of a fan patch of a niche game

[shut vector]

It pulls its info from the internet or websites.

[brave crown]

@glacial storm
I need to write a tutorial for it, but in short you need to specify a bot_shared_secret in your dedicated server config file, then join bots by running

AlpineFactionLauncher.exe -bot SECRET -url rf://IP:PORT

where SECRET is your server's bot_shared_secret, and IP:PORT is the IP:PORT of your server

Note that this is the first incarnation of bots. Their behaviour will improve over time, and they will also become more accessible (ie. easier to join to servers)

[glacial storm]

Well I think I can wait a bit more until the bots can be added via console command or ingame option

Don't know anything about running dedicated servers in RF

[brave crown]

this is true, but also certainly likes to hallucinate sometimes 😛

There's no documentation anywhere online about how to add these bots yet, because I wrote the functionality and I haven't written the docs for it yet

Those commands I believe are accurate for Sauerbraten ironically 😛

[desert crown]

classic google ai moment

[boreal ether]

@brave crown would/could/even possible for mesh objects to have the option to scale the object bigger or smaller ?

[brave crown]

I am not sure the complexity involved yet, but that is something I do plan to explore for 1.4 (it's another item on the big list of "features I've always wanted RED to have" lol)

[gaunt lotus]

for 1.4 RED needs a Goober button

i dunno what it would do but yeah

[boreal ether]

ohh goober, can you get RED to run on DX11? Imagine the complex maps we could make without it crashing

[viral light]

it could open an input field and whatever you type gets pinged directly to goober's phone

[brave crown]

More like a Fudster button, which opens a chat window with the FF LLM

[boreal ether]

haha yeh like the paper clip

[brave crown]

Idk if a full DX11 implementation for RED is in the cards, but I definitely do plan to explore what's feasible to make it more stable in more complex environments

RED is way more accessible now than it ever has been before, as you can probably tell from the new geometry operators and such 😛 so there's a lot that is on the table now which wasn't before

[boreal ether]

it sure is, ive been using the vertex delete option alot

its like learning RED all over again without tutorials or any explanation on how to use it

[brave crown]

:p

Vertex delete and geometry mirror have been super useful for me

[boreal ether]

what is ext. ?

[brave crown]

deletes the face and all adjacent faces

all faces that share at least 1 vertex with the face selected

[boreal ether]

ah ok, what does ext mean think ive seen it in events too

[brave crown]

I used it to mean extended, since there wasn't enough room for the full word lol

and i used that name because i couldnt think of any way to better describe it

did not put a lot of thought into the name :p

[shut vector]

Just wondering Goober, just my curiosity, with RED running as 32-bit, is it subjected to the RAM limits

[brave crown]

both RED and RF are 32-bit

[shut vector]

So they can only use a max of 2GB of RAM?

Like Office 32-bit?

[gaunt lotus]

its like 3GB yea

[shut vector]

Ahhh ok, just wondered thats all

[gaunt lotus]

in practice i doubt u can get tehre

without bad textures

[brave crown]

^ this is a big part of the benefit of using dds textures, especially if you have a lot of super high resolution textures

plus downloadable filesize of course

[viral light]

do steam deck people have any feedback on the new ff account linking method in alpine 1.3.0? should be much easier to use now

[wraith comet]

I was going to be a steam deck person.

https://tenor.com/view/crying-toby-mcguire-lonely-sad-tears-gif-16080417

Was.

[dire geode]

I gotta have to test controller pr on Steam Deck at some point!

[dire geode]

In the meantime,

I'm doubling down. You can now use Gyro and Touchpad to control the mouse cursor

Should help prepare for eventual Steam Controller 1/2 support down in the road (aka next SDL3 major release, they recently exposed Steam Controller touchpad to the API)

[dire geode]

but i do happen to have a experimental build that has semi-full Steam Controller support, but it's unfinished and will not be part of Alpine Faction 1.4 (unless the next major SDL3 Update adds exposable touchpad input before AF 1.4)

[silk tinsel]

where is the option to make messages appear under the health icon ? or is it not in this version ?

[gaunt lotus]

ui_gamefeed in console

[silk tinsel]

Are the new geo-mod properties "like updating detailed brushes as geomodable" effective even when the entire level is covered with Non-Geo Region ?

[brave crown]

I have not honestly tested that, but I would expect not, given the test of "is this in a geo region" is checked before RF2 geo is considered

[silk tinsel]

Should've tested that and present it in the tutorial

[brave crown]

what?

why?

why would you ever do that lol

I have tested a geoable brush in a geo region with hardness not 100, and it works as I described - the geo region applies, because it's considered first

[silk tinsel]

well you know.. in case of mappers have their maps completely covered in non-geo

[brave crown]

But I'm not going to show in a tutorial, a circumstance that should never happen because there's realistically no reason to ever have done it 😛 I can't test literally every circumstance either - that's why I release betas

[brave crown]

Even that though - why? I have seen only a handful of maps that do that, and there was never a reason to have done that, since setting level hardness to 100 was the appropriate way to achieve that effect

[silk tinsel]

sigh.. i always done that in my maps rather than setting up hardness.

[brave crown]

why?

[silk tinsel]

when i dont want it to be destroyed at all

i just never considered it at all

And here's the thing which it may sounds.. really dumb

[brave crown]

ah ok - well either way, yeah you should just delete those, especially if you're using RF2 geomod 🙂

[silk tinsel]

Like adding a bunch of non-geo regions around speciific areas in the map, leaving the uncovered parts of the map being geomodable by default. That's the oldest way ive ever done when i had to achieve a semi-destructive map lmao

[brave crown]

Yeah that approach makes sense, but having the complete level covered in non-geo regions doesn't :p

[silk tinsel]

i thought that was the only way to make non-geomodable maps. but now with this tutorial, it's back to the drawing board for me.

[brave crown]

Nope, level hardness 100 is the most straightforward way 🙂 With RF2 style geo disabled, level hardness works the same way it did all along, which is setting the hardness for all areas of the level that are not inside a geo region

with RF2 style geo enabled, level hardness is used as the hardness for geoable brushes, and you can apply RF1 style geo anywhere else in the level via geo regions

[silk tinsel]

rendering Non-Geo regions as useless then ?

[brave crown]

When RF2 style geo is used, yes - basically

[silk tinsel]

can't decide which effect would work the best for transparent ice crystals when they blow up.. shall they have ice or glass chunks? 😅

[boreal ether]

crunchy cat dont mind, just as long as its crunchy

[silk tinsel]

fair enough 😛

[shut vector]

Just want to check something. We can now do triggered particle emitters in Alpine? I fancy setting up a spectacular finish on RC3 which is to blow confetti at the end as you get closer to the finish line.

[brave crown]

You could always do that - with Particle_State

[obsidian warren]

Okay, I get the bots, I get the team games, I get the balancing teams, I get the fucking click limter. But why. Why I ask, is it, that EVERY SINGLE GAME I played with @prisma monolith tonight, I was set at a 5v4 disadvantage with 3 bots a piece, where he had one of three different teammates through the evening? We tried manual shuffling. Why tried ignoring it and hoping it would come good. NOTHING worked.

[brave crown]

Is your concern with the decision on which team a new player who joins gets assigned?

here's how that works - note spectators and browsers are fully excluded from this process

When a new player joins the server, these tests are checked in order:

1. Total lowest human+bot player count gets the new player (your example is 4v4, so this is equal)
2. Lowest team score gets the new joiner (if team score is tied, this would be equal)
3. The team with more bots is considered disadvantaged, so gets the new player (your example has equal bots per team, so this is tied)
4. Purely random assignment between red/blue team

If the first 3 were all tied, newly joined players ended up on @prisma monolith 's team 3 times via pure RNG

[obsidian warren]

My concern is both teams had the same number of bots, my team was always lower score, but what happens next game? Pure RNG gives jinx the third player 13 times out of 13?

Or rather, since there are two players involved on that team, pure RNG gives me no extra player 13 times out of 13?

[brave crown]

If it was 5v4, the team with 4 would always get the new player, no RNG involved

(players = humans+bots)

[obsidian warren]

no so... 6 bots. 3 per team. jinx and I join. 4v4.

Another player spawns. cool, jinx gets it. New map, teams shuffle, jinx and him vs me. Cool. New map, jinx and him vs me. okay. New map, jinx and him vs me. He leaves. New player. Jinx and him vs me. New map, jinx and him vs me. Jinx and him vs me. Jinx and him vs me. New player. Jinx and him vs me.... etc...

I lose each and every one of these games btw

[brave crown]

Oh, I guess team balance wasn't turned on, so no shuffle between subsequent levels if you stay on a team mode

[obsidian warren]

There were shuffles, we had jinx and I swap for a while in the middle... And still went back to the same thing every time

[brave crown]

actually I do see an issue with the logic - the logic for a newly joined player is sound as I described above, but when shuffling teams (at the start of a round when team balance is on), here's how it works:

1. Pass 1: Shuffle the bots and equally assign per team
2. Pass 2: Shuffle the humans and equally assign per team

In a scenario with 3 players, it does shuffle the 3 players and randomly decide which team gets the 2 players vs the 1 player. It however does not currently shuffle the order of those 3 players, so the lowest player ID (usually the first player to join the server) will always get the extra human, as long as there are 3 humans

I will fix this so that the list of humans is shuffled before the humans are dispersed between teams

[obsidian warren]

Yes, that would do it. Jinx joined first, so that would always give him the extra player

[brave crown]

In a scenario with 3 humans, yes that fits

[obsidian warren]

Are all bots the same? Do we need to shuffle bots? If not or even if can given 2 seperate order lines, can we not assign the lower score player to the losing team, assuming uneven teams? That would at least "shuffle" the extra player to the losing team every round

[brave crown]

https://github.com/GooberRF/alpinefaction/commit/c064d97d5c6ac049faa2c5ede52e6dd5d9895e54

fixed

[obsidian warren]

Thanks

@prisma monolith

[brave crown]

Are all bots the same?
In the FF servers, the bots have the same settings. You can customize bot profiles, but our servers have not done that currently

can we not assign the lower score player to the losing team, assuming uneven teams
Currently scores are not tracked between rounds. What you described is actually how it is working, but scores are all 0 at the round start, so there's no score-based balance to be done

[obsidian warren]

Yeah okay, so you'd have to assign them BEFORE the end of round for the following round, to make it work

[brave crown]

Sure in theory that would work, but is not how team balance works

[obsidian warren]

No and I get that, but aren't we here rewriting how it works/

[brave crown]

Yes, but the shuffle can't realistically be done on round end as opposed to round start, because round end isn't always an accurate representation of the players that will still be in the server on round start

(players without the level, who get kicked for not meeting the server requirements, etc.)

[obsidian warren]

Sure, but we're talking casual rounds. More people leave mid round, than at the end of the round...

[brave crown]

That's true, and tbh the lack of any mid-game team balance mechanism has been a problem in RF forever. Have considered various ways to address that, but nothing concrete yet. Something like how TF2 handles it is probably appropriate (I'm sure other games do the same, but TF2 is the one I'm most familiar with)

ie. if teams are unbalanced, it waits a little while to see if the players fix it themselves. If they don't, it broadcasts a server message saying team balancing is going to happen, and then it auto switches the team of the next player from the advantaged team to die

Or, if a player is already dead and NOT idle, just switches that player

[obsidian warren]

Yeah that's fine too as a concept, it at least improves it, it can hardly make it worse 90% of the time. However, I still think that just pulling data from the previous set, even given some players drop due to levels etc, would improve the balance dramatically

Over an average of games that is. I can see situations where it would suck big time

[brave crown]

Some sort of skill estimate-based context would be good, yeah agreed

[obsidian warren]

Yeah if we could assign elos to it like QL does that would be helpful, but failing that, I still think purely switching the lowest scored player on the winning team would help balances dramatically, over a few games

[gaunt lotus]

stats is something we have been scaffolding

it's not as easy as QL where your steamid acts as a consistent (well, aside for the mentally ill) player identifier

we do desperately need even just some jank/fast real-time team balancing badly for GN

it was always a problem with team games and is only somewhat masked by gametype switching right now

[shut vector]

Hey @brave crown in regards to Particle_State, do I only need to use that event to turn the Particles on? or do I need something like an Invert as well? And the Particles Emitters in question, they just need to have "Emitter is initually on" unchecked for this to work?

Tigger > Particle_State > Paritcle Emitter

[brave crown]

Depends on what you're trying to do

Particle Emitters can be either on or off

"Emitter is initially on" means it starts on. If this is not checked, it starts off

A Particle_State is essentially an interface for a Particle Emitter to the event system. You link to the Particle_State because you "can't" link to the Particle Emitter for this purpose (ignore the fact that you literally can link to the Particle Emitter, because it's pointless in most cases)

When Particle_State receives an "on" message, its "on" response routine is to turn the particle emitter on (if it's off)

When Particle_State receives an "off" message, its "off" response routine is to turn the particle emitter off (if its on)

By default, an event or a trigger "activating" a Particle_State means sending an "on" message. Invert is one way to flip the "on" message to an "off" message as it is flowing through (there are also other ways)

Just wanted to explain all of that because I think understanding how this all works is very important

If a particle emitter is ON and you want to turn it OFF, you need to send an "off" message to the Particle_State. Trigger->Invert->Particle_State for example

If a particle emitter is OFF and you want to turn it ON, you need to send an "on" message to the Particle_State. Trigger->Particle_State for example

[shut vector]

Fully understood 🙂

If you have a lot of Particle Emitters, can this fix the issue of particles not spawning in?

Ive got about 25+ particle emitters in one length of track in the Snow section, and there is not many particles appearing. Think I might be hitting the particle emitter limitations?

[brave crown]

I think you're hitting the particle limit, not the emitter limit

Active distance will stop spawning particles when you are at least that distance from the emitter, which can certainly help with that (and just performance in general)

For reference though, I think I recall that the field doesn't work on listen servers, so just be aware of that when testing. Should work fine on dedis though, which is realistically where the map will be played

[nimble sierra]

How exactly do you use the light sprites?

I noticed in Abrupt Decay you have some events linked together, just confused on the setup

[brave crown]

@nimble sierra you mean Coronas?

[nimble sierra]

Yes

[brave crown]

I have a video I need to record on Coronas and Meshes, just haven't gotten to it yet, but in essence...

Coronas are configred exactly as they look - the easiest way to get a template to work from is to make a clutter light, then use the "To Mesh Object" button in the Select Objects window (via Tools). That will make a mesh and corona object to match the settings from the clutter, and then you can adjust the corona object as you wish (and delete the mesh if you dont need it)

[nimble sierra]

Ohh ok

I think I get it

[brave crown]

The events...

Unhide_Glare works the same way for glares (coronas) as Unhide does for clutter/entities

Unhide_Glare -> Corona will unhide the Corona if it's hidden

Invert -> Unhide_Glare -> Corona will hide the Corona if it's visible

in my event systems in abrupt decay you will see Route_Nodes instead of Inverts... I typically always use Route_Nodes instead of Inverts simply because they're more flexible. But in the way I'm using them in abrupt decay, they're functionally the same as an Invert event

Route_Node is basically the same as an Invert event or a Delay event, but gives the mapper a lot more control over the behaviour. "Pass through" behaviour is the same as a Delay event, "Invert" behaviour is the same as an Invert event

[nimble sierra]

Thanks for the explanation, I’m definitely going to be using this more

This is the one thing I seen that i had to learn right away lol

[brave crown]

this event system achieves this function:

• When the camera mesh dies, turn off the red light on the camera
• When the camera mesh dies, turn off the red glare on the camera

[brave crown]

yeah its really handy :p

[nimble sierra]

Oh that makes sense

[brave crown]

https://www.redfactionwiki.com/wiki/Launching_Alpine_Faction_Bots

I can't remember who was asking me for this a little while ago, but here's a quick tutorial on how to run bots

@slow yarrow might have been you?

[desert crown]

@brazen nest ^

@glacial storm also asked but i think he wanted an ingame solution

(via console commands)

[shut vector]

@obsidian warren was another asking about Bots

[obsidian warren]

Many years ago perhaps..

[shut vector]

I scrolled up and saw you mention Bots 😄

[obsidian warren]

Recently, it would have been more behavioural

[brave crown]

Have been entertaining a new text-based "texture format", which would be used like any other texture, but doesn't actually have bitmap data itself. Instead it's basically a metadata file that references other data. Here's the format I'm considering

[header]
frame_time = 1000 # ms
animation_mode = 2 # 0 = static; 1 = ping pong, 2 = loop, 3 = play once
initially_on = true

[[frame]]
file = "mtl_testtex1.tga"
frame_time = 5000

[[frame]]
file = "mtl_testtex2.tga"

Major benefits of this approach would be:

1. Far greater control for animated textures (more granular frame time config, different frame times per frame), and no annoying VBM format limits
2. Can reuse textures as frames as many times as you like, WITHOUT needing to duplicate the texture and its filesize every time. You could, for example, have 5 "new textures" using this format, which use the same frames but have different animation behaviour. The only additional filesize is another text file
3. Can be controlled via the event system - like setting a specific frame, changing frame time, changing animation behaviour, etc.

[brave crown]

Oh I almost forgot - another benefit is for example, if you have 50 frames that all need the same alpha channel, you could just export a greyscale alpha mask, and apply that as the alpha mask for the "new format" file, which saves you from needing to duplicate the alpha channel for each frame individually (the frames could just be 24-bit RGB frames)

[brave crown]

The extension for these is .atx, and here are all the currently supported fields in my proof of concept:

[header]
# --- Playback timing ---
# default ms per frame
frame_time = 100

# --- Animation behavior ---
# 0=Static  1=PingPong  2=Loop  3=PlayOnce
animation_mode = 2
initially_on = true

# --- Format coercion (optional) ---
# "565_rgb", "1555_argb", "4444_argb", "888_rgb", or "8888_argb"
format = "8888_argb"

# --- Alpha mask (optional) ---
# 8-bit greyscale
alpha_mask = "mytexture_alpha.tga"

# --- Material override (optional) ---
# Fallback to filename-prefix if omitted
material = "metal"

[[frame]]
file = "panel_clean.tga"

[[frame]]
file = "panel_dented.tga"
frame_time = 500

[[frame]]
file = "panel_broken.tga"
frame_time = 50
material = "rock"

[gaunt lotus]

text-based texture format

you mean a texture

[brave crown]

[boreal ether]

i wondered wtf he was talking about

[gaunt lotus]

i guess to avoid the dorky english here you could call it a declarative texture

[wraith comet]

That's actually a really brilliant idea.

I would like to see some performance benchmarks on it, but having a texture you literally map out in text is quite a stroke of genius.

[split sleet]

i think we could go further

and make Alpine/rf MUD

look

go w

grab rg from box

e

e

s

w

---

what im suggesting is the ultimate RF regressed version

going towards the other end !

[brave crown]

Yeah that's probably a good term to use

The format will typically be labeled with its file extension - ATX - but yeah, declarative texture is a good term to use here

[brave crown]

in theory overhead should be very light. If an alpha mask or colour format conversion is specified, it needs to load into VRAM as a new instance, but if not, it just uses the existing instance handle from VRAM

So, you could for example have 20 textures on the walls in your map, and then have an ATX animated texture on the floor which uses all those 20 wall textures as its frames, and the game would just use the same instances as it already loaded for the walls

no different than just another wall with that texture

ATX is basically just an abstraction layer for loaded resources, which provides an interface to access it

of course animated ATX instances will also have timers to control when the frame changes, but that's very light

[wraith comet]

That sounds very promising so far, if that's the case.

[brave crown]

As of AF 1.4, RED and the game will now support these formats for textures:

• TGA (8-bit greyscale, 24-bit RGB, 32-bit RGBA)
• VBM (16-bit, 565/4444/1555 colour modes, animation)
• DDS (lossless: 24-bit RGB, 32-bit RGBA, 16-bit 565/4444/1555; compressed: DXT1, DXT3, DXT5)
• JPG (24-bit RGB)
• PNG (8-bit greyscale, 8-bit greyscale+alpha, 24-bit RGB, 32-bit RGBA; 16-bit and lower bit depths auto-converted)
• ATX (Alpine-specific declarative format with frame timing, animation modes, material override, alpha mask, and format coercion)

To be totally clear though, the big benefit of DDS DXT compression is GPU support. JPG/PNG have smaller filesize via lossy compression (which is good of course) but have the same VRAM use as TGAs. DDS with DXT compression is smaller filesize and less VRAM (on modern GPUs, anyway) - so using DDS + DXT compression will always be a better idea if you're going to be using enormous textures

[boreal ether]

is it possible to make .vbm start on the first frame when used as Display full screen?

[brave crown]

it's not possible to control what frame a vbm is on, period - I thought it would have started on frame 0 if used on display fullscreen image, though. Haven't dove into that behaviour but I expected it would work that way

It will be possible to control these things with ATX though

[obsidian warren]

What version are we up to? I have 1.3.0-beta3 (Bakeapple), but every time I open the game it tells me to redownload it. I've discovered pressing "cancel" and starting the game anyway works, but it's still a little annoying to have to do it...

Okay, so if I download it it gets rid of the "beta3" and I can join the match server, but when I quit and attempt to rejoin, it reverts back to the beta

[desert crown]

you should not be on beta 3 anymore as there is an official release i have no idea why it would be reverting

i'd try a clean reinstall of the full thing

@obsidian warren

[brave crown]

1.3.0 is curent

Your install of 1.3.0 isn't reverting to the beta. The installer installs 1.3.0 to your AF install location. You would have extracted the beta manually to some folder on your system. You need to not use the beta (you can delete it if you want, you don't need it), and just use your "proper" AF installation

[obsidian warren]

An uninstall and reinstall worked, I don't know where I might have extracted the beta, but it's all fixed now anyway - Thanks guys

[desert crown]

[near river]

Hey Goober, so great 1.3 is released! is there any documentation I can read for operating the new bots? 👀

[desert crown]

second

there is a written tutorial

getting link

[brave crown]

https://www.redfactionwiki.com/wiki/Launching_Alpine_Faction_Bots

[desert crown]

nvm xdd

[near river]

thanks a million

looks like the dedicated server guide is a stub right now, is there another location with that info?

[brave crown]

there's not a full guide but if you go to https://dedi.alpinefaction.com you can build a config. It is missing some of the newer options, but the basics are all there

Command line at the top of the page is what to use to launch the server

[near river]

awesome

does the lanonly flag work as advertised (no internet connection)? in fact, would anything bad happen if i block alpine in my firewall while running locally?

[brave crown]

lanonly doesn't actually block network connections, it just stops the server from trying to register with the tracker

No, nothing happens if you block inbound network access other than then server not being able to be accessed from the internet (which would be your goal in this case, obviously :p )

[viral light]

i was talking to goober earlier about some new event stuff and thought i'd move the conversation here

it started out as a desire for a method to get the current time within a map's event system

and i proposed having "magic" goal names, where the values are driven by the engine and not something you set yourself, but you are free to access

and these would be used to access (numeric) values that you otherwise couldn't

some ideas i had:

• date/time, maybe both local and utc (y/m/d/h/m/s)
• number of players currently in the map
• framerate
• time remaining in the match
• local player's score
• red/blue team scores

so as a random and maybe silly example, you could use a Goal_Check event on a goal name of AF_PlayerCount to open up a new area of the map if the player count passes a certain value

[wraith comet]

I like the idea a lot. It has a lot of potential for flexibility, especially in multiplayer maps. I will definitely not abuse it to do nefarious things to players at low framerates.

https://tenor.com/view/smiling-cat-creepy-cat-cat-zoom-kitty-gif-13989597

[brave crown]

I think there would be a lot of value in these kind of accessible stock variables. To get the most value out of them though I think some more catalysts would needed - like When_Player_Joins, When_Score_Reaches and such

[viral light]

probably

although id wanna see that in addition to the magic goals, rather than in place of

i mean maybe it would make sense to have "when_goal_reaches" lol

[brave crown]

Actually, that is probably a more elegant solution lol

[brave crown]

and yeah that's what I was going for

but When_Goal_Reaches just takes care of all of that lol

[viral light]

youd have to add netcode for any of that tho

for it to be meaningfully useful

since if you'd have it be able to latch once it crosses the threshold, you'd want that to still be latched for late joiners

[brave crown]

tbh I think that probably should be a separate thing

I could see a use case where you would want something like this to fire exclusively clientside, for example

There probably should be some kind of way to store data (server authoritive) which is synced to clients (including on late join)

well lol, there kinda is. Bool data is transmitted via clutter

a phone being killed outside the map when a checkpoint door is activated is really just syncing a bool value to all clients

[boreal ether]

yo goober, have you added foot steps to alpine multi. i know the pistol was the only gun that made foot step sounds. just heard then in the EU server

[brave crown]

@gaunt lotus wrote that feature, not me, but yes footsteps are fixed in AF 1.3

[boreal ether]

oh

thats a big game changer

[gaunt lotus]

u guys will be finding 1.3 stuff for months

[crude oyster]

Not concerned that since RF can only play so many sounds at once, that now it's going to get overloaded on full servers and sounds are going to start disappearing? 🤔

[gaunt lotus]

it's a concern but it seemingly has not been an issue, even when testing with 32 player bot games

they are pretty difficult to hear in large games though, so if anything they are what gets dropped

click/pistol spam is what usually overloads the sound engine lol

[wraith comet]

That must have been what happened to me when my Mom would tell me to clean my room.

[crude oyster]

You try on a map with a shitton of ambient sounds and play sound events all going at once or just on a default map that has no level sounds? 😛 Guess it's fine if footsteps get dropped first when limit is reached. Would really suck though if level sounds are what get dropped first. 🤔

[gaunt lotus]

actually the most important thing is that gameplay sounds aren't dropped

but yeah, it was tested on a variety of maps

it's likely possible to increase the number of sound slots as well

[crude oyster]

Nah screw gameplay sounds, most important is that map sounds don't get dropped, I spend a shitton of time building an immersive audio atmosphere haha.

[gaunt lotus]

i hear you, and when possible that's going to be something we'd obviously want to work all of the time

but there's no two ways about it. it's a multiplayer pvp game first and foremost, the priority always has to be gameplay

your immersive atmosphere loses all of its immersion if you can't hear someone shooting behind you for example

[crude oyster]

Sure but if it comes down to hearing footsteps that haven't been part of the game for 25 years or map sounds, map sounds should win. 😛 Guess we'll see how it goes.

[gaunt lotus]

they have been with pistol though, and they attenuate heavily based on distance

if it becomes an issue i'm fairly confident it would be fixable

[desert crown]

Footsteps have been missing sure but i feel like them being missing was a hugely weird gameplay problem that once again due to how long it took the 40 different people that have worked on patching this game never took a peak at under the hood, never got resolved 😛

i think the argument for having footsteps for the actual game feeling AND competitive design should be higher than ambience 😛

though speaking of this

i havn't played the SP long enough in density that i was for my any% speedrun @brave crown

did you have a look at the sound leaks that are still present?

[brave crown]

I don't know that I fully understand what you mean by that

[desert crown]

the sound vanishes in SP for certain things after being played over and over again in lengthy durations 😛

Its most notable in space station with the PR

i brought it up before and you said you'd take a look 😅

[brave crown]

I've not specifically looked at it no

that I can remember anyway

[desert crown]

thats all i wondered

[brave crown]

there's been a lot going on lol

[desert crown]

no i know 😝

it only really affects me or grant atp

so its not a big problem

[near river]

Hey Goober! sorry to bug once more, I was going to try the bots out on your classic map pack. can I put those VPPs into user_maps/multi and just give the level names in the server config?

[prisma dirge]

Serverconfig should look like this, maybe Goober can confirm, sorry for jumping in but it took me just 2 minutes...
Filename start with dm so it should be multiplayer, I hope...
For getting this serverconfig I unzipped the zipfile into a folder, used dos-command dir /b and replaced .vpp with .rfl and buldump the levels on https://dedi.alpinefaction.com/#levels

[brave crown]

Yep! 🙂

Willson's syntax should be right

[split sleet]

@brave crown i have a question , even though outside of the game my poke .wav files are pretty loud . In-game they are bit quieter than your af_hitsound1 and af_killsound1 counterparts ..hmm

do u know what could be the issue here ?

i think that killsound feels nice

not sure about hitsounds - pokeball throw one .

maybe they are same volume actually ...its just different tone and my mind isnt used to it so it appears quieter

[gaunt lotus]

i think i had to bump the gain on the ones i use

they might even clip badly and i just dont care lol

has anyone made gopnik elite guard skin yet

[split sleet]

https://tenor.com/view/russian-bochk-bochka-bass-kalbasor-gif-18411064

@green cobalt someone threw a challenge for u

bass bass hardbass adidas semechki and all that jazz

yes ?

tri stripes

i remember 90s in Poland were more like that , our similar to gopniks ,chavs subculture - DRESY

now its not as distinc subculture

and more intertwined with hiphop culture / with variety in clothing its basiscally gone

[near river]

SO COOL! i have just 2 questions Goober:

1. can you pass a server password through the command line args? (didn't see anything in the wikis i read)
2. all of the classic levels worked out of the box besides waterlogged (no waypoints), is there a simple way to get them in?

[brave crown]

Oh interesting, that map should have had waypoints but it seems to not. I'll do waypoints for it, 1s

@near river should be good now if you want to reload it

[near river]

[brave crown]

I don't specifically know of an issue here - the volume the sounds are played at is based on the stock sound files, but those files are not particularly quiet or loud so I wouldn't expect any strange behaviour when replacing them

(also sry I totally missed that message before lol)

[near river]

I have to get to work im afraid, I didn’t see a reupload to factionfiles is there somewhere else I should look?

[brave crown]

The waypoints files are associated with the map on FF, and when a bot tries to load a map, it checks FF for a waypoint file and downloads it if available

So just try joining bots to a server on that map and they should download the waypoints

[near river]

oh I see, after that I assume the waypoints are stored somewhere locally?

[brave crown]

yes, and only redownloaded in the future if either you delete them locally, or if FF eventually gets a newer version of the waypoints than you already have locally

they're stored locally in user_maps\waypoints if you're curious to take a look at them

[dire geode]

hi, can anyone go ahead and test SDL KB/M PR for a bit? need to at least switch to SDL KB/M Mode in-game

i went ahead and at least addresses only one part of the problem, specifically WM_MOUSEMOVE flushing.

i...don't have access to higher mouse polling rates in me, so i'll hope anyone else can do

[near river]

just had a chance to try it out, working great! thanks a bunch

[brave crown]

I should be able to give this a shot this evening. Am I correct in understanding that a successful test results in basically no changes in behaviour, other than support for additional mouse/keyboard buttons that weren't supported by the stock input?

[wraith comet]

@brave crown

Hi

🙂

[brave crown]

Would you believe that you sent that all of 3 minutes after someone at work did the exact same thing lol

[wraith comet]

I would, actually, because I have a knack for doing that.

That and accidentally third wheeling my best friend when him and his girlfriend are trying to have alone time.

(Without fail.)

Timing is my specialty. Whether it's comedic timing, fortunate timing, or unfortunate timing depends on my RNG that day.

And I was never good with numbers.

[dire geode]

main goal is ensuring mouse's poll rate is "stable" when compared to Stock and DInput Mouse.

and yes, additional kb+m buttons, too

based on my brief time with my trackball mouse: it should be decent enough

[gaunt lotus]

the mouse input feels fine to me for a quick initial test, but fs exclusive is broken for some reason

[dire geode]

Fullscreen Exclusive? I've been searching into that bug a few times.
I don't think it's entirely related to SDL KB/M stuffs.

But just in case, can you try the master build and Version 1.3 to see if that issue also occurs over there.

[gaunt lotus]

it does not occur in master

[dire geode]

ok, once I get back home: I'll need to try fixing it

[gaunt lotus]

hmm oh wait

this might be me

ah nope

from crashlog

[   0.53] ERROR: D3D11 call failed: swap_chain_->Present(sync_interval, present_flags) (function flip in line 549)
[   0.53] ERROR: D3D11 result: 887a0001 (DXGI_ERROR_INVALID_CALL)
The application made a call that is invalid. Either the parameters of the call or the state of some object was incorrect.
Enable the D3D debug layer in order to see details via debug messages.```

it's fine in current 1.4.0 dev master

on Win11 25H2, 5070ti, low latency enabled in nvidia driver, FSO enabled

[dire geode]

after investigating, this might be a more involve fix than I thought, SDL Window Management (needed for Mouse events) is not friendly towards DXGI.

this might require redoing the entire thing from the ground up instead (ideally, without the Windowing Management), and potentially might be moved outside of next release candidate.

for now, the bigger priority is getting Gamepad PR in.

speaking of that...

I got myself a new Steam Controller and I can confirm to you that it's "partially" supported.

[desert crown]

found another weird edge case last night that i hadn't seen before

Rail gun without laser

if what ive learned from @gaunt lotus is correct

this is purely due to the delay ?

he's firing before spectate has adjusted and the reload hadn't finished so the effect is just lost

[gaunt lotus]

probably or maybe occluded from your client's non-spectate perspective

ammo goes down so i'd assume the latter

[desert crown]

ah 🙁

unfortunate woulda been a cool clip

[gaunt lotus]

i bet u could chromakey it in

tbh

lmao

[desert crown]

idk 😂

[gaunt lotus]

u just record the anim

and time it / overlay

[desert crown]

very hard to chromakey the blue laser itself in i think

[gaunt lotus]

u turn off gun models and hud

then make a blue map i guess

sorry red

then record it

idk

[desert crown]

didn't we try thsi goofy shit for replacing guns on peoples pov with no weapons models

[gaunt lotus]

idk i mean

in theory uit would work

a lot less work than fpgun too

cus u just need to time it with 1 shot

[desert crown]

seems like a sidequest for me 😝

[flint dirge]

manually run the installer against the prefix for RF
this is the way, thank you man.

[nimble sierra]

So how exactly does revolt game mode work?

Is it similar to assault mode where there’s objectives?

[desert crown]

waiting on goober cooking an example map

[gaunt lotus]

loosely based on battlefields breakthrough

[brave crown]

Yeah revolt is designed as an asymmetrical multi-stage attack/defend scenario gametype. Red team attacks and blue team defends. Gameplay moves between stages as each subsequent control point is captured, and spawn points move with it. Game ends either when the timer is up (blue wins - successful defense), or when red captures the last point (red wins, successful attack)

[brave crown]

Today - May 12, 2026 - at 12:38PM local time in Newfoundland, the most consequential feature of all was added to Alpine Faction.

In-universe clocks now reflect the real world (local) time.

I'm 99% sure this was a feature promised in pre-release interviews by Volition in 2000, but it absolutely was never implemented... until now.

[brave crown]

Ok in all seriousness, an actually important feature just got added

The game now supports textures in these formats:

• TGA
• VBM
• DDS
• JPG
• PNG
• ATX (Alpine texture format)

The editor also now supports all of these formats too

Additionally, the following events have been added for manipulating ATX files in the world during gameplay:

• ATX_Set_Frame
• ATX_Play
• ATX_Pause
• ATX_Set_Frame_Time

Here's an example .atx file, fully commented showing the capabilities. .atx files are TOML-based text files, so open it in a text editor

if anyone's interested in testing out this functionality, I really would appreciate it. Here's a dev build that supports it

IMPORTANT: Like always, do not overwrite your "good" AF 1.3 install with this dev/beta build

MORE IMPORTANT: AF 1.4 (including this dev build) use RFL version 305. This means that maps saved with this level editor version will NOT work with AF 1.3 or any previous versions. It ALSO means that any RFLs saved with the dev build of the level editor may end up becoming corrupted down the road (before AF 1.4's eventual proper release). All that to say, DO NOT rely on RFLs saved with this dev version of the level editor. DO NOT use them as your "good" copy of your level. These RFLs may become corrupt with no notice

That said, I'd love it if you'd test out the newly supported formats and ATX manipulation events (on test maps) and let me know if you run into any issues 🥳

@crude oyster @boreal ether tagging you because i know you've both asked about new texture formats that support animation before

You could now, in theory, make an animated ATX file using JPG frames

[gaunt lotus]

booo

it should reflect the local time converted to martian time

DUH

[viral light]

Being able to seek to arbitrary frames is huge

[desert crown]

i liked that it just worked from when you loaded into the game 😂

[gaunt lotus]

so who is going to use the texture format to make RF inside RF?

[brave crown]

Absolutely, and TONS of scripting potential with it being tied to an event

Also ATX files are extremely tiny since they're just text, so if you want a second instance of the same texture so you can control it independently, it's dead simple to do that

(you can also set material overrides per frame... so if you wanted in a run map for example, a texture that looks exactly the same but is ice sometimes instead of cement... you can 😛 )

[viral light]

ok so the scope of those events is the texture, as in, you couldn't control it per-face or something (without adding another atx file)

[brave crown]

Correct, it's per handle (handle = the texture filename without extension)

[viral light]

right

makes sense

so an atx is kind of = a material in unity land

[brave crown]

basically yeah

[viral light]

actually pretty cool

[brave crown]

it's an abstraction layer for a bitmap

that can be manipulated

[viral light]

so much new stuff but what's missing, from my brain, is ideas

[brave crown]

here you go, my employee brainstormed for you

[viral light]

i was already thinking about doing that lol

but larger scale than just atx

why does your employee spell destabilize wrong

[brave crown]

my employee uses Real(tm) English

[viral light]

lmfao

can we move bolt sources yet

and kill the flickering

[brave crown]

no, I did have that working at one point but not properly

because the emitter position is saved as the source for the bolt at spawn and then not considered after, so the approach needs to keep track of child bolts for each emitter and move the handles with it

[viral light]

do you have to? that would go against how particles work no?

being able to change sim space from local to world would probably be epic poggers

same for particles

[brave crown]

Yes, but not against how targets work on the other side of the bolts :p

[viral light]

right

[crude oyster]

Not that anyone actually looks at the clocks, but might be neat if you could also set their start time via event, for anyone that wants that extra little bit of immersion if their level takes place at a specific time. Or could be used for a time travel sequence, showing the clock moving ahead or backwards really fast.

[crude oyster]

With capture points, is there any way to set the height of the trigger outline? Like if its on uneven terrain some of the outline is floating and other parts are below ground. Need the wall to be a couple m tall instead of the default of like 0.5, that way I can have it all touching the ground. 🤔

Also If I want the any team respawn points around a capture point, to change to only the team that owns the capture point, once the capture point is captured, what's the best way to do that? 🤔

[brave crown]

you can set the height offset in the event, but not the height of the band. There are clientside commands to do it, but the player sets that not the mapper. I would suggest just making the terrain more flat, honestly. Other than that, you do have the option to use When_Captured events and make your own indicator if you wanted to

[brave crown]

this is standard behaviour of control points:
https://www.redfactionwiki.com/wiki/Mapping_with_Control_Points#Linking_to_Respawn_Points

You could rig something up with events if you wanted different behaviour, but I'd suggest just using the stock behaviour for this because it's standard and expected by players

[crude oyster]

Ah that sucks.. Making the terrain flat around the capture point would look worse then the half floaty half underground band. I don't have any ideas on how I'd make a custom indicator that would look decent.

If the height can be controlled by commands, why not just add that property to the Capture_Point_Handler, that can set a default height for each band, so they can be adjusted to look good on surfaces that aren't perfectly flat? 🤔

[crude oyster]

Oh nice! That's the behaviour I want, so easy peasy. No need to make it more complicated then it has to be. 😛

[brave crown]

why not just add that property to the Capture_Point_Handler
The event structure only supports 2 configurable float values, and outline offset and cap rate multiplier already use both of them

[dire geode]

change of plans,

since fixing that is going to require...essentially overhauling Exclusive Fullscreen: I opted to shelved the SDL Keyboard/Mouse stuffs for now infavor of backporting the exisitng mapping workaround to a new PR and leveraging WM_KEY stuffs

https://github.com/GooberRF/alpinefaction/pull/374

and Alt keys.

elsewhere in the world of Game Controllers: Steam Controller 2 glyph is already added in, alongside minor adjustments on how Steam glyphs are handled

(don't expect full Steam Controller 2 support for the time being)

[dire geode]

sorry for the late delay! i added the changelog. now it's ready to be pushed.

[dire geode]

@brave crown, whatever you did with the build fix (d961979)...broke Gamepad PR CI now. 😭

i've determined that it's most likely related to Windows SDK changes, something along the lines of, which SDL seems to struggle.

'Options': is not a member of 'AudioClientProperties'

i've traced down at least one of the potential sources, i believe it's NTDDI_VERSION=0x06010000. while removing it solves it, it already breaks the rest after i press a functionality.

right now, i'm trying to figure out if this is a specific configuration bug or a SDL-specific bug (which i can actually report said bug separately

for now: gamepad stuffs will have to be put on hold.

which is unfortunate, I just added full support for Steam Controller 2 (sans Trackpad, it doesn't really work at the moment, and might get dropped entirely) in a separate test branch. 😔

[brave crown]

Well, for now you could just revert the ci.yml change in your branch and continue to build the PR

just, when you're getting close to it being ready, then we can figure out what's going on there. The ci changes in the latest commit were mostly just modernizing the workflow, so it should be able to be worked out. But again, not important until the PR is closer to being ready for merge anyway

[dire geode]

based on my investigation: i'm more inclinded to say this is both a SDL bug and a Alpine Faction bug. the former sounds like a easy fix, but i'll pass it up to SDL folks.

it isn't a ci.yml issue (i reverted as suggested: it didn't work), I believe it might be a CMakeList (the root one) issue to me?

(oh and it'll retroactively break Windows.Gaming.Input for some reason. but it's possible to fully disable it)

i did sorta manage to get that fix...until i press any menu button and i get two crashes.

I tried asking Claudy via Copilot but to no avail.

[brave crown]

O.o

freetype was also updated, to note

[dire geode]

yea, i noticed.

i'm more inclined to believe it's more of a Windows SDK switch, but i'm working on theories at the moment

[brave crown]

I'll grab your branch and have claude investigate as well, see if it comes back with anything

[dire geode]

i suggest you start with https://github.com/AL2009man/alpinefaction/tree/refs/heads/testbranch1 (that's the upstream)

[brave crown]

why not POC-GyroGamepad?

[dire geode]

and the one without the upstream (but with a forked sdl fix)
https://github.com/AL2009man/alpinefaction/tree/testbranch3

[dire geode]

if you went with that, you get to look at the last 5 painful commits of attempts on fixing the build

that's why i created two test branch to isolate

but you can still go with POC-GyroGamepad

[dire geode]

i actually went ahead and use my pevious SDL3 fork without any gameplay stuffs and i can confirm the same problem occurs after i did the merge to newer branch

my suspicion is the Windows SDK changes in that commit...?

i just gonna go to bed

i'm been awake for far too long trying to sort this out

[brave crown]

im going to bed in a sec too, but claude is chugging away at diagnosing and fixing, will let you know what it comes up with

[dire geode]

gotcha. in the meantime: I'll flag WASPI-specific bug to SDL maintainers.

thankfully, pre-d961979 isn't affected by it after i apply my sdl fork

[brave crown]

Found the culprit. SDL3 has a SDL_Preseed_CMakeCache that unconditionally re-sets HAVE_WINDOWS_GAMING_INPUT_H=1 for any MSVC ≥ 19.1 (VS 2015+). Need to either disable the preseed or work around it.

claude thinks this is the cause

trying a build now

[dire geode]

i already done that.

but i can try in my end.

[brave crown]

set(SDL_PRESEED OFF CACHE BOOL "" FORCE)
set(HAVE_WINDOWS_GAMING_INPUT_H 0 CACHE INTERNAL "" FORCE)

it put these in CMakeLists.txt in the sdl dir

build is still going though so not sure yet if it actually worked

[dire geode]

if i remember, that's a bug for mingw portion.

while the WASPI portion is for msvc error

[dire geode]

already tried that, in combination with my custom WASPI fix.

no dice

[brave crown]

it built for me with that change

[dire geode]

try launching the game and see if you can move around

at least press any of the menu buttons

i'm suppose to be in msvc for my Visual Studios, but i haven't tested in mingw mode yet

[brave crown]

yeah the menu works

[dire geode]

looks like i'll need to switch to mingw then

[brave crown]

I am using msvc

[dire geode]

okay, now let's go ahead and test it out!

while i try to build in my end, i'll rolling out the proper fix https://github.com/GooberRF/alpinefaction/actions/runs/26015391822

[dire geode]

you can try to apply the same fix over on https://github.com/AL2009man/alpinefaction/commit/d7f19233d8b34babaa703e9f509953af331d3099 for comparison (that's before the bug appears)

imma head out to bed now.

g'night

[dire geode]

just woke up. after enough investigations, and now knowing the GitHub CI fails: i filed both bugs over to SDL masterminds.

according to the funni Claude via Copilot: it is most likely related to Windows SDK target change (around CO_MTA_USAGE_COOKIE) that caused a regression on SDL's side.

both of those issues should be fixed later today or this week.

I love Microsoft Windows

[dire geode]

ok, wasapi portion has been fixed. I'm still waiting for them to investigate the WGI issue.

the previous workaround to disable Windows.Gaming.Input still won't work due to errors as seen in the screenshot, causes game crash the moment i click the menu button. am still trying to find a workaround

https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/issues/15646#issuecomment-4479479027

[dire geode]

ok, the fix should apply and be able to bypass the build issues. please use SteamController2-test branch to tests it.

in my end: the menus works so i'm in the same position as you are.
but the moment you enter in-game, or go to load screen/start screen: the entire game crashes.

best i can do is grab a snippet of my crash log

[   4.53] ERROR: Unhandled exception: ExceptionAddress=0x751c4984 ExceptionCode=0x87a
[   4.53] ERROR: ExceptionInformation[0]=0x1
[   4.53] ERROR: ExceptionInformation[1]=0x1ac4b0
[   4.53] ERROR: ExceptionInformation[2]=0x1ad150

turns out, it's a D3D11 bug. 😔 (i already selected nvidia gpu, copilot)

it does not affect DX8/DX9, i can enter into the game no problem

[brave crown]

Does this happen to you on master

[dire geode]

i haven't tested master branch at the moment

but i shall

[dire geode]

i tested it.

same problem occurs

i can see the same compile build warnings as before, i'll give you the build output once i finish doing the deeds

i'll send you two text files for you to review.

[boreal ether]

@brave crown do you know about the bug while climbing ladders the weapon fire animation loops when fired once?

[dire geode]

all issues related to SDL has been fixed. you should be able to test POC-GyroGamepad again. which means we're temporarily switching to a GIT_TG and upgraded CI build inorder to use said fix.

that's temporary until the next SDL stable release.

however: it won't address the DirectX 11 crashes, as you already saw during the build output regardless of master or forks

[brave crown]

That seems to be a hardware-specific issue, which certainly needs to be addressed

[dire geode]

i already have a good idea that something got broken during the switch to a newer SDK update.

[brave crown]

does it happen on AF 1.3 release?

[dire geode]

nope. i just checked the release build

it's specifically commit d961979 is where that crash started

[brave crown]

I am expecting that the edits to gr_d3d11.cpp, gr_d3d11.h, or gr_d3d11_error.cpp would have caused this (otherwise I have no idea)

But these changes are not causing this issue for me. Any chance you can revert those specfic files to before this commit and see if the issue persists

[dire geode]

oh, i already done that. crash doesn't occur to pre-d961979.

but i'll go try reverting those back to pre-d961979.

[brave crown]

Right, I get that its something in that commit doing it. But it's a very large commit, so trying to nail down specifically what

and it's an issue I can't reproduce

[dire geode]

i can confirm it's specifically those three files.

if you haven't saw d3d driver bug.txt, it's supposely a AMD-specific issue, and my PC is a NVIDIA+AMD Laptop-based combo

let me see if i can ask Claude via Copilot if there's some sort of a workaround...

[brave crown]

can you also ask claude to identify the specific change in those gr_d3d11 files that is likely causing the issue

I don't have it in front of me right now or I'd ask lol

[dire geode]

right now, my times gonna be limited, but i'll try it quick

[brave crown]

thanks

[dire geode]

found the culprit.

it's D3D11_CREATE_DEVICE_DEBUG

// Restored in d96197956b:
#ifndef NDEBUG
    flags |= D3D11_CREATE_DEVICE_DEBUG;
CREATE_DEVICE:
#endif

i'll get the PR in for you to check

https://github.com/GooberRF/alpinefaction/pull/377

as far as I can tell: it's specific to debugs, but i'll gonna compile the release build just to see if it doesn't cause a crash

edit: it doesn't

(this might give you a better idea on how to get pre-rendered videos working on NVIDIA+AMD Laptops in the near future)

[wraith comet]

Man. I hate bugs like this that only affect debug but not release, or vice versa. I had to deal with something like that awhile ago and it was horrible.

[dire geode]

i'll need a copilot reviewer for this pr, i opened the PR already.

[fast crescent]

@brave crown SiD can't see flag glow even though he is using dx 11, has r_dynamiclightndotl 0 enabled, and dynamic lighting in option enabled

any ideas what to check next or why he cant see flag glow?

[brave crown]

Short of a hardware dependency, which I think is very unlikely, he should be

@earnest iron are you seeing the dynamic light glow at all?

[fast crescent]

he said no

we are in server btw

in case u wanna talk to him there, or i can send him here lol

[brave crown]

It would make a lot more sense for him to ask about it if he is the one having the problem 😛

[earnest iron]

This is what it says

[brave crown]

that setting only controls whether lights show through geometry, nothing to do with whether the lights show up period

[earnest iron]

I can see glow in dx8

Not 11

[brave crown]

Are you sure you have dynamic lights turned on in the video options menu

[earnest iron]

Its on

[brave crown]

And if you hold the flag or have the amp, do you see the dynamic light glow on the floor below you

[brave crown]

ok so the dynamic light is rendering

[earnest iron]

That dx 8

Let switch to 11

This is 11

[brave crown]

right

ok so let's back up - what is the problem exactly? I thought the problem was that dynamic lights weren't rendering for you, but they are in that screenshot 😛

[earnest iron]

Cant see flag flashing under wl ramp for example

[fast crescent]

try it with me moving around on top of wl sid

[brave crown]

right - dynamic lights seem to be working properly for you

[fast crescent]

shoudl he turn down gamma?

[brave crown]

what is the issue?

in your video, the dynamic light is rendering through the ceiling

[fast crescent]

its harder for me to see than on my screen, so maybe gamma is too bright makign it harder for him?

[brave crown]

idk maybe, he can adjust gamma if it makes it easier to see - it's impossible for me to tell what the correct light level is on a cell phone video of a screen 😛

but there is no functional issue visible in this video

[earnest iron]

This is direct 8

[fast crescent]

ok

[earnest iron]

Looks like its showing better now with gamma lower

[brave crown]

that's good

[earnest iron]

Might be my old crappy imac

[brave crown]

it's very visible for me watching your video tbh

[earnest iron]

Thanks

U have laser eyes?

Need to get mine checked

[brave crown]

Well I mean, as visible as I would have expected for a phone video of a computer screen 😛 but yeah it's pretty clear haha

[fast crescent]

matches @brave crown ?

sinc eur here

[brave crown]

nah I can't, I need to sleep in a min

[fast crescent]

k

@brave crown imagine if all @earnest iron needed was glasses, and he started beating me so badly in RF i lost my will to fight and had to quit RF forever?!?!?

😁

[desert crown]

after that abrupt decay performance he may need more than glasses

[fast crescent]

https://tenor.com/view/shocked-burn-parks-and-rec-chris-pratt-gif-2693723001935437012

[obsidian warren]

Same

[brave crown]

@dire geode can you try master again and see if the issue is fixed for you

(it should be)

Instead of removing the feature that was crashing for you (d3d11 debug layer), it's now gated to a switch (-d3d11-debug-layer)

so, that switch might crash you because of the driver bug you described earlier. But you shouldn't crash if you don't use the switch

[dire geode]

can confirm it's fixed

[brave crown]

fantastic! 🥳

[brave crown]

UX may need to be tweaked a little, and the vbm overlay for the bag holder is absolutely a placeholder, but bagman mechanics are working

[nimble sierra]

Neat

[brave crown]

The biggest question I have is what to do for the pickup lol

RF2 has a briefcase, RF:G has a glowing green orb with smoke coming out of it, so there's not exactly a standard lol

I'm currently using the nano canister as a placeholder. Some sort of modified nano canister might be the play. Whenever I design these kinds of things I always try to do them the way Volition would have done them back when they were making RF. And I think it's a pretty fair bet it would have been nanotech-themed

[wraith comet]

It either would have been nanotech themed, or a complete non-sequitur, knowing Volition. So I think modified nano canister is a good bet.

[nimble sierra]

I could see something like a briefcase working. It could be the antidote to the plague.

It would also be cool if could customize the pickup, like make it a nuke or some kind of explosive.

[brave crown]

Bagman playtest with bots

Bot behaviour still needs some tweaking, and the pickup isn't final, but the core mechanics are all working

Also the bag return timer is far too long currently lol (its just using the flag return time right now)

[gaunt lotus]

i dont like that bag holder seems to be wallhacked

[brave crown]

We can definitely play with that, but it's the way Bagman works in every other implementation in the series, so I wanted to try it out like that first

[gaunt lotus]

wait really?

[brave crown]

100%

[gaunt lotus]

for rf2?

[brave crown]

https://youtu.be/0r6V0lHB2e8

[gaunt lotus]

what a terrible design lol

[brave crown]

RF2 also shows a distance number lol

Eh, I don't really agree. It changes the gameplay for sure, but the loop is based around hunters having "perfect" information and the bagman having to constantly defend themselves, rather than them being able to hide

[gaunt lotus]

the TTK is too low

[brave crown]

It's a fundamentally different design the other way. Totally down to try it out here, but yeah I wanted to match the design found elsewhere in the series first

[gaunt lotus]

i understand the intent behind making them wh

[brave crown]

The current design is essentially identical to RF2's implementation other than the initial delayed spawn (which is just a net positive I think) and the lack of distance numbers

[gaunt lotus]

but it's going to be dogshit with humans

the only way it works is if the bag gives some buff

[brave crown]

I was considering whether either regeneration or kill rewards should be built into the standard rules for the gamemode

kill rewards are probably a better design for this kind of thing, I think

[gaunt lotus]

i would actually go for regen

[brave crown]

Like +30 effective health kill reward or something. That may be too much though given they can also run armours while holding the bag

[gaunt lotus]

because if you are being swarmed by low hp enemies you can survive forever otherwise

[brave crown]

Actually, just thinking out loud here but what could be really neat would be:

• Regen for bag holder
• Kill reward +50 effective health for killing the current bag holder
• 25% damage reduction for non-bag holders attacking bag other non-bag holders

For the regen, I think the most intuitive way would probably be to just award +X every time you get a point (ie. every 1 second you hold the bag). That design is also far less likely to run into annoying network sync issues since I'd entirely avoid clientside prediction lol

Maybe +10 effective health per point would make sense

so you regain a 50 armour in 10 seconds

[gaunt lotus]

yea

sounds playable

[brave crown]

values can be tweaked but yeah I'll try that, seems good in theory

[brave crown]

yeah it feels nice with the regen and kill rewards

[gaunt lotus]

when someone has the cannister, can you attach it to their back?

also, when the "bag" is dropped, can the mesh have an outline that's visible through the wall? i would find the chevron annoying visually

hmm i guess the cannister isn't ideal for that

it would almost be better to do "hold the flag" and re-use the flags

or carry the banner

[brave crown]

Yeah I was thinking about that

The mesh can certainly have an outline

[gaunt lotus]

as much as i dont hate the cannister, it might be a not terrible idea to implement a custom mesh for this if you dont want to reuse the flags

[brave crown]

Yeah I think a custom mesh is the way to go tbh

[gaunt lotus]

it just feels a bit temu right now

if it's a bag... some kind of backpack? might be annoying to fit for all 3 skeletons

[brave crown]

Yeah I was thinking some sort of backpack might make sense, but it might be tricky

In rf2 I think it's a briefcase floating over the characters head

[desert crown]

it is yes

for "Regime" its Sopots hat

it also apparantly has a "draw through walls" symbol above it

[brave crown]

it does yeah

and a distance counter, which is very ugly IMO lol

[desert crown]

yah

no need for that i think, maybe the through the wall thing (for larger maps) but still

[brave crown]

you can already see the bag carrier outline and sprite through the map :p

[desert crown]

oh well then yeah

fuck the second symbol then lol

[gaunt lotus]

i think the symbol should be there but id want to be able to toggle it off and still be able to play the game mode

[brave crown]

you mean locally?

[gaunt lotus]

ya

[brave crown]

Oh yeah for sure

it's not implemented yet but that will be for sure

https://youtu.be/iRGleX0kLCw

@desert crown ^current implementation

[desert crown]

10/10 c4 throw btw

😂

[brave crown]

:p

[desert crown]

but yah looking good

i assume the ui is only displaying the top 3 score to keep it from being to much

[brave crown]

right, the rest is on the tab scoreboard like normal

actually, come to think of it, I probably should change it to work like RF:G does - where it shows your score regardless. If you're not at the top, you're at the bottom

[desert crown]

so 4 players

top 3 and you

[brave crown]

no, top 2 and you, unless you're in the top 2

so if you're in 5th place it would show the 1st and 2nd place players and then you

[desert crown]

oh gotcha

[brave crown]

alright, this seems ready to me

[desert crown]

New Class Unlocked - Mortar Canon

[brave crown]

still not quite sure what to do for the mesh, but at least its a backpack now lol

[silk tinsel]

ghostbusters proton pack

[boreal ether]

Wait is that cryo cooler? I thought you was just using it to test while you found a suitable briefcase

[earnest iron]

https://tenor.com/view/rbny-vasc-soccer-southward-beer-gif-12872708

Is that keg filled with Canadian whiskey goober?

[boreal ether]

its full of magic cards. goober is top bag man player when he is in the knowledge of this

[brave crown]

👀 perhaps

[desert crown]

its no longer bagman

its whiskey man

[wraith comet]

Battle for the Martian Hooch

[fast crescent]

He knows better than to drink that inferior swill!!! 😉

[crude oyster]

Would it be possible to add gas region previews to RED? Tis a little tedious to keep having to go back and forth between game and RED for tweaks, til you get the look your going for. 😛

[brave crown]

Currently, no that's not practical, because gas regions rely on D3D11 and RED still runs D3D8. If RED ever gets a renderer upgrade, supporting gas regions would certainly be part of that, but that's an enormous undertaking and at least right now not a priority

[crude oyster]

I see.

Also is it just me or are gas regions just not useable if there's a skybox behind them? 🤔 It just like totally disappears if there is a sky behind it instead of geometry. Was thinking they might be a neat way to create volumetric cloud effects but instead they become totally invisible when they are surrounded by show sky walls. 🫤

[brave crown]

Well it does show up in front of the sky, but yeah it does seem from your video that it fades quicker with a skybox behind than normal geometry. I don't know off hand what would be required to fix that, but it's definitely not ideal. As is, it's totally usable viewing from gas into the level or the sky - that part works fine, just viewing gas at a far distance with sky behind it doesnt look right

[brave crown]

Bagman and Team Bagman are officially merged into Alpine for v1.4 🥳

Bag placement in levels works using a tiered approach:

1. If the level file contains the (new) Bag object type, the bag will spawn there. This is for new maps where the author wants to specify the location directly
2. I've manually placed the bag in the default levels in some sensible positions (hardcoded)
3. For levels without hardcoded positions, and without a Bag object in the level file (i.e. basically all custom maps, in a practical sense), the bag will be placed on an item location. It goes through Damage Amp, Invuln, Super Armour, Super Health, in that order, until it finds a valid location.
4. For levels without hardcoded positions, without Bag objects, and without any super item position to spawn the bag, the bag spawns at the player start

[crude oyster]

It seems when you add texture overrides to a mesh object, when you create the vpp it still just packs the original texture and not the override. 🤔

[brave crown]

Oh, hm. There's a big list in RED of files that get packed in the vpp, maybe I missed texture overrides

It does pack textures directly referenced by mesh files used on Mesh objects, though right? Just to confirm

oh also I forgot to mention this but this morning I merged a change which properly fixes teleports dragging players through the level (by adding new netcode):
https://github.com/GooberRF/alpinefaction/commit/03645f95220f2b48e51c467b6cf716b4bf9b86a3

Side note, playing bagman with bots is actually really fun lol

[desert crown]

is there a server i can hop on to see or will i need to wait for 1.4

[brave crown]

There is not, but I could put one up if you wanted to check it out in a dev build

[desert crown]

over the weekend sure 💜

[brave crown]

I can probably get that done in like 15 min lol

[desert crown]

😄

[brave crown]

@zinc quiver because I know you want to run a test/beta server - I just pushed that required fix. Build the latest master branch and you should be good

[zinc quiver]

cool thanks, that was quick

[brave crown]

@desert crown FF test server is up, has a ton of maps on it, but I haven't tested all of them with Bagman yet, so I can't guarantee how well they'll play. I've tested all the default maps, Abrupt Decay, Foundation, and a handful of others and they play well.

No bots on the server yet but will be later

Also OK I think plans to run a BM testing server so, you can test in either

if anyone's interested in testing out Bagman, I really would appreciate it. Here's a dev build that supports it. The FactionFiles.com [AF 1.4 Test] server is running the game type

IMPORTANT: Like always, do not overwrite your "good" AF 1.3 install with this dev/beta build

MORE IMPORTANT: AF 1.4 (including this dev build) use RFL version 305. This means that maps saved with this level editor version will NOT work with AF 1.3 or any previous versions. It ALSO means that any RFLs saved with the dev build of the level editor may end up becoming corrupted down the road (before AF 1.4's eventual proper release). All that to say, DO NOT rely on RFLs saved with this dev version of the level editor. DO NOT use them as your "good" copy of your level. These RFLs may become corrupt with no notice

[zinc quiver]

BM testing server is online atm under the name faction5 [dev] but will be under faction5 [AF 1.4 Test] later.
For now i have added only the default maps, but will add some more later!

So far it's a really nice mode ! 🙂

[desert crown]

playing with the bots is neat 🙂

feels like an actual hide and seek game mode since they can't just "see you"

i guess i just beat them xdd

[desert crown]

lol

[brave crown]

@zinc quiver i think the default game type for your server is CTF lol

[desert crown]

i did wonder why there was a tdm map on an arena map before

aw no bots in ff bagman

[brave crown]

not yet

will be later

[desert crown]

womp womp

[zinc quiver]

ill add it as BM

i guess i have CTF as default purely for the location pinging lol

also dm11 gives me problems, data incompatible
when i download it from FF its the levelseb.vpp
im going to check how to fix that

[brave crown]

Your bots must have a broken dm11.rfl

[desert crown]

do you have a modded one in usermaps

check

[brave crown]

Run where dm11.rfl from the bot and it will tell you where it's loading from

[zinc quiver]

Probably, i have 4013 vpps in the multi folder

[desert crown]

💀

[zinc quiver]

problem solved, thanks 🙂

and server is up with more maps

and without sniper 1 hit now btw :p

[brave crown]

@zinc quiver would also be ideal to set the bagman settings back to default

The 7.5sec should be good for most situations, but could always be changed. I'd far rather that testing of the gametype happens with defaults settings though, so I can get an idea of if the defaults should change

[zinc quiver]

i have set it up the default way now 🙂

2 secs delay in respawning
7.5 secs for bag return time

[crude oyster]

Yeah it packs the original textures referenced by the mesh, just not the override textures.

[viral light]

rfsb updated to support bm/tbm

[brave crown]

FF 1.4 test server is back, with fixes, running bagman, with bots

@desert crown since you were asking

[desert crown]

[desert crown]

there are a few maps that the "start" position doesn't work on so far

the jan ones 100%

SEB

[brave crown]

If you can make me a list of rfls that would be super useful - it should work for most but for the handful it doesn't I can hardcode positions

[desert crown]

idk the jan maps rfl 🙁

the one with all the portals

and this one

idk their names though

[brave crown]

Press tab it should say it

[desert crown]

im not on it

lmao

[brave crown]

But if it's too long, info in console would

Oh ok

[desert crown]

i know how to search the name ingame XD

[brave crown]

@onyx parcel sending this in the alpine dev thread rather than introductions :p

Awesome to hear you've been working on co-op! 🥳 Curious, is your intend to PR it back to main Alpine?

[onyx parcel]

When it is finished I think so. There is quite a bit of work and testing still needed. I will record some footage soon on how it looks so far. Main issue so far is the AI/NPC streaming between server and client. On the server it looks on par with Singelplayer now, I had to do quite a bit of fixes, like the PS2 footage I just shared, that was also how it looked for the server on PC at first, where the AI/NPC just keep cycling their animation, some don't play and some events just don't happen properly.

Here is the PS2 version so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRxa0SGEJ-k

[silk tinsel]

Damn! Wish this was on PC too! but not splitscreen xD

[onyx parcel]

Working on it. I actually worked on PC first, and mirrored some of that to see if it could work on PS2, and well. It does!

[silk tinsel]

If you pull that off, on pc with a multiplayer server that can let maximum 32 players in, will be carnage with that amount while plowing through singleplayer campaign!

it would need manually level changing tho, as loading screens and load_level events weren't designed for multiplayer.

[onyx parcel]

I semi figured that out. Though I need to iron out some of those bugs. Server has no problem going through level transitions now, problem is now with clients following.

I am also working on a wait for other players to reach level end feature/level transition in xx:xx.
What was a bit if a headache to figure out was the server going crazy by level transistion, like it would first reload the current level but put you in the current position, and then you can transistion just fine, that I fixed. Also implemented last Inventory feature, so when you go through a level transistion, you keep your weapons and ammo.

I need to implement unholster and body pickup too. When everything will work fine-ish, then some heavy testing will be required.

[silk tinsel]

Anything to bring the coop experience to its fully potential.

[dire geode]

Co-Op?!

yoo

since I've been dabbling with PC Controller support, i might have to futureproof to prepare for future local splitscreen support down in the line (but I probably won't be handling this time around)

right now, the current hotswap setup is sorta designed around Steam Deck's docked experience.

[zinc quiver]

dm_MEAN

[zinc quiver]

i will get back to you at some point with that.
For now i have checked most of my fav maps and the ones i have available on my servers, however i want to do a more thorough test with time, at times that im bored 🙂

[wraith comet]

OH MY GOD

I LOVE YOU

I AM SHITTING BRICKS

[desert crown]

@brave crown so whilst this is possible - i think its start position would be kind of awkward to play with (dm666CastleOfDoom)

you gotta yeet at it from the towers

might be better to place it on the ground on this map

the 2 towers you can get to it from are only spawn locations you can't get there naturally outside of going up the towers and jumping to them first - maybe u don't care about this though, i just personally found it to be a little weird

also wtf just happened lol

[brave crown]

the cutscene camera is inside the bag lol

[desert crown]

OH lmao

similarly compounded - its a few geo mods out of the way which kind of ruins grabbing it early in a match

can get to it but agian just a bit off

my rule of thumb atm is if the bots can't easily get at it ill report it

dm_LASTEXIT

can't reach it via any normal method

All Around the world - i can't recall if its in a reachable spot but i don't think so

hahahah Dac_Dust

its a geo mod but yeah

lmao

funny spot

[brave crown]

it's where the amp is

or invuln

[desert crown]

yah

i never knew they existed in this map no one seems to blow that crate up 😂

DM-RFU5-Midwichv5

[gaunt lotus]

lol

just go up there and get it

:>>>

[desert crown]

sorry im kinda spamming 😅 dm dac zelda

[desert crown]

😠

[gaunt lotus]

prolly need a better bag spawning mechanism

[desert crown]

i think alot of them are player starts

instead of amps etc

[brave crown]

most of the ones youve been sending are amps

just mappers putting amps in weird places lol

[desert crown]

morbis gravis is possible but you gotta fling out the teleport idk if you want that lmao

as i was typing someone flew out and grabbed it

but thats a spawn i think?

[brave crown]

but eh, I think the bag placement mechanism generally works pretty well - it's only really a problem in 2 instances:

• maps without powerups and a weird player start (not super common)
• maps where the mapper put the amp/invuln in a weird unreachable spot (even less common)

There are also some cases like DAC Zelda where the placement is probably not ideal but it's totally workable

I suppose swapping the player start fallback for a multi spawn point might make sense

[desert crown]

not super common as i land on 5 in a row 😭

[brave crown]

which? O.o

[desert crown]

i just sent them ^ XD

[brave crown]

Jan used powerups far less in his maps than like every other mapper for the record :p

[desert crown]

ok but dac zelda/compounded/midwich/AATW/Last Exit/Castle of Doom

[brave crown]

    { "dmcompounded.rfl", -28.0f, -7.0f, 33.0f },
    { "dm_mean.rfl", 30.0f, 17.0f, -4.0f },
    { "dm_lastexit.rfl", 7.0f, -9.0f, 0.0f },
    { "dm666castleofdoom.rfl", 0.0f, -4.88f, -10.0f },
    { "dm-megamix.rfl", 0.04f, -17.13f, -0.02f },
    { "dm_mf_all_around_the_world.rfl", 3.70f, -40.06f, 15.88f },
    { "dm-rfu5-midwichv5.rfl", 23.50f, 11.0f, 5.0f },

I've added these because yeah they are more ideal than the auto placed ones. But of those, only Last Exit was actually unusable

well and midwich

but midwich was unusable in a way that is impossible to detect with code

[desert crown]

and the portal one from jan redt

[brave crown]

it's because of the way the map is designed

[desert crown]

again idk the name of it

[silk tinsel]

so it's not just ANY map that can be played Bagman in, huh.

[brave crown]

?

[desert crown]

well any map can

its not the game mode its the placement lol

[silk tinsel]

how can you tell of where are they placed based on each custom map ?

[brave crown]

it's that, for existing maps, there needs to be a way for Alpine to know where to put the starting bag position. For new maps, mappers can decide that themselves

[desert crown]

tf u think we're doing acer XD

Jurassic park was fine 😄

[brave crown]

#1376930844597551146 message
this explains bag placement

[desert crown]

wait hellbowl had a dm ? I thought it was just CTF XD

[silk tinsel]

understood now

[desert crown]

uhm

@brave crown

the bag reset but it didn't reset to where it started and i can't see it anymore

[silk tinsel]

but what if there is map with a Player_Start that can be hard to reach or impossible and doesn't have any powerups?

[desert crown]

thats what we are looking for

so goober can hardcode the position on those maps

super weird though lmao

dmturtleb1 @brave crown

since the geomod isn't sign posted at all

idk if players would know well enough

i mean

they'd see the outline obvs

but still

ok im sorry i guess the wall texture is different but i know afaction players 😝

also the bots don't have the geo mod configured here i guess they can't seem to get to it

[brave crown]

stuff like that isn't particularly concerning IMO. It is signposted - it's in a secret, and also the bag is only ever at its "home" location at the start and if it returns (which doesn't happen very often)

the bots should know how to geo into it though, that's a problem, but a different one :p

[desert crown]

idk i feel like you reduced the countdown from the other day

[brave crown]

?

the timer has been identical since I made this

[desert crown]

i think its reset timer was longer last time i checked

oh O_o

[brave crown]

OK increased it in his server

which I asked him to revert

[desert crown]

AH

thatl be it then

[brave crown]

testing should be done on stock settings :p

[desert crown]

the better lava control

@brave crown second opinion required

corpse crossroads

its possible in theory but extremely out of the way

finally got it lol

[gaunt lotus]

it only spawns in like one starting position, right?

[brave crown]

what do you mean?

there is a determinative spawn position per map yes, if that's what you mean. Whether it's the bag object, hardcoded position, powerup position, or player start, it will always be at the same position every time the map is loaded

[desert crown]

gonna take a break for now think i found some good maps to spot problems with

[brave crown]

oh wait I think I see the issue with that map

the bag spawning logic seems fine, but that map has more items than the item limit lol

[desert crown]

O_o

[brave crown]

issue seems to be that no further items can be created because it's at the limit, and when you die it's a race condition to see whether your dropped weapon or the bag takes the free slot

so it is a map problem

my workaround for now is just to retry to respawn the bag every 2 seconds if the attempt to spawn it fails

so worst case scenario there's no bag for a few seconds before the game autocorrects