Room Features
Rooms can have three different features:
FloodFillLines: the basic unit of a room, it is made by a series of points that define semi-ellipsoids in 3D space. The game will connect all the points of aFloodFillLineby removing the material between them. A room can consist of as manyFloodFillLinesas you want.Entrances: points in 3D space with an associated vector which tell the game where to connect the room's entry and exit tunnels.FloodFillPillars: specified by a series of points in 3D space, the game will fill the resulting line with material. This is how the game implements decorations, bridges or the infamous finger cave.
In addition, there are two special features that can be added if you want to add your room to Point Extraction (aquarq) missions:
PE_MiningHead, accepts one or multiple locations with the position of the minehead. The game will pick one at random. If none is present, the minehead will fall at (x, y, z) = (0, 0, 0).PE_PodDropDown, accepts one or multiple locations for the extraction pod to land at the end of the mission. Works exactly likePE_MiningHead.
Finally, there are three single fields that belong to the room:
Name: the name of the room as will be shown in the editor and the name that will be used when saving the UAsset.Bounds: controls the distance between caves. Smaller bounds give shorter tunnels in mining missions but could also cause rooms to be so close that they overlap together. Some starting points could be:
| Room size | Bounds |
|---|---|
| Small | 2500 |
| Medium | 3500 |
| Big | 4500 |
How big are your rooms? If the room can be contained in a 1000x1000x1000 cube, the room is on the smaller side. For a 10000x10000x10000 cube the room is on the bigger side. Feel free to experiment!
Tags: the tags are how the game chooses which rooms to pick for each mission. Please see section Adding the room to the game.
Your First Room
The editor will force the room JSON to have at least the FloodFillLines and Entrances fields, while pillars are optional. The simplest room you can create is a single FloodFillLine with two points, and two Entrances (one entrance and one exit):
{
"Name": "RMA_EditorTutorial",
"Bounds": 3500,
"Tags": [
"Rooms.Linear.CustomTest"
],
"FloodFillLines": {
"Floodfill_1": {
"Points": [
{
"Location": {
"X": 0,
"Y": 0,
"Z": 0
},
"HRange": 850,
"VRange": 850
},
{
"Location": {
"X": 0,
"Y": 5000,
"Z": 0
},
"HRange": 850,
"VRange": 850
}
]
}
},
"Entrances": {
"Entrance_1": {
"Location": {
"X": 0,
"Y": -700,
"Z": 200
},
"Type": "Entrance",
"Direction": {
"Pitch": 0,
"Yaw": 90,
"Roll": 0
}
},
"Entrance_2": {
"Location": {
"X": 0,
"Y": 5600,
"Z": 200
},
"Type": "Exit",
"Direction": {
"Pitch": 0,
"Yaw": 90,
"Roll": 0
}
}
}
}
which produces the following cave:
The following sections contain all the implemented fields for each feature.
FloodFillLines and FloodFillPoints
The FloodFillLine is the basic unit of a room. It is made of a series of FloodFillPoints. Points of the same line will be connected together by their tangent lines as shown in the visual editor, in the order they are specified. A room can have as many lines as desired, and a line must have a minimum of two points to be drawn by the game. Each point has the following parameters:
| Parameter | Required | Default | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Yes | N/A | Three values X, Y, Z which define the center of the point. |
| HRange | Yes | N/A | A float value that indicates the radius of the point in the XY plane. |
| VRange | Yes | N/A | A float value that indicates the maximum height of the point, see below in Controlling Height. |
| CeilingHeight | No | 900 | A float value that can make the room taller if positive, or shorter if negative. Values that result in a height larger than VRange will have no effect. |
| FloorDepth | No | 0 | A float value that will raise the floor if positive or lower it if negative. |
| FloorAngle | No | 0 | An angle value between 0 and 359 that adds the corresponding slope to the point. |
| FloorNoiseRange | No | 100 | A float value which, when increased, makes the floor rougher in texture. |
| CeilingNoiseRange | No | 100 | A float value which, when increased, makes the ceiling rougher in texture. |
| WallNoiseRange | No | 100 | A float value which, when increased, makes the walls rougher in texture. |
| HeightScale | No | 1 | Untested, but probably multiplies the room height. |
Controlling the room size
The main parameters for controlling the size are HRange, VRange, CeilingHeight and FloorDepth. To make a point wider or narrower in the XY plane, change its HRange value:
Controlling the height can be done in different ways. The easiest is to just use VRange and/or CeilingHeight: the height of the room will be the minimum of the two values (take into consideration that the default for CeilingHeight in the editor is 900). In addition, the FloorDepth parameter raises or lowers the floor starting at the Z coordinate of the point:
In the case of the figure above, a negative value of FloorDepth creates a depression in the ground for the point on the right. A similar effect can be created by specifying a positive FloorDepth on the other point:
Noise parameters
The WallNoiseRange, CeilingNoiseRange and FloorNoiseRange parameters all do the same thing: they make the texture of the walls, ceiling or floor smoother or rougher. For example, the following image shows the default value for WallNoiseRange = 100:
While the following image shows the effect of setting WallNoiseRange = 700:
Sloped rooms
The FloorAngle parameter adds a slope corresponding to the specified angle. For example, the following room is specified with FloorAngle = 35:
If the direction of the slope is always the same or it is randomized is untested (but let me know if you find out).
Entrances
Entrances are how the game knows where to connect the tunnels that connect the rooms. The tunnel system is automatic: the game will connect rooms from Exits to Entrances and will put dirt in those missions that have it like mining or salvage. Every now and then the game will also create a looping tunnel in a seemingly random spot: this behaviour is right now not well understood.
Entrances have the following parameters:
| Parameter | Comment |
|---|---|
| Location | Three floats X, Y and Z which indicate the position of the Entrance. |
| Type | Accepts three string values: Exit, Entrance and Secondary. The function of the Secondary type is unknown/untested. |
| Rotator | Three floats Yaw, Roll and Pitch which rotate a normal vector which bt default is (xn, yn, zn) = (1, 0, 0). The direction of the resulting vector is the angle in which the game will try to connect the incoming (type Entrance) or outgoing (type Exit) tunnel. |
- You can specify more than one
Entranceand oneExitand the game will pick them at random. Having noEntranceor noExitis untested. - The game will try to connect the tunnels in the angle specified by the
Rotatoreven if it means intersecting the tunnel with your room.
FloodFillPillars
If FloodFillLines remove material to create a room, pillars are how material can be added to create columns, decorations, bridges, etc. A FloodFillPillar is in essence a series of points that form a line. Each point of the line has the following parameters:
| Parameter | Required | Default | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Yes | N/A | Three values X, Y, Z which define the center of the point. |
| Range | No | 150 | Accepts Max and Min: controls how thick the pillar is. |
| FillAmount | No | 100 | Untested. |
| NoiseRange | No | 150 | Accepts Max and Min: adds texture to the pillar to make it smoother or rougher. |
| SkewFactor | No | 0 | Untested. |
In addition to these, the FloodFillPillar itself also accepts a couple of multipliers:
| Parameter | Required | Default | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Points | Yes | N/A | A list of points with the fields specified in the table above. |
| RangeScale | No | 1 | Accepts Max and Min: multiplies the Range parameter of all points. |
| NoiseRangeScale | No | 1 | Accepts Max and Min: multiplies the NoiseRange parameter of all points. |
The following images have a couple of pillar examples.
"FloodFillPillars": {
"Default_Pillar": {
"Points": [
{
"Location": {
"X": 0,
"Y": 0,
"Z": 0
}
},
{
"Location": {
"X": 0,
"Y": 0,
"Z": 500
}
}
]
},
"Thick_Pillar": {
"Points": [
{
"Location": {
"X": 0,
"Y": 800,
"Z": 500
},
"Range": {
"Min": 500,
"Max": 500
}
},
{
"Location": {
"X": 0,
"Y": 800,
"Z": 500
},
"Range": {
"Min": 500,
"Max": 500
}
}
]
}
}
"FloodFillPillars": {
"Smooth_Pillar": {
"Points": [
{
"Location": {
"X": 0,
"Y": 0,
"Z": 0
},
"Range": {
"Min": 700,
"Max": 700
},
"NoiseRange": {
"Min": 200,
"Max": 200
},
{
"Location": {
"X": 0,
"Y": 0,
"Z": 500
},
"Range": {
"Min": 700,
"Max": 700
},
"NoiseRange": {
"Min": 200,
"Max": 200
}
]
},
"Noisy_Pillar": {
"Points": [
{
"Location": {
"X": 0,
"Y": 800,
"Z": 500
},
"Range": {
"Min": 200,
"Max": 200
},
"NoiseRange": {
"Min": 2000,
"Max": 2000
}
},
{
"Location": {
"X": 0,
"Y": 800,
"Z": 500
},
"Range": {
"Min": 200,
"Max": 200
},
"NoiseRange": {
"Min": 2000,
"Max": 2000
}
}
]
}
}
