Guards, patrols and walkways
Placing guards
The Characters section of the inventory has every kind of soldier used in any mission: 28 types, from patrols and guards to snipers, gunners and officers, then the story characters and civilians. Each shows the weapon and model it is usually seen with.
Click one, then click the map. R turns him before you place him. Right-click the map and Add enemy here does the same.
Nothing is restricted by level. A model the level does not have is marked import (imported on Apply in his panel); when you apply, the studio brings it in from the level that has it, with its own textures. Where the level already has a texture of the same name with another picture, the model gets a copy of its own, so a sniper brought into Eagle's Nest wears his own camouflage, not the level's.
A guard's panel
Click a guard, yours or the level's, and his panel opens on the right.
- The preview: his character model, holding his weapon, turning slowly. Drag to turn it, scroll to zoom; the corner button opens a large view.
- Type, Weapon and Model: what kind of soldier he is, what he carries and what he looks like. How well he aims and how fast he reacts come with his type.
- Side: who he fights for (see Sides).
- Sight: how far he Sees (10 to 200 m) and how wide his View is (20 to 360°). They start at his type's own; his type puts them back.
- Position and facing, with buttons to turn him 15° either way or 90°.
- Stand on: which floor of the building he is in, or the ground, a tower's platform, a desk top.
- Patrol, and further down, Alarm: which alarm he answers, and whether he is a reinforcement who only arrives when it rings.
- Orders: what he does as the mission goes on (see Orders).
Weapon lists the thirteen weapons the game arms its soldiers with. The knife, the flashbang, the proximity mine and the dual Uzi are not among them: a guard given one holds it like a rifle and never uses it. They are still there as pickups for the player, and a guard who already carries one keeps it, marked he can't use it.
Editing one of the level's own guards changes that very guard in the level, and nothing else about him. His change is listed in the change log, and can be undone from there.
Sides
Every soldier, yours or one the level has, is on a Side:
- Enemy: against you. A guard you place starts on this side.
- Fights on your side: a friendly, like the game's own allies (the driver in Trainyard, Priboi, Anya and her escort). He shoots at the enemy, not at you. On the map he is drawn in the player's green, the legend counts friendlies on a line of their own, and the sight lines leave him out of the guards watching for you.
- A side of its own: a third side, which the game uses only for two guards in Ekk's fortress.
- Another side... takes any other team number, for a mission that wants more sides.
Friendlies and enemies fight each other in the game when they meet, so a squad of yours can take on a patrol while you watch. Changing a level guard's side changes only that: his model, patrol and alarm stay as they were.
Patrols
Guards walk the level's walkways (the game calls them the navigation mesh): a network of points joined by links. A patrol is a list of stops on that network.
- Select the guard and press Edit patrol route (or P).
- The walkway points around him appear. Click them in the order he should walk them. Each stop is numbered on the map.
- Press Done.
The panel lists the stops, each with a button to remove it, and Remove patrol removes them all, so he stands where he is. With several guards selected, Remove patrols does them all at once. It says Route is legal and how long one lap takes, or what is wrong: a stop he cannot reach from the one before, for example.
On the map, guards walk their patrols while the animation plays (Space): along the links, walking or running as the patrol says, pausing at the stops. Your own guards' routes are always drawn; the level's show when you select a guard, or with the patrol routes layer on.
The level's guards and their patrols
Many of the level's guards have more than one route: one for when all is quiet and others for the alarm. The studio shows the quiet one as his patrol. Rewriting it leaves his alarm routes alone. A guard who had no patrol gets a standard patrol script when you give him one.
Orders
A soldier can do more than stand or patrol: one of yours, or one of the level's in your copy of a mission. His Orders, under his patrol in his panel, say what he does as the mission goes on:
- From the start: his patrol (or he stands), or Follows you.
- Steps, each starting when one of your events happens (the Events tab: an area you reach, a guard killed, a switch pressed, an objective done...). In a step he goes to a walkway point and waits there, patrols a route round and round, stands, or follows you. Tick Runs and he runs there.
Press Add a step, pick its event, then Pick where he goes (or Pick the stops) and click walkway points on the map; Esc or Done ends. While he is selected, the map draws each step's way along his walkways, in its own colour, numbered.
He follows the latest step whose event has happened: Priboi can follow you to the depot, wait by the gate when you get there, and run for the truck once the generator blows. This is how the game itself moves Priboi when he is on your side. A guard of the level keeps everything else he does - his alarm, how he fights - and does what he did before until his first step.
You can also start from the event: in the Events tab, Add what happens… → A soldier moves on, click the soldier, then where he goes. The event's card lists every soldier who moves on when it happens.
Following you
The game has no "follow" of its own. A soldier who follows you keeps up part by part along his walkways: the studio lays areas about 20 m across over them, and he runs to the walkway point of the part you are in. He does not walk at your heels, and where his walkways end, he waits.
A patrol step changes to the next step at the end of a round: the game only gives a soldier new orders when he has nothing to do.
What a guard sees
The Sight lines button (the eye, top right of the map) shows what guards and cameras can see.
- View of the selected guard or camera (on by default): his field of view in yellow, over the ground he can really see, with buildings and hills in the way. It follows him as he walks his patrol.
- What all guards and cameras see: a wash over all the watched ground, brighter where several watchers overlap, and red stripes on walkable ground nobody sees. The panel gives the share of walkable ground that is watched, and by how many.
The panel also sets the defaults for guards and snipers (guards 120° and 70 m, snipers 80° and 140 m), and whether the player it tests for is standing, crouching or lying. These are estimates: how far guards really notice you is decided by the game.
The quietest way in
Find the routes works out the quietest way on foot from the player's start to each objective, and draws it: green where nobody watches, red where someone does. Each route gets its length and how much of it is in view, and the mission a word: quiet, watched in places, or watched most of the way.
The walk follows the ground: not steeper than 40°, round buildings and fences, through gates. It is an estimate; in the game the player can climb and jump where the studio's walk cannot.
Walkways
The Navigation tab (left edge) is where the walkways are.
- Add node (or A), then click the map to add walkway points. Dashed lines show the links a new point will get: up to six points on the same floor within 15 m. A red point has no neighbour close enough and would be refused, so move it closer.
- Your walkway points show with the level's, when Show all nodes is on or you are working on walkways or a patrol. Once they are in the game they look like the level's own, green; until then they are in your colour. Their names (N12) show while you work on them.
- Show all nodes (N) shows the whole network. Click one of the level's points to select it, drag it to move it, or press Delete to remove it. A point that a guard's patrol uses cannot be removed.
- Each graph (a separate network) is listed with how full it is. A graph holds up to 999 points. Click one to hide it, or zoom to it.
When you apply, the studio rebuilds the walkway files, cuts any link that would now run through one of your buildings or walls, and refuses a change that would cut a route one of the level's guards walks.
A cut can leave part of the walkways cut off from the rest, and the game stops when a guard tries to go from one part to the other ("Error in graph 3 routenet"). So Apply joins every part that came apart back to the rest, with new walkway points round your buildings and walls where it can, and leaves out a cut-off part no guard uses. A guard whose walkways had to be joined gets a warning in his panel and in the check list, and Lay the joining points puts those points into your mission, where you can see them and move them. While he is selected, the points Apply adds show on the map.
A guard needs walkways where he stands
When the mission starts, the game walks every guard to his walkway graph. With none at his own height, he walks off to the nearest one there is: up into the air where a building's floor used to be, on an empty map. The studio only gives a guard walkways on his own floor, and moves him onto another graph when you move him onto its walkways (into a building, say). The check list and Apply both refuse a guard with no walkways near him, or with his walkways on another floor: lay walkway points where he stands, or move him to where they are.
The game walks him to them in a straight line, through whatever is in the way. So when a soldier stands away from his walkways with a wall or a fence between, Apply lays walkway points from where he stands round it, and the check list says so. If there is no way round, it warns you.
The game does not stop a guard at a wall: he walks the walkways' links and goes straight through anything a link crosses. So Apply cuts every link that touches a wall, a fence or a building you placed, and lays new walkways on the open ground round your buildings, so the walkway point nearest you is on your side of the wall when a guard comes for you. They show as small rings with the walkways, and the Navigation tab says how many it adds.
A sniper on a watchtower needs nothing more: a watchtower or a water tower from the inventory brings walkway points for its platform, as the game's own towers have, and a guard up there stays there. Stand him on it with Stand on, platform.
Inside buildings
Guards stand on walkway points, not on floors, so a building needs points inside for guards to stand in it.
- A building you place brings its rooms' walkway points with it (Inside, Floor nodes in its panel, on by default). They join the nearest network when you apply.
- Stand on (or [ and ]) moves a guard or item between a building's floors: ground floor, first floor, a tower's platform.
- In patrol mode, the hollow points inside a building are its rooms' points: click them to make a patrol go indoors and up the stairs.
Next: objectives and events.