AltSides Home

What is AltSidesHelper 🔗?

AltSidesHelper allows you to add extra 'sides to your map, as well as further customize your A-Sides, and display them in the same way as vanilla's B and C sides. It also provides some assets for D-Sides, including a custom cassette entity and a few icons.

If you're using AltSidesHelper for the first time, visit the setup page to get up and running. A list of all possible options for the A-Side meta can then be found on the fields page. The custom cassette and trigger also have their own dedicated page on how to use them.

Verbose logging can be enabled if you're having issues, but if you're unable to resolve them contact Luna (the main developer of the mod) via the Celeste Discord 🔗, or just ask around for help.

Setting up AltSidesHelper

To use any of AltSidesHelper's customizations, you'll need to add extra metadata to your map stored in YAML files next to your map.

Similar to Everest's {map name}.meta.yaml, you'll need to create a {map name}.altsideshelper.meta.yaml for every map you want to customize, or add as an alt-side.

Notes for Alt-Side Maps

When making an alt-side, save it as a .bin as usual. The map file must not end in -B, -C, -H, or -X, or otherwise be recognized as a B-Side or C-Side by Everest - that will produce crashes. Ensure that the map is sorted last alphabetically, such as by appending Z- or 99- to the start - not doing so can mess up your campaign's overworld (sorry!).

For the A-Side

An "A-Side" is used here to refer to a regular map that's being customized, or the A-Side for a map with alt-sides. Here's an example for the A-Side map examplemodder/ExampleMod/ExampleMap.bin's alt-side meta:

Sides:
- OverrideVanillaSideData: true
  Preset: "a-side"
  ShowHeartPoem: true
- Map: "examplemodder/ExampleMod/ExampleMap-D"
  Preset: "d-side"
  UnlockMode: "consecutively"
  ShowBerriesAsGolden: true

This file would modify the A-Side's heart to show no text when collected, and add the map examplemodder/ExampleMod/ExampleMap-D.bin as a D-Side (using AltSidesHelper's D-Side assets) that shows it's berries as golden berries on the chapter panel.

If you're not familiar with the YAML format, I recommend using a YAML validator website to check your formatting. In short: each bullet point starts another entry, which can either be an additional map added as an alt-side (by specifying the Map field), or a set of customizations to be applied to the A-Side (by specifying OverrideVanillaSideData: true). The full list of fields that can be set is detailed in the Fields section below.

For the alt-side

Here's what the alt-side meta for the D-Side in the previous example would look like.

AltSideData:
  IsAltSide: true
  For: "examplemodder/ExampleMod/ExampleMap"

There's not much to be customised here. IsAltSide should be set to true for any map that is an alt-side, so that it can be hidden from the overworld. For should be set to the ID (path minus .bin) for the A-Side, so that AltSidesHelper can find it's customizations.

The field CopyEndScreenData can be set, and defaults to true. When on, the alt-side will use the end screen of the A-Side when completed (with different text). If this is disabled, you can set it separately in the {map name}.meta.yaml like normal.

CopyTitle can be set, and defaults to true. When on, the alt-side will use the title of the A-Side. If this is disabled, you will need to set the title seperately using a language file like normal.

Using AltSidesHelper Entities

An alt-side that has its UnlockMode set to triggered must be unlocked using either the Alt-side Unlock Trigger or an Alt-side Cassette. The Unlock Trigger unlocks it upon being entered, and the cassette unlocks it when collected.

Both have the attribute "Alt Side To Unlock". Put in the ID of the map to be unlocked there (e.g. examplemodder/ExampleMod/ExampleMap-D). The cassette has additional attributes that specify what sprites and text it uses. By default, it uses assets supplied by AltSidesHelper for a D-Side.

• Sprite Path: The sprites to be used for the cassette in-world. collectables/leppa/AltSidesHelper/dside_cassette/ by default. collectables/cassette/ for the vanilla sprite.
• Unlock Text: A comma-separated list of dialog keys for captions to be displayed in the unlock cutscene. leppa_AltSidesHelper_dside_unlocked ("D-Side Unlocked") by default. OVERWORLD_REMIX_UNLOCKED for vanilla text ("B-Side unlocked").
• Menu Sprite: The image to be displayed in the unlock cutscene. collectables/leppa/AltSidesHelper/dside_cassette by default. collectables/cassette for the vanilla sprite.

Enabling Verbose Logging

To enable verbose logging, open modsettings-Everest.celeste in your saves folder, and replace the line beginning with LogLevels with:

LogLevels:
  '': Info
  AltSidesHelper: Verbose

This causes most customizations to be logged. You probably don't want this, unless you're a mod author investigating an incompatibility, or you're sending me a bug report. It fills your log.txt pretty quickly.