A modern level editor for Red Faction (2001).

Glacier — GED, short for Glacier EDitor — is a clean-room reimplementation of the Red Faction .rfl level editor, built in .NET 8 + Avalonia. It targets stock-RED editor parity and Alpine Faction editor parity, then layers modern editing conveniences on top of both — real gizmos, unlimited undo that survives save, live CSG preview, link graph, detailed layer view and object outliners, one-click packaging, prefabs, dependency explorer, and full Lua scripting workflow support.

Glacier helps to make Red Faction level design accessible and approachable for those more familiar with modern design tools like Unity, Unreal Engine, or Blender; while also providing long awaited tools and workflow improvements for veteran level designers.

Highlights

• Reads all RF1 RFLs — opens every stock version (0xB4–0xC8) and every Alpine version (300–305) with a byte-preserving round-trip.
• RED-authentic geometry & lighting — the full compile pipeline (time-ordered brush booleans → portal chopping → room building → t-joint fixing → lightmap UV) plus a multithreaded, byte-exact lightmap baker (point / spot / tube, shadows) that reproduces RED's per-texel kernel, with optional Alpine smoothlights quality.
• Modern editing over stock parity — interactive move / rotate / scale gizmos, keyboard transforms, unlimited undo/redo that survives save, live CSG preview, and a full UV unwrap editor — without giving up any stock brush, face, or vertex operation.
• Everything a level needs — every object type with data-driven inspectors, all 90 stock events and all 58 Alpine events, links with the interactive Link Graph editor, and full trigger / mover / group / cutscene authoring.
• Assets & packaging — a dockable Asset Browser (textures / meshes / sounds), one-click .vpp packaging with a full dependency scanner, import/export (OBJ / FBX / glTF / DAE), and a prefab system.
• Playtest & polish — one-key playtest in stock RF or the Alpine launcher (single & multiplayer), a first-run wizard, fully bindable hotkeys with RED Classic / Modern presets, a command palette, dark/light themes, and Direct3D 11 + OpenGL backends on Windows & Linux.

→ Full feature catalog for the complete, detailed breakdown.

Quick start

1. First-run wizard. On first launch, GED helps you locate and validate your Red Faction install, pick a keymap preset (RED Classic or Modern), a camera scheme, and a theme. Your install's VPPs are mounted automatically the first time you open a level.
2. Open a level. File ▸ Open, drag a .rfl onto the window, or pass --open <file>.
3. Build geometry. Compile from the Level menu or toolbar — builds run in the background and never block the UI.
4. Bake lighting. Calculate Lightmaps / Calculate Lighting (L / Shift+L).
5. Create a level packfile. Build a .vpp with the dependency scanner and review dialog.
6. Play. F7 Play Level, F8 Play from Camera, F9 Play in Multi, F10 Play in Multi from Camera.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11 x64 (Direct3D 11 GPU; the WARP software rasterizer works as a fallback), or Linux x64 (Wayland via XWayland or X11; renders through a cross-platform OpenGL 3.3 host, so Mesa's llvmpipe software GL works too).
• A Red Faction installation — your own game files. GED loads textures, meshes, and .tbl tables directly from the install's VPP packfiles. GED never redistributes game assets; they remain your own copy.
• Alpine Faction — powers Alpine-only editor features and multiplayer playtest launching.

Files & settings

GED is a portable app: everything it writes lives next to the executable, so you can drop it on a USB stick or in any folder and keep your setup with it. No installer, no registry, nothing left in your user profile.

File / folder	What it holds
settings.cfg	Your settings (install path, viewport prefs, theme, MRU, colors).
keymap.cfg	Your key bindings (preset + overrides).
logs\	Crash logs and a rolling session.log.
cache\	Texture/mesh thumbnail cache (safe to delete; regenerated on demand).
prefabs\	The default prefab library (relocatable in Settings).
recovery\	Emergency autosaves written if the editor crashes mid-edit.

If the app's folder isn't writable (e.g. installed under Program Files, or an AppImage mount), GED falls back to your user profile so nothing is lost silently, and shows a one-time notice. See Building & running for the exact per-platform paths.

Building from source

Requires the .NET 8 SDK:

dotnet build Glacier.sln -c Release
dotnet run --project src/Ged.App

Full build, packaging, and platform-specific instructions (Windows and Linux, including AppImage packaging and Wine playtesting) are in docs/building.md.

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Chris "Goober" Parsons. See LICENSE for the terms that apply to Glacier. Third-party and adapted-code attributions are in licensing-info.txt. Red Faction game assets are your own files and are never shipped with GED.

Trademarks

The Glacier name is not covered by the MIT license. You are welcome to use it to refer to the official, unmodified builds. If you distribute a modified version, please give it a different name and do not imply endorsement by the author.