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Alt Groups

Achievements can have groups added to them that allow for alternative requirements to unlock an achievement. These are called Alt Groups,

When using Alt groups, for the achievement to trigger, all the conditions in the Core group MUST be true. And then all the conditions of ANY Alt group must be true. In other words, each Alt group uses OR logic.

Example

In this dummy example for Contra (NES) the achievement requires, "While on stage look up or crouch." Lets look at what's in the Core group and in the Alt groups:

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In the core group: 0x18 = 5. This checks that the player is on stage.

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In Alt 01: 0xbc = 1. This checks that the player is looking up.

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In Alt 02: 0xbc = 2. This checks that the player is crouching.

As long as the player is on stage. The core group is true. If the player looks up, Alt 01 is true. If the player crouches, Alt 02 is true. If core + Alt 01 OR Alt 02 are true, the achievement will trigger.

Facts about Alt Groups

  • To add or remove Alt groups click the + or - button in the bottom left of the achievement editor.
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  • If you want to simply test for this OR that you can leave the core group blank and add this in Alt 01, and that in Alt 02.

  • No matter how many Alt groups an achievement has, if the Core group is true, only one Alt has to be true for the achievement to trigger.

  • When using ResetIf and PauseIf, PauseIf only pauses the group that it's in, but ResetIf resets hit counts in all groups and prevents achievements from triggering so long as the reset is active.

Using Alt Groups for Conditional Resets

Advanced: An Alt group can be used to create a ResetIf condition that is only active some of the time.

If you create an Alt group containing a PauseIf condition and a ResetIf condition, you can use the PauseIf condition to disable the ResetIf condition under certain circumstances without disabling the entire achievement.

  • The Reset will still affect all groups, including your core group. The Pause will only pause the Alt group containing the PauseIf.

  • This logic can be applied to multiple Alt groups in the same achievement to protect several separate Reset statements.

  • Make sure that you have at least one Alt group that will be true or the achievement won't trigger. The easiest way to do this is to create an extra alt group that has one condition that is Value 1 = Value 1.

  • Beware: If your Pause condition is false, and the Reset condition is also false, the group will be considered true unless you have another always false condition in the group. When using an Alt group to segregate a PauseIf, make sure to include an always false condition like Value 1 = Value 0.

Changelog

Released under the GPL-3 License. There are no copyright-protected ROMs available for download on RetroAchievements.