1 General
The vehicles in EMERGENCY 4, both units and the civil traffic, drive on defined pathways in the game world. The vehicles have to know, where the streets are located - for this reason we need to place paths and streets.
Streets are necessary for units. They set up a network on the map, which is used by the units for the navigation through the game world.
Paths are mainly used by the civil traffic. They show civil persons and cars, where they can move over the map and which path they should use. You also can use paths for special scripting events and for the control of squad units, because streets can not be triggered by scripts.
2 Creating new streets and paths
2.1 Creating new streets
In order to create a new street, you'll have to open the menu 'Edit' and afterwards 'Streets' in the editor of EMERGENCY 4.
No you've openend the 'Street editor'. On the left side of the panel you can choose, if the street should be created for land vehicles (Carstreet) or for water vehicles (Waterstreet), e.g. the fire and rescue boat. You can create a new street with a click on 'New', afterwards a new window will open.
You also can name streets in order to distinguish them from each other. It makes the handling on large maps much easier. If you want to give a name to a street, you can click on the street and replace 'Unnamed' with a name by your own.
With a click on 'Add' you can place the first placement spot of the new street with a click on the left mouse button.
Now you can see a white line in the middle and two blue lines on the left and right side of it. The white lines marks the middle of the two lanes. The two blue lines mark the lanes with opposing roadways. The white linie should always be placed in the middle of the road on your map and the two blue lines should be placed in the middle of the two opposing lanes.
In our example you can see, that the two blue lines are placed outside the lanes. For this reason, we'll have to reduces the distance between the two lanes. You can move the blue lines if you hold the Ctrl key and drag the lines with the left mouse button.
Every street on the map needs one of these defined streets. For this reason, you'll have crossing at the intersections in some cases. These crossings are necessary for the street network tool in order to calculate the completely network. If the street network doesn't consist of a coherent network, your emergency vehicles won't drive in a proper way over the map - their driving behavior will be quite chaotic.
Proper placed streets can be seen easily if the lines in the middle of the streets are white. If you have red lines there, the street network wasn't placed in a proper way. In the following screenshots you can see both right and wrong placed street networks.
2.2 Create a new path
You can create paths with the same procedures as you create streets. You can open the path editor with the menu 'Editor' and 'Paths' or the function key F7. Now you can press the button 'New' once again and create a new path. With the button 'Add' you can place new path waypoints.
You have some additional options for the placement of paths. With the Speed option you can defined different movement speeds of your path objects. And you also can set, if the objects should be deleted if they reach the end of the path. You also can set different movements types, e.g. moving forward, backward, in a circle or in a ping-pong-mode.
Usual speeds for persons lie between 1.7 and 2.0. The speed for cars should be between 6 and 9. Paths always will used on the right side (the blue line on the right side).
If you place a person or car in the scene mode, you can choose with the menu 'Properties' / 'Edit Traits' which path should be used from the start of the map.
You also can name the paths like streets. This is important if you want to control the path by scripts.
All paths have a white line in the middle and two blue lines on the left and right side. You can move the blue lines of you hold the Ctrl key and change the distance between the two lines with the left mouse button.
2.3 Edit streets and paths
You also can edit streets and paths afterwards. You can add new waypoints in existing streets / paths in order to model curves more accurate. For this action you'll have click on the street or path, choose the option 'Insert' and add the waypoints with the left mouse button.
The vehicles and persons exactly use the defined pathway for their movement. For this reason, you should place more waypoints in curces in order to allow a much smoother movement through them.