Making Tunnels in Final Alert 2

[Chrono Vortex]

It took me forever to figure this out myself, so I figured it’d be a good idea to save anyone else out there who wants to make tunnels work using Final Alert 2 the trouble.

The first thing you’ll need to do is follow this other tutorial in order to enable FA2 to work with tunnels. If those instructions don’t work for you, or you just don’t want to deal with them, try replacing “FAData.ini” in the folder where you have FA2 installed with this version:

FAData.ini

If it worked, you should now have a “Tunnels” option in the sidebar:

Next, you’ll need to set up the terrain for the tunnels. The tunnel terrain pieces are under (Tunnel Floor) and (Tunnel Side). Your setup should look something like this:

If you don’t want the road, you’ll need to use the tunnel pieces under (DirtTunnel Floor) instead, which will look something like this:

Now to make the actual tunnels. Open the new “Tunnels” tab in the sidebar and select “Create tunnel.” In my experience, these are the best locations to draw the tunnels relative to the terrain:

All you have to do now is finish drawing the cliff. Be careful not to draw over the tunnel pieces:

And that’s it. If you’ve done everything right, units should be able to pass through your tunnel without issue.

If you want a reference, here’s a map with a couple of tunnels in it:

Tunnel Example.map

One more thing; the tunnel facing toward the bottom left has a little bit of an alignment issue, which leaves some annoying black pixels in-game:

There’s not really a way to fix this without modding, unfortunately. I’d recommend just covering it up with some trees or something. A bit crude, but effective:

[[CC] RaVaGe]

Very nice thread, thanks for the tutorial.

[Alpaca]

cool info!

[KazutoSensei]

I got acctually a problem and maybe someone can help me...

When I try to use tunnels and the dotted lines have no space, then the unit/s don't move through it.

But when the dotted lines are free with space, it works? Does someone know why I can't create a normal "cliff" where units move through a tunnel?

 

1 Picture (Doesn't work)

2 Picture (Does work, but wouldnt work when Cliff is filled on same height)

Edited September 27, 2022 by KazutoSensei

[McPwny]

I am surprised you guys are getting tunnels to work at all. last i looked red alert 2's tunnel tiles themselves werent configured correctly and shouldnt work as tunnels, and even if you have a patched version of the tunnel tile files, the way that final alert 2 draws the 'lines' for the tunnels has an error in its calculation for it. mappers have traditionally resorted to using a separate tool for drawing tunnels.

PS. try pressing the 'D' key in FA2 to enter the depressed tile mode to access the spaces behind cliffs

[KazutoSensei]

33 minutes ago, McPwny said:

the way that final alert 2 draws the 'lines' for the tunnels has an error in its calculation for it

Ah, is there a way to fix it?

 

33 minutes ago, McPwny said:

mappers have traditionally resorted to using a separate tool for drawing tunnels

How is the programm called, do you know?

 

33 minutes ago, McPwny said:

PS. try pressing the 'D' key in FA2 to enter the depressed tile mode to access the spaces behind cliffs

Thx for the advice, didn't know that yet. But it didn't change something. If I close the space between the two tunnels parts (bottom entry/exit and top entry/exit) with higher space or cliffs, then it won't work. May be because of your calculation error you mentioned.

[McPwny]

its called tunnel drawer and its here: https://ppmforums.com/topic-37881/ts-ra2-tunnel-drawer/

sadly, it was made with adobe flash player which is now defunct and wont work for most people. you used to be able to use the editor off of the web page, but now you need to get a flash player emulator, and use it to play the .swf file.

[KazutoSensei]

On 9/28/2022 at 12:52 AM, McPwny said:

its called tunnel drawer and its here: https://ppmforums.com/topic-37881/ts-ra2-tunnel-drawer/

sadly, it was made with adobe flash player which is now defunct and wont work for most people. you used to be able to use the editor off of the web page, but now you need to get a flash player emulator, and use it to play the .swf file.

Thank you again for your fast support all the time. Sadly that drawer didn't help too.

I think tunnels/tubes got bugged in RA2/YR cause nevertheless what I try, I dosn't work if the cliff is filled out.

With free space between the cliffs everything is working, but when I fill it with ground on the same height, than it won't work. 

I extracted the coords from the drawer, even though I dosn't make a difference with the ones I get from the map editor.
Only thing with map editor is, that he spams -1, -1, -1, so you just remove it until you have 1 "-1" at the end of the coords.

But even with that in my "mapname.map" - file it don't work. He draws the lines, enter and exit, but the unit won't go through it.

(Picture 1 - This one works perfect)

If the tunnel line cells are on the same height as the ground, perfekt, Tunnel works like a dream.

(Picture 2 - dream looking, but dosn't work)

But when you use flatten ground to make it look like a mountain it wont work anymore.

So yeah, if maybe anyone else has solution for me, I would cry out of appreciation.

 

Greetings KazutoSensei

Edited September 29, 2022 by KazutoSensei
Gramma mistakes

[McPwny]

hmm so long as
1- the tubes are drawn correctly like in the picture
2- the tunnel ends are on the same elevation
3- the tunnel tiles themselves are configured properly
it should work.

when you select a unit and hover the cursor over the tunnel tile, does it display an enter symbol, or does it display the normal mouse cursor?

[GradualyWatermelon]

On 9/28/2022 at 12:52 AM, McPwny said:

its called tunnel drawer and its here: https://ppmforums.com/topic-37881/ts-ra2-tunnel-drawer/

sadly, it was made with adobe flash player which is now defunct and wont work for most people. you used to be able to use the editor off of the web page, but now you need to get a flash player emulator, and use it to play the .swf file.

There's a better way. MapTool has an option to fix tunnels broken by FA2/FS.

[KazutoSensei]

12 hours ago, McPwny said:

hmm so long as
1- the tubes are drawn correctly like in the picture
2- the tunnel ends are on the same elevation
3- the tunnel tiles themselves are configured properly
it should work.

when you select a unit and hover the cursor over the tunnel tile, does it display an enter symbol, or does it display the normal mouse cursor?

I don't know what I should configurate correctly there.
I place the enter and exit, don't draw over tunnel parts and it dosn't work.

Also the normal cursor is displayed.

On 12/30/2017 at 9:39 AM, Chrono Vortex said:

Tunnel Example.map 52.53 kB · 510 downloads

These examples don't work, too. So idk if thats a new bug for RA2 or if really no tunnels are working at all and never will  

9 hours ago, GradualyWatermelon said:

There's a better way. MapTool has an option to fix tunnels broken by FA2/FS.

Thanks for your new idea and I also tried it, but dosn't work, too.

I get the following when I use "[Misc] Fix Tunnels" on my test map.

[Info] Starting processing of maps.

[Info] Processing map: C:\Users\Patrick\Desktop\Custom\MyMaps\In Progress\tunnel test.map
[Info] Initializing map file 'C:\Users\Patrick\Desktop\Custom\MyMaps\In Progress\tunnel test.map'.
[Info] Parsing IsoMapPack5.
[Info] Parsing OverlayPack.
[Info] Parsing OverlayDataPack.
[Info] Parsing conversion profile file.
[Info] FixTunnels set: Saved map will have [Tubes] section fixed to remove errors caused by map editor.
[Info] Skipping saving map file as no changes have been made to it.

[Info] Processing of all maps completed successfully.

After that I copy it again to my "Custom"-Map folder of RA2 but without success.

Idk what I could do to get it working, I think I should forget about tunnels, cause how it seems, it won't work.

Edited September 30, 2022 by KazutoSensei

[McPwny]

i mean that the actual .TMP tile in the game might be bugged. I used to make tiles, and i noticed that westwoods original tunnel tiles in the vanilla game were configured wrong and would not actually work as tunnels, for temperate at least. popular terrain expansion patches fix these issues, but in vanilla they wont work, and cncnet may not have ever updated the tunnel tiles.

if thats the case, then maby a person could talk the devs into patching in working versions of those .tmp tiles.

[GradualyWatermelon]

Kazuto, I noticed that you're placing the North-West/North-East tunnels wrong. You should place these tunnels with the purple line in between the cliffs.

On 9/30/2022 at 4:46 PM, McPwny said:

i mean that the actual .TMP tile in the game might be bugged. I used to make tiles, and i noticed that westwoods original tunnel tiles in the vanilla game were configured wrong and would not actually work as tunnels, for temperate at least. popular terrain expansion patches fix these issues, but in vanilla they wont work, and cncnet may not have ever updated the tunnel tiles.
if thats the case, then maby a person could talk the devs into patching in working versions of those .tmp tiles.

Yeah, the tunnels are incorrectly configured, but I remember some of them worked, so I tested tunnels on all theaters except Lunar (because Lunar has no tunnels.)
Here are my results:
In NewUrban, only the tunnels with road tiles on them worked. The non-road tunnels don't.
In Urban, all types of tunnels work, albeit they use incorrect graphics.
In the rest of the theaters, the tunnels don't work at all.
Well, Kazuto, you're only hope of making tunnels work are in these theaters. Thankfully, this MapTool I mentioned a few posts ago has features to convert your map to one of these theaters.
Also, you can have my tunnel testing maps: RA2YR Tunnel Test Maps.zip

Edited February 2, 2023 by GradualyWatermelon

[GradualyWatermelon]

UPDATE: I was mostly wrong. the tunnels in the rest of the theaters do work, your units just has to be right next to a tunnel and click on the very end of the tunnel where the tunnel entrance points (the red tunnel squares only seen in FA2) are, which is not intuitive.
Also, in Desert, NewUrban, and Temperate, units can't actually pass through the non-road tunnels because there seems to be impassable tiles on the tunnel entrances.

[McPwny]

its a curious thing that tunnels even work at all without the proper terrain types. tunnel tiles are supposed to have a special tunnel terrain type on the cells that the tubes are linked to as well as a reference in the theater .ini file. they will play an enter cursor when you hover over them and units will pathfind through them automatically when told to move to the other side... i wonder if you placed the tubes on some normal terrain, if the units would still enter if told to go to that cell

[KazutoSensei]

3 hours ago, GradualyWatermelon said:

UPDATE: I was mostly wrong. the tunnels in the rest of the theaters do work, your units just has to be right next to a tunnel and click on the very end of the tunnel where the tunnel entrance points (the red tunnel squares only seen in FA2) are, which is not intuitive.
Also, in Desert, NewUrban, and Temperate, units can't actually pass through the non-road tunnels because there seems to be impassable tiles on the tunnel entrances.

So you found it out. I testet it. Only Urban or NewUrban supporting tunnels from the beginning.

Snow and Desert won't work, except you transform them to Temperate and then to NewUrban.

The only entrance/exit click funcionality won't help cause you need to see both sides, if not it won't work and even if, then its not good gameplay.

 

(IMPORTANT: Road Tunnels are needed)
Theaters which support tunnels:

• Urban
• NewUrban

Theaters which only work after theater change to NewUrban

• Temperate

Theaters which won't support tunnels:

• Desert (Only works when changed from Desert -> Temperate -> NewUrban [But your lose your theater Desert])
• Snow (Only works when changed from Snow -> Temperate -> NewUrban [But your lose your theater Snow])
• Lunar (No Tunnel sets)

For switching theaters you need MapTool by @Starkku

Link: https://github.com/Starkku/MapTool

Thx for the support @GradualyWatermelon and @McPwny

 

So if some updates happen for the support of tunnels on other theaters let us know here.

Beside that, see you next time. 

Edited September 30, 2022 by KazutoSensei
better reading and gramma mistakes fix

[GradualyWatermelon]

Glad to help you out

[McPwny]

a little bit of a necro post, but bbglas and I have discovered a way to fix tunnels in a map; ini edit an overlay to be Land=Tunnel, and place that overlay on top of the cells marked with green in the framework tiles and then link the tunnels to make the tunnels function as they should.

this way, technically the tunnel tileset isnt even needed. the modified overlay itself acts as the tunnel node; a fact you can exploit to make any tile you want into a tunnel. for example, here i simply set the 'Land=' type of the pallet overlay to =Tunnel and linked them together. ingame, it works as a tunnel perfectly with enter cursor and all
 

 

edit: bbglas made a video demonstrating it
https://youtu.be/MQ807CmD4s8

Edited November 10, 2023 by McPwny

[[CC] RaVaGe]

On 9/30/2022 at 6:36 PM, McPwny said:

its a curious thing that tunnels even work at all without the proper terrain types. tunnel tiles are supposed to have a special tunnel terrain type on the cells that the tubes are linked to as well as a reference in the theater .ini file. they will play an enter cursor when you hover over them and units will pathfind through them automatically when told to move to the other side... i wonder if you placed the tubes on some normal terrain, if the units would still enter if told to go to that cell

Is it fixed in Terrain Expansion?

[McPwny]

presumably they did fix them, but i didnt look at them that closely and cant say definitely. fixing tunnels is a trivial affair involving nothing more than patching the existing tiles and putting tham in a .mix.

[[CC] RaVaGe]

I got the tunnels working, made tunnels on urban, placed them according to the above tutorial by original poster and then used the "MapTool" to "Fix tunnels".

[McPwny]

despite fa2 having a tunnel mode, it doesnt handle the tunnel drawing code correctly and it either corrupts, or overcomplicates the code. honestly should never be used since tunnel drawer gives more flexible and reliable results than fa2 even if can be 'fixed' with maptool. tunnel drawer here: https://ppmforums.com/topic-37881/ts-ra2-tunnel-drawer/

the tunnels themselves are called 'tubes', and the tubes are supposed to lie on a special terrain type called 'tunnel' which should be exclusive to the three cells of the tunnel terrain tile for pathing and linking purposes. on the vanilla tiles, the cells that are supposed to have the 'tunnel' terrain type are set as 'clear' making the tunnel tileset basically just an ordinary cliff. interestingly, its possible to coax units into tubes without the tunnel terrain type on the tube end, but its far from optimal. as i showed in the above post, by setting the Land= type to =Tunnel on an overlay its possible to get the tunnel terrain type on the same tile as the tube end and restore proper functionality in any theater

as a side note, i checked and found that urban theater does in fact have the tunnels correctly configured. for reference, these are the tiles that you should be linking the tubes to.