GD Experience

This very first post will explain the basics of Sandbox2. There are 2 really basic things you need to lean : creating the most basic map and moving around.

Let's start with the basic map : You first need to grab Sandbox2 from your Crysis CD and install it. Once installed, open the Sandbox2 editor (Editor.exe, default path would be "C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Crytek\Crysis\Bin32\Editor.exe"). In the top left menu, click File > New. Enter a Level Name, leave Use Terrain checked and click OK (screenshot below, on the left). You should end up with a plain level (screenshot below, on the right)

In the menu, click Terrain > Edit Terrain. This will open a new dialog window which lets you edit the terrain heightmap. This is only the rough sketch of your final landscape. You can fiddle around with the options in there and with the left mouse button, add terrain, the right button will erase this. You have to think of this as a view from above. The closer you are to white, the higher the terrain will be.

Once done, click OK. Then go in File > Generate Surface Texture, leave all the default options and click OK. It will take a few seconds to compute and will quickly give you a nice looking view of your map, with a water base and grass on your terrain. We will see later how to change this and make it better.

Now you have a basic landscape running, it's time to have see what your map looks like in game. Save your map and hit Ctrl+G or in the menu Game > Switch to Game. There is a glitch on the crytek editor that sometimes won't load you in game and put an error in the console at the bottom of the screen :

[Error] Failed loading map texture id 0.

If you encounter this, simply reload your map (File > Open) to get rid of the problem. To switch back from the game to the editor, just hit Escape key.

We're going to move closer to this new landscape it in order to apply a couple of textures, add models & stuff. Use your keyboard arrow keys to move around (you can also use W, S, A and D). The mouse right button will let you rotate the camera in all angles. Let's add a new texture, other than grass to our texture set. In the menu, click Terrain > Texture. You will get the following window :

Simply click the "new" button (highlighted in red in the screenshot above) and give it a name: "sand" will do fine for the moment. Select your new sand texture and click the Load Texture button (highlighted in red too in the screenshot above). Just pick any odd sand texture you find. I chose beach_dirt.dds. This has given you a new texture to use on your terrain. Now switch to the RollupBar (by default, this is the tolbar you have on the right side of the screen. If you can't see it, just click View > Show Rollup Toolbar. In that tool bar, you need to click the Terrain icon and then pick the Layer Painter sub-menu :

This will extend the toolbar a little more. In that new section, you will be able to pick the texture of your choice (we only have 2 right now : Default and sand). Click on sand, and use the mouse left button to apply sand texture to the terrain :