Build a Long Wooden Bridge

Build a Long Wooden Bridge

by [TLB]stickman

This tutorial will show you how to build a long wooden bridge for crossing those extremely large rivers on your maps. First, find a nice, large, flat area of your map to use for constructing the bridge. The area must be perfectly flat, so select the Terrain Editor, and using your Level tool, flatten out the area just to be certain that it is all one elevation.
If your map does not have an area that you can use, you can always create a New Level for this purpose.
Once you have your flat work area, select your Level Editor, making sure that the Default Layer is selected. Pull down the Render Menu, and select Grid with Texture Mode.

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The grid lines are helpful in aligning the individual sections of the bridge and are only used as a visual reference.
To find the bridge sections that we will be using, go to your Resources menu, and expand Objects/staticobjects/common/roads/

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Pull down the Snap Menu, and make sure that Snap to Ground is selected.
Select the wooden\_bridge\_head1, then drag and drop it onto the work area. Do Not Rotate any of the pieces; just leave them in the orientation that the Editor puts them in. Notice that bridge head 1 has the handrail on the left-hand side as you “walk up the ramp”.
I rotated my camera view 180 degrees after placing this first object though, so that I could build the bridge from right to left.

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At this point “Nudge” the bridge head (either by clicking and dragging the RED arrow, or with your keyboard by holding down the Shift Key and using your cursor keys.) Nudge the bridge head until it is aligned with a grid line of your work area.
Now select the wooden\_bridge\_segment from the Resource bar and drop it onto the map. Get it close to the bridge head, but do not let them overlap. Place two or three more segments onto the grid, end to end, with small gaps in between them. Now select the wooden\_bridge\_head2 and place it onto the work area at the opposite end of the bridge.

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Now, double-click one of the bridge heads, bringing up the Absolute Transformation window. Look at the value for Position -- X/Yaw. If you want to, go ahead and round this number so that there are only zeros to the right of the decimal point. This only helps to simplify the next operation.

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To make it a little quicker, and with the X/Yaw value already highlighted, right-click and select copy.
Now, double-click the other bridge segments and bridge head and replace (by pasting) the Position –X/Yaw value for those objects

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At this point all of your pieces are at the same height and in perfect alignment. Now we have to slide the pieces together.
Select a bridge segment that is next to a bridge head and then zoom your camera in close so you can see the two ends coming together.

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Let the two pieces just barely overlap. If you overlap too much, you will see a “flickering” effect when viewed from the air in game, so don’t overdo it. Do this for all of the other pieces of your bridge. You have been saving your work as you go, right?
When you are done, your bridge should look something like this.

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Now move your camera directly above the completed bridge and rotate the camera so that the bridge is as shown below. Do not rotate the bridge, just your camera view. Click and drag a Selection box around the entire bridge, selecting all the pieces.

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Right click and select Save Object Bundle. Give your new bridge a name and click OK.

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You can now place the completed bridge into your maps by right-clicking on your work area, selecting Object Bundles, and then selecting your bridge by the name you gave it.

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Part 2:

Navmesh a Long Wooden Bridge