Ladders on buildings – DayZ

Overview

This page describes how to create and configure ladders for custom building models.

Requirements:

• Work-folder / Work-drive with custom mod files (folder and config structure).
• Object Builder (from DayZ Tools package) with Buldozer (model preview) setup.
• Ability to binarize and pack custom mod files.

Supported ladder types

There are two types of ladders currently supported:

• Front bottom enter with side-way top exit
• Front bottom enter with front top exit

Additionally, both types also support middle side-way enter and exit points and they can be under an angle.

Model

The most important ladder configuration is present in the Memory LOD of your model. Here, a set of vertices and associated named selections define the ladder. Every selection begins with ladderN_ where N is the ID of ladder starting from 1. Following picture shows an example of Memory LOD of 3 different ladders.

To get an idea on how individual points function, take a look at the following list:

• ladderN_bottom_front - defines a bottom entry ladder step
• ladderN_middle_left, ladderN_middle_right - defines a middle entry/exit ladder step, can contain multiple vertices (each representing a floor) if necessary
• ladderN_top_front - defines an upper exit ladder step
• ladderN_top_left, ladderN_top_right - defines an upper exit ladder direction (when ladder is against the wall), keep in mind that it has to be at least 5 ladder steps higher than the floor is (basically height of the player when standing on a ladder)
• ladderN - defines where enter ladder action shows up (the UI widget itself)
• ladderN_dir - defines from which side ladder can be climbed
• ladderN_con - the measurement point for the enter ladder action (has to be on the floor level)
• ladderN_con_dir - defines a direction of 180 degrees cone (from ladderN_con) from which action to enter a ladder shows up

In addition to the Memory LOD, View Geometry component with named selection ladderN has to be present covering the volume of the whole ladder.

Animations were designed to work with fixed ladder dimensions, you can take a look on the following picture to get an idea how an ideal ladder should look like:

Also keep in mind that characters do collide when climbing a ladder so it is necessary to create enough space for a climbing character in both Geometry and Roadway LOD.

Config

Unlike Arma way of configuring ladders, in DayZ you no longer need to specify ladders[] array in the config class of your building. That being said it is still necessary for your model to have a config representation (see doors guide - game config part for more info) and named property class=house in the Geometry LOD.

Sample

You can take a look at DayZ Samples GitHub repository here for an example of ladder meshes itself. These ladder parts are the same from which ladders were made on most of vanilla buildings. You can also check this sample for a laddernest model, which was a model used to develop ladders (contains all the different types and use cases).