[FC5] Wetland Turmoil (and a little review of sorts)

[grapen]

I wanted to do something different in-between my planned projects, so I had a look at Far Cry 5's Arcade editor and made an Outpost level called Wetland Turmoil. I also figured that I'd take this opportunity to write down my more or less incoherent thoughts on the editor, for those interested in checking it out.

I like Arcade overall. It's robust, easy to learn and simply put designed for cranking out levels fast. I think that's both a strength and a detriment, as on one hand it diminishes the barrier of entry and creates a huge PR buzz for the game, while on the other it hampers advanced users creativity. You can tell it's a watered down version of whatever editor Ubisoft uses in-house, as I was missing some stuff that I wanted. There's no prop scaling, flowing rivers, dynamic wires, scripting of any kind, custom post fx - things that you otherwise might find in the base game of Far Cry 5. Though I must say that the environment options available are powerful. Each node on the grid has a hard memory limit that is hit quite fast, especially when you add AI. This makes sense though as Ubisoft would not want to deal with huge, broken maps all over the place, basically a safety net.

Terraforming, painting foliage, placing props, setting up compositions etc. is a blast though, and you get a lot of props to use, a majority of which are from FC5. Great fun if you, like me, are into that. If my memory serves me right, it's very similar to the old CryEngine editors from back then? I only dabbled a little bit in those to fully remember.

I spent about 2-3 workdays from downloading the editor to publishing my map, which I think speaks for how easy it is to learn and iterate in it. Would I recommend anyone getting the game just for the editors sake? No, not really. As much as I think the editor is cool, there's both Unreal and Unity to scratch the same kind of mapping itch.

So here's a few shots of my level. I wanted to take some inspiration from L4D's Swamp Fever, which turned out a really fun project considering there were hardly any natural swamp/wetlands foliage, so I had to improvise. If you have the game installed you could search for maps made my user "grap3n".

[blackdog]

I think if you are applying or intending to apply to a job in Ubisoft, playing with this editor could be beneficial.

Regarding similarities, I found the FC3 editor (which I used on the console version) and the FC4 editor to resemble the flow of the CryEngine 3, so you are probably right in your thoughts.

Hope your map will be successful and downloaded a lot!

does Arcade give you stats like that? 

[grapen]

1 hour ago, blackdog said:

I think if you are applying or intending to apply to a job in Ubisoft, playing with this editor could be beneficial.

Regarding similarities, I found the FC3 editor (which I used on the console version) and the FC4 editor to resemble the flow of the CryEngine 3, so you are probably right in your thoughts.

Hope your map will be successful and downloaded a lot!

does Arcade give you stats like that? 

Good point, if you’re really pinpointing a job at Ubisoft then this editor seems solid! I believe you get stats such as number of plays and ratings, haven’t really had a look at it yet.

[El Moroes]

A nice and immersive visual ! Cool ;)

[silent]

Nice work.

The far cry series uses Dunia, which I believe is an off-shoot of Cryengine 1, Other titles uses different engines. 

 

[blackdog]

Yeah, FC3 had still some branding from Cryengine. Can’t remember if there was also some actual friction between the companies at the time.

[General Vivi]

Would love to see a top-down  / flow map of your level. Looks really cool though

[El Moroes]

I tried to find it in the Arcade mode of the game and it failed :( 
I tried with your nickname, with the name of the map,...

[grapen]

1 hour ago, El Moroes said:

I tried to find it in the Arcade mode of the game and it failed
I tried with your nickname, with the name of the map,...

Damn, that’s odd, I was able to find it, but I’ve heard there’s issues with arcade right now and that people are having issues finding their own stuff even.