Crysis Level Editor.

Raziaar

Raziaar

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Okay... I haven't played Crysis yet. Just haven't gotten around to it, couldn't be bothered. Not sure when I will, but I was browsing some CG artistry forums and I saw an old video of the Crysis level editor. And even though it's relatively old as far as when it was released, it still blows my mind. I've never seen it before, because I haven't been following crysis.

The video I'm talking about is here.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/17757.html?type=mov


Anyways... I want to ask. Have any of you guys used this, been using it? Was it easy and intuitive for what you envisioned or just fun to play with? I love designing maps and stuff, but only when I have an easy and intuitive editor that performs fluidly and naturally with what I want to do. The last game I really spent a lot of time with doing level design was Starcraft... and I loved it.

So... tell me, and I'll see about picking up Crysis because the video blows my mind at it's supposed ease of use and power.
 
hahah, what a funny coincidence... I just started playing around with the editor today with a friend. It's quite amazing.
 
I want to know what kind of rig he's using. Beautiful framerate.
 
Yeah, I've been using it quite a bit lately. It has a small learning curve, nothing a few tutorials and crymod.com can't help. It's extremely powerfull and it functions intuitively. I can't wait to actually finish something.

I've got a large chain of islands with a enormous ammount of detail, but it puts a strain on my rig at high detail in DX9 while in the editor. (In areas with over 1mil polys.) Expect lower framerates compared to running it ingame. I'll post some screenies in this thread tomorrow. :D


The editor alone made buying the game worth it.
 
I used editor with demo. That was a way to check out vehicles from full.
Hah btw its XP not uber-1337-hax-Vista with "DX10"
 
The games worth getting for the editor alone... powerful yet simple enough even for me to use!!!
 
Guess I need to try out the editor again. When I messed around with it a bit I couldn't figure out how to change the textures or add trees/grass.
 
ohh thats funny I just bought crysis today for the editor. Here is a sexy screen shot of my first ever map!

I must sleep now, more editing tomorrow!

6ooq7fq.jpg
 
So I must be a complete retard, but I can't get the editor to work. I installed it with the Sandbox 2 executable from the CD, and it creates a directory in the crysis folder called "Editor" with a lot of stuff in it, but no executable to start the editor...anybody know why?
 
E:\crysis\Bin32 (or whatever hardrive its installed on)
 
Here's a few snips from something I've been working on...

testmap_01.jpg


testmap_02.jpg


testmap_03.jpg


testmap_04.jpg


testmap_05.jpg


testmap_06.jpg


testmap_07.jpg


testmap_08.jpg


So far, I understand how to do:

Vegetation
Layer Painting
Sequencing (to some extent)
Terrain formation
Voxels
AI (some flow graphing)
Creating particle effects
etc...
 
Are there many AI models to pick from? Mostly along the lines of Generic NPC's?
 
Yeah, there are quite a few. Mostly NK troops with different appearances and loadouts. There's a bit more to it. You'll understand once you get more familiar with archetypes.
 
AFAIK, there is some console command that enables a lower gamerate, which you can record at in fraps, then speed up, eliminating lag. Only downside is there's no sound.
 
Hammer is not so :D

I didn't care for it much, though texturing walls was easy.
 
Man... I need to get this. I am absolutely awesome at creating appealing landscapes with tools so easy to use like this! And from the looks of it, they look great!

Great looking stuff TC!
 
Crysis level editor doesn't have to deal with complex brush structures. It's basically a terrain editor that streamlines a lot of the work. Any editor can raise/lower terrain so it looks nice. Hell, the Warcraft III editor does that. Try recreating the first few levels of Doom in the Crysis editor. Oh wait, you can't unless you model it all separately and import it in.

Comparing it to a decade old .bsp editor is kind of silly.
 
Thanks guys! I'm going to start working on it again soon and pull it all together. There's a lot that needs to be done still. I'll post an overview later...


Viperidae said:
AFAIK, there is some console command that enables a lower gamerate, which you can record at in fraps, then speed up, eliminating lag. Only downside is there's no sound.
Click to expand...

I think you're talking about the frame capturing. You need some sort of movie maker that can take a series of screenshots and convert them into an avi file or something.

I'll look into this sometime soon.



The editor does support solids (brushes). It's kind of clunky atm and is not really designed for creating complex structures.

That's the only thing I don't like about this engine, there is no in-engine way to create "brushwork" like in source. Which means, less structural diversity in maps.
 
Stormy said:
ohh thats funny I just bought crysis today for the editor. Here is a sexy screen shot of my first ever map!

I must sleep now, more editing tomorrow!

6ooq7fq.jpg
Click to expand...

As a black mesa designer, I expected more stormy. Just kidding :p
 
TCfromBN said:
Thanks guys! I'm going to start working on it again soon and pull it all together. There's a lot that needs to be done still. I'll post an overview later...




I think you're talking about the frame capturing. You need some sort of movie maker that can take a series of screenshots and convert them into an avi file or something.

I'll look into this sometime soon.



The editor does support solids (brushes). It's kind of clunky atm and is not really designed for creating complex structures.

That's the only thing I don't like about this engine, there is no in-engine way to create "brushwork" like in source. Which means, less structural diversity in maps.
Click to expand...

So I can't make my own buildings wall by wall?
 
I'm going to start getting familiar with the editor more this week hopefully. So far I've just been using it to test things I've been doing with the C++ SDK. The flow graph stuff looks nice and it's good that it's easy to make maps in this :D
 
Bear in mind that Sandbox 2 is primarily a level editor for Crysis, meaning you can only use models and textures that are currently in the game data. Once the SDK is released we'll have access to all the standard modding features with the engine.
 
Looks really good, TC. How long did it take you to get to that point of skill with the editor? There are just some basic things with that editor that confuse me.

Making the Voxel Box, for instance. Last night I tried to make a cave with relative success, but when I tried to make another in another part the box spawned a million miles away and I couldn't get it to the spot I wanted...little crap like that annoys the shit out of me!

Also, when you generate terrain, how do you get the textures to sharpen up? The look like crap when they're first applied. Also..when making layers, why do you have to choose two textures (one material and one texture, I guess)?

Sorry for the wall of questions, lol, but I really want to get good at this.
 
The material is the "detail texture" for when you are close to it. The "texture" is the "LOD" texture.

To get to that "skill level" (lol), I've probably spend about 30-40 hours in Sandbox2.

I'm not so sure what you mean about textures looking crappy when you generate terrain...
 
I'll get ya some screenshots. What do you mean LOD? Long distance? Thanks :)
 
Vigilante said:
I'll get ya some screenshots. What do you mean LOD? Long distance? Thanks :)
Click to expand...

LOD means level of detail. It's a phrase that represents the fact that an object of high detail and an object of low detail generally appear the same when they are viewed from a distance.

Because of this, objects with high detail are highly wasteful of valuable resources when viewed from a long distance, and so they have a developed system of Level of Detail, which swaps out a high polygonal mesh object wtih a low polygonal mesh object once it reaches certain distances, sometimes with multiple steps in order to maintain the illusion of the shape while preserving system resources.

Same thing can be applied to textures I think... High resolution swapped with low resolution as you go further out.
 
I've been using one of the randomly generated maps it can make to experieriment on, following the tutorials. However, when I save and exit the map, and then reload it, it brings everything back except my beach texture.

However, if I go to retexture the beach, each cell I touch with the texture tool automatically restores the texture I had before -- is there some way to fix this?
 
You need to:

File > Generate Surface Texture


You should do this before you save and exit each time. Also, before you export the level to the engine should you want to play it in the game.


Also, more update...


testmap_10.jpg


testmap_14.jpg


testmap_13.jpg


testmap_12.jpg


testmap_15.jpg
 
Cool, thanks.

I'll fraps some stuff I'm up to once fraps stops doin' it wrong...dunno what's up with it, but the toolbar section in the video ends up with the Project Reality background in it, which wasn't even running.

EDIT: On this "try everything" map, when I mess with the texutre layer painter thing I run into a problem.

My first texture was a wet beach texture that I applied to any part of the local landmass touching water. The second is supposed to be a "cliff face" texture, but when I make it using the "Texture" option, and pick the two (why two again?) textures, it always paints the wet beach no matter what I select on that list.
 
The reason you have to pick two textures - I learned this from messing around with the BF2 level editor - is that one is the actual texture you're painting, which can be seen from afar, while the "detail" texture is the one shown when you get within a few meters of the textured surface. This, I assume, is done to cut down on the amount of RAM required to store textures, since there's no point in storing a high-res texture for these mountains out in the distance.
 
I've been making a power struggle map. But I'm not going to release any screenies till I get my new Uber PC, which I just bought today :O.
 
i cant even find the editor. Where is it?
 
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