Contents

Command-line switches

A command-line switch changes how the editor behaves for one session. Most of them turn off one change RED+ makes to RED. You do not need any of them for normal work.

This page lists the switches meant for mappers. RED+ also accepts switches for testing RED+ itself, which are not listed here.

How to pass a switch

RedPlus.exe hands every switch on its command line to the editor.

Right-click your shortcut to RedPlus.exe and choose Properties. To make a shortcut, see Install and start RED+.
In Target, after the path to RedPlus.exe, type a space and the switch. For example:
```
"D:\Games\Red Faction\RedPlus\RedPlus.exe" -thinwalls:off
```
Click OK, then start RED+ from that shortcut.

Type each switch exactly as shown here, in lower case. Separate several switches with spaces.
A switch applies from the start of the session to its end. To stop using one, close the editor, remove the switch and start RED+ again.
When File, Mod (RF+) starts the editor again, the new editor gets the same switches.
Double-clicking RedPlus.exe itself starts the editor with no switches.

Starting the editor

Switch	What it does
`-mod` followed by a space and a mod name	Starts the editor with that mod from the game's `mods` folder, in place of the one saved by File, Mod (RF+). For this session only. See Mods.

Lighting bake

Each of these changes the next bake, unless its row says otherwise.

Switch	What it does
`-thinwalls:off`	RED lights a face that points away from a point or spot light with part of that light. With this switch, walls and boards thinner than about 0.35 units do not block that part, so a face lit from the other side of such a wall comes out brighter.
`-nobackfaceshadows`	Surfaces that face away from a point, spot or tube light are not shadowed, so such a light shines through floors, walls and ceilings.
`-creaseshadows:off`	Where two faces meet at an angle of up to 45 degrees, each texel takes its shadow from its own position, so a shadow crossing the corner can stop in a straight line there.
`-creaseband:` followed by a number	How far from such a corner, or a gentle bend, texels take the shadow at the corner itself, in tenths of a texel, from `5` to `200`. For example, `-creaseband:40` is 4 texels. Without it, the band is at least 1.75 texels and at least 0.25 units wide.
`-smoothfix:off`	On surfaces with a smoothing group, texels next to very thin faces keep the position and direction Red Faction's lighting code works out for them, even where it is wrong. Such texels can come out far too bright or too dark.
`-nearcoplanar:off`	Faces that lie flat against each other but not exactly in one plane each get their own lightmap, so a shadow crossing the edge between them may not line up. It applies when the lightmaps are laid out again: Level, Calculate Maps and Light, or `L`.
`-moveroccluders:off`	Brushes in a moving group without the Detail flag block no light at all when they are lit, not even for their own faces.
`-seammovers:blend`	At the end of a bake, the lightmap of a moving brush is matched with the faces of other brushes it touches, as well as its own. A door sitting just behind its frame can take the frame's light along its edges.
`-emissivekeep:off`	An emitting face's Bright and Depth (Face Properties) change after Rebuild Geometry, the way RED's own rebuild leaves them, and the bake uses the changed values.

Bake speed

Each of these uses an older, slower method for one part of Calculate Lighting.

Switch	Part of the bake
`-fasttree:off`	shadow rays and bounce light rays
`-fastbounce:off`	bounce light rays only
`-aowide:off`	ambient occlusion rays and sun rays
`-aoahead:off`	building each surface's ambient occlusion tree, which then runs on one thread

Viewports and display

Switch	What it does
`-truecolor:off`	The editor shows 24-bit and 32-bit textures, and lightmaps, in 16-bit colour. Dark lightmap gradients can then show bands. It uses less memory. The level and its lightmaps do not change.
`-meshlod:stock`	Meshes switch to their lower-detail models at stock RED's distances, a tenth of the game's.
`-waterspeed:stock`	Water waves move once per frame, so their speed depends on the frame rate.
`-skypass:off`	In Render Everything, the sky room is not drawn behind Show Sky faces.
`-texpan:stock`	While the editor is open, it pans faces with a texture mover by changing their UVs, and saving the level writes the changed UVs.
`-ambientrange:stock`	An ambient sound's outer range sphere is drawn at about half the distance the game plays the sound.
`-spotgizmo:stock`	A spot light whose FOV, or FOV plus dropoff, is over 180 degrees is drawn as a narrow cone pointing backwards.

Packfiles

Switch	What it does
`-packsounds:off`	File, Create Level Packfile leaves the level's custom sound files out.

Bake log

Switch	What it does
`-shadowmeshattribution`	The ray-traced shadow line in the bake log also counts the rays that placed meshes blocked. Shadows do not change.