The Terrain Expansion allows mappers a much greater creativity over their maps for Yuri's Revenge. No longer are they limited to just what Westwood needed for the single player campaigns. Now desert has the same tilesets as temperate, NewUrban is an almost complete merge of Temperate and Urban, Snow has many of the Urban features that are present in NewUrban and there are several incomplete features that now work correctly.

Yes, Westwood dropped several features from the game, but not the game engine when they modified the Tiberian Sun engine. Modders use incomplete or unused features of unit control to make new unique units. For maps, these features are tunnels and train track overlay. Westwood made graphics for tunnels, but they did not set the terrain types that control unit movement up correctly. The TX team has fixed the tunnel terrain tiles so that they now correctly allow tunnels to run between them, but that is only part of the problem. The officially licensed map editor FA2 has the number of features available to place in a map crippled. You cannot place the tunnel [Tubes] in a map from the editor, even though the pre-license version the creator of FA originally made could. You also cannot place the tiles by default either, though the fixed FAData.ini file can fix that. Similarly FA2 will not let you place the train track overlay. By default the overlay exists, but is left over from TS and is in the wrong pallet. However the TX as of v1.4 has new graphics that looks like modern day train track except lunar terrain that has tracks and tunnels reminiscent of TS. The Unofficial Map Editor FA2 1.2 will allow all these functions to work.

To play maps that use the expansion you need to have installed the expandmd06.mix into your RA2 directory from the main download below. As an end user just wanting to play maps made for this expansion, this is the only step you need to take as the expansion is totally self contained in that mix file. To uninstall you simply delete the expandmd06.mix file from the RA2 directory. Currently there are not a great number of maps that make use of the terrain expansion and most of them come with the download for it. However in the future mappacks may be developed that require the TX to work correctly as the maps have TX features present. Maps that need the TX should have names that start with '(TX)' to make it easy to identify online when a TX map is being used. There is more detail including an FAQ section in the documentation available below.

The Terrain expansion can make a very worth while addition to mods that plan to include new single player or multi-player maps. The new train track terrain can be complemented by new structures and units that can only be added in a mod for instance to create trains running around a city stopping at stations. You can make new maps that involve tunnels for movement around the map or a city that is in the middle of a snowy winter. Perhaps you want to create cliffs in the desert or perhaps have a desert oasis with a waterfall and a lake at the bottom of some cliffs. This and more can only be accomplished if you use the TX as part of your mod. You can find more details of exactly what is available in the documentation including how to add even more terrain that is only available in your mod.

The more specific instructions for making maps that feature the TX tilesets are available in the documentation. There are a few steps you need to take in order to make your version of FA2 recognise the extra tile sets and you have to use FA 0.98 to place tunnel tubes and train track from the overlay dropdown. We only support the use of FA2 v1.01, which is the latest official version of the editor, or higher versions along with FA 0.98 to supplement 1.01's functionality. There are workarounds to use earlier versions with the expansion, but we do not support them. We do however support the use of FA2 v1.02 that Matze has unofficially released. With our FAData.ini file you can place tunnel paths in this version without needing to resort to FA 0.98. Subject to testing, FA 1.01 and 1.02 should be able to share the same updated FAData.ini file.

We currently provide a fix for the tunnels in RA2 so that maps can be made for it that work using FA 0.98. There may possibly be an addition of basic train track features to the RA2 versions of the theatres after TX v1.4 but plans in that direction are not certain.

The expansion has been tested for compatibility with existing maps and you can play the normal campaigns and even play online normally with the expansion installed and benefit from the few graphical enhancements. Tournament play has not been tested, but it is not expected that any problems would arise from the use of this expansion. However the developers cannot be held responsible for any damage caused from the use of this expansion and make no guarantees that it will perform to your expectations. As with most things on the net, you use this at your own risk. Do not direct link to these files, but instead link to the main page of the project site.