Custom Bridges

This is a bit difficult to make a tutorial for, but I just wanted to point out to people that they can get creative and make their own bridges in WorldBuilder.


What you need:
1. Wooden_pier_rural_small object (found in environment > art ambient > objects > industrial > wood). This is the deck of your bridge that units will walk on. What this object does is make impassable terrain passable. Doesn't matter if it's below super deep water or on a vertical slope, as long as this object is within the area grid your units will be able to walk or drive on it. Arrange these into a rectangle or whatever shape you want your bridge to take. These must be turned into an entity group and set to invulnerable via scar scripting, otherwise they will be easily destroyed during the game. Make sure you don't leave any small gaps in the deck or units will fall through it - they won't take damage, but they'll magically warp under the bridge and back ontop of it in the blink of an eye and it will look weird.

Example of what your deck will look like at first:


2. Movement blocker splines or objects. These must go at the edges of the deck of the bridge to prevent units from walking off/on the bridge where they're not supposed to. Make sure the movement blockers overlap with the bridge deck a little bit. If they don't then units might still be able to walk off the edge of the deck and magically warp to the ground without taking damage.

Example of where to place your movement blockers:



3. The "R" key and extra objects of your choice. Here's where you get creative and add the frame of your bridge with whatever objects you desire. If you don't want the deck of your bridge to look like wood, you can cover it with "High_wall_01" for a brick road (found in environment > art ambient > objects > oob objects) or with "hangar_roof_##" (found in environment > art ambient > objects > industrial > metal) and rotate it to a horizontal plane with the "R" key and place it just barely ontop of the wooden deck. KEEP IN MIND that any objects you place under the bridge will affect pathing! Try to avoid putting the legs or supports of the bridge underneath it and instead them it beside it. But you can put objects beneath the bridge if you set them to Visual objects. When you select an object, under the "current" options there will be 2 buttons - "To Visual" and "To Entity". The default is Entity, so all you need to do is select the object and click the "To Visual" button. Also, you may want to make the bridge supports invincible the same way you made the bridge deck invincible. This will prevent them from being destroyed and having the bridge magically float in the air without any support.


Pros:
1. They can be as long as you want.
2. They can be as wide as you want.
3. They can branch off, go in zigzags, have multiple entry/exit points and ramps.
4. Depending how imaginative you are, they can look niiiiice.

Cons:
1. They must be indestructible since there would be no way to repair it.
2. They can be difficult to make. When creating it you must take several things into account:
- Objects that are indestructible (entity's set to invulnerable via scar scripting). These objects typically make the frame of the bridge and cannot be used as objects/beams directly beneath the bridge since they will block the pathing. They can also negatively affect units LOS and cover.
- Objects that are visual (and therefor easily destroyed). These objects don't affect pathing or LOS and can be used below the bridge for more visual appeal, but since they're easily destroyed you must keep in mind what the destroyed version of that object looks like. You don't want random chunks of wood/concrete stuck in the air.
- Pathing. This will be affected by how you arrange the visual objects and the entity objects. You must always keep pathing in mind so that you don't create a bridge with random blocks where units cannot move on the deck.
3. As with ingame bridges, units cannot cross beneath these bridges either. You will need to put movement blockers on each side of the bridge to prevent units from magically walking on/off the sides and magically teleporting up/down.


Examples:


This is a wooden trestle bridge I made using fence posts. The pathing is 2 wide, so the only units that can cross it are infantry and AT guns. Most of the wooden frame is indestructible but any beams of wood that crisscross or lay horizontal underneath the tracks can be destroyed. This way the bridge can have objects beneath it that don't affect pathing AND can appear to take damage when the objects set to "visual" are destroyed, but not inexplicably have pieces of wood floating in the air since they are all connected to atleast 1 invulnerable object.



This is a bridge slightly wider than the ingame bridges and longer than the "best bridge".



This is a "bridge" (It's more of a catwalk). There are multiple entry/exit points. It goes in a circle, and can be crossed again in the middle. Unfortunately since I'm using the iron_girder objects as the legs of the structure directly underneath the deck of the bridge, I had to set them to invincible so that they could not be destroyed and left with a floating bridge. The downside to this is that the entire deck of the bridge provides bonus cover since the units think they're standing beside the iron_girder and not ontop of it. This is one of the things you have to think about when creating these kinds of objects.

Remember to check the impass editor when you're doing step 3 to make sure you're not accidentally blocking pathing with your bridge decorations.

I just wanted to inspire other people to get creative. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Very Nice!!

By the way, why is it that when I put a bridge over land instead of water, I check the impass and although the bridge is clearly not in the way, nothing can pass under it?

Bridges can only be crossed over OR under. You cannot do both. If you place a bridge that can be crossed over, when a unit tries to go under it they will instantly warp ontop of it when they try to pass under. If you make a custom bridge like I showed above, you need the block object/spline that go along the edges of the bridge to prevent this from occurring. It will block units from being able to warp up onto the bridge. So on your map even though it looks like units can go under it, you need to be creative and block it so that people don't think it's possible (add trees/shrubs/rocks).

If you make a bridge units can go under (by setting the bridge or objects to "Visual") then they can cross under it but not over it. And now you need to use the block object spline wherever you might have a bridge support so that units dont walk through walls. But there are some downsides from this too. Now you need to get creative and stop people from trying to cross over it. If you use a game bridge for this, it will be destroyed from the first hit it takes from a mortar or tank - and it will have a splash animation play when it is destroyed (which doesn't make sense if it's on land). Also depending on the bridge it will also play the destruction animation and show it falling apart, but then magically revert back to a half destroyed bridge once the animation is over. The 2 railroad bridges don't have splash animations though, and the smaller one can't be destroyed, so they work OK for land bridges that you can cross under. But my suggestion is to avoid using the prebuilt game bridges as land bridges you can cross under. When I create a bridge that units can cross under I have 2 rules. Rule 1: Make a custom bridge. This will stop the water splashes when the object is destroyed and the bridge won't be destroyed on the first hit it takes (or ever). Rule 2: Make sure that units can't access the deck of the bridge. You can do this by having one side of the bridge disappear off outside the playable area, or (using custom bridges) destroying a small section of the bridge closest to the bridge entry point.

Hope that answers your question.

Yes it does ! Thanks!

nice little tutorial, helps me a lot, thanks ^^

Hi i know you said it was hard to do A tutorial on this one but Would u pls try. it would be a must see video for Mappers.! also you talk about scar scripting would u mind do a tutorial on that aswell. ?

this Custom bridge would really open up for some cool maps. so why not make a real tutorial on the topic ?

It's a lot of work for a video tutorial. You can use Janne252's map extractor and unpack my maps from the workshop to see how things are done.

I have another example of this in the screenshot below. A custom "bridge".... and by bridge I mean gangplanks for ships. This tutorial could be updated since there is a better object for pathing than the small wooden bridges. The Designer_walkmesh (EBPS > gameplay > designer_objects > objects > walkmeshes > designer_walkmesh) appears as an ugly checkerboard in the map editor, but is invisible in game. It doesn't need scar scripting to set it to indestructable either. All you need to do is use the objects found in the 'visuals' tree to create a bridge. The visuals tree is filled with tons of indestructable objects perfect for bridge building. And building other things such as the ship below. Example with the windows, turrets, and various other objects.


If Relic manages to squeeze one more expansion out then I will do a tutorial. Honestly the best part about this game for me has been the World Builder. I'm always more excited to see what new assets they have for maps. With WFA it was waterfalls... which made my waterfall tutorial obsolete. And with British forces it was the new bridges and canal walls and industrial objects.

This andthis is just so awesome we need maps with this kinda shit in rotation it'd just be

Hi i cant get these things to work,
i have my objects in an Egroup and the script is like this

function OnInitID()

-- [[ Markers ]]

-- [[ Squad Groups ]]

-- [[ Entity Groups ]]
eg_boardwalk = EGroup_CreateIfNotFound("eg_boardwalk")
eg_invuln = EGroup_CreateIfNotFound("eg_invuln")

EGroup_SetInvulnerable(eg_invuln, true)
EGroup_SetInvulnerable(eg_boardwalk, true)

end


but it still gets destroyed. is my script wrong and if so how should it look ?

Nvm i Fucked up its working now thanks for the Post mate