CryENGINE 3 Cookbook

Over 100 recipes written by Crytek developers for creating AAA games using the technology that created Crysis 2

Creating a new level

Before we can do anything with the gameplay of the project that you are creating, we first need a foundation of a new level for the player to stand on. This recipe will cover how to create a new level from scratch.

Getting ready

Before we begin, you must have Sandbox 3 open.

How to do it…

At any point, with Sandbox open, you may create a new level by following these steps:

1. Click File (found in the top -left of the Sandbox’s main toolbar).
2. Click New.

From here, you will see a new dialog screen that will prompt you for information on how you want to set up your level. The most important aspect of a level is naming it, as you will not be able to create a level without some sort of proper name for the level’s directory and its .cry file. You may name your level anything you wish, but for the ease of instruction we shall refer to this level as My_Level:

1. In the Level Name dialog box, type in My_Level.
2. For the Terrain properties, use the following values:
   • Use Custom Terrain Size: True
   • Heightmap Resolution:512×512
   • Meters Per Unit: 1
3. Click OK.

Depending on your system specifications, you may find that creating a new level will require anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. Once finished, the Viewport should display a clear blue sky with the dialog in your console reading the following three lines:

Finished synchronous pre-cache of render meshes for 0 CGF’s
Finished pre-caching camera position (1024,1024,100) in 0.0 sec
Spawn player for channel 1

This means that the new level was created successfully.

How it works…

Let’s take a closer look at each of the options used while creating this new level.

Using the Terrain option

This option allows the developer to control whether to have any terrain on the level to be manipulated by a heightmap or not. Sometimes terrain can be expensive for levels and if any of your future levels contain only interiors or only placed objects for the player to navigate on, then setting this value to false will be a good choice for you and will save a tremendous amount of memory and aid in the performance of the level later on.

Heightmap resolution

This drop-down controls the resolution of the heightmap and the base size of the play area defined. The settings can range from the smallest resolution (128 x 128) all the way up to the largest supported resolution (8192 x 8192).

Meters per unit

If the Heightmap Resolution is looked at in terms of pixel size, then this dialog box can also be viewed as the Meters Per Pixel. This means that each pixel of the heightmap will be represented by these many meters. For example, if a heightmap’s resolution has 4 Meters Per Unit (or Pixel), then each pixel on the generated heightmap will measure four meters in length and width on the level.

Even though this Meters Per Unit can be used to increase the size of your level, it will decrease the fidelity of the heightmap. You will notice that attempting to smoothen out the terrain may be difficult as there will be a wider minimum triangle size set by this value.

Terrain size

This is the resulting size of the level with the equation of (Heightmap Resolution) x (Meters Per unit). Here are some examples of the results you will see (m = meters):

• (128×128) x 4m = 512x512m
• (512×512) x 16m = 8192x8192m
• (1024×1024) x 2m = 2048x2048m

There’s more…

If you need to change your unit size after creating the map, you may change it by going into the Terrain Editor | Modify | Set Unit Size. This will allow you to change the original Meters Per Unit to the size you want it to be.

 

Generating a procedural terrain

This recipe deals with the procedural generation of a terrain. Although never good enough for a final product because you will want to fine tune the heightmap to your specifications, these generated terrains are a great starting point for anyone new to creating levels or for anyone who needs to set up a test level with the Sandbox. Different heightmap seeds and a couple of tweaks to the height of the level and you can generate basic mountain ranges or islands quickly that are instantly ready to use.

Getting ready

Have My_Level open inside of Sandbox.

How to do it…

Up at the top-middle of the Sandbox main toolbar, you will find a menu selection called Terrain. From there you should see a list of options, but for now you will want to click on Edit Terrain. This opens the Terrain Editor window.

The Terrain Editor window has a multitude of options that can be used to manipulate the heightmap in your level. But first we want to set up a basic generated heightmap for us to build a simple map with.

Before we generate anything, we should first set the maximum height of the map to something more manageable. Follow these steps:

1. Click Modify.
2. Then click Set Max Height.
3. Set your Max Terrain Height to 256 (these units are in meters).

Now, we may be able to generate the terrain:

1. Click Tools.
2. Then click Generate Terrain.
3. Modify the Variation (Random Base) to the value of 15.
4. Click OK.

After generating, you should be able to see a heightmap similar to the following screenshot:

This is a good time to generate surface texture (File | Generate surface texture | OK), which allows you to see the heightmap with a basic texture in the Perspective View.

How it works…

The Maximum Height value is important as it governs the maximum height at which you can raise your terrain to. This does not mean that it is the maximum height of your level entirely, as you are still able to place objects well above this value. It is also important to note that if you import a grey scale heightmap into CryENGINE then this value will be used as the upper extreme of the heightmap (255,255,255 white) and the lower extreme will always be at 0 (0,0,0 black). Therefore the heightmap will be generated within 0 m height and the maximum height.

Problems such as the following are a common occurrence:

• Tall spikes are everywhere on the map or there are massive mountains and steep slopes:
  • Solution: Reduce the Maximum Height to a value that is more suited to the mountains and slopes you want
• The map is very flat and has no hills or anything from my heightmap:
  • Solution: Increase the Maximum Height to a value that is suitable for making the hills you want

There’s more…

Here are some other settings you might choose to use while generating the terrain.

Terrain generation settings

The following are the settings to generate a procedural terrain:

• Feature Size: This value handles the general height manipulations within the seed and the size of each mound within the seed. As the size of the feature depends greatly on rounded numbers it is easy to end up with a perfectly rounded island, therefore it is best to leave this value at 7.0.
• Bumpiness / Noise (Fade): Basically, this is a noise filter for the level. The greater the value, the more noise will appear on the heightmap.
• Detail (Passes): This value controls how detailed the slopes will become. By default, this value is very high to see the individual bumps on the slopes to give a better impression of a rougher surface. Reducing this value will decrease the amount of detail/roughness in the slopes seen.
• Variation: This controls the seed number used in the overall generation of the Terrain Heightmap. There are a total of 33 seeds ranging from 0 – 32 to choose from as a starting base for a basic heightmap.
• Blurring (Blur Passes): This is a Blur filter. The higher the amount, the smoother the slopes will be on your heightmap.
• Set Water Level: From the Terrain Editor window, you can adjust the water level from Modify | Set Water Level. This value changes the base height of the ocean level (in meters).
• Make Isle: This tool allows you to take the heightmap from your level and automatically lowers the border areas around the map to create an island. From the Terrain Editor window, select Modify | Make Isle.

 

Navigating a level with the Sandbox Camera

The ability to intuitively navigate levels is a basic skill that all developers should be familiar with. Thankfully, this interface is quite intuitive to anyone who is already familiar with the WASD control scheme popular in most First Person Shooters Games developed on the PC.

Getting ready

You should have already opened a level from the CryENGINE 3 Software Development Kit content and seen a perspective viewport displaying the level.

The window where you can see the level is called the Perspective Viewport window. It is used as the main window to view and navigate your level. This is where a large majority of your level will be created and common tasks such as object placement, terrain editing, and in-editor play testing will be performed.

How to do it…

The first step to interacting with the loaded level is to practice moving in the Perspective Viewport window.

Sandbox is designed to be ergonomic for both left and right-handed users. In this example, we use the WASD control scheme, but the arrow keys are also supported for movement of the camera.

1. Press W to move forwards.
2. Then press S to move backwards.
3. A is pressed to move or strafe left.
4. Finally, D is pressed to move or strafe right.
5. Now you have learned to move the camera on its main axes, it’s time to adjust the rotation of the camera.
6. When the viewport is the active window, hold down the right mouse button on your mouse and move the mouse pointer to turn the view.
7. You can also hold down the middle mouse button and move the mouse pointer to pan the view.
8. Roll the middle mouse button wheel to move the view forward or backward.
9. Finally, you can hold down Shift to double the speed of the viewport movements.

How it works…

The Viewport allows for a huge diversity of views and layouts for you to view your level; the perspective view is just one of many. The perspective view is commonly used as it displays the output of the render engine. It also presents you a view of your level using the standard camera perspective, showing all level geometry, lighting, and effects.

To experiment further with the viewport, note that it can also render subsystems and their toolsets such as flow graph, or character editor.

There’s more…

You will likely want to adjust the movement speed and how to customize the viewport to your individual use. You can also split the viewport in multiple different views, which is discussed further.

Viewport movement speed control

The Speed input is used to increase or decrease the movement speed of all the movements you make in the main Perspective Viewport.

The three buttons to the right of the Speed: inputs are quick links to the .1, 1, and 10 speeds.

Under Views you can adjust the viewport to view different aspects of your level

Top View, Front, and Left views will show their respective aspects of your level, consisting of bounding boxes and line-based helpers. It should be noted that geometry is not drawn.

Map view shows an overhead map of your level with helper, terrain, and texture information pertaining to your level.

Splitting the main viewport to several subviewports

Individual users can customize the layout and set viewing options specific to their needs using the viewport menu accessed by right-clicking on the viewports header.

The Layout Configuration window can be opened from the viewport header under Configure Layout. Once selected, you will be able to select one of the preset configurations to arrange the windows of the Sandbox editor into multiple viewport configurations. It should be recognized that in multiple viewport configurations some rendering effects may be disabled or performance may be reduced.