Available for Download: How to Plan Game Environments and Level Designs

New Challenge 2012: Storytelling Level Design/Game Environment Challenge - Enter Here

Top Tutorial Topics

LevelDesign

UDK©

3D Modeling/
Maya®

CryEngine 3 SDK

L4D2

L4D1

Get Started

Challenges

Call of Juarez 2 Part 6: Creating Roads and Rivers

November 14, 2009
Category: Call of Juarez 2

Part 6 covers:

Road Tool
Road properties
How to edit roads
Creating rivers
Creating a custom material for water

Call of Juarez 2 Level Design Part 6: Roads and Rivers

CoJ2 Bound in Blood Video Notes:

Road Tool

Create New Road and Name it

Double Mouse Click on your road and open up the properties

Create a new road by placing road control points

Double Mouse Click on your road and open up the properties

Set the way you want your road to look like. Defining width, length, material etc.

Define your Road Material and your Roadside Material

With select tool active, you can move road control points around and reshape your road.

Insert a new control point on the road by select 2 control points and click on Insert New Control Point

Split the road by selecting a single control points and click on Split

Merge the road by selecting two control points and click on Merge

Double Mouse Click on your road name and open up the properties. Check off 'align road to terrain'.

Use the select tool to move the control points up above the terrain.

Select the road then press Adjust the Road to Terrain

Creating Rivers in ChromEd is similar to roads, with few tweaks.

Materials choose: data/shaders/master/templates/river_a.mat

You want to insert a visbox.msh that will control the way water functions when player enters it.

Model Browser --> All --> Mask: visbox

Position and Resize/Scale the visbox.msh to fit into the body of water you created

Custom water material is simple to create. Use notepad and copy/paste the following text

import "liquid.mtt"

sub material()
{
extern float TIME;

float f_wave_0_scale = 0.125;
float f_wave_1_scale = 5.0;
mtx m_nrm_0_xfm = translate( 0.08 * TIME, 0.051 * TIME, 0.0 ) * rotate( 0.0, 0.0, 5.0 ) * scale( 16.0, 0.55, 1.0 );
mtx m_nrm_1_xfm = translate( -0.01 * TIME, -0.03 * TIME, 0.0 ) * rotate( 0.0, 0.0, -2.0 ) * scale( 16.4, 0.52, 1.3 );
mtx m_nrm_2_xfm = translate( -0.081 * TIME, 0.055 * TIME, 0.0 ) * rotate( 0.0, 0.0, -5.0 ) * scale( 14.0, 0.5, 1.2 );
mtx m_nrm_3_xfm = translate( 0.001 * TIME, 0.005 * TIME, 0.0 ) * rotate( 0.0, 0.0, -1.0) * scale( 0.4, 0.025, 0.025 );

extern string s_water_cubemap;

use mtt_liquid(
e_opq_order = or_seetrough_1,
e_nrm_order = 2,
e_trn_order = 2,
e_bdf_order = 2,

f_blend_distance = 16.0,

f_blur_distance = 500.0,
f_blur_falloff = 5000.0,
f_blur_falloff_shift = 500.0,
f_blur_fresnel_power = 1.0,
f_blur_strength = 1.0,

v_deep_color = [0.12, 0.13, 0.08],
f_deep_distance = 379.0,
f_deep_opacity = 1.0,

f_deform_distance = 100.0,
f_deform_falloff = 2500.0,
f_deform_strength = 0.25,

e_shadows = e_shadows_pp_simple,

s_env = "data/mapsextra/yourmapname_rfl.dds",
v_env_factor = [0.22, 0.2, 0.2],
f_env_fresnel_bias = 0.5,
f_env_fresnel_power = 1.0,
f_env_fresnel_scale = 1.5,

v_liquid_clr = [1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0],

s_nrm_0 = "water_waves_n.dds",
f_nrm_0_scale = 2.0,
m_nrm_0_xfm = m_nrm_0_xfm,

s_nrm_1 = "water_waves_2_n.dds",
f_nrm_1_scale = 2.5,
m_nrm_1_xfm = m_nrm_1_xfm,

s_nrm_2 = "water_waves_n.dds",
f_nrm_2_scale = 1.5,
m_nrm_2_xfm = m_nrm_2_xfm,

s_nrm_3 = "water_waves_2_n.dds",
f_nrm_3_scale = 2.0,
m_nrm_3_xfm = m_nrm_3_xfm,

f_spc_power = 555.0
);
}

Save the water material as mapname_water.mat

Place the material file inside the map folder you are working on.

Make sure you replace a line where it says

s_env = "data/mapsextra/yourmapname_rfl.dds", to match your _rfl.dds

Double Mouse Click on your river name and open up the properties.

Under Road Material, input the location of your mapname_water.mat by typing in manually where the mat file is stored. In my case it was

data/mapsextra/lostcollateral/lostcollateral_water.mat