The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

Starbreeze | Vivendi |

Put simply, Riddick is a first-person shooter that blends equal parts blasting, hand-to-hand combat, stealth attacks, and even some platforming into the mix. Riddick takes noticeable risks in a crowded genre and succeeds. From its movie-inspired presentation to its minimalist HUD and the deadpan delivery of Diesel's likeable killer, Riddick is saturated with a sleek kill-or-be-killed atmosphere that pervades all. The combat is sharp, the AI can be smart and relentless, and the level design deft. Oficial Forums Demo

Post tutorial Report RSS Riddick University: Importing map geometry

Here's a tutorial on how to import map geometry from Blender into Butcher Bay.

Posted by on - Intermediate Level Design/Theory

Introduction

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay ran on a proprietary engine created by the developer Starbreeze simply called Ogier. Like their previous two games, Enclave and Knights of the Temple, they released an SDK for it. Unfortunately Riddick is one of the only games I've seen that had a developer SDK created for it and yet no mods were made or released.

So I have decided to try and fix that and I'm going to upload several tutorials educating everyone on how the editor works. With the goal of teaching you how to make your own Riddick levels and mods. This tutorial specifically goes over how to import level geometry from a program such as Blender or 3dsmax into Riddick.

What you will need

  • A program to build meshes in. In this case I'm using Blender
  • OBJ 2 Map

Creating the mesh

First you'll need to create the mesh. In this case I'm using Blender's mascot Suzanne.

Blender

Next you'll need to export it as OBJ. I recommend scaling up the model as large as possible. As OBJ 2 MAP bugs out if the model is too small. Make sure to go to Object->Apply->Transforms after doing so. I also recommend decimating the mesh if it's very high poly as it may freak out with that as well.

Using OBJ 2 MAP

After exporting open OBJ 2 Map

OBJ


You will need to play with these settings a little to get the right output. As long as the model is relatively low poly and scaled fairly large it will open afterwards. I've noticed Spikes and Extrusion tend to work best with Ogier in my experience. After pressing the GO button it will spit out a .map file. You'll need that for the next step.

Opening the map file in the Ogier editor

Next open the Ogier editor and go to File->Open.

OBJ2


You might notice the .map file we created does not show up by default. Go to Files of type and select all files.

OBJ3


Now it will appear. Select the .map file we created.

OBJ4


Now the map file will open.

OBJ5

Conclusion

Now that we have the model file in the editor we can do whatever we want with it. Including moving around individual faces and texturing it. We can also copy it into an already existing map you're working on by highlighting everything (hold the right mouse button) and copy/pasting. This technique is very powerful as it would allow for importing terrain or entire levels from other games into Butcher Bay.

image 1

I hope this has inspired you to try importing your own level geometry for Butcher Bay.

Post a comment

Your comment will be anonymous unless you join the community. Or sign in with your social account: