Hi,
I am new to Unreal, so I may be heading completely in the wrong direction.
I am trying to experiment with generating an rts tile based map from a landscape. Basically an actor that holds converted landscape information (into tile based information) used for gameplay purposes, such as steepness, low res pathing etc.
I do realize that this may not be required, and much of the information is present in the landscape itself. But this is also just an attempt to familiarize myself with the engine a bit.
A landscape is complicated in the way it organizes data (components->subsections->quads->vertices), I need to “flatten” this information into a “x” by “y” tile map, extract vertex normals for a quad (all 4 neighboring veritces), and average them to find steepness.
Much of the information required for this is available in the editor, (ULandscapeEditorObject), and so I think the best way to go would be to create an “editor” plugin that performs such a transformation?
I have been looking at the LandscapeEditorModule and as far as I understand:
- a static instance of a ULandscapeEditorObject is created. We register a custom detail layout for the class (FLandscapeEditorDetails)
- the FLandscapeEditorDetails renders various modes / properties required to manipulate a landscape
I would of course like to add a “button” such as “Export Rts Map” in the “New Landscape” category for e.g., without actually modifying the LandscapeEditorModule in any way. However, I do not see any way to do so.
Basically I would like to hook into the ULandscapeEditorObject custom layout and modify it, without hijacking the customization’s made by FLandscapeEditorDetails
There is another option which I have not explored much, creating a URtsWorldMap object that derives from ULandscapeEditorObject and hooking in a custom details layout there. I am not sure the Landscape Editor functionality would be preserved though.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and any help in advance!