Q: How do geo-mods effect level designing and the general gameplay in that respect?
-The level designers really need to think about the fact that the player can shoot through a wall, but they have to think about where the player can go because normally in a FPS game it's very linear in terms of where you can go. To a certain extent we still have to, because our game is very story driven, but the level designers need to think about what areas are destructible, to what degree, and to how that fits into solving puzzles. So, a lot of time is spent making sure you can still progress through the game and see the story, while all the while taking advantage of a destructible environment. top

Q: Are only very few, certain areas geo-moddable?
-Vast regions of the game will be geo-moddable. Most walls, floors, and ceilings will be geo-moddable. It is not a gimmick that you can use only in certain places, but a new style of gameplay. The thing that you're not considering, perhaps, is that you will have limited geo-mod-capable ammo. Sure, you can start blowing holes randomly all over the place, but then you don't have the ammo to blow through the one wall that you really need to get through to continue your progress through the game. You have to choose wisely where to geo-mod. That's the limiting factor, not having only a few places geo-moddable. Think before you blow. Also, level designers can opt to make impenetrable materials to keep the game moving along. With that said, it should be known that a great majority of the second half of the game (in the PS2 version at least) features little to no geo-modding, which is rather disappointing. top

Q: Are all the holes made by geo-modding the same?
-No. There is nothing at all pre-generated about them. top

Q: How are geo-modded holes determined?
-Weapon type, ammo type, relative position, material, and distance are all deciding factors in the resulting geo-modded area. top

Q: How hard exactly (programming wise) is geo-modding?
-John Slagel, a senior programmer on Red Faction, had this to say, "It was difficult. I spent over half a year writing the code. Okay, I was doing other things also, like making sure the levels could render fast (portals, etc.) but mainly I was figuring out how to do the geo-mods. Most of the time I spent learning and experimenting. I even drove to Indiana once to talk with a professor who wrote a book on CSG (Christoph Hoffman). Even then, the actual code to make the hole is pretty simple compared to everything else. There's all sorts of other stuff: You need to detect pieces of the world that come off and make them fall. AI path finding has to know about holes to avoid them or shoot through them. Everything has to be dynamic... We can't rely on precalculated visibility or PVS sets. We even update lighting when you blast holes through walls. So even though I wrote the initial geo-mod code, there are still usually two or three of us actively dealing with the other code issues surrounding the geo-mods. It is a major undertaking and affects almost every piece of code, art, and design in the game in some way." top

Q: What purpose does falling geometry serve in the advanced physics simulation portion of the title?
-Falling geometry can be used in several ways to kill opponents in clever ways. For example, you can collapse a bridge that has a powerful vehicle crossing it (which only happens once in the game and is no different really than a scripted event). You can cause stalactites to fall and crush your enemies, or to block their path (which is practically impossible to pull off in actual combat). You can walk on geometry that has fallen, and use it for cover. You can also take out the floor from underneath someone or send a missile above their head causing debris to damage them. top

Q: Let's say you blow a hole in the first floor ceiling, will the stuff that's right above it cave-in? And let's say a building is damaged, a lot, would it collapse?
-Yes, if you blow a hole in the floor underneath someone, they will (if they survive the blast) fall until they hit solid ground. If you blow out the lower walls of a multi-story building, the rest of the building collapses (only happens with guard towers and the like). Blow out the end supports of a bridge (natural or man-made) and the bridge collapses (only happens once in the game). Even though this kind of thing is not widely implemented throughout RF, it's still there. And stuff will fall, if there's nothing there to hold it up. top

Q: If you have a weapon that fires bullets and you shoot it at a wall a lot will it make a hole?
-The way things are working right now armor-piercing bullets will pierce certain materials (vehicle armor and pipes, for example, the latter giving off steam when pierced). These bullets make entry hole decals on the walls, but (at least right now) it does not create geo-mod holes through the walls nor will it leave an exit decal. You can shoot through applicable walls with armor piercing ammo, but there just won't be a geo-modded area, but rather decals. The game will still recognize that the bullet has traveled through the wall though. top

Q: Will ejected shell casings have realistic physics and react with the environment accordingly?
-Yes. They fall out and bounce around and will even cause ripples if they hit the water. top

Q: Will there be wind in the game?
-Techincally the answer is yes, because the engine was using wind to affect particles; however, this is never present in the actual game (PS2 version at least). top

Q: Does wind effect aim?
--Techincally the answer is yes; however, this is never present in the actual game (PS2 version at least). top

Q: Is there going to be bullet drop?
-We will have limited thrust on our rockets, so if you fire your rocket launcher towards the sky, it's eventually going to come plummeting back down to you. Other weapons such as the sniper rifle will also feature bullet drop, but it's nothing drastic. top

Q: Will objects within the world react realistically to water?
-Yes. Things that should sink, sink. It's really cool to walk up to the water's edge and fire a weapon into the water. The bullets make ripple rings, and the empty casings ejected by the weapon also land in the water, making more ripple rings, and you can see the casings drop to the bottom of the lake/pool/whatever. Objects can float or sink. It's all pretty sweet. Weapons that can be used underwater (such as the pistol) will also make a different sound when fired underwater. top

Q: What would happen when you blast a hole in a large tank filled with water or some other fluid? Will the water spill out? Will the water's cylindrical model just sit there leaving you in amazement on just how some detail like this could be passed up?
-You should find that fluids behave as you would expect them to. Water sinks to the lowest level it can reach in a gravity well, and fog and heavier-than-ambient-atmosphere gases should fill the bottoms of areas as well. Fluids should also react to the effects of geo-mods. That was the official answer Volition gave us at least, but it appears that none of these things are present in the actual game (PS2 version). You'll find that there is a water line in the world for a body of water and if you cross that line by digging (even if you're tunnel is nowhere near the actual body of water) you'll hit liquid. You never actually see water flow or smoke and fog drift either. Again, this is all from the PS2 version and brief hands-on with the PC version. It could change by the final, but don't get your hopes up. top

Q: Are there different glass types?
-Yes, you can expect to run into a variety of glass types in Red Faction. There's regular old glass, reinforced glass, bullet-proof glass, shatter-resistant glass, mirrors, etc. Some shatter differently than others, while some don't shatter at all. top

Q: Will you be able to put the required geo-mod damage levels so low that a pistol could make a hole?
-We can do this right now but a whole bunch of little geo-mods caused by bullets is going to kill your framerate. Consider this, when you create a geo-mod, you don't just add the faces from the geo-mod itself but the faces that are created as a result of the faces the geo-mod touches being split. It becomes way too much to calculate. top

Q: Does Red Faction take pressure into consideration?
-No. The closest thing to it is when a submersible gets destroyed it creates a special explosion that is drawn for it, but no actual physics are being taken into consideration. top

Q: Will all glass break with only two shots?
-There are different types of glass in Red Faction, ranging from breakable with a single shot, to breakable with five (or more if we wanted) shots, to unbreakable glass. In glass that takes more than two hits, you see each individual impact (you'd see four, for example, on five-shot glass before the fifth shot shattered it). top

Q: Can you geo-mod objects in the world (not the environment) such as computers?
-Objects, such as computer consoles, either get blown to smithereens by a blast or they switch to a corpse model that shows the object in a wrecked state. top

Q: Can a mapper define what is and what is not geo-moddable?
-Yes. If you are creating a map or level you can assign whatever geo-mod properties (if any) to whatever environmental face you like. top