The Curse of Orion: The Next Encounter is a bizarre, lengthy, and difficult FPS total conversion campaign mod for Red Faction.

\Disclaimer/
The purpose of this release to FactionFiles is to extend the audience reach. Updates to this mod always go its Moddb webpage first. You could be playing an outdated version of this mod.

\Earnest Message/
I have made many mistakes, I've made tons of poor quality mods riddled with immaturity. This mod series started as a joke and has become my entire identity.
It has become something I truly want to be decent. When making this mod I had a revelation of what needs to happen to make this entry the best one yet.
All immaturity this series was known for is gone. All levels use a maximum of 63 entities for quicksaving to work. There is more environment and entity variety than before. Everything about this is just better.
This is the best I have in me. This very well might be the last entry this series has. My motivation to make anything has diminished and that goes across everything Red Faction related.
I ask for forgiveness and another chance at this. Any genuine feedback would be greatly appreciated and considered. Hope you enjoy this Madman production.
Thank you all.

\Oddities Explained/
This mod is a bizarre deviation from what generally is expected a Red Faction campaign mod should look like. This mod is a horde shooter and many changes are needed for this style of campaign to feel and run decent on the geomod engine. Many seemingly odd design choices have had thought put into and most stuff is intentional.
All weapons using the same ammo type ensures that in every level the player is able to destroy as many structures as the engine allows. This also prevents player from potentially running into hostiles that drop ammo for a weapon that you don't need ammo for.
Explosions that create geo craters will destroy item pickups, due to this it was decided that item pickups should be kept to a minimum and health should be regenerating. The slow regenerating health makes the campaign more difficult and encourages players to stick around in each level longer to destroy stuff.
A big goal during development was for this linear campaign to have lots of freedom. Level progression is almost never forced, player decides when to progress, player decides how fast to progress, player decides which path to take through many large open areas.
Assault rifle is always collected way after heavy machine gun due to the faster reload time making it the best rapid fire automatic weapon in this campaign. The best weapons in the base Red Faction campaign doesn't mean they are the best here.
All weapons deal fire damage, fire damages armor first and it helps to make the combat feel smoother when the most common hostile only needs to be shot at until lit on fire rather than shot until dead.

\Usage/
Copy TheCurseofOrion_TNE directory into the mods directory of your Red Faction installation. Select mod: TheCurseofOrion_TNE in Dash Faction Launcher to launch game with the mod.

\Plot/
This is the ultimate training phase of your Red Faction probationary period. If you survive you will prove yourself as the chosen one to liberate Mars from Ultor when the time comes. Many miners have been sent to this realm, none ever make it back.

\Recommendations/
Frame rate limit between 30-144 is recommended to reduce frame rate related bugs.
Do not use large texture mods. Textures in dds format will override vbm textures in which this mod uses plenty of.
Ingame menu video options has three blocks of different brightness next to the gamma slider. Lower gamma until the first two dark blocks are almost indistinguishable. Does not work for 16bit color depth.

\Tips/
Drones and Tankbots are the most dangerous hostile in the campaign. Their barrage of rockets are able to quickly kill the player. They generally should become a priority to destroy when in view.
Have every weapon bound to their own key near your movement keys to allow instant switching of weapons. You should be able to do this without needing to look down at your keyboard.
This mod is based on projectile combat so jumping, crouching, and side strafing is essential to avoid getting hit. Do not run toward incoming fire without some side strafing added.
The change in player hitbox from standing to crouching is seemingly instant. Learning to use ctrl for crouch is best and ducking beneath incoming projectiles should be common.
Riot stick is a very powerful weapon. It has long range, zaps through walls, does great damage per second, and is the only weapon that isn't projectile based.
Difficulty is greatly affected by how fast one tries to progress. It is possible and likely that one tries to progress faster then they can handle.
Hostiles will try to attack the player within a certain range. Move far away enough and they'll stop attacking to focus on staying within range.
Be sure to watch your back in large open environments, hostiles can flank and close in from all directions.
A few entities have a very large amount of health. It may seem as if they are invincible at times.
All structures besides terrain is destructible in most levels.
Adjust reticle size with reticle_scale command.
Higher difficulties make enemies move more.
Explosions will destroy weapon pickups.

\Issues/
*Carrying a corpse during a level load/save puts the player in holstered mode. It can initially seem like the game has been softlocked. (Mod-bug)
*Saving on jumpads will create a softlocked savegame with the player dying immediately upon loading. (?)
*Dynamic lights flicker when passing through portals. Probably an issue with Windows Nvidia drivers. (?)
*Credits sometimes won't play in the final level. Probably an issue with savegames or event scripting. (?)
*Some effects will break from high frame rates. Recommend maxfps limit range is 30-144. (RF-bug)
*Ambient sounds won't pan from left to right channel unless EAX is enabled. (DF-bug)
*Geo debris breaks object collision. Save and Load temporarily fixes this issue. (RF-bug)
*Dynamic lights don't always work correctly on detail brush terrain. (RF-bug)
*Footstep sounds only work for miners equipped with the pistol. (RF-bug)
*Swap Assault Rifle controls breaks Assault Rifle. (DF-bug)
*Some building have broken glass rendering. (RF-bug)
*Cutscenes break ambient sounds. (RF-bug)
*Occasional game crashes. (RF-bug)
*Abrupt music looping. (Mod-bug)

\Estimated stats/
Start of development = 5/17/2022
Moddb release date = 5/13/2023
Game length = 5-8 hours
Speedrun length = 01:35:20
Hostiles = 2835
Levels = 45

This file hasn't been reviewed yet. Tell us what you think!