The YR Red-Resurrection mod files are left unlocked and openable by community modding tools so others can view them and maybe a learn thing or two! The modding community developed, thrived and survived from the sharing of information afterall.
The mod comes with several tools to help you improve the experience of Red-Resurrection, for example with the creation of new maps! Final Alert 2 is accessible from the main menu and altered to support the mod's content. Furthermore a map renderer and conversion tool is included to streamline the map creation process.
If you have general modding questions it is recommended to visit the community sites listed below, where you may be able to find help.
The mod is neatly packed into several mix files. Below is a list of the mixes and their contents.
- expandmd10.mix - Contains the RA2 missions, movies, SHPs, voxels, cameos, palettes and other assorted files.
- expandmd11.mix - Contains theatre TMPs and sound files.
- expandmd12.mix - Reserved for updates to the RA2 missions.
- expandmd13.mix - Reserved for updates to various art assets (so far cameos, to be overridden by the textless versions).
- expandmd20.mix - Reserved for updates to the stringtables.
- expandmd30.mix - Used by the optional Russian language pack.
- expandmd40.mix - Used by the optional textless cameos pack.
- expandmd80.mix - expandmd98.mix - Reserved for updates.
- expandmd99.mix - Contains the INI files.
The map editor - a modified version of Final Alert 2 - can be launched directly from the client.
Red-Resurrection changes the colour palette of several theatres in order to better support the new terrain, however the map editor is stuck reading the old palettes... thankfully Starkku created a small program that will fix this for you!
Simply launch fa2_pal_fixer.exe from the Red-Resurrection folder and, if you have unedited ra2.mix and ra2md.mix files, it will inject the correct palette files, fixing the issue for you in Final Alert 2!
- Save the map with standard gamemode enabled.
- Save or place the map inside the Red-Resurrection\Maps\Custom folder with a .map extension.
- ???
- Profit.
Simply rename the map preview file (which must be in PNG format) to match the name of the map file. The optimal size for the preview is a width no greater than 812 and height no greater than 384 pixels so it does not get resized by the client itself, and look blurry. Maintain the original aspect ratio however, and just ensure the longest size matches the appropriate value. Also reducing the colour depth to 256-colours greatly decreases the size of a preview.
The Map Renderer is used to render a full map preview, so you can view it without going ingame, or shrink it down to use in the client.
You can simply drag your map onto the program window and hit render and it will output the file in the same directory. It is highly recommended to resize and compress the image before sharing it anywhere as they can be tens of megabytes in size.
The Map Tool is used to do a number of batch changes to maps such as converting one or more to a different theatre or optimizing a multiplayer maps filesize by removing unnecessary information.
It is a powerful tool out of the box with numerous templates for you to use on your own maps but new templates can be created to serve your own needs.
If you wish to develop your own templates then you can check out the documentation below.