Design 1, Design 3 (Computer and Video Games)
Unit 5 - 5th, 7th November 2002

H ow to Build Terrains with the BSP based Terrain Builder

You can build a room with a nonplanar floor like that:

Right click on the "BSP based Terrain" builder icon.
Set the width of segments and depth of segments to numbers like 8, 16, 32 asf.
Press "Build".
Check whether the "Vertex Snap" icon at the lower bar of the editor window is on (green).
Set the "Drag Grid Size" to a small number like 1, 2 or the like.
Now Select your terrain brush in any of the Windows.
Click on the "Vertex Editing" tool on the upper right position of your tools menu.
You can select single vertices in any of your windows or multiple vertices by pressing CTRL-Alt and draging the mouse with the left mouse button kept clicked over a series of vertices.

If everything went fine, the selected vertices should turn white, the unselected ones should go grey.
Now you can drag the selected vertices to a new position.
Do that by releasing CTRL-Alt and then pressing and keeping pressed the CTRL key alone.
Now click the selected vertices in any window with the left mouse key pressed, the right mouse key pressed or both mouse keys pressed.
Vertices should follow your mouse movements either horizontically or vertically.

You can see that the floor is no longer planar. There are hills and valleys on it.
To leave "Vertex Editing Mode" click the camera icon in the upper left position of your toolbar.

Now you can build your room from the brush we have at present by activating the "Subtract Brush" tool. Underneath you'll find a screenshot after the editing was done and the new room was viewed in the player view.

Note that there is a fake shadow underneath the player pawn, the geometry of the room casts proper shadows however. If you add a Water Zone in the lower regions of the room, you might arrive at something like that: