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TREP User's Guide (updated 14 Nov 2007)

Table of contents:

1.0. Intro

2.0. What it's all about?

3.0. Important notes
  3.1. Note about number coloring
  3.2. Note for level and object builders — how to provide modified engine with your level or object
  3.3. Note about presets for versions 0.67+
  3.4 «For the God's sake, why some options are grayed out?» or using «Extend tomb4.exe size» option
  3.5. Patched engine's system requirements

4.0. Getting started…

5.0. TREP main window
  5.1. Main window — video / audio settings
  5.2. Increase enemy / object limits & relocate target buffer options
  5.3. Increase per-mesh vertex limit
  5.4. Increase flyby sequence limit
  5.5. Increase statics limit
  5.6. Remap particle buffer

6.0. Video / audio settings' sub-sections
  6.1. Bar Customizer
  6.2. Font Customizer
  6.3. Credits Sub-Customizer & Credits text editor
  6.4. GFX Customizer 1
  6.5. GFX Customizer 2
  6.6. Light Customizer
  6.7. Camera Customizer
  6.8. Sound Customizer

7.0. Main window — gameplay options
  7.1. Extended tomb4.exe section chart

8.0. Gameplay options — sub-sections
  8.1. Enemy HP Customizer
  8.2. Physics Customizer
  8.3. Inventory Customizer
  8.4. Item Configurator
  8.5. Weapon Customizer
  8.6. Damage / HP Customizer
  8.7. SAS grenades bugfix
  8.8. Limits Sub-Customizer
  8.9. Object (trap) Customizer

9.0. Flipeffect Editor and FURR Language command system — learning the basics
  9.1. Command reference
  9.2. Conditional directives reference
  9.3. How to create ELSE_IF sequences with conditional directives

10.0. Race Timer Editor — bringing thrill to your levels
  10.1. Race Timer Workaround
  10.2. Trick: how to create one-shot flipeffect with Flipeffect Editor and Race Timer Editor.

11.0. DRACO custom patch module

12.0. Advanced scripting with TREP

1.0.: INTRO

Let's go back in time, 24 November 2005… It was the day when first TREP version (0.2 alpha) was released:

Then it was simply called «TR 4.5 Patcher» and was clumsy and buggy utility with only three dumb options available. Now it has evolved into complex patching system with flexible flipeffect and racetimer editors, presets support and custom patch module. Now TREP allows you to edit almost one thousand different so-called «hardcoded» values and parameters at the same moment in any possible combination, and amount of these parameters is constantly growing with every new update. Maybe some of these parameters are truly stupid and useless, maybe TR4 engine still isn't flexible enough to create total conversions, maybe it's still buggy sometimes, but at least all these options and features brought something new to TR level editing.

Even now, when other wonderful and much more functional patches to be released, TREP still remains first utility that allowed level builders around the world to use features never seen before in custom levels. Remember how it began on EZBoard forum — do you get it? I hope you do. Even if a lot of people despise, hate and ignore TREP, even if they prefer to use other patches, they MUST remember that Eidos allowed to use TR4 engine modifications regarding TREP in the first place. Moreover, unlike any other patches, now, after one year of development, TREP became fully FLEXIBLE, EXTENSIBLE and SCALABLE patcher, now it allows you to create absolutely new patches fast and without any pain and suffering! So theoretically, TREP's possibilities are UNLIMITED, and anyone can bring something new to it!

2.0.: WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT?

In this file we'll try to explain every TREP setting and the way it works. Basically, it's plain simple — replacing some existing constants and modifying code partly. Some of basic options were already explained in readme file, but now, when amount of options reached hundreds and hundreds, it should be explained a little more detailed. It can be useful if you want to know how TR4 engine doing some actions, how it works with different constants, etc. etc. All in all, if you don't know how to deal with TREP — read this text!

Stupid question: why it is called «Tomb Raider 4.5 Engine Patcher»?

«4.5» means only one thing — it is still OLD TR4 ENGINE. No major graphical improvements, no new moves, new keys, new objects, moveables, enemy slots or effects. Sorry. BUT! It's already NOT EXACTLY TR4 engine from 1999. It is now more flexible, some specific features can be bypassed, and some features can be modified. It is believed that with wise TREP option usage, a talented builder can create new and refreshing TR game with… well… at least a bit DIFFERENT gameplay and overlook.

Feel free to experiment with all options and try to find non-ordinary ways to use them — all in all, you are not limited to some fixed changes! With TREP, you can decide for yourself, which options should be turned on, and which options should be left intact. And remember that main target of TREP — is to give level builder maximum customizability with minimum changes applied to engine internals.

3.0.: IMPORTANT NOTES

If you never tried to edit executable before, you must remember some rules. First — ALWAYS BACK-UP ORIGINAL EXECUTABLE. If something went wrong, if TREP modified your tomb4.exe file incorrectly, then DELETE BROKEN EXECUTABLE and restore your old one from back-up. But hopefully everything will be fine, and you'll never see your game crashing without noticeable reasons.
Second — ALWAYS SAVE YOUR SETTINGS WITH PRESETS. Existing parameters cannot be read from tomb4.exe file, so you must always back-up your settings with external preset. Also, presets can be useful, if you want to create different game engine versions for different levels.
Third — KEEP IN MIND HEXADECIMAL DIGITS. Every Windows version (95/98/Me/2k/XP) contains Calculator program, which supports hexadecimal digits. So if you lost and don't know how to deal with hexadecimal, then go to windows calculator and just convert hex digit into decimal. Here is typical hex values and their decimal equivalent (h means hex, d means decimal):

FFh = 255d
FFFFh = 65535d
03E8h = 1000d

And so on, and so on…
 

3.1.: NOTE ABOUT NUMBER COLORING

In TREP, you can encounter 3 types of numbers:

1) Signed (positive and negative) decimal (for example 100, 15, -40, -250)
2) Unsigned (only positive) decimal (100, 15)
3) Hexadecimal (FFFF, 07BC, 1C).

These three types of data highlighted with different colours:

1) BLUE TEXT — positive and negative decimal values allowed.
2) BROWN TEXT — only positive decimal values allowed
3) BLACK TEXT — raw hexadecimal values

 

3.2.: NOTE FOR LEVEL AND OBJECT BUILDERS — HOW TO PROVIDE MODIFIED ENGINE VERSION WITH YOUR LEVEL OR OBJECT

In general, there are two ways you can provide modified engine for your level. First (and more simple) — just include modified executable (or both XP and non-XP modified executables) with your level. Second — include .tps preset in your level package. Second way is more advanced and require VB runtimes and additional knowledge about engine patching for all who will download your level. So, when you are releasing your level, it's better to include modified executable, but when you're beta-testing it (so you need to re-create your custom game environment for all beta-testers frequently), it may be easier and faster to use preset. Also, presets can be used if you releasing custom objects/outfits/any other stuff which will require modified engine, so builders will know which parameters they should use, if they'll use your object/outfit/etc. with their levels. Note that preset is nothing more but plain text file, so you can remove unnecessary settings from preset and leave only changed options — for example, if you releasing custom weapon, you can only leave settings for this weapon, and remove all other settings.

3.3.: NOTE ABOUT PRESETS FOR 0.67+ : since version 0.67, preset/config format was a bit changed. So, old TREP versions will not work with presets generated by TREP 0.67. But version 0.67 has backward compatibility with old presets, so you can safely use your old presets with new version (but it is recommended to convert it into 0.67 version presets anyway).
 

3.4.: «FOR THE GOD'S SAKE, WHY SOME OPTIONS ARE GRAYED OUT?» Since version 0.7, some TREP options can only work in combination with «Extend tomb4.exe size» or «Remap scene memory» options. The reason is internal TR4 engine free space now exhausted, so features that require extra code or memory, should be placed in extended executable section. To achieve this, TREP modifies tomb4.exe PE header to add one more section with default size of 512 kbytes. After this, tomb4.exe size will increase to 1.2 mbytes.
To read more about extended section structure, read Main options — gameplay settings chapter.

3.5.: PATCHED ENGINE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Most of «Increase…» and «Remap…» TREP features also drastically increases memory usage. If you'll try to compare default engine memory usage and modified engine memory usage, you will realize that when old engine uses about 18 megabytes of memory (title flyby), maximum-modified engine uses about 40 megabytes of memory. So, if you're using TREP, be sure you have at least 64 mbytes of RAM, if you don't want swapping or crashes. Also, if your level uses a lot of textures, objects, animations and large sound samples, it will affect memory usage as well. Therefore, it's better to have at least 96 mbytes of RAM to be sure that everything is in place.
Also you should know that TR4 engine was optimized for low-polygon sceneries and it performs poorly in hi-polygon scenes. TR4 engine primarily depends on RAM speed and CPU power, so it's recommended to use very fast DDR memory and CPUs with high FSB speed. Most of contemporary custom levels (like Neon God) are almost unplayable on computers with slow SDRAM memory. Surprisingly, videocard/GPU power is absolutely not critical, it's enough to have low-end GeForce2 MX / GeForce FX 5200 / etc. to play comfortably.

4.0.: GETTING STARTED…

What you should do exactly after you've downloaded .zip file with new TREP version? Unpack it, and most likely you will see two files — executable itself (trep_xxx.exe), custom patches file (patches.drc) and folder with help files (readme.txt and such). If you will try to launch executable at the first time, you will receive this warning:

This warning is COMPLETELY NORMAL. If you are launching TREP first time and seeing this warning, it only means that TREP now will create new configuration file (trep.cfg) in the same directory. Also, this message will appear if some error will occur during configuration file reading. Meaning, if you will try to edit config file manually and modify some parameters incorrectly, most likely this message will appear.

This message will appear if syntax.fln command file (required for Flipeffect and Racetimer editors) was not found (or if you launching TREP for the first time):

This message appears if you haven't put patches.drc (DRACO custom patch set) file in the same directory with TREP:

If you have copied new executable in the directory where old TREP version was, you will get this warning:

It will appear only if you have forgot to delete old version's config file.
 

But what if you'll see this message box then?

It means that you're using tomb4.exe engine, which is not compatible with TREP. For now, TREP only supports EUROPEAN TRLE GAME ENGINE VERSION — BOTH XP PATCHED AND NON-XP-PATCHED.

 

But… what if you see THIS warning?

It means that you are trying to launch TREP from directory which is not contain tomb4.exe file. Put TREP executable in the same directory as tomb4.exe, or move tomb4.exe file to TREP's directory.

 

And you'll surely see these standard Windows alert boxes, if you'll try to modify already launched executable:

***

Now for more advanced error messages. This message will appear in two cases. First — if config file was incorrectly modified or old config version was used. Second — you have entered incorrect parameter in Flipeffect or Race Timer editors, or you have incorrect custom patch specified in custom patches section. The reason why this message appears is internal binary converter cannot convert some string data into byte array:

And now, the most nasty error in whole executable:

Normally, there must be no reason for this error message, but who knows… TREP is really bugged program!

5.0.: TREP MAIN WINDOW

After brief appearance of loading screen, you will see main TREP window.

Main window divided in three parts — video / audio settings, gameplay options and functional buttons & version label.

Functional buttons are: «about…» (brings up fancy greetz screen), «load preset» (loads predefined settings file), «save preset» (saves it), «defaults» (resets ALL settings to config file's defaults), «modify» (modifies executable) and «quit» (no need for explanation, though). Also there is small gray button in the bottom left corner named [out] . When you press it, TREP will generate listing of all used offsets and bring you message box with information about current configuration file. It is useful if you want to know if your config file correct or not — if there is any empty offsets, it means that your config isn't valid and you should fix it or delete it. Also it allows you to see full TREP offset map.

Useful trick: maybe you're wondering how to reset to defaults main window settings, but leave intact all other settings. Here's the answer: click TREP logo in upper right corner, and main window settings will reset to defaults.

CONSOLE MODE

TREP supports console input. To activate console, like in any first-person shooters, press ~ key in the main TREP window. Then small console textbox will appear.
In console, you can enter ANY TREP parameters listed in config/preset file. For example, type DrawingDistanceRange=10000 and you will see that drawing distance value changed to 10000.
Console is useful if you want to change some options without wandering in TREP's dialogs and forms.

Also there are some shortcut commands:

  MOD or MODIFY : modify executable.
  RESET or DEFAULT : reset ALL settings to defaults.
  KILL or QUIT or EXIT : exit TREP.

5.1.: MAIN WINDOW — GRAPHIC SETTINGS

Most important options in «graphic settings» is surely Drawing Distance (DD) options. By default, TR4 engine renders about 20 sectors in front of you, then it just cut off polygons and you can see only skybox or darkness. Now you can freely change this limit, and make it lower or higher. Lower DD values can be useful when creating foggy levels (mean «Silent Hill») or just for saving system resources, when higher DD values can be useful with large open-air spaces.

WARNING! If you are using high drawing distances, also YOU MUST USE «Remap scene memory» option, or else TR4 engine WILL crash in most cases! Why it happens and why you should remap TR4 scene memory for using high drawing distances? Well, this problem caused by overloading of two internal TR4 dynamic arrays with polygon, texture, etc. data (in other words — scene data). So, to use high drawing distances without risk of overloading these arrays, they must be reallocated (remapped) to extended (larger) memory zone. But even when this limit is increased, there is still a chance to catch a crash, if your scene will contain more than 20000 fully textured faces, especially with environment mapping (aka shiny effect).

As for Distant Fog, this parameter is responsible for distance where fog begins to fade-out everything to black (or color which you've set in script file). Look at this picture and you should understand what we're talking about:

Let's imagine that Lara standing at left and watching to the right. All rooms and objects BEFORE DF range (i. e. colored with blue) will be 100% visible. Then, after DF range reached, all objects and rooms will begin to fade to black or scripted FOG colour (colored with red at our picture). Then, after DD range reached, every object or room will just disappear and you will see only skybox or blackness!
So now you can freely change these two parameters. For example, you can move distant fog farther, like this:

…Or you can increase/decrease both Drawing Distange range and Distant Fog range.

Here is an example how good old levels look like with extended drawing distance:

In this example from eTux's level, we can see whole area without orange fog. You can see the building in the far side of The Source, all platforms and walls. It looks even better in-game!

This is screenshot from beginning of «Recruiting Demon Smalls». If you'll try to play this level with maximum drawing distance, you will be able to see whole area with mountains and huge building. It looks absolutely awesome in dynamic.
 

Both Drawing Distance and Distant Fog values are IEEE-754 32-bit float values and they can be fine-tuned to any value you want. Also, there are five preset buttons (entitled «DD presets») for drawing distance values: hell, default, not too far, far and very far. In most cases, «very far» preset should work OK with «Fix drawing distance crashes» option set to on. But you must note that setting DD/DF values extremely high is not good in terms of speed optimization.

HARD CLIPPING OPTIONS
Hard clipping is a clipping that occurs in indoor rooms (without sky). Maybe you already have seen these awful disappearing rooms/objects even with increased drawing distances (for example, see GokuZ's Toy Story Demo). Now you can make this clipping more flexible or turn it off completely. Here is overview of all settings:

Hard clipping range: all simple — range, at which objects and/or rooms will disappear. By default it's equal to drawing distance range, but you can change them independently. But note that you can't set it more than about 131000 units. Why? Well, because even if this value equal to drawing distance range, it acts somehow different. It's very possible that this hard clipping is a very old code, maybe even back from 1996 year, because it affects only indoor rooms, and TR1 contained no outdoor rooms at all.
Affect — default (indoor) / all objects / off: even more simple than previous option. Default changes nothing, but all objects option will turn on hard clipping for ALL objects in level — even for those in outdoor rooms. What's the use of this? Well, look at big outdoor games like Serious Sam: Second Encounter. When there is a huge outdoor area around you, you simply CAN'T fill it all up with objects, because system resources are not unlimited. So, good idea is to set all objects disappear after some distance, when player can't see them. But all «geographical» surfaces (i. e. rooms — walls, floor, ceiling) will stay in scene at any range. Even more good idea is to set floor texture colour to a colour similar to objects you've placed on it — so transition will be almost invisible. For example, you can create outdoor area about 80x80 squares and then fill all the floor with tall grass objects, trees, etc. Of course, engine will crash then, or will act slow as hell, because this is too much! But if you'll use texture with the same colour as grass and set Hard Clipping distance to about 1/3 of overall drawing distance and turn it on for all objects, game will run faster and won't crash.

Here are two examples how hard clipping option works with rooms.

1. This is the pictures from GokuZ's Toy Story demo. As you can see, when hard clipping option set to intact, far rooms are «clipped» and completely not visible, and appears as empty black cubes.
 

2. This is from SeiferZero's Twin Crystals 2. It's easy to see that far zone of this large scenery is vanished, when hard clipping is intact. When hard clipping is off, you can see ALL scenery without clipping.

If you've decided to play some level without hard clipping at all, remember to use «Remap scene memory» option, because disabling hard clipping also affects scene memory usage.

FOG BULB CUTOFF: This option similar to Hard Clipping option, but it affects only volumetric fog bulbs. You also can set it to free distance in sectors (just press edit… button, and Fog Tuner will pop-up), or disable completely.

***

Another options that you can change in main window's «graphic settings» are:

Turn off distance limit completely: this option modifies TR4 code a bit, so polygon cut-off procedure will be bypassed (sorry for lame definition).
Force volumetric FX = OFF: this option useful when you want user to play your level with colored distance fog without turning off vol. FX via game setup.
Remove look transparency: not so useful option. It turns off «transparent Lara» when pressing «Look», like it was in TR1-TR3 games.
Disable enemy disappearance: turns off enemy disappear, for both land and water enemies. Again, like in TR1-TR3 games.
 

5.2.: INCREASE ENEMY / OBJECT LIMITS AND RELOCATE TARGET BUFFER OPTIONS

Please note that «Increase enemy / object limits» option is a COMBINED OPTION to increase THREE different limits:

1) Overall TR4 engine data buffer (from 5 MB to 20 MB).
2) Amount of items in level.
3) Amount of simultaneously shown enemies.

For detailed description of each option, read further.

INCREASE ENEMY LIMIT: Since TR1, enemy limit in TR games was 5. No more, no less. Only known exclusion is Compsognatus dinosaurs from TR3 and Little Beetle/Rats in TR4/5. This is so damn sad… When games like Serious Sam storming you with hundreds of enemies, poor TR games can offer you nothing but 5 baddies or dogs or scorpions or anyone else. Fortunately, enemy limit can be increased from 5 to 20, so you can create more action-packed games. Imagine 10 dogs attacking Lara from all sides, 5 eagles attacking from the sky and 5 snipers firing from guard towers…
P.S.: Actually TR4 engine can handle about 30 enemies in scene, and maybe even more, but sad part is auto-targeting bug: maximum stable amount of enemies, when auto-targeting still works correct, is 8. The reason is small target buffer, which allows to store data only for 8 targets. So, if you'll just set «Increase enemy limit» option to ON without any additional options turned on, enemy limit will increase only to 8 enemies.

But don't worry, you can get even more enemies at the same time. How? Relocate target buffer option will help you. What this option does? It relocates target buffer to another memory zone, so engine can handle up to 20 enemies in scene. But note that you'll be able to turn this option on ONLY if you've selected «Remap scene memory» option. That's because relocated target buffer is placed in a memory zone which was occupied by old (non-remapped) scene buffer. As long as you remap scene memory to a new location with «Remap scene memory» checkbox, this old memory zone is free, and target buffer can be moved there.

USEFUL NOTE: If you think that 20 enemies still isn't enough for you, you can increase it even more. To do this, open config file and find these lines:

These two lines define amount of overall enemies and overall memory buffer for enemies. Both values are hex values (so 14 means 20), and EnemyLimitZoneModData is an inverted hex value (i. e. actually it's 0001BD78). To increase enemy limit even more, set desired hex value for IncreasedEnemyLimit (let's suppose you want 50 simultaneous enemies — then you must set IncreasedEnemyLimit to 32). Next, use this formula to calculate memory buffer for enemies

EnemyLimitZoneModData = Hex(1646 * IncreasedEnemyLimit)

I. e., if you want 50 enemies, you must use this value: 1646h * 32h = 459ACh. Then invert it in this way:

000459AC → AC590400

And this will be desired EnemyLimitZoneModData value.

INCREASE NASTY 256 OBJECT LIMIT: Everyone knows about that. 256 objects… What's the point of this limitation? Who knows… Anyway, now you can disable it too. How? Same way as enemy limit — just activate checkbox. Next, try to add more items to existing projects and see what's the difference between non-modified and modified versions. In most cases, if you'll try to load a level with, for example, 310 objects, it will crash or hide some items from you.
Good example how this option affects gameplay, is JMN's «The Nightmare» level. This level contains 256 items, and if you will try to light flare and throw it, it will immediately disappear (it happens because flares/ammo/torches count as ordinary items in TR4 engine).

Now the most interesting question: how many objects now you can use in your level? And here is the answer. By default, TR4 reserves 1439232 bytes of memory for 256 objects. TREP increases this limit to 5756928 bytes and 1024 objects. As reported by TRWad, maximum amount of objects that can be activated is 1023, so we can presume that 1024 is more than enough.
Be very careful when increasing object limit. It's not known how 512 or 800 or 1000 objects will be kept by engine in savegames, so test it a lot before releasing your custom level. It is obvious that you will need to use ResetHUB script command more frequently to clear object cache.

INCREASE OVERALL TR4 DATA BUFFER: TR4 engine uses single data buffer (heap) to allocate memory for various types of data — mesh data, TexInfos, boxes, rooms, and so on… This heap is very small by default — only 5 megabytes! This checkbox will also increase this buffer up to 20 megabytes, so you theoretically can use much more TexInfos and build more complicated levels that could have crashed engine before patch.
Also this modification can remove so-called stretching polygon bug, when you see garbage polygon pointing to upper left corner of the screen (to read more about this bug, go to this tombraiderforums thread).
If your level gone beyond this increased 20 megabytes buffer size, you can increase it more. To do this, find these lines in config file:

Both these values are hex values. First entry (LevelBuffer1ModData) specifies buffer size in bytes, and second specifies buffer size in dwords (i. e. quad-bytes). Simply put, second value should be 4 times smaller than first.
For example, if you want to change heap size from 20 megabytes to 40 megabytes, you should modify these lines like this:

But don't try to use extremely large buffer size values! Remember that engine will immediately reserve ALL this memory after launching, so if you have 128 megabytes of RAM and set buffer size to 256 megabytes, it won't end up good for you.
 

5.3.: INCREASE PER-MESH VERTEX LIMIT

Limits, limits, limits… Just another boring limit — 255 vertices per one mesh. Accidentally, this setting was found, and now you can increase limit. But… there is one thing you should remember. DO NOT use meshes with: 256, 512, 768, 1024, 1280 etc. vertices, because TR4 engine's internals won't work correctly with these values. All other values (for example, 257, 511, 1023, 1025 etc.) should work fine. Maximum amount of vertices in every object is not tested, I can only say that meshes with 4500 vertices works fine, and this is not the limit. Supposedly, max. vertices per mesh is now 32767 or 65535. So, per-mesh vertex limit now increased in about 128 times. I've read somewhere that «you can't create whole room as an object». Well, now you can.

Stupid question: why some vertex values can send engine to crash? The reason is strange TR4 engine mesh loading procedure, which uses some vertice numbers for strange purpose (more precisely — it occupies upper byte in WORD vertices number value). For example, even if you didn't use any high-detailed meshes, sometimes hexadecimal numbers 0100 (decimal 256), 0200 (decimal 512) etc. will appear there. Thus, it's needed to bypass ALL rounded (hex 0100, 0200, 0300…) vertice amounts. That's the reason why you shouldn't use meshes with 256, 512, 768 etc. vertices.
 

5.4.: INCREASE FLYBY SEQUENCE LIMIT

Core design really brought cinematographic feel to TR games since TR4 with implementing flyby cameras. Sadly, this feature was limited in TRLE too — maximum amount of flyby sequences per level is only 8! But with this option you can increase flyby sequences up to 64. Note that you still can't add more than 8 flyby sequences with TRLE editor. However, latest revision H of dxtre3d 2.0 allows you to create up to 64 flyby sequences and up to 128 flyby cameras.

Stupid question: why you can't set this option to ON by default? Answer — as with relocate target buffer, this option also requries to remap scene memory with corresponding checkbox. That's because TR4 engine uses two 8-bytes long fixed memory zones to keep information about flyby camera numbers. When you remap scene memory and increase flyby seq. limit, these two zones are relocated to old scene memory zone (which is not used anymore with scene remap), and each flyby sequence zone occupies 64 bytes.

5.5.: INCREASE STATICS LIMIT

When you're enabling this option, amount of maximum static mesh slots will be increased from 60 to 240. This way you can create levels with far more details, furniture, different types of trees, etc. etc.! It is not known how TRLE will handle extended static mesh slots (above 60), but dxtre3d can handle it pretty well.

5.6.: REMAP PARTICLE BUFFER
This option requires «Extend tomb4.exe size» feature enabled. 

In the year 2005, Ageia released special hardware unit PhysX, which can drastically boost performance in complex scenes with thousands of particles. In the year 2006, Crytek announced their new DirectX 10 game named «Crysis». In the year 2006, Tomb Raider 4 engine still was able to draw only… are you ready?.. 256 particles.
What does it mean? Well, if you will decide to put a lot of flames, steam/smoke/mist emitters and sprinkler/darts objects in your map, very soon you will realize that a lot of particles just missing — no ricochets or sparkles, no flame or smoke sprites in some places where they are supposed to be. This happens because of this 256 particles limit.
Remap particle buffer option can increase particle limit by moving particle buffer to other memory zone. Here is the example — three fountains (emulated with Sprinkler objects) before and after particle limit increase:

TR4 has a particle bug, when some of particle's coordinates may be corrupted. In game you will see it as chaotically flying lines or sprites (usually you can observe it with a lot of flame emitters placed in level — you will sometimes see flickering flame sprites)

6.0.: VIDEO / AUDIO SETTINGS' SUB-SECTIONS

In the right part of «video / audio settings» main window section, 7 buttons are placed. When you press one of these buttons, audio or video settings sub-section window will appear. Now let's try to explain what each sub-section does.

6.1.: Bar Customizer

TR4 engine contains only 6 bars — health, air, sprint, loading, sound and music bars. In exe file, each bar has its own procedure, where colour, width/height values are set.

All TR4 bars has two colours to be set — main colour (which appears at the «center» of the bar — red for HP bar, blue for air bar, etc.) and fade colour (which appears at the top and bottom of bars). You can independently change all these colours.

NOTE ABOUT POISONED COLOUR: Actually, poisoned colour isn't an independent value — it blends with HP bar «main colour». I. e., if your HP bar's main colour is RGB(FF,00,00) and «poisoned» colour is RGB(00,FF,00), then actual poisoned bar colour in game will be:

RGB(FF,00,00) + RGB(00,FF,00) = RGB(FF,FF,00)

But what happens if, for example, your HP main bar colour will be RGB(30,00,FF) and «poisoned» colour will be RGB(FF,60,00)? Look, maximum value for each colour is FF (decimal 255), and 30+FF=12F. If something like this will happen, then corresponding POISONED colour will be ignored, and «main colour» will be used. I. e., in our case, poisoned bar colour will be RGB(30,00,FF)+RGB(FF,60,00)=RGB(30,60,FF). It can be clearly seen in these small preview colour rectangles.

Next, what the hell is «animated» feature? Everyone of you have seen animated bars in «Options» menu — sound and music. As for other ingame bars — they are static by default. But with little code modification, it's possible to make them animated too. Note that animated bars' colour formula is different. To be more precise, animated bar uses sky sprite to overlay animating effect (thanks to GeckoKid for information about this!).

Also, you can disable any in-game bar. For example, you can turn off loading bar (like in PC version of TR3) or disable health bar (if you don't want player to see current HP, like in old Resident Evil games).

Width, height and X values: width and height values can be adjusted for each in-game bar. As for X position, it can only be adjusted for sprint, air and loading bar.
NOTE: Loading bar position can't be set more than 7F. This happens because loading bar's horizontal position coded as 1-byte value, and values more than 7F will actually give you negative position value.

ABO and PBO colours for Music/Sound volume bars. ABO means «Active Bar Overlay», and PBO means «Passive Bar Overlay». These two parameters responsible for active (highlighted) and passive (non-highlighted) additional colours of these two bars. Active Bar Overlay colour can be independently set for each bar, when PBO can be set only for both bars at the same time. 

Border: sets colour for ALL bar borders.

Critical bar blinking speed: speed of air and HP bar blinking, when they're in critical state. You can set it to 0 and get fancy hi-tech flickering bars.

Static bars style: defines style of static bars. You can choose three options:
   Normal — standard TR4 bars (horizontally-faded).
   Gradient (TR5-like) — gradient bars like in TR5 (faded with black colour from top and bottom)
   Gradient (flat) — flat gradient bars.

       Examples of how flat and TR5-like gradient bars look in game:

6.2.: Font Customizer

Primarily, Font Customizer allows you to change fonts' colours. Of course, you can always color font sprites itself and then re-insert it into level file, but you'll never get a chance to modify each ingame colour in that way. But with Font Customizer you can independently change colours of every font.

NOTE: Actual in-game colours will look different than in TREP, so make sure you've tested selected colours and got proper result.

TEXT EFFECTS: please don't think that you can change only effects and align in main title screen. Almost all text is customizable in TR4 engine, but I'm too lazy to implement ALL possible text entries for now.

LEGEND DISPLAYING TIME: there you can change legend (this short «The year 2000, somewhere in Egypt…» text) title timeout, but you can't set it more than FF.

WINDOW TITLE: changes options and game window title from «Tomb Raider - The Last Revelation» to anything you want.

6.3.: Credits Sub-Customizer & Credits text editor

Warning: many people complained about incorrectly working credits. As stated by Tombcool, credits are not visible and begin to flicker if you're trying to bring some other Windows application over TR4 window. Supposedly, the case of this bug is engine incompatibility with newest graphic cards (for ex., late ATi Radeon cards).

Let's imagine you have created your first (or second, or last) custom level. You've put a lot of work into it, maybe spent years manually texturing models, fixing numerous bugs and creating new traps. And of course you now want to give a credit to all who helped you, to list music you have used, etc. etc. But no matter what you'll do, TR4 has eternal hardcoded credits with Richard Flower & Co.! Well… It was true until now. Firstly, GokuZ released his article about modifying executable to create custom credits. But I think it's too difficult to edit PLAIN TEXT with HEX EDITOR, so that's the reason why Credits text editor was created. This small text editor delivers some useful functions for easy credits modifying. Let's have a look at it:

Credits sub-customizer consists of main text field with credits text, status bar (gray rectangle with «1 / 71 [max 71]» text in it) and some extra options.
Status bar provides you information about current credits text and will also warn you if any errors will occur. But in its normal state, status bar provides you this information:

Current line / Overall lines in text [max amount of lines allowed]

I. e. if you read in status bar 7 / 24 [max 52], it means that you now editing line 7 of overall 24 lines already in text, and maximum amount of lines is 52. Maximum amount of lines depend on specified characters in one line value (to know more about this value, read further).

Also note horizontal pointer at the top of the text field. Its function — to specify how many characters can be used in each credit line (optionally, you can change this parameter with characters in one line textbox).

If you're going to use custom credits, you should know about relation between line length and overall number of lines. The case is TR4 engine uses fixed amount of memory to keep credits lines, and for each line it allocates fixed amount of memory. In other words, you are limited to about 1500 bytes of text. However, as mentioned above, you can freely change line length. But the more line length is, the less is overall amount of strings you can use.

If you will exceed maximum amount of strings, line label in the right side of status bar will become red and will notice you about this. Also, if you will exceed maximum line length, orange message will appear in the left side of status bar, noticing you about first problem string. If you will ignore these warning messages, redundant strings and characters simply won't be written into executable!!!

Other interesting thing in TR4 credits string format is strings with a look of %0n. What does it mean? In simple words, such string forces engine to load specific text from SCRIPT.DAT file and also apply other style and formatting to this line. By default, these «scripted lines» used for department titles, like Programmers, Sound FX, Music and so on. It will be easier to understand if you'll just look at this screenshot:

«Normal string» will appear as is in game. But if you will print out, for example, %01, then corresponding «scripted string» will be used instead (in your case it's PC Programmer). Check out SCRIPT.TXT file to figure out meaning of each scripted string!

You also can use end credits not only to show names of authors, but also you can turn it into end-game legend, which will finalize your game with words like «…And Lara croft lived happily ever after even after…». There should be enough room for placing relatively large text.

Other Credits sub-customizer options are:

Credits audiotrack number: number of track used with credits (instead of default title audio).
Credits level jump number: specifies which number will be identified as «credits level number». By default it's 39, i. e. if you will place a trigger END_LEVEL with value of 39, game will jump to credits.
Normal / scripted line effect / align: style and align for both normal and scripted lines.
Don't replace %n lines with SCRIPT.DAT lines: this option will COMPLETELY TURN OFF scripted strings. I. e., even if you will write %01 or %05 or anything like this in credits, it won't be replaced with scripted string, but instead will appear as is.
Fix credits flyby bug: VERY IMPORTANT OPTION! TR4 engine credits feature is a bit buggy. When game exits to credits, title flyby won't reset. As a result, you will see corrupted flyby sequence (for ex., camera will fly off to the upper corner of your level and stuck there) or completely blacked-out screen. To fix this bug, use this option.

6.4.: GFX Customizer 1

GFX Customizer 1 changes various graphical FX and particle effects constants. It's not too much options to change, at least for now.

Lightning: here you can modify lightning parameters. Actually, there are few types of lightning in TR4 engine (vertical and some horizontal). For present moment, you can only modify parameters for horizontal lightning (Flame Emitter 3 OCB 2 and 3) and lightning conductor object.
Blood: and this is some blood parameters for you. Size, intensity and lifetime parameters are easy to understand, but as for spread factors, you must note that higher number means LESS spread. I. e., if you want blood to spread all around the room, set X and/or Y factors to 3-4. And if you don't want blood to spread, just fall down, set it higher. Also, most interesting option is set sprite to opaque. Have you seen original TR4 blood? And you call it BLOOD?! No. This is not a blood. It's a jam, it's a paint, it's maybe some spiritual substance flying from poor creatures, but it's not a blood. Now you can fix it. For best results, replace existing blood sprite with some hi-res sprite from other games (because usage of 8x8 monochrome sprite for blood is a nonsense).
Smoke: here is two option for changing smoke durations (pistols/uzis and revolver only).
Misc: options for hardcoded waterfall scroll speed and sky scroll direction. You may need to test those over and over again to gain necessary results.

«COLOURS» sub-entry
In this sub-entry you can change some hardcoded colours for some effects:
Gunflash blend colour: Have you ever wanted to create, for example, blue gunflash? If so, you maybe encountered problems with wrong gunflash colour: i. e. if you're creating blue gunflash mesh, it will appear green in game. It happens exactly because this «Add colour» gunflash parameter. By default, TR4 engine adds yellow colour to gunflash mesh (RGB(2F,2F,00)). Now you can change this.
Wallpapers blend colour: this option will modify ADDITIONAL background colour for inventory, options, load and save screens. It will not make your backgrounds like in TR5, for these you must use OVERRIDE MAIN COLOUR option.
Override main colour: You now can make backgrounds look like TR5 (not black and white, but black and yellow), or use your imagination and change colours to something else. For example, if you are building retro level, you can create sepia background.
Wallpaper fadeouts — fade top / fade bottom: these two options will fade top and bottom of the inventory background to black.
Sparkles blend colour: this is option for so-called «ricochets» and also sparkles which appear when gunshell falls into water.
Waterdrops colour: this will change waterdrops colour cast.
Shadow blend colour: you can change not only shadow colours, but also transparency. By default, all TR shadows look more like a puddles of dirty water, but now you can make shadows completely black (set «Shadow Transparency» option to FF). Or you can set it to 00 and remove all shadows completely.
Fadeouts colour: when TR engine loads new level or loads savegame, screen will smoothly fade in/out to black. With this feature, default black colour can be changed to anything else. This is useful when you creating level in Resident Evil or Silent Hill universe (remember, when you're starting new RE game, screen flashes with white colour). 

6.5.: GFX Customizer 2

Like GFX Customizer 1, this one changes some particle and sprite constants.

Explosion: actually this sub-entry will modify explosion effect only for crossbow explosive ammo. Maybe later other options will be included.
Sparkles: a bunch of sparkle (ricochet) effects. Try to increase «fall-off delay» parameter to get wonderful slowly-falling sparkles effect. Also you can increase add-on sprite initial size or change its ID, so it will be seen more clearly.
Sparkles — unify for various surfaces: In different conditions, TR4 calls same sparkle procedure with different parameters. One of this different parameters is sparkle amount. For example, when you shooting at static mesh, armored baddy or object, only 3 sparkles will appear, and if you shooting at wall — more will appear. This option allows you to change all sparkle amounts in a row, so, for example, if you will set sparkle amount to 10 and choose this option, 10 sparkles will appear in any case, not only when you shooting at wall.

Anim textures — frame change interval: now this is option that can REALLY improve TR4 engine's animated texture performance. By default, TR4's animated textures look like slide-show (only 6 FPS), but if you will decrease this value, texture animations will be operated faster! In combination with large animated texture sequences (dxtre3d and TRLE can both handle VERY BIG amount of frames and anim sequences) you can create much more realistic (in other words — SMOOTH) water, lava and many other effects. It is recommended to use frame change interval 3 or even 2 — it gives very smooth animated textures, for example, water will look like in Unreal Engine games.
Don't try to use frame change interval 1, because animations will be too fast then, and will look like garbage, but not smooth.

OVERVIEW: To make smooth water/lava/etc., you must do three things. First — find HIGH-QUALITY animated texture sequence for water/lava/etc., because existing TR1/2/3/4/5 animated textures are VERY bad, and it's only 8 frames long. Second — make LONG (10-30 frames) animated texture sequence with your level editor. Third — decrease frame change interval to 3 or 2 with TREP. Also, to make water more realistic and pseudo-«randomized», you can create two different animated texture sets with different parts of one long animation (for ex., if you've found 60-frame water animation somewhere, you can divide it to two 30-frame anim sequences in dxtre3d) and then apply these two different animations on both sides of your water surface with «double-sided» option enabled.
To feel the difference between poor old animated texture speed and increased texture speed, you can, for example, check the water animation in Bojrkraider's The Experiment 3 or download this test level (1.4 MB, two rooms only). By default, water animation look like awful slideshow, but with increased speed it's now feeling like REAL, FLUID water, not just 8 frames of something called «animated texture». I bet you will never use ugly default animation speed anymore, if you have seen new smooth water animation.
Also please note that with increased anim texture speed there are a lot of other possibilities to create dynamic environments. You not only can create water, but fire, fog, storms, dynamic landscapes and many more… Here is other test level with realistic fire texture applied to a static mesh with PixStr2. Compare it with old TR4 sprite fire and think for yourself — what's the best!
The point is right placement for right textures!

It's almost one year passed since this option was revealed, but MOST of new TR levels still contain AWFUL, UGLY and 8-year old animated textures from TR4. But even most important that even if builder decide to release a level with custom tomb4.exe included, for 99% he will leave this TREP option intact. I don't understand why TRLE community still don't see benefits from FAST-ANIMATED textures and still use default, slideshow-like settings. 

Water distortion / lighting: specifies speed of waving water effect and lighting. You can use it to create more smooth and fast water animations.
Thanks to Harly Wuson for this option.

Flyby widescreen bars — height / speed: these two parameters will modify widescreen cutscene bars. You can increase its size to gain more cinematographic effect (like aspect ratio 2.35:1, Cinemascope and so on).

Fadeouts — speed / duration: this is option for loading fadeouts. You can set duration to zero and increase level loading time by that. Also you can increase both speed and duration to gain more cinematographic fadeouts, but you must test it a lot, because incorrectly modified values can produce funny bugs, like twin or quad fadeout and such. For example, 5/20 values work good.

Underwater dust — simple — underwater dust values. Maximum amount value will set max. amount of particles in scene, and density will change speed of UW dust disappearing. Size and sprite ID values control how large sprites are and which sprite is used to draw dust. X/Y flow can be used to force dust move to a specific direction.
PLEASE NOTE that if you will specify other sprite ID, it may look like underwater dust particles consist only of half desired sprite. It happens because underwater dust is generated from sprite ID #10 by default, and this sprite also contains some other picture in the upper left corner, so it must be cutted-off. That's what engine does with sprite:

Volumetric fog colour table modifier: it looks like that for Core guys it was enough to use palette with only 27 colours as fog. But no. What if you want magenta fog in your level? And it's not here. Sorry, but no more hardcoded fog colour table. Cut off page 97 of your TRLE manual and forget about this nonsense.

Waterfall mist settings: waterfall mist is a hardcoded mist used for waterfall effects, but actually this effect can be used for various purposes. By decreasing amount and increasing density parameters and changing colours, you can create different particle objects. It can be just more dense waterfall mist or completely different effect, like thermonuclear fireball, like this one:

Note that effect looks wonderfully smooth and vivid in game, especially with large density values, but it eats a lot of graphical system power, so lots of waterfall mist objects with high density will cause engine to act very slow. Also, if you will use too much waterfall mist objects at the same time, they won't work correctly.

Sprinkler settings: used with Sprinkler object. You can modify spread, amount, arch, colour and also length (gravity) of particles. Most interesting in Sprinkler object is that you can create realistic fountains with it! Just enable «Loop forever» option, and sprinkler will work as long as it's activated!
Note that by increasing arch value you can create actual fountain physics:

Just remember to use «Remap particle buffer» option in main TREP window, or else your fountains won't work good!

6.6.: Light Customizer

First of all, Light Customizer allows you to change overall light intensity. This option can be useful if you want to create more saturated lighting in level. Also you can turn off lights completely by setting this parameter to zero.
Effective areas: for some dynamic lights, you can modify effective area. For example, if you creating new guns with more firepower, you can also increase gunflash effective area.

Binoculars light range: modifies binocular light range. Binocular range format is completely similar to DD/DF range format:

05 = DD range 5024.00
10 = DD range 10240.00
15 = DD range 15360.00

and so on, and so on… Just remember, that you can decrease binocular range to zero and thus turn off binocular light. Also, if you've increased DD/DF range, you can also increase binocular light range in a corresponding manner. (Thanks to Paolone for investigating this parameter!)

Flare colour: looks like a lot of people tired of green flare colour. So I included possibility to change flare colour. Note that you can't smoothly change flare colour, only select from green, red and yellow colour. This happens because TR4 using complicated formula to calculate light colour and a lot of variables must be changed.

Flare lifetime: defines flare's lifetime. You can set it up to 1092 seconds, but please remember about Flare Bug in TR4 engine — you cannot have more than 32 simultaneous dynamic lights, and flares also count as dynamic light. So, if you want to increase flare lifetime, be sure that player won't be able to activate more than 32 dynamic lights (flares, gunflashes, binocular/motorbike/jeep lights, alarmlight/blinking light/amber lights).

Disable flare blinking effect: when this option selected, flares won't blink, just glow constantly.

Disable motorbike headlight: if you're using motorbike in day levels, you can turn off headlight then.

Blinking light options: some options for BLINKING_LIGHT light object.
Blinking light — combine with alarm light option: this option will allow you to use both BLINKING_LIGHT and ALARM_LIGHT objects in the same slot! Just remember that you must enable Extend tomb4.exe size option in main TREP window to make it active.
To turn blinking light into alarm light in game, just set OCB to -100 for desired BLINKING_LIGHT object. To modify alarmlight radius, you can use Coordinate options, but note that it will also affect ALL BLINKING_LIGHT objects, so you must re-adjust their actual nullmesh position, or light will appear in wrong places.
(Thanks to Harly Wuson for providing information about this modification!)

Amber light options: same as above, but for AMBER_LIGHT light object. Note that you can't change colors smoothly — it's because it is calculated by formula.

6.7.: Camera Customizer

Here are a few camera options for you.

Normal camera distance: all simple — normal (non-weapon) camera distance from Lara's model.
Normal camera follow speed: this value will set speed for camera following in normal mode.
Normal camera top: by changing this option, you will «rotate» normal camera position up and down.
Look/battle camera distance: by decreasing this value, you will move look camera closer to Lara's model. Also you can enter negative value here, and then look camera will be placed in front of Lara model, so you can create first-person look mode then.
Add-on battle camera top: When you draw weapon, TR4 engine moves camera up to get a better view of enemy. Core guys thought that it will give you a better view of enemy until TR5. In TR5 they almost removed this add-on height value, so when you draw weapon, camera position will stay almost intact. By setting this value lower, you can re-create this TR5 battle camera behaviour.

Change FOV: here you can change Field Of View for all game cameras except some flyby cameras and inventory screen. The meaning of this value is similar to most PC first-person shooters (like Quake 3 and so on). Bigger FOVs will produce nifty «fish-eye» feeling, and smaller FOVs will create illusion of «zoomed» picture.
Please use this option carefully, because in rare cases too high FOV values can cause engine to crash.
 

FREE CAMERA: Lock — this option allows you to turn off camera following (when weapons are not drawn). You can freely position camera with «Look» button and then run off somewhere, so Lara will be not in camera's field of view. This can be useful when creating screenshots.
NOTE: when you are starting new game, you should press «Look» button, or else you will see only darkness. Also, when you will pick something up in game, you will be not able to see anything for a few seconds. And don't try to use vehicles with this option active — because you can't use «Look» button in these cases!

FREE CAMERA: Stick — minimizes «move away if too near to wall» threshold. If you remember oldest TR games, maybe you also remember that camera behaviour in that games was a little different — when LC is standing close to the wall, camera won't move on side, but will stay beyond LC. This option can be useful in levels with small rooms.

6.8.: Sound Customizer

Overall SFX Sample Rate: not too useful parameter. You can use it to increase sound quality of samples. Just take your favorite 44100 Hz samples, re-set it to 22050 Hz (DO NOT resample it, just set lower sample rate) and then increase overall SFX sample rate. Bad thing is you need to re-set sample rate for all samples, but it can easily be done with batch converters.

[lara being hit] sound ID: And now for famous «underwater_door» bug. If you don't know what is it, here is the explanation. When some enemy shooting to Lara (Baddy 1, Baddy 2, SAS) and you have somehow modified «sounds.txt» file, in most cases you will hear strange «underwater» sound. This happens because TR4 contains abandoned code responsible for playing sound when Lara being hit by enemy's bullets. Possibly it should be gibs spreading sound, or blood splattering sound, or even «Ah-ah, my god, it burns!» voice like in TR7, but Core never included it in final version.
So, you have two solutions. First — you can change sound ID, find some «gibs» or «blood» sample on the Net or rip it from other games (for ex., Quake 3 or Max Payne, or earlier TR games), place it in «sound\samples» directory and edit «sounds.txt» file, so proper sound will play every time enemy bullet will hit Lara. Note that sound IDs are completely similar to «sounds.txt» sound IDs, so if you want to assign sound ID #50, you must write down 50 into TREP's textbox. Second — you can turn off this sound completely, but I don't recommend you to do so.

[no ammo] sound ID: same as with [lara being hit] sound ID, but this option changes sound ID for «no ammo» in-game event. When Lara runs out of ammo, this sound will begin to play. But Core also left it behind in the process (remains of this bug can be observed in Cleopatra's Palaces level — when you run out of shotgun ammo, SARLID_PALACES sound will play).

Enable ricochet sound effect for Lara's guns: do you remember TR1? If you do, maybe you also remember that Lara's guns produced ricochet sounds there. For some reason, Core removed ricochet sounds from TR4 (but you still can hear them when SAS is firing). Here is an option to bring TR1-like ricochet sounds back. Be sure you have not overwritten LARA_RICOCHET sound in sounds.txt file!
This option requires «Extend tomb4.exe size» feature.

Extend sample memory from 256 kb to 1024 kb: most useful option is sound sample memory increaser. What is it? Look, if you will try to use any sound sample larger than 256 kbytes, game will crash. Now this limit increased, and maximum sample size is 1 mbyte. Useful when setting-up long ambient noises, like radio chatter, winds, bird twittering and so on.

Sound customizer: understanding music options

As you can see, now you're able to extend max. amount of audiotracks from 111 to 127. Unfortunately, TR4 engine operates correctly only with 127 audiotracks, then various glitches will appear (due to TR4 engine mostly uses 1-byte signed values for operating with audiotrack numbers).
Next, you can change looped audiotracks range. What is it? Maybe you know that some audios are hardcoded as looped-tracks, and some not. So here you can define track number, after which (inclusive) all remaining audiotracks will be looped.
Next, hardcoded jeep and secret soundtracks can be changed or disabled completely. Note that jeep has not only INSIDE soundtrack, but also OUTSIDE track, which will be activated when you will exit jeep. Here is description for various jeep audiotrack option combinations:

1) If you will disable OUTSIDE track, but leave INSIDE intact, «jeep theme» (98 by default) will play forever until you will step onto other looped track trigger.
2) If you will disable INSIDE track and leave OUTSIDE intact, «jeep theme» won't be played, but when you'll exit jeep, corresponding looped track will be activated (110 by default).
3) If you will disable BOTH inside and outside tracks, no extra tracks will be played when you'll enter/exit jeep.
4) If you leave both tracks enabled, TR4 engine will act like always.

7.0.: MAIN WINDOW — GAMEPLAY OPTIONS

Now we're going to something really serious. Graphic settings are funny, but more interesting is various gameplay parameters. All these parameters grouped in «gameplay options» section.
 

PIGTAIL: FORCE SINGLE/TWIN/INTACT — This option is useful for creating twin-pigtail haircuts (outfits) for old Lara and single-pigtail haircuts for young Lara. If you, for example, set pigtail to «force twin», TR4 engine will be forced to draw two pigtails in ANY CASE — i.e. for both young and old Lara. Maybe you will ask: «why should I use this option, if I already can use ResetHUB bug?» And here is the reasons:
  1) Pistols / binoculars / flares will be shown in inventory screen (unlike ResetHUB bug).
  2) You will be able to use flares.
  3) You can use twin pigtals for old Lara in the very first level too.
  4) You can use single pigtail for young Lara (so you won't have any weapons/flares in your inventory).
 

FIX HOLSTERS BUG: other annoying TR4 engine bug is empty holsters when you put back UZI/Revolver weapons. With this option, bug can be fixed. How it was done? Well, thank goodness there was enough free space (filled with NOPs) around «put back weapons and swap holster meshes» procedure, so some jumps were placed for various «active weapon» conditions. 
 

ENABLE BONUS LEVEL WORKAROUND: something special for all TR3 and TR2Gold lovers  — secret level workaround, which depends on all possible statistic conditions you may want to set. When enabled, this setting modifies END_LEVEL trigger behaviour, so if player have corresponding statistics, he will jump to level specified in Bonus level # textbox. Otherwise, he will jump to Alternate level #. Warning! Since version 0.74 you must specify SECRET LEVEL'S NUMBER as trigger parameter for corresponding END_LEVEL trigger in your level editor, or bonus level won't load.
When you press conditions… button, small window with all possible conditions will pop-up. As you can see, you now may use ALL statistics' screen conditions as secret level conditions. Here is description for each option:
   Time taken: right, if player will be too slow and won't complete your game in specified time, bonus level won't load.
   Ammo used: if player will use too much ammo (more than specified), he will not proceed to bonus level.
   Medkits used: just like in Silent Hill or Resident Evil games — if player have used more medkits than specified, he won't be able to play bonus level.
   Distance travelled (m): if player will walk around too much and overall travelled distance will be more than specified — no bonus level.
   Secrets: if player haven't collected specified amount of secrets — no bonus level (this method was already used in TR2Gold and TR3).

Note that you can create situations that was absolutely impossible before! For example, like in Silent Hill or any Capcom games (like RE, Onimusha, Dino Crisis series etc.), you now can create multiple endings and storyline branches, which will depend on player's statistics!

DISABLE «HANG GAME THREAD» ON LOST FOCUS: Debug option. When enabled, tomb4.exe process won't hang if window has lost focus. Useful when debugging engine with OllyDbg (you can modify code and immediately see result without switching back to tomb4.exe window).
 

EXTEND TOMB4.EXE SIZE: without this option turned on, you won't be able to use Flipeffect Editor and some other options (i. e. if you won't turn on this option, these extra options will be grayed out). This happens because Flipeffect Editor, Racetimer Editor and other various options which require extra code placement, needs more space to place such code. Since user-defined flipeffects and racetimer events are not static and can be very long in terms of hexcode, a lot of space is reserved for these two TREP editors. Also, for future development, TREP reserves large amount of memory for its own possibly-forthcoming features.
Here is the full structure of extended tomb4.exe section:

Extended tomb4.exe section chart

Note: to receive virtual offsets (which can be operated in OllyDbg, CheatEngine and other debugging software), add B52000h in «remap scene memory» mode or 752000h in non-remapped mode.

If you have no custom flipeffects, racetimer events and extra features enabled, most of this space will be filled either with 00 or 90 bytes.

ENABLE ADVANCED SAVEGAME MANAGEMENT: Most of recent custom patches will require this option. It changes the way TR4 engine saves your game — first of all, after this patch you MUST PLACE ALL YOUR SAVEGAMES into /SAVE subdirectory (you must create this directory manually). Second thing — each SAVEGAME.* file will be supported by extra savegame file named TREPSAVE.* to store extra statistics and values used by other TREP patches.

8.0.: GAMEPLAY OPTIONS — SUB-SECTIONS

Like with «video / audio settings», «gameplay options» section contains additional panel with buttons at the right side. Here you can modify gameplay-specific parameters.

8.1.: Enemy HP Customizer

It's so stupid to have 2 level editors (dxtre3d and TRLE), various object editors (pixstr2, strpix3, wadmerger, etc.), texture editors (TBuilder etc.) but not to have possibility to change enemy HP! But now at least you can change HP for majority of TR4's enemies. It's really wonderful that you can set enemy's HP to a VERY big value. You maybe know that, for example, Scorpion will die after only 50 direct pistol hits. But now you can create super-bosses with HP set to… are you ready?.. 32767 (hex 7FFF) !!! I. e., to kill this enemy, you should hit him with: a) 32767 pistol bullets, b) 2185 revolver bullets, c) 1821 shotgun shells… You got the idea :) .
ABOUT SMALL SCORPION: The reason why Small Scorpion's HP placed in independent sub-section is strange TR4 code, which not sets SS's hp to specific value, but uses some CPU register's value as HP value. To change it, we must modify TR4 code, so SS's HP won't be equalized to CPU register, but will use its own independent value. It can be done only by setting far jump to a data section of tomb4.exe file, because new (modified) code's size is bigger than default code.

ENEMY HP FLAGS: Maybe you're wondering, what's these colored circles at the right side of each enemy's HP? Here is the answer — it's hp flags. HP flag defines a reaction for Lara's gunfire at enemy. For example, Small Scorpion will bleed and die, and Demigod 1 will be invincible. HP flags can change this.
For detail explanation about HP flags, press [ ? ] button in Enemy HP Customizer.
ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT WARNING: if you change your enemies' flags and then try to load a savegame which was generated with other enemy HP flag values, this savegame will NOT WORK CORRECTLY or WILL CRASH GAME. It is important when you're testing your level's playability — don't even try to save somewhere, then edit HP flags and then load old savegame generated with other HP flags!

8.2.: Physics Customizer

Physics Customizer allows you to change majority of rotation factors (thanks to Harly Wuson for discovering most of them), swim speed and some other options.

All these values are RAW values, so you have to test it again and again to gain necessary results. But since version 0.687, your life can be easier, because you can use rounded sliders to define rotation factors. As for Swim Speed, you must set it LOWER to get HIGHER swim speed, and so on. Jump gravity textbox modifies REAL GRAVITY for jumps. In combination with shell casing gravity, it's useful for space and alien levels.

Do not explode motorbike/jeep in water: looks like TR community really tired of hydrophobiac jeep and motorbike, which will explode immediately after they touch the water. Now you can fix this! But you should note that bike/jeep won't stay on the water surface, so you can't make functional boat with it. BUT, indeed, you can now create levels with marshlands, which will need jeep to complete a level (for example, you can set timed door which Lara can't pass on foot through marsh, so she will need to use jeep). Also you can try to create boat and use it with shallow water, but I don't think it worth a try.

Shell casing gravity: this parameter will modify gravity for shell casings ONLY. Higher value will set higher gravity, and zero gravity will send shells fly in the sky. Useful when creating illusion of low-gravity.

Falling damage (divider): if you've decreased gravity, you can also increase (yes, increase, cause it's divider) this value to reduce falling damage from higher ledges.

Disable ledge grab-climb delay: in earlier TR games (TR 1/2/3), Lara climbs immediately after she grabs the ledge, but in TR4, there will be a pause between grab and climb actions. It's very annoying if you like fast gameplay. So turn it off, if you want to speed-up grab-climb procedure a little.
 

8.3.: Inventory Customizer

One of the most serious changes that you can do with TREP is an inventory changes. Years have passed since TRLE released, and no one tried to modify start-up inventory. This is so sad to have same start-up items in the beginning of each custom level… But now it's all in the past!

«Pistols» checkbox: with this option you can remove pistols from startup inventory. This option can add some realism to your level, if you've removed guns in the beginning of your level (like it was in Knights of Terafosia, for example). Also note that pistols will reappear in inventory after picking up «Pistols» item and will stay with you forever (even after load/save), but you need to SELECT IT in inventory or press hotkey (1) to use it (like with any other weapon picked up).
«Binoculars» checkbox: here you can remove binoculars from start-up inventory. You think it's useless? Let me not agree with you. Imagine: now you can create puzzles which will require binoculars-exclusive features to complete (like dark hole with hint in TR4's The Lost Library, or never-seen-before Zoom Ratio puzzles).
Crowbar: TR4 engine checks if you've picked up Crowbar in previous level and if so, it will move it to new level. This checkbox will bypass that code, so Crowbar will be with you in the beginning of the game and UNTIL THE END. Since this feature selected, IT CAN'T BE REMOVED WITH SCRIPT COMMANDS.

Amount of big medkits: it's all simple — change amount of start-up Big Medkits. Set it to 0, if you want to remove Big Medkits from start-up inventory completely.
Amount of small medkits / flares: these two textboxes will allow you to change amount of these start-up items. But notice that if you will try to modify small medkit value, flare value will change too. Why? See further…
Seperate Small Medi / Flare amount: do you want to know interesting fact about TR4 engine? Here it is — Small Medkit and Flare start-up amounts equalized in executable. It is not known why it happened, maybe same reason why Small Scorpion HP equalized to some register's value. All in all, this checkbox will modify code slightly, so you will be able to set Flare / Small Medkit amounts independently.

Enable limited pistol ammo: good god! Now you can get rid of unlimited pistol ammo! I'll never understand, why to set unlimited pistol ammo for Lara… OK, let's admit that these pistols are gas pistols or water pistols, but what about shell casings? Unlimited ammo and shell casings — how unrealistic… But now you can change these things. This checkbox will make pistol ammo limited, like with any other weapon.
Unfortunately, Pistol Ammo item, which you surely saw in any TR4 wad, was ignored by TR4 engine. When you are picking up «Pistol Ammo» item, engine WILL identify this item as ID #350. But TR4 engine contains no code to work with this item ID. So, to make this item workable, we need to add code which will add ammo to inventory, if user picked up «Pistol Ammo» item. After this modification, TR4 engine will use BOTH pistols and pistol ammo items correctly. Note that you now can remove pistols from start-up inventory, then pick up ammo, and it will appear as real ammo, just like shotgun, revolver, etc. ammo.

Start-up pistol ammo: this option required for limited pistol ammo feature. Here you will change ACTUAL start-up pistol ammo value with underlying textbox. By default, engine will set this value to UNLIMITED («FFFF» in hex), but with little code modification, you can change it from 0 to 255. Remember: if you have turned on limited pistol ammo feature, you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RESTORE UNLIMITED PISTOL AMMO until starting new game. All savegames with this option activated will contain limited pistol ammo; you won't be able to restore it even with GUN cheat.

To create limited pistol ammo, you should do two things:

 1) Turn on «Enable limited pistol ammo» option
 2) Change start-up pistol ammo to desired value.

Optionally, you can also remove pistols from inventory. Note that if you will remove pistols and set start-up pistol ammo more than 0, it will appear as «n x Pistol Ammo» item in inventory. If you will set start-up pistol ammo to 0, it will disappear from inventory.


Disable shotgun ammo 6x divider: as you probably know, shotgun's gunfire consists of 6 shots. Thus, ACTUAL SHOTGUN AMMO is not the ammo which you can see in Inventory screen. Inventory screen's ammo is nothing else than ACTUAL ammo divided by 6. So, you now can disable this divider to see ACTUAL ammo amount instead of divided. This option can be useful when you've reduced amount of shotgun shots in Weapons Customizer (see further).

Health at startup: here you can modify start-up HP. But this option will not modify MAXIMUM health points. To modify Max. HP, you must use HP \ Damage Customizer, which will be described below.
Air / sprint at startup: same as with HP startup value.

Disable in-game load / save: if you want to create demo level without possibility to save or load, or you want to create level with savegame checkpoints, then turn on these options, and load/save items will disappear from inventory, and also you won't be able to use F5/F6 keys.
Disable inventory: same as with load/save.

Disable compass cheats: if you want engine to ignore compass cheats, you can turn this option on. Note that compass needle then won't be transparent anymore when pointing North.
Fix compass direction bug: and one more annoying TR4 bug. Unlike TR1, TR4's compass shows non-actual compass direction, but Lara's direction. This is so unrealistic… But this checkbox will fix direction bug, and compass will show actual compass direction. BUT YOU MUST INVERT COMPASS NEEDLE then, or else needle will point to south instead of north. If you have standard TR4 compass in your level, you only need to retexture it, but if you have created custom compass needle, then you must «reverse» it with your 3D modelling program.

More savegame slots: once Core released a patch for Tomb Raider 4 which increased savegame slots from 10 to 15. But sometimes it's still not enough, so here we go again — savegame slots were once more increased from 15 to 24. It could have been increased more, but then load/save dialog text strings just won't fit the screen (it was already compressed at maximum).
NOTE: this option will also squash text in Control Configuration menu, but since you don't have to go to Control Configuration frequently, this bug can be considered as minor and non-critical. Also, this option WILL NOT WORK IN SOFTWARE MODE.

Overall secrets: this textbox allows you to change amount of secrets listed in «Statistics» screen.

FlyCheat magic word: you know that TR4 has FlyCheat that is initiated by pressing DOZY. Here you can change DOZY «magic word». You'd better use words without repeating symbols (e. g. you can use ABCD or BCDA, but better don't use AABB or CCDD). If you will use repeating symbols, it will be treated as one symbol (for ex., AABB will be treated as AB).

Pick-ups quantity: here you can modify amount of ammo for each pick-up. Note that different crossbow bolt and grenade types has its own value.
WARNING!!! Pistols / pistol ammo pick-up quantity will be available ONLY AFTER YOU'VE TURNED ON «Disable "Unlimited" pistol ammo label» CHECKBOX!!!

Small Medkit effect: this textbox allows to change small medkit healing effect. Useful when modifying Lara's Max. HP (see «HP \ Damage Customizer» section) or creating difficult levels. Also you can set Small Medkit's effect to minimum and rename it to, for example, «Antidote» — so it will neutralize poison, but won't heal Lara.
Invert Small Medkit effect: stupid option. Really stupid. After applying it, small medkits won't be small medkits anymore. They will DECREASE your HP! Replace «small medkit» mesh with cigarettes mesh, name it «A pack of cigarettes» — and voila, you have «evil» pick-up item in your level.

Item/ammo rotate speed: just for fun. You can independently change item/ammo rotation speeds in inventory.
Pick-up showing duration: duration of pick-up rotate animation. You can set it to 0 to disable pick-up showing completely.

8.4.: Item Configurator

What is «Item configurator»? It's a very small window with very little amount of options. But these options can completely change difficulty or style of your game, because it modifies x_combo items behaviour.
Now what is x_combo item? You surely know what is it. It's all these items entitled Puzzle item 1 combo 1, Key item combo 1, Pickup item combo 1, etc. These items, when combined, will produce other item. Good to note that TR4 engine actually (of course!) will NOT combine these items, but simply replace them with some other item. And surely this newly produced item can be ANY item, not only corresponding Puzzle/key/pickup item . And most important thing that combo items are not connected to their parent items, so you can safely use combo and original items for completely different purposes! For example, «Puzzle Item 1 Combo 1 + Combo 2» formula can produce ANY item, but you still will be able to use original Puzzle Item 1 for the same purpose as before.

For example, let's suppose that you started level without any weapons in really «drrrreadful place». There is a guardian somewhere nearby that holds key to the door you should open. To kill this guard and get the key, you must assemble your weapon from two parts — barrel and case. After combining these items, you will be able to use your weapon (of course, you should find ammo too!).

How item configurator works? Plain simple — just two small list boxes. Left listbox specifies current combination formula (e. g. Puzzle Item 5 Combo 1 + Combo 2), and right listbox specifies resulting item of this combination (e. g. Puzzle Item 5). You can assign ANY item to ANY combination, i. e. you can create any weapon/medkit/key/item/pickup with any combination formula.

Example: Puzzle Item 1 Combo 1 + Combo 2 = Shotgun
This combination will turn two Puzzle Item 1 combo items into shotgun!

Also Item Configurator is useful for creating multi-layer puzzle items. For example, you can create these two combinations:

Puzzle Item 1 Combo 1+ Combo 2 = Puzzle Item 3 Combo 1
Puzzle Item 2 Combo 1 + Combo 2 = Puzzle Item 3 Combo 2

Thus, player should find 4 puzzle combos and combine them in the proper way to create only one puzzle item (Puzzle Item 3).
 

8.5.: Weapon Customizer

Look at trsearch.org resource — there are a lot of custom guns available — really cool pistol, UZI, revolver, shotgun, grenadegun and X-bow models… But what a difference it makes, if these items will act like old standard TR4 weapons? So, Weapon Customizer allows you to change ALL guns' damage, and also some specific gun effects.

Complex weapon modifiers: it's a table which allows you to set 4 parameters for each «holster» gun and also 3 parameters for shotgun.
   a) damage — you know, it's hard to describe what this parameter does… :)
   b) rate — fire rate. Minimum is 1 (guns will fire like hellstorm). Maximum is defined by length of corresponding fire animation.
   c) dispersion — bullet dispersion. Useful when creating powerful weapons with low accuracy.
   d) flash dur. — gunflash effect duration. I like to set it to 1 and set fire rate to 2 — looks outstanding!

Preview screen: press «Play» triangle button, and you'll see animated preview of selected gun's effect and rate (some computers will act too slow with this preview window).

Stupid question: why only these weapons are grouped in special parameter table? Well, it resembles actual tomb4.exe structure.
 

SHOTGUN GUNFLASH OPTIONS
Actually, shotgun gun flash uses the same procedure as pistols/uzis/flare flash, but it will just bypass gunflash mesh draw. It's not good if you are going to create MP5, M16 or gatling gun in a shotgun slot. MP5 or gatling gun will look so silly with a lot of smoke coming from it and no any gun flashes… But if you will turn on gunflash mesh for shotgun, these weapons will look much more realistic and funny. Also, you can customize gunflash position, so it will fit your gun animation (by default, position is set for South Pacific Remake outfit created by PoYu), and customize vertical smoke puff position (you can hide it under floor, if you'll set it to 255).

Shotgun shot amount: here you can reduce amount of shotgun shots. In combination with Inventory Customizer's «Disable shotgun ammo 6x divider» option, this option is useful for creating other weapons in shotgun slot. For example, you can disable ammo divider, set shotgun shot amount to 1 and then create MP5/M16 in shotgun slot.
Explosive weapons damage: damage for any explosive weapon — both explosive X-bow bolts and any grenade type.

CROSSBOW OPTIONS
Crossbow bolt fly speed: speed of crossbow bolt.
Crossbow normal damage: damage for standard crossbow ammo.
Crossbow poison damage: Enable this option, and you'll be able to change default poison damage (1) from 0 to 7F.
Crossbow ammo flags: here is the way to change each crossbow ammo's type. For example, you can set all ammo flags to e, then create rocket launcher in crossbow slot and enjoy REAL rockets in DEFAULT crossbow ammo slot.

flametail checkbox: with this little option, you can add extra effect to the crossbow bolts — now they will have flame tail and trailing light! It can be useful, if you want to convert crossbow into some Ultimate Weapon (like plasmagun, flamethrower, BFG etc.):

GRENADE GUN OPTIONS
Grenade timer (1/24 sec): timer for Grenade Launcher's grenades. You can simply increase timeout (up to 65535/24=2730 sec=45 min) or DISABLE IT COMPLETELY by setting this value to zero. Still, grenades will explode if any enemy or Lara will touch them.
Grenade weight \ launch power: some physic values for grenades. With it, you can create «weightless grenade», which will fly horizontally (like in TR2). Also, in combination with disable grenade rotation and force one-touch for all ammo options, you can emulate Rocket Launcher or TR2 grenades.
Grenade ammo flags: same as above, but for grenade gun, but with a little difference. Grenade gun actually has two hidden new ammo types! It's Ultra Ammo (flaming grenade with cool red tail, which will explode immediately after touching anything) and Frag Ammo (kind of Super Ammo, but with increased number of fragments).

TARGETING DISTANCE OPTIONS
We may suppose that Lara Croft is a perfect shooter. She can fire from 2 pistols, 2 uzis and other powerful weapons from any distance she wants at anyone she wants. But what if her skills with uzis are less than with pistols? Here we go. DECREASE or INCREASE targeting distance for ANY weapon, and Lara will use autotargeting at different distance.

TWIN WEAPON OVERRIDES
These two buttons specify twin-weapons (i. e. uzis and pistols) configuration. If you will un-push one of these two buttons, corresponding pistol/uzi WILL NOT WORK. For example, you can turn off left pistol/uzi and therefore create single pistol weapon in your game (with editing fire animations, of course).

DISABLE AUTOMATICAL WEAPON CHANGE
By default, when Lara is running out of ammo, she will automatically holster her weapon back and take out pistols. Now you can disable it.
 

8.6.: HP \ Damage Customizer

This customizer modifies Lara's maximum HP, various HP bar width parameters and some damage factors.

HP DRAIN section
This sub-section used for changing various «decrease health» values for some game events.

 a) No air: when Lara out of air, she drowns. I. e., her HP will decrease until she will die. Here you can change this decrease factor.
 b) On fire: when Lara catches fire, her HP will decrease. So, this textbox will adjusth «on fire» HP leak factor.
 c) In spikes: when Lara walking through spikes, she is getting hurt. Here is health decrease factor for that.
 d) In joby spikes: HP drain value for spikes created by (or for) our dearest level designer named Joby Wood.
 e) In smoke: as for «on fire», but for smoke…
 f) In darts: same as above, but for darts…

USEFUL NOTE: if you want to create underwater level (like «Deepsea Dive») with TR4 engine, then you can set «No air» HP drain factor to 0 and hide air bar (see «Bar Customizer» section). Thus, even if air will drain, HP will not decrease, and you won't see empty air bar (thanks to Barry and Titak from tombraiderforums.com for this hint).

ENEMY DAMAGE/BEHAVIOUR sub-section
Here you can change almost all enemies' damage.

Little Beetle dispersion: if you'll decrease this value, little beetles will be more «concentrated» when biting Lara, so her health will decrease quickly. But don't set this parameter too low, because then little beetles will go insane and run around Lara with a speed of a sport-car.

Magic attack (divider): Here is divider for ALL magical attack in TR4 game: i. e. for demigod attacks, Set's energy attacks, Mutant fire attack, etc. To increase magic attack damage, DECREASE this parameter.

Disable mutant locust attack: This option allows to disable locust attack for dragon (normal locust enemy still will work).

8.7.: SAS grenades bugfix
TR4 engine is a VERY bugged engine, where holstered weapons disappear, where you hear underwater door sounds when being shot, where compass pointing to West instead of the East, where flame sprites are flying all over the level, where game will crash if you have placed any wrong object in any wrong place. But most ridiculous bug of all is, possibly, Lara Croft's explosion-proof bra (as mentioned by Magnus). With this awesome bra, no any SAS grenades can hurt Lara!
But enough. We already saw too much explosion-proof equipment in TR custom levels, so now it's time to cardinally change it!

In other words… SAS grenades bugfix section will allow you to partially fix classic TR4 engine harmless SAS grenade bug. Not only it allows you to turn grenade damage back on, but also modify some parameters with it:

Dmg / thresh: specifies damage for each grenade explosion and Lara's HP threshold, after which grenade will make a «fatality» and kill Lara completely.
Fast kill: any grenade will kill Lara immediately, like in TR3.
Blow-up fatality: plays blow-up animation on death. If you want it to work correctly, you must use Lara object from revised wad with animation 438 (mine blow-up). Also if you have motorbike/jeep in your level, don't use it, or else you will see strange things if Lara will be killed by grenade when driving!

This option requires «Extend tomb4.exe size» feature.
 

8.8.: LIMITS sub-customizer
This sub-customizer allows you to change maximum health and air bars' values and ranges. It's useful when you want to create weak or more powerful Lara.

Max. HP bar value: maximum health value. Used for ingame HP limitation and for HP bar maximum width recalculation (see further).
Raw HP bar range & Divider: low-level parameters used for aligning HP bar's width. Do not edit it manually, if you not sure what you are doing.
Recalculate HP bar range: each time you'll try to modify max. HP bar value, this button will become red. This means you SHOULD PRESS THIS BUTTON AFTER YOU'VE SET MAXIMUM HP BAR VALUE!!! Or else your bar width won't fit actual HP value.
Medkits HP limiter: this value should be equal to «Max. HP bar value». It is used to «limit» medkits' effect to an absolute HP maximum.
Normal-critical threshold: if Lara's health will fall lower than this value, health bar will blink.

OVERVIEW: How to set maximum Lara's health… 
So, to change Lara's maximum health, you normally should complete these steps:

1) Change «Health on startup» value in Inventory Customizer to any value you like (but remember that maximum is 32767).
2) Put the same value into «Max. HP bar value» text field in HP \ Damage Customizer.
3) Put the same value into «Medkits HP limiter» text field in HP \ Damage Customizer.
4) Press «recalculate HP bar range» button in HP \ Damage Customizer.
5) Adjust «Normal-critical threshold».

Stupid question: what if I get this error message?

This message means that you have set too low maximum health value. Minimum HP value is 202, and the maximum is 32767 (if you will set it higher, Lara will die).

Almost same parameters can be applied to air bar and sprint bar, except air restoration rate and motorbike nitro drain rate. It defines how quickly air / bike nitro will be replenished / drained.

8.9.: Object (trap) Customizer.

Since ages, some TR objects had hardcoded parameters that couldn't be modified. For example, spikes, which retract and extract with fixed (hardcoded) intervals. Or it's boulder gravity, or raising block height… Trap Customizer allows you to modify some of these hardcoded values, and this way you can drastically change your game's feeling by creating completely new traps with modified parameters!

Two block platform sub-section

Invert movement direction: many TR builders complained that they can only raise two-block platform, not lower it. Now you can invert two block platform movement direction and create elevators that will not go up, but go down instead.

OCB 0 mode only options: these four parameters valid for customizing TWOBLOCK_PLATFORM only in depress mode (OCB 0). Again, you think it's useless? Now let me tell you something. Do you remember hanging block puzzles from TR7? I. e. when you need to jump to other block before it will fall too low? So, with these options you now can create same puzzles — scales puzzles, hanging block puzzles, and many many more… By varying depression distance parameter, you can create different types of platforms that will fall down at the specific height that you maybe will need in your level. Note that depression and repression speed can be modified SEPERATELY! It means you can create platforms that will fall very quick under Lara's height, but they will need much more time to restore their initial height when Lara leaves it. Also there is another invert movement direction option, but it's only valid for OCB 0 mode.

One example: imagine that Lara should jump from one platform to other before platform will go too low or too high, or else she won't be able to grab next platform or get into small cavern… It's a wonderful potential for creating this kind of puzzles!

Please remember that if you're using platform(s) that will descend into water rooms, you shouldn't allow them to descend lower than 2 clicks, or else Lara will stuck in the floor.
 

One block platform sub-section
Warning: this feature requires «Extend tomb4.exe size» option.

If you will look closer, you will notice that TR4 engine contains a lot of abandoned features. For example, if you will look at OBJECTS.H file, you will notice a lot of undocumented objects — like TRIPWIRE, DIARY_ITEM, ONEBLOCK_PLATFORM and so on. Unfortunately, nobody never wrote a single line of code for these objects, and object slots itself were left empty. Fortunately, TR4 still contains entries for such objects. Therefore, it is possible to make these abandoned objects functional!
So this sub-section allows you to make ONEBLOCK_PLATFORM item active. Note that you can change behaviour for this item seperately — it means you now can have two platforms with different parameters in your level! For example, you can create platform that goes up in ONEBLOCK_PLATFORM slot and platform that goes down in TWOBLOCK_PLATFORM slot!
 

Spikes sub-section

Joby stretch speed: maybe you've seen this trap in one of the last TR4 levels. Joby spikes is a spikes that begin to spin and stretch to the bottom of the room. Speed of this stretching is hardcoded, but now you can change it precisely. In the meaning of the gameplay, you can create a room in which some operation should be completed in the precise time before Joby Spikes will get Lara (for example, you can use some pushable objects to work with, or you can create «crossover room» with Joby Spikes, where Lara should return after some action in other room and then do some action in it — and all this before Joby Spike will get her).

Normal spikes timer: this option was moved from Physics Customizer. As you maybe already understood, it will modify TEETH_SPIKES cycle delay. You can set it higher to create «inpassable» teeth spikes or lower to create «Phew, just in time» spike corridors etc. etc.

Retraction speed: modifies speed of normal spikes retraction/detraction.
 

Darts sub-section: nothing so much new here — darts colour, interval and speed. Increase interval and speed — and you will create more difficult trap to overcome. Also, you can set darts colour to RGB(0,0,0) (so darts won't be visible), create static mesh with no collision and texture it like laser beam (good point to use UVRotate or animated textures here), decrease darts interval to minimum and create an illusion of harmful lasers, like in TR3 or TR5.

Raising / expanding block options — height and raise anim speed: two options for BOTH raising blocks and EXPANDING PLATFORM. Why they have no separate settings? Reason is that only one code piece is used for all these three objects.
In other words, Raising Block 2's height will be ALWAYS equal to TWO Raising Block 1 heights, and Expanding Platform's height will be equal to Raising Block 1 height.
Link fake height option allows you to link visible mesh height to real collision height. You can use this option if you don't want to edit raising block meshes, but with this option Expanding Platform won't work correctly anymore (i. e. its visible expanded width will not be equal to actual collision, but maybe you can get along by modifying Expanding Platform mesh).

Falling block options: timer and tremble value. Timer can be used to increase or decrease delay before Falling Block collapse. Very useful for creating «just in time» traps (you can fine-tune timer and then create, for example, collapsible bridge which will need Lara to use sprint, or else falling block will fall before she will manage to pass it). Also you can use small timer values for creating «Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade»-like puzzles, when Lara will need to step onto certain squares, or else she will immediately fall into an abyss.
In contrary, you can INCREASE timer and create another «just in time» puzzle, when Lara will need to do some action before floor will collapse under her.
Tremble value can be useful if you don't want to show player that he is standing onto falling block.

Squishy Block 2 sub-section: it modifies Squishy Block 2 options. What's the squishy block 2? It's the final trap in TR4, when Lara goes through a room with skulls on the ceiling, and if she will stand too much under it, Squishy Block 2 will make his appearance and will squish Lara into a slight amount of guts. So now you can change its timer and tremble value (parameters similar to same Falling Block parameters). More checkbox will reorganize code a bit, so you will be able to use bigger timer values (by default, TR4 engine allows you to use values only up to 127). Note that no any tremble checkbox WILL NOT turn off «final tremble» which happens when squishy block falls down (for modifying this «final tremble», use corresponding textbox), but will turn off «squishy block in the process» tremble.

«Other objects» sub-section:
Boulder gravity: increase or decrease it, and boulder will be more or less heavy. Note that values more than 15 will cause permanent tremble around boulder, even if it's completely stopped.
Slicer-dicer speed: speed for infamous Slicer-Dicer trap from TR4's The Tomb of Seth.
Slicer-dicer radius: multiplier for Slicer-Dicer radius. Every time you will increase it by 1, radius will be doubled.
Lightning conductor interval: specifies interval for lightning conductor object.

9.0.: Flipeffect Editor and FURR language — learning the basics

Flipeffect Editor is a small editor with special command language (shortly named FURR — from Flipeffect User-Related Repository) and syntax system that allows you to create USER-DEFINED FLIPEFFECTS. It's not like you have some fixed amount of fixed flipeffects, and you stick to it, and you can't modify them. No. You can create YOUR OWN FLIPEFFECTS from scratch! It means, if you want to create flipeffect that will add some key or remove all weapons from inventory, then go for it! If you want to create flipeffect that will slowly drain or replenish Lara's HP, then go for it! If you want to create flipeffect that will move Lara or any item to any position in your level or play any animation — you can do this! Even more, if you have some assembly language skills, you can create not only flipeffects, but also COMMANDS for these flipeffects! Then you can share your skills with all TRLE builders and release your custom command file with new commands!
But, since you're supposedly a beginner, let's learn the basics of Flipeffect Editor. Here it is:

Largest text box (with slider on its right side) is a box where you will enter new commands for your flipeffect. Small textbox at the top side of window (entitled «Description») is a description for your flipeffect.
Under the main large text box there is a «gray zone» with three buttons and two text labels:

[S] button: initiate spellcheck (i. e. checking for syntax errors and wrong commands) for ALL flipeffect slots.
[L] button: reload command file (you can specify any syntax file, not only default «syntax.fln», like on start-up)
[LIST] button: creates a list of all available commands.

code status label: this label («spellcheck OK» by default) will inform you about any errors found in your command sequence.
line number label: this label tells you overall amount of lines in current command sequence and line you're currently pointing to.

One shot checkbox allows you to create one-shot flipeffect that will execute only once when Lara is on trigger.

Pre / post mode switch specifies one-shot flipeffect mode. «Pre» mode means that flipeffect will be stopped immediately, and «post» mode means that flipeffect will be stopped only in the end of the code. You MUST use «post» mode, if you want to create, for ex., soundtrack trigger that will play if Lara surfacing the water (like in TR1-3 Lara's home and TR4's «your average priceless seaweed» cutscene).

Enable flipeffect editor checkbox will, indeed, enable Flipeffect Editor. If you won't enable this option, you won't be able to do anything in Flipeffect Editor, and no any custom flipeffects will be written to executable.

Current flipeffect combobox specifies flipeffect you're currently editing. By default, custom flipeffect slots begin from 47 (since last hardcoded TR4 filpeffect is 46) and end with 146. Therefore, you have 100 different flipeffect slots. When you changing flipeffect slot with this combobox, it will save all changes you've made to previous slot.
If (somehow!) you've filled all 100 flipeffect slots, you can increase slot amount in config file. Just find TriggerSlots=100 line in the beginning of trep.cfg and set it to anything you want (up to 512).

Flipeffect Editor hotkeys

  F1  — opens command list for quick reference.
  F2  — brings up navigation box (you can quickly navigate through filpeffect slots with it)
  F3  — initiates spellcheck for current flipeffect.

9.1.: COMMAND REFERENCE

IMPORTANT: since TREP 0.72 revision 6, RETN command added automatically to the end of each flipeffect code. So you don't need to use this command anymore.

Some commands are plain commands without any additional parameters required. You simply enter this command and… that's it. But some commands will require additional values (one or two), so you must also enter these parameters. For example, if you want to enter command that will decrease Lara's HP, you should enter VALUE which will specify speed of HP decreasing.
In case command uses these parameters, it will be shown in square brackets with description of parameter type in it. For example, DEC_HP [values 0-32767].

PLEASE REMEMBER: if command have extra parameter, this parameter should be entered WITHOUT SQUARE BRACKETS.

STOP
This command will stop flipeffect execution if you will leave trigger sector. If you WON'T use this command, flipeffect will be active even after you will leave trigger sector! So this command is very important when creating HP decrease / earthquake / etc. triggers, since without it flipeffect will continously execute even after Lara will leave trigger sector! Do not use this command with «One shot» flipeffect, because then it will act in opposite way!
Also you need this command when triggering flipeffect with flyby camera.
Thanks to Paolone for discovering this command!

RESET
Completely resets any flipeffect information (i. e. current active flipeffect and last activated one-shot flipeffect).
Thanks to Paolone for discovering this command!

ONESHOT_STATE [your flipeffect number] [0 or 1]
Manually resets one-shot data for specified flipeffect. Useful if you want to re-activate already triggered one-shot flipeffect, or, on contrary, to manually disable some flipeffect.
Example: ONESHOT_STATE 47 0 — reset flipeffect 47 one-shot state to 0, so it can be activated again.

INC_HP [value 0-32767, specifies HP replenish speed] [value 0-32767, specifies overall HP limit]
Useful when creating «first-aid zones», like medical stations in Half-Life games. You can use it if you don't want player to use medkits but want to replenish HP in specific zones.
First parameter specifies speed of HP restoring, and second one specifies HP limit after which HP restoring will stop (normally, this parameter should be equal to max. HP value specified in Limit Sub-Customizer, but if you want your HP restore point to replenish only half of Lara's HP, you can specify different parameter).
Example: INC_HP 5 1000 — slowly replenishes Lara's HP until it's 1000.

DEC_HP [values 0-32767, specifies speed of HP decreasing]
This command will decrease Lara's HP with specified speed. You can use this command to emulate various hazardous environments, like poison coolant zones in TR7 or hot/cold water zones. Also you can combine this command with animating objects or textures and therefore create illusion of some harmful moving object or land. Also you can combine it with shallow water and create illusion of harmful quicksand (like in TR3).
Example: DEC_HP 5 — slowly drains Lara's HP. 

INC_AIR [value 0-32767, specifies air replenish speed] [value 0-32767, specifies overall air limit]
This command can be used only in water rooms. Usage similar to INC_HP command.
You can use this command to create «air supply points» in large pool areas (like it was done in Rayman 3).

DEC_AIR [value 0-32767, specifies speed of air decreasing]
Will decrease air points. This command also works only in water rooms. You can use it to speed-up air decrease speed in certain zones of your water rooms to make realistic approach (for ex., you can increase air decrease speed in sink zones or in cold water zones).

INC_SPRINT [value 0-32767, specifies speed of sprint increasing]
Increases sprint points with specified speed.

DEC_SPRINT [value 0-32767, specifies speed of sprint decreasing]
Decreases sprint points with specified speed.

SET_POISON [value 0-32767, specifies strength of poison attack]
Can be used to add/remove poison. 0 will remove any poison, and other values will poison Lara with specified speed (although it only affects «trip effect» power, but not HP decrease speed).
Example: SET_POISON 0  — cures Lara.

KILL_LARA
Kills Lara Croft immediately. Similar to DEATH trigger, but without stupid fire effects all around.

LARA_ON_FIRE
This command will simply set Lara on fire, like any flame emitter does.

START_TIMER
Starts racetimer from zero.

START_TIMER_FROM [minutes:seconds.fractions]
Starts timer from specified time. It is useful if you're using countdown race timer (see Race Timer Editor section) and want to specify initial time.
Please note that seconds parameter allows you to enter not only whole numbers, but also fractional numbers. Therefore, you can specify fraction of seconds.
Example: START_TIMER_FROM 01:15.03 — starts timer from 1 minute, 15 seconds and 3 fraction of second.

SET_TIMER [minutes:seconds.fractions]
Overrides current timer value with specified one.
Example: SET_TIMER 02:00 — overrides current timer value with 02:00.

FREEZE_NORMAL_TIMER
Compensates normal timer increasing with DECrease command. I. e., normal timer will freeze. If you will use this command with inverted timer, time will decrease with double speed. Also, if you will place more than one FREEZE_NORMAL_TIMER command in a row, timer will invert at this point (for normal timer) or will count with triple/quad etc. speed (for inverted timer).

FREEZE_INVERTED_TIMER
Same as with FREEZE_NORMAL_TIMER, but compensates timer value with INCrease command.

STOP_TIMER
Stops and hides racetimer.

SET_LEGEND_TIME [values 0-255]
If set more than 0, immediately will show legend string for corresponding time span.
If set to 0, will hide legend string (useful when you have two-way level with legend and want to disable legend at return start position).
Example: SET_LEGEND_TIME 100 — will show legend for a brief time. 

SET_LEGEND_STRING [values 0-255]
Replaces legend string with corresponding string # specified in ENGLISH.TXT. Counts from 0.
Also note that you can use abandoned [PSXStrings] entry as additional string repository (about 42 additional strings) for your extra legends.
In combination with SET_LEGEND_TIME command, you can use it to create LOTS of additional legend strings that will appear as soon as player will step onto flipeffect.
Example 1: SET_LEGEND_STRING 6 — replaces legend string with «Valley Of The Kings» text (string # 7 in ENGLISH.TXT).
Thanks to Harly Wuson for this command! 

EQUIP [item type constant]
Equips or unequips any weapon or item (except torch). For example, when this flipeffect is activated, Lara will equip pistols, shotgun, crossbow, flare etc. Also note that you can use these commands during flybys, so you can force Lara to light a flare or holster/unholster any weapon even if controls are locked in camera's properties.
Possible constants that can be used: NOTHING, PISTOLS, SHOTGUN, UZIS, REVOLVER, GRENADEGUN, CROSSBOW, FLARE.
Example 1: EQUIP FLARE — Lara will immediately take out and light a flare.
Example 2: EQUIP NOTHING — Lara will put back any weapon or throw out flare.

HOLSTER_WEAPONS
If Lara has any weapon in her hands, she will put it back into holsters. This command useful when you want to remove some weapon (or remove all weapons) and don't want Lara to stuck with «virtually removed» weapon in her hands. Note that player won't be able to draw weapon until he will leave this trigger sector (you can create some tricks with this effect, like denying weapons in specific areas).

EMPTY_HOLSTERS
Removes any weapon mesh from holsters. Should be used with weapon removal commands.

EMPTY_BACKDRAW
Removes any weapon mesh from backpack (shotgun, grenadegun, crossbow). Should be used with weapon removal commands.
Thanks to MontyTRC for discovering this command!.

FILL_HOLSTERS [mesh type constant]
Fills holsters with specified mesh. Constant can be PISTOLS, UZIS and REVOLVER.
Example: FILL_HOLSTERS UZIS — fills holsters with uzi meshes.

FILL_BACKDRAW [mesh type constant]
Same as for FILL_HOLSTERS, but for shotgun, grenade launcher and crossbow. You can use it with SHOTGUN, GRENADEGUN and CROSSBOW constants.
Example: FILL_BACKDRAW CROSSBOW — fills backdraw with crossbow mesh.

DEACTIVATE_WEAPONS
Disables «Draw weapon» key until player will pick up weapon again and select it in inventory. Should be used with weapon removal commands.

ACTIVATE_PISTOLS, ACTIVATE_UZIS, ACTIVATE_REVOLVER, ACTIVATE_SHOTGUN, ACTIVATE_GRENADEGUN, ACTIVATE_CROSSBOW
Contrary to DEACTIVATE_WEAPONS command, this command activates corresponding weapon.

REMOVE_PISTOLS
Quick command to remove pistols from inventory. Remember to use it in combination with DEACTIVATE_WEAPONS, EMPTY_HOLSTERS and HOLSTER_WEAPONS commands.

SET_BINOCULARS [0 or 1]
Removes (0) or puts (1) binoculars in inventory.

SET_LASERSIGHT [0 or 1]
Removes (0) or puts (1) lasersight in inventory.

SET_CROWBAR [0 or 1]
Removes (0) or puts (1) crowbar in inventory.

REMOVE_ALL_GUNS
Quick command for removing ALL GUNS AND AMMOS from inventory. Also this command includes all necessary holster and deactivate weapon commands.

CALL_FLIP [0-46]
Calls any old flipeffect number (0-46). You can use it to combine some flipeffects within one command sequence.
You can't call your own flipeffects with it!

MOV_BYTE [hexadecimal address constant] [byte value 0-255]
Moves byte value at specified address. Similar to MOV BYTE PTR DS:[address],[value] assembly command.
Useful when you need to modify certain value in TR4 memory.

MOV_WORD [hexadecimal address constant] [integer value 0-65535]
Moves integer value at specified address. Similar to MOV WORD PTR DS:[address],[value] assembly command.
Useful when you need to modify certain value in TR4 memory too. 

MOV_DWORD [hexadecimal address constant] [long value 0-4294967295]
Moves long value at specified address. Similar to MOV DWORD PTR DS:[address],[value] assembly command.
And, again… It is really useful when you need to modify certain value in TR4 memory!

ADD_KEY [KEY_ITEMx constant]
Adds specified key to inventory. Parameter IS NOT numerical parameter, but special key constant KEY_ITEMx, where x — key number.
Example: ADD_KEY KEY_ITEM2 command will add key #2 to inventory.

REMOVE_KEY [KEY_ITEMx constant]
Removes specified key from inventory. Parameter IS NOT numerical parameter, but special key constant KEY_ITEMx, where x — key number.
Example: REMOVE_KEY KEY_ITEM2 command will remove key #2 from inventory.

ADD_QUESTITEM [QUEST_ITEMx constant]
Adds specified quest item to inventory. Parameter IS NOT numerical parameter, but special quest item constant QUEST_ITEMx, where x — quest item number.
Example: ADD_QUESTITEM QUEST_ITEM1 — adds Amulet of Horus to inventory.

REMOVE_QUESTITEM [QUEST_ITEMx constant]
Removes specified quest item from inventory. Parameter IS NOT numerical parameter, but special quest item constant QUEST_ITEMx, where x — quest item number.
Example: REMOVE_QUESTITEM QUEST_ITEM2 — removes Breast Plate from inventory.

ADD_EXAMINEx
…where x — 1, 2 or 3. Adds specified EXAMINE item to inventory. Note that examine number is not a parameter, but part of a command.
Example: ADD_EXAMINE2 — adds EXAMINE 2 item to inventory.
Thanks to Harly Wuson for these commands!

REMOVE_EXAMINEx
Similar to ADD_EXAMINEx, but removes specified examine item from inventory
Example: REMOVE_EXAMINE3 — removes EXAMINE 3 item from inventory.
Thanks to Harly Wuson for these commands! 

SET_PUZZLEITEM [PUZZLE_ITEMx constant] [amount of item 0-255]
Sets (overwrites) specified amount of specified puzzle item (NOT puzzle combo or quest items!) to inventory. Parameter IS NOT numerical parameter, but special puzzleitem constant PUZZLE_ITEMx, where x — item number.
Note that it won't add item, but OVERWRITE current item amount. I. e., if you have one Canopic Jar 1 in your inventory, and you will step onto flipeffect with SET_PUZZLEITEM PUZZLE_ITEM2 0 command, amount of Canopic Jars 1 in your inventory will be set to 0.
Example 1: SET_PUZZLEITEM PUZZLE_ITEM4 1 — sets one puzzle item 4 in inventory.
Example 2: SET_PUZZLEITEM PUZZLE_ITEM4 0 — sets NO ANY puzzle item 4 in inventory (i. e. removes such puzzle item from inventory).

ADD_PUZZLEITEM [PUZZLE_ITEMx constant] [amount of item 0-255]
Adds specified amount of specified puzzle item. Usage similar to SET_PUZZLEITEM command.

ADD_PUZZLECOMBO [COMBOx_y constant]
Adds specified puzzle combo item to inventory. Parameter should be special constant representing combo item ID.
Example: ADD_PUZZLECOMBO COMBO5_1 — adds puzzle item 5 combo 1 to inventory.
Thanks to MontyTRC for this command!

SET_SUPPLY [supply constant] [amount of supplies 0-32767]
Sets (overwrites) specified amount of units for specified supply ID.
Supply constant can be: PISTOL_AMMO, UZI_AMMO, SHOTGUN_NORMAL_AMMO, SHOTGUN_WIDESHOT_AMMO, REVOLVER_AMMO, GRENADE_NORMAL_AMMO, GRENADE_SUPER_AMMO, GRENADE_FLASH_AMMO, CROSSBOW_NORMAL_AMMO, CROSSBOW_POISON_AMMO, CROSSBOW_EXPLOSIVE_AMMO, SMALL_MEDKIT, LARGE_MEDKIT, FLARES.
Example: SET_SUPPLY CROSSBOW_EXPLOSIVE_AMMO 54 — sets crossbow explosive ammo amount to 54.

ADD_SUPPLY [supply constant] [amount of supplies 0-32767]
Adds specified amount of units for specified supply ID. Usage similar to SET_SUPPLY command.

ADD_WEAPON [weapon constant]
Adds specified weapon (NOT ammo) to inventory. Weapon constant can be: PISTOLS, UZIS, SHOTGUN, CROSSBOW, GRENADEGUN, REVOLVER.
Example: ADD_WEAPON SHOTGUN — adds shotgun to inventory.

REMOVE_WEAPON [weapon constant]
Removes specified weapon (NOT ammo) from inventory. Weapon constant can be: PISTOLS, UZIS, SHOTGUN, CROSSBOW, GRENADEGUN, REVOLVER.
Example: REMOVE_WEAPON SHOTGUN — removes shotgun to inventory.

SET_WATERSKIN1 [0-6]
Sets (overwrites) current small waterskin value in inventory. 0 means no small waterskin at all, 1 means empty waterskin, 2 means waterskin with 1 litre of water, and so on.
Example: SET_WATERSKIN1 3 — adds small waterskin with 2 litres of water to inventory.

SET_WATERSKIN2 [0-6]
Sets (overwrites) current large waterskin value in inventory. 0 means no large waterskin at all, 1 means empty waterskin, 2 means waterskin with 1 litre of water, and so on. Usage similar to SET_WATERSKIN1 command.
Example: SET_WATERSKIN2 3 — adds large waterskin with 2 litres of water to inventory.

PICKUP_ITEM [pickupable object ID]
This is common command for adding ANY pickupable items in inventory. It will act just like when Lara have picked up item in game — engine will show you rotating item in the bottom right corner.
Example: PICKUP_ITEM 353 — add shotgun to inventory.

DRAW_ITEM [pickupable object ID] [time to draw in frames]
Similar to PICKUP_ITEM command, but instead it'll simply draw pickupable item on-screen, without adding it to inventory.

PLAY_SAMPLE [0-32767]
Plays specified sound sample ID. Mostly, this command is useless in Flipeffect editor (because TR4 already have flipeffect for this action), but you can successfully re-use this command in Race Timer Editor.
Example: PLAY_SAMPLE 3 — plays sample ID #3.

PLAY_SOUNDTRACK [0-127]
Plays specified audiotrack. Maybe it's useless in Flipeffect editor too (since TR4 already have PLAY_SOUNDTRACK trigger event), but again, it can be VERY useful in Race Timer Editor (for example, to play certain audiotrack at the certain moment).
Example: PLAY_SOUNDTRACK 52 — plays 052.wav audiotrack.

PLAY_ANIM [0-32767]
Plays any Lara's animation.
You must use this command ONLY WITH ONE-SHOT OPTION ENABLED, OR ELSE ANIMATION WILL FREEZE.
The power of the Dark Sid… oh damn, sorry. I mean, the power of the PLAY_ANIM trigger is almost unlimited, and it can allow you to create tricks like this:

Until now, it was only possible to create same effect with a lot of dummy BRIDGE_FLAT objects and dummy rooms with slanted floor!
Another important thing is PLAY_ANIM command allows you to create in-game cutscenes without cloning Lara into animating slots and without additional .tr4 cutscene files. Only one limitation is you can't use speechheads.

LOAD_LEVEL [level number 0-127]
Loads specified level number. Similar to END_LEVEL trigger command, so it's useless in flipeffect editor. But you can use this command in race timer editor to load specified level at specified time.

FLASH_RED, FLASH_ORANGE, FLASH_YELLOW, FLASH_GREEN, FLASH_LIGHTGREEN, FLASH_BLUE
These commands will flash the screen with specified colour. Effect is similar to Amber Light explosion or Baboon teleportation. Also note that these commands are very useful with Race Timer Editor, because you can emulate self-destruct explosion effect with it.
Also it's recommended that you will use this command in «one-shot» mode, or else flash will continously pulsate (but you indeed can use this effect to emulate «painful heartbeat» in combination with DEC_HP command).

SHAKE_CAMERA [-1000-0]
When parameter is set to NEGATIVE value, it will shake the screen with specified power (-10 will give you small camera shake, and -600 will produce absolutely insane shake effect which in combination with FLASH commands can be useful for self-destruction special FX emulation). Positive values seems to do nothing but moves camera to the floor.
Example: SHAKE_CAMERA -100 — shake camera with power of -100.

SHAKE_CAMERA_SOFT, SHAKE_CAMERA_MEDIUM, SHAKE_CAMERA_HEAVY
If you don't want to look into SHAKE_CAMERA command parameter, you can use these shortcut commands instead. As you understand, soft gives soft tremble, medium gives medium, and heavy gives you heavy tremble.

LARA_DRIPS [amount of drips 0-255]
Initiates water dripping effect on Lara. If you will set amount of drips to 255, dripping effect will be unstoppable until you'll jump into water.
Example: LARA_DRIPS 150 — adds medium amount of drips to Lara.

BLEED
Bleeds Lara. You can use this command to bleed Lara in specific sectors (for ex., if you want to emulate harmful environment, like insect swarms in Silent Hill 3 or Diablo II games).

FADEOUT
Fade-outs screen, as if game is over. Can be useful if you're preparing a cutscene or something like this.

UVROTATE [-127-127]
Specifies speed of scrolling animated textures (UV Rotate). Please remember that you should use this command with NOT one-shot flipeffect and apply it in EVERY POSSIBLE ZONE where player will be able to see scrolling textures with specified custom speed, because animation speed will reset to default, if player will reload his game.
Thanks to Harly Wuson for this command!  

SPEEDUP
This nifty command will double speed of engine timers (except UV Rotate graphical method and certain other visual effects, like gunfire animation). You can't use two or more such commands in a row, because then engine will hang.

SPEEDDN
Slows down engine. Can be used to simulate slo-mo effect (like in Max Payne).
You can use two or more commands in a row, and engine will act slower and slower in specified flipeffect sectors. But note that it will also slow down camera timer, so it won't look smooth.

ORIENTATE [-32767-32767]
Orientates Lara to specific direction. You can use this command to deny player to go to certain locations in combination with CHANGE_POSITION command and some sound sample playing, for example, Lara's «No.» This method is far more realistic than stupid «transparent wall» limiter.
Examples:
ORIENTATE 0 — orientates Lara to the North.
ORIENTATE 32767 — orientates Lara to the South.
ORIENTATE 16384 — orientates Lara to the West.
ORIENTATE -16384 — orientates Lara to the East.
Thanks to Harly Wuson for discovering this command!

ROTATE [-32767-32767]
Continously rotates Lara with specified speed (positive numbers will rotate to the right, and negative numbers will rotate to the left)

CNANGE_ACCEL [acceleration value]
This command can be used to override current Lara's horizontal acceleration. You freakin' MUST use this command, if you will decide to create cutscenes with PLAY_ANIM command, or else player will be able to corrupt cutscene positioning by jumping over flipeffect. Just set it to CHANGE_ACCEL 0, and acceleration and speed will reset to zero.

CHANGE_ACCEL_VERT [acceleration value]
Same as previous command, but for VERTICAL acceleration value. You also MUST use this command if you'll create cutscenes with Lara to reset her acceleration.

CHANGE_POSITION_X [coordinate], CHANGE_POSITION_Z [coordinate]
These two commands will change Lara's X and Z position. You can use them to quickly teleportate Lara in the room. However, dealing with global coordinates may be a pain, so possibly it's easier to use Lara Position Changer object from Tomo's engine update patch (available at laraslevelbase.org).
You can use these commands to deny Lara's movement in certain direction (for example, if you're creating 2D-like sidescroller game).
Coordinate parameters are LONG (i. e. -2147483647 — 2147483647) numbers which represent TR4 global coordinates.

CHANGE_POSITION_Y [coordinate]
This command is a bit buggy. It forcedly changes Lara's current Y position (height), and it result in denying jumping and any other actions that should modify Y coordinate. But you can use this command to force Lara appear at the certain height in room if, for example, you want to play a cutscene with «Play any animation» command or if you simply want to teleport Lara at the certain point in your level.
Coordinate parameter is LONG (i. e. -2147483647 — 2147483647) number which represent TR4 global coordinate. 

CHANGE_ROOM [room #]
Changes current Lara's room number. With this command, in combination with CHANGE_POSITION commands, you can change Lara's position between rooms. Important: you must use CHANGE_ROOM command BEFORE CHANGE_POSITION commans, or else Lara object will be corrupted and you'll need to restart level.
Thanks to Harly Wuson for discovering this command!

CAMERA_FOLLOW
Immediately puts camera back at the Lara's position. Can be useful to fix camera position after using CHANGE_POSITION commands et cetera.
Thanks to Harly Wuson for discovering this command!

LOCK_CONTROLS
Locks controls.

UNLOCK_CONTROLS
Unlocks controls.

USE_BINOCULARS
Sets binoculars to active state.
Thanks to Nowid50 for discovering this command!

ADD_POSITION [speed of moving X -2147483647-2147483647] [speed of moving Z -2147483647-2147483647]
Continously adds specified values to Lara's position. I. e., until Lara is in this flipeffect zone, she will be smoothly moved to the specified direction. It may be easier if you will look at this example:

In other words, this command can be called «land sink» in opposition to «water sink» method in TR engine. But if you will decide to use this command for emulating wind or transporter that should throw Lara into an abyss or deep pit, you should know about TR4 engine bug, which will allow player to stay «on the edge of the abyss», until he will stand still and won't make any moves, if speed of moving parameter is less than 110.

MOVE_ITEM_X [raw item ID] [coordinate]
MOVE_ITEM_Y [raw item ID] [coordinate]
MOVE_ITEM_Z [raw item ID] [coordinate]
These three commands can move items (NOT Lara, but other items, like enemies or boulders) on the map. But you can use it only with ACTIVATED items, or else their position will reset to defaults when you will re-load your game.
Raw item ID can be discovered with FexInspect program. Just open your level file with it and find desired item in the list and remember its number in the list — that is the raw item ID. Coordinates are, as always, TR4 global coordinates (equal to ones shown afterr «t» label, when you're pressing F1 key during gameplay).

KILL_ITEM [raw item ID]
Kills specified item. You may think that word «kill» applicable only to baddies, but you're wrong. You can kill ANY item. Even two-block platforms, ropes and boulders! This is useful if you want certain baddy to be removed from the map, or you want to open some passage that was previously blocked by platform. Also note that item will not appear again after killing, if you will reload level.

SHATTER_ITEM [raw item ID]
Similar to previous command, but kills item with old-school «shatter to meshes» effect.
You FREAKIN' MUST use STOP command after this command, and also create one-shot flipeffect, because this command can be used ONLY ONCE with every item, or else game will crash!

SET_HP [raw item ID] [HP value]
Overrides specified item's health points. As with KILL_ITEM and MOVE_ITEM commands, to override some enemy's health points, you must know his raw item ID. Then, you simply create flipeffect which will set more HP, and… voila! You have two baddies in the same slot with different health points!
In fact, this can be useful, if you want to create some complications for player during the boss fight or to make some nasty trick to disable player's ability to kill some certain baddy fast. For example, you can combine this command with timer editor, and if player won't manage to destroy some enemy in time, enemy's HP will be increased.

MOVE_MIRROR [room number 0-255] [mirror border world coordinate]
TR4 engine allows only one mirror to be in level. Thus, to create mirrors in multiple zones (not only in one room in the whole level), you can change mirror's room location and mirror border coordinate. But remember that mirror coordinates will reset to SCRIPT.DAT's defaults with every level restart, so be sure that corresponding flipeffect will be activated when player can see your mirrors!

LOAD_GAME
Shows «Load Game» dialog. Can be used if you want player to activate load game dialog at the certain points.

SAVE_GAME
Same as with LOAD_GAME, but shows save game dialog. In combination with «Disable in-game save» feature, can be used to create savegame checkpoints.

Warning: this command replaces old pre-0.72 «FE 40/41 save» option, because it was too buggy. If you already have a project with savetriggers, all you need to do is to replace 40/41 savetrigger flipeffects with new ones created in Flipeffect Editor.

SHOW_STATS
This command immediately shows statistics screen. Can be used in combination with END_LEVEL trigger to show final level statistics or final game statistics.

SHOW_INVENTORY
Shows inventory screen.

DRAW_BMP [file number -99-99]
Pauses game and draws BMP file from corresponding file number from -99 to 99 placed in /pix subdirectory until player will press ESC or ACTION key. Optimal resolution is 640x480. Can be used to create intro/outro screens and Max Payne-like graphic novels (you can use several DRAW_BMP commands in a row with PLAY_SOUNDTRACK and/or PLAY_SAMPLE commands inbetween).
Examples:
  DRAW_BMP 52 — draws /pix/52.bmp file.
  DRAW_BMP -7 — draws /pix/-7.bmp file.

PLAY_FMV [file number 0-99]
Plays .bik file placed into /fmv subdirectory. For ex., if set to 15, it will play file fmv15.bik. This command is only available when «Enable Bink videos playback» DRACO custom patch is activated.
Examples:
   PLAY_FMV 2 — plays /fmv/fmv02.bik file.
   PLAY_FMV 52 — plays /fmv/fmv52.bik file. 

ADD_DIARY [0-65536 number of STRINGS2.TXT string]
This command must be used ONLY with «Multi-purpose LOAD GAME item» DRACO custom patch. It allows you to spawn extra diary record and this way unlock new diary entries for player's eye. Parameter specifies number of string in STRINGS2.TXT file to assign for diary entry. For example, if you will use ADD_DIARY 6 command, there will be new diary record, which will contain string number 6 from STRINGS2.TXT file. Note that this way you now can add diary records in ANY order, which is very important for non-linear scenarios. Remember that first reserved string for diary in STRINGS2.TXT file counts as string number 5!
Examples:
   ADD_DIARY 5 — adds new diary record with string #1 in it.

ACTIVATE_BAR
If you have enabled multi-purpose bar DRACO patch, this command will set this bar to active state and its value will continously decrease.

DEACTIVATE_BAR
Same as above, but DEactivates MP bar and allows it to restore its value.

ACTIVATE_ITEM [raw item ID]
Activates specified item. Can be useful in combination with various conditional directives (i. e. you now can activate item only if Lara HP is at certain value, or if Lara is pointing at certain direction, or when certain button is pressed).

SWAP_INVENTORY
This is very useful command. It replaces current player's inventory with additional inventory buffer that is saved in extra savegame (that's why this command requires advanced savegame management feature). Each time you will use this command, player's inventory will be swapped with inventory stored in add-on savegame. This way you can have two separate inventories in your game if, for example, there are two independent, but alternating storylines in your game. When inventory is swapped, it is put into non-active state until next SWAP_INVENTORY trigger, but it will be saved in each savegame anyway.
Also you must note that when you're swapping inventory first time, IT WILL BE ABSOLUTELY EMPTY (i. e. no any items except save/load/diary). So you must fill new inventory with items by using various add item commands.
Another thing to note is that if you've completely changed player's weapons, you must use HOLSTER_WEAPONS, DEACTIVATE_WEAPONS, EMPTY_HOLSTERS and/or EMPTY_BACKDRAW commands to disable previously selected weapons. To enable some other weapon, use corresponding ACTIVATE commands. To fill holsters with corresponding meshes, use FILL_HOLSTERS and FILL_BACKDRAW commands.

SWAP_LARA_MESH [meshswap item index] [Lara's mesh to swap]
One of the most powerful commands which allows you to modify Lara's looks in-game. Simply said, it's all your speechheads, hot-swapped outfits, custom dirty meshes, wet meshes, bloody meshes, etc. More important is that meshswap will indeed be saved after game reloading!
Thanks to Harly Wuson for creating this command!

CHANGE_WEATHER [0 to 3]
When used in combination with «Enable weather» DRACO patch, this command will change weather conditions in your level. 0 disables any weather, 1 sets it to rain, 2 to snow, and 3 to both rain and snow.

NO_FADEOUT
When «Fadeouts between audiotracks» patch is active, this command will disable fadeout for one forthcoming audiotrack. You can use it before CD or SECRET operation on the same trigger, so secret picking-up will immediately invoke audiotrack playing, without lengthy fadeouts. Also you can use it when you want to play some kind of all-of-a-sudden audiotrack that should scare poor player to hell.

NOP
This command does completely nothing (NOP means No OPeration). You can use it if you have compiled your level but later decided to remove certain flipeffects from the map. You can replace your flipeffect code with this NOP command, and thus create «empty» flipeffect that will do nothing.

***

9.2.: Conditional directives reference

What is conditional directives? It's standard commands, but their purpose is not to do something in your flipeffect, but to exit flipeffect if corresponding condition is not complied. You can use these directives if you want to execute flipeffect only if corresponding condition is complied or to interrupt flipeffect on certain stage of execution. In the meanings of programming, it's equal to If [condition=true] then [execute procedure] else [exit procedure] .

Please note that since version 0.743 you also can use such directives in Racetimer Editor, but ONLY WITH (method: call) OPTION! Otherwise, game will crash.
For now, there are two conditional directives:

ONLY_IN_WATER
This command will deny to execute all following commands if Lara is not in water room. Useful when you want to activate your flipeffect only in water rooms (e. g., if you want to create cold water pool or other water-only effect).
You should place this command before any other commands!

ONLY_ON_LAND
Similar to ONLY_IN_WATER command, but, in opposition, it will deny to execute all following commands only if Lara is IN the water. This is useful if you want to create some hazardous environment that will hurt Lara if she is not in water.
You should place this command before any other commands!

ENVIRONMENT [environment type]
This is more flexible variation of ONLY_IN_WATER and ONLY_ON_LAND directives. It allows you to select specific environment where flipeffect will be activated.
Environment types can be:
 0 — ground
 1 — underwater
 2 — water surface
 3 — flight
 4 — shallow water

Thanks to Harly Wuson for discovering this command!

IF_CARRY GUNS
IF_NOT_CARRY GUNS
Two conditional directives that acts like LARA_IN_COMBAT internal TR4 engine trigger type.
Thanks to Nowid50 for discovering this command!

***

IF_LARA= [Lara's parameter] [value]
IF_LARA!= [Lara's parameter] [value]
IF_LARA> [Lara's parameter] [value]
IF_LARA< [Lara's parameter] [value]
IF_LARA>= [Lara's parameter] [value]
IF_LARA<= [Lara's parameter] [value]

These six directives allow you to interrupt flipeffect if certain Lara's parameter is equal (=), not equal (!=), more (>) or less (<) than specified value. With these directives you can create flipeffects that will only execute only if, for ex., Lara's Y position lower or higher than specified value.
Possible Lara's parameters are: LARA_Y, LARA_HP, ANIM_NUMBER, LARA_STATEID, LARA_ORIENTATION.

Example of flipeffect with IF_LARA>= conditional directive:

STOP
IF_LARA>= LARA_Y -600
KILL_LARA

This flipeffect will only kill Lara if her global Y coordinate (i. e. height) is more than -600. If, for example, Lara will put standable pushable block onto this trigger and then climb onto this pushable block (which will result in decreasing Lara's global Y coordinate lower than -600), flipeffect won't be activated! Please note that this directive uses ABSOLUTE global coordinates, which you can see while pressing F1 key in-game.

Another example of flipeffect with IF_LARA< conditional directive:

STOP
IF_LARA< LARA_HP 100
FLASH_GREEN

This flipeffect will flash screen with green colour only if Lara's health is lower than 100 points!

***

Keypress conditional directives

Keypress conditional directives can be used to prevent flipeffect execution if player haven't pressed some key, or, in contrary, HAVE pressed some key. For example, you can create cutscene that will be triggered only if player pressed ACTION key, or you can create motion-sensitive trigger that will execute if player haven't pressed WALK or DUCK key.

IF_PRESSED — flipeffect will continue execution only if specified key is pressed.
IF_NOT_PRESSED — flipeffect will continue execution only if specified key is NOT pressed.

Possible keys are: ACTION, JUMP, DRAW, ROLL, USE_FLARE, DUCK, SPRINT, WALK, LOOK, LEFT, RIGHT, BACK, FORWARD

Example:

STOP
IF_PRESSED ACTION
PLAY_ANIM 448

This flipeffect will play animation #448 only if player pressed ACTION key. Note that you must create one-shot flipeffect with mode: post selected.

***

Low-level conditional directives

Low-level conditional directives are not connected to some specific Lara's state or any other condition or variable. Instead, these directives allows you to use ANY TR4 variable with fixed address (air amount, sprint energy amount, ammo, time taken, secrets found etc.) as a condition. You must note that such variables can be BYTE (0-255), WORD (0-65535) and DWORD (0-4294967294). You must use corresponding command for each variable according to given variable type.
Here is the list of these conditional directives.

BYTE_IF= [ADDRESS]  [SIGNEDBYTE]
If  BYTE value at [ADDRESS] equal to [SIGNEDBYTE], then execute flipeffect.

BYTE_IF!= [ADDRESS]  [SIGNEDBYTE]
If  BYTE value at [ADDRESS] NOT equal to [SIGNEDBYTE], then execute flipeffect. 

BYTE_IF> [ADDRESS]  [SIGNEDBYTE]
If  BYTE value at [ADDRESS] MORE THAN [SIGNEDBYTE], then execute flipeffect. 

BYTE_IF< [ADDRESS]  [SIGNEDBYTE]
If  BYTE value at [ADDRESS] LESS THAN [SIGNEDBYTE], then execute flipeffect.  

BYTE_IF<= [ADDRESS]  [SIGNEDBYTE]
If  BYTE value at [ADDRESS] LESS OR EQUAL TO [SIGNEDBYTE], then execute flipeffect.  

BYTE_IF>= [ADDRESS]  [SIGNEDBYTE]
If  BYTE value at [ADDRESS] MORE OR EQUAL TO [SIGNEDBYTE], then execute flipeffect.   

WORD_IF= [ADDRESS]  [SIGNEDINTEGER]
WORD_IF!= [ADDRESS]  [SIGNEDINTEGER]
WORD_IF> [ADDRESS]  [SIGNEDINTEGER]
WORD_IF< [ADDRESS]  [SIGNEDINTEGER]
WORD_IF<= [ADDRESS]  [SIGNEDINTEGER]
WORD_IF>= [ADDRESS]  [SIGNEDINTEGER]
DWORD_IF= [ADDRESS]  [LONG]
DWORD_IF!= [ADDRESS]  [LONG]
DWORD_IF> [ADDRESS]  [LONG]
DWORD_IF< [ADDRESS]  [LONG]
DWORD_IF<= [ADDRESS]  [LONG]
DWORD_IF>= [ADDRESS]  [LONG]

^ All these WORD and DWORD directives are the same use, except they are used for WORD and DWORD variables.

***

9.3.: How to create ELSE_IF sequences with conditional directives

Since Flipeffect Editor and FURR Language deals with raw assembly language sequences (i. e. it's not high-level compiler), you can't create ELSE_IF conditions within one flipeffect. However, you CAN create two flipeffects with different conditions for one parameter and then place them onto one square. Then, engine should execute only one flipeffect with proper conditions and ignore other flipeffect(s).

***

Command list can be extended with user-defined commands by editing SYNTAX.FLN file. Also in same file you can declare any constants of specific types.
All information about adding commands and declaring constants available in language reference bundled with TREP.

10.0.: Race Timer Editor — bringing thrill to your levels

Let me begin this part of our manual with a lyrical digression.

Alien

You think it's absolutely not possible to create same situation in TR4 engine?
You're WRONG!
Moreover, you don't need any rolling balls, flying saucers, walking dead and other complicated things to achieve this. All you need is edit good old TR4's race timer.
Race Timer Editor allows you to edit these basic parameters:

Invert race timer. In other words, timer will be counting down. In combination with START_TIMER_FROM command in Flipeffect Editor, you can set up timer to certain time and then count time down.

Timer becomes visible at: change the time when timer will actually show on-screen. For example, by default it's 60 minutes. If timer will reach 60:00 mark, it will be hidden from your eyes. Despite this fact, TIMER WILL STILL WORK. With this trick, you can create «invisible» countdown, which becomes visible only when in critical state (for example, only 5 minutes left).

Timer font effect ID: style of timer. By experimenting with this value you can create yellow or red timer, like in Resident Evil games.

Race Timer Editor hotkeys

  F1  — opens command list for quick reference.
  F2  — brings up navigation box (you can quickly navigate through timer events with it)
  F3  — initiates spellcheck for current timer event.

***

10.1.: Race Timer Workaround

Before using this option, don't forget to turn on «Extend tomb4.exe size» option in main TREP window.

At last… With this option, you can do almost everything you want with your race timer. How? Let me explain.
Main purpose of Race Timer Editor is to assign ANY COMMAND to ANY TIME VALUE. For example, you can create Race Timer Event that will play audiotrack #90 when timer will reach 05:00. Or you can create event that will kill Lara if Timer will count down to 00:00!

How it works?
Race Timer Editor uses SAME COMMAND SYSTEM AS FLIPEFFECT EDITOR. I. e., all commands that are listed above in Flipeffect Editor Command Reference, are applicable to Race Timer Editor!

By default, Race Timer editor allows you to assign 100 various events for race timer. To change currently editing event, select desired number in Event number combobox.
If (but how?..) you've filled all 100 timer event slots, you can increase slot amount in config file. Find RaceTimerSlots=100 line in trep.cfg and set it to anything you want.

In Race Timer Editor, each timer event has a few parameters:

If race timer value = …
Maybe it's most important parameter. It specifies time value for current race timer event. In other words, when race timer will reach this time value, corresponding event code will be executed.
Please note that seconds textbox allows you to enter not only whole numbers, but also fractional numbers. Therefore, you can specify fraction of seconds.
Example: 234:48.4
NOTE: Gray text in square brackets is calculated RAW value. You can use this value to see immediate result of your manipulations with time values.

Then…
Two text fields — small (description) and large (event code itself). All in all, look of this window almost the same as with Flipeffect Editor. As it was already said above, event code commands are completely similar to Flipeffect Editor commands (which is listed in syntax.fln file). I. e., you can use same KILL_LARA, DEC_HP, SHAKE_CAMERA etc. commands. Good to note that in any case, Race Timer Editor ALL EVENTS ARE ONE-SHOT EVENTS. I. e. they cannot be continously applied to certain time span — only to a UNIQUE TIMER VALUE. This difference between Flipeffect and Race Timer editors allows you to use same commands with other purpose. For example, since DEC_HP becomes one-shot, you can use this command with large parameters (for ex., DEC_HP 500) and thus remove certain amount of HP from Lara at the certain time.

EXAMPLE OF RACE TIMER EVENT:

When race timer value = 0 min 0 sec…
Then:

KILL_LARA
FLASH_ORANGE
PLAY_SAMPLE 106
PLAY_ANIM 438
SHAKE_CAMERA_HEAVY

This timer event will kill Lara like she was blown up in a self-destruction mayhem — it will remove all HP, flash and shake screen, and also play explosion sample and blown-up animation when timer reaches 00:00 (you must invert race timer and initialize it with START_TIMER_FROM command to do this successfully).

10.2.: TRICK: How to create one-shot flipeffect with Race Timer Editor and Flipeffect Editor

If you find Flipeffect Editor one-shot capability too buggy and still want to get rid of continously executing flipeffect, you can combine both Racetimer and Flipeffect editors to execute desired flipeffect only once. This procedure requires a bit of patience, so listen carefully.

As you already know, Race Timer will be hidden from you, if time value is more than threshold. You can wisefully use this option to create dummy «timer zones» for various purposes, and player even won't notice that something happened.

Example: let's suppose you want to activate FLASH_GREEN command once. If you will do this as always in Flipeffect Editor, green flash will continously pulsate until player will leave trigger sector. So, to create one-shot flash, you must combine both Racetimer Editor and Flipeffect Editor.
Create new trigger in Flipeffect Editor and enter these commands:

START_TIMER_FROM 100:39.99
STOP
RETN

Then go to Racetimer Editor and create new event with these parameters:

If race timer value = 100 min 40 sec
Then:
FLASH_GREEN

Now, when you will step onto your new flipeffect, timer will start from 100:39.99. But almost immediately after timer will begin to work, event from Racetimer Editor will be activated. It will flash screen only once.
Don't forget to set-up another flipeffect trigger near your main trigger, which will stop timer!

You can create a lot of such «dummy timer zones», since TR4 can handle big timer values.

11.0.: DRACO custom patch module

Main article: DRACO patches reference

Despite the fact that after about 9 months of TR4 engine research ~500 different options were documented, there are still many people who are bringing us something really new and unique, like rain or snow patches, various object behaviour changes etc. etc. Also, a lot of requests were posted in various TR forums, and it is absolutely not possible to complete all of these requests just because if TREP will contain ALL requested options, there will be hell lot of a checkboxes, textboxes and various other controls, which will make user interface hypertrophied and ugly. Moreover, releasing new TREP versions one after another each half of week may be a even bigger problem for the author.
To overcome these problems and also to allow creation of user-defined, custom patches without releasing any custom tomb4.exe files and/or fourth-party standalone patchers, DRACO module was created. In other words, function of DRACO module is to create, organize and operate various code patches without editing TREP source code and without using any extra utilities or releasing custom tomb4.exe files.

12.0.: Advanced scripting with TREP

Main article: eSSe scripting reference

Since early days of TREP development, a lot of TR level builders asked if it is possible to make most useful TREP parameters level-specific. It was not possible until recent time, but now it should completely change. Do you know why? Listen up: now you can create advanced script file that will be able to handle ANY TR4 engine code, change ANY parameters on the fly and support ANY POSSIBLE additional parameters. As with DRACO module, if you're skilled enough, you can create YOUR OWN script entries of any type or change add-on script file structure — to do this, use small utility called eSSe — Extended Script / String Editor.