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.

The inventory: characters, weapons and items, structures

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; when you apply, the studio brings it in from the level that has it.

A guard's panel

Click a guard, yours or the level's, and his panel opens on the right.

A guard of the level, selected

• 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.
• 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.

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.

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.

1. Select the guard and press Edit patrol route (or P).
2. The walkway points around him appear. Click them in the order he should walk them. Each stop is numbered on the map.
3. Press Done.

Editing a patrol: the stops are numbered, and the walkway points he can use are shown

The panel lists the stops, each with a button to remove it, and Clear removes them all. 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.

His patrol in the panel

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.

What a guard sees

The Sight lines button (the eye, top right of the map) shows what guards and cameras can see.

A selected guard: his field of view in yellow, over the ground he can actually see, and his route

• 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.

What everyone sees: red is walkable ground nobody watches

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 Sight lines panel, with the routes found

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.

Routes to the objectives: green unseen, red watched

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.

The Navigation tab

• 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.
• 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. 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.

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.