[Unstable Branch] DrainSim Level Editor (Alpha) - Getting Started

How to play other peoples creations:

1. subscribe to a level you like on the workshop

2. start your game and go to your garage

3. click on the icon on the top left

4. click on workshop

How to use the Editor:

1. Water simulation settings and minimap capture. next to that shows the water height of the currently selected measure volume

2. Add or remove mesh collision from the water simulation.

3. Voxel dirt editing tools.

4. Content Browser. Add meshes from here.

5. Outliner. Shows all actors and meshes in the level.

6. Details panel. Edit the selected actor here.

7. Upload your level or update an existing Workshop submission.

   After a long wait, the Level Editor is finally here. You can find the Level Editor in the main menu.

The Level Editor is still in an early development state, so there may still be some bugs. Future updates may also break existing map submissions.

When you open the editor, the essential DrainSim actors and tools are already placed in the level as examples. More content will be added in future updates, including more pre-made landscapes and backgrounds. You can select these through the BP_EditorStreamLevelLoader actor.

The water simulation also has some limits. It uses a top-down projection, which means that scenarios with multiple floors or tunnels do not work yet. For now, you will have to trick the simulation a little to create a convincing result. The Water Hider tool under 2 lets you exclude meshes from the water simulation. You can also use the WaterBlocker actor to block water where needed. The water hider visualizer is currently broken caused by unreal engine 5.6, as soon as I update the whole game to 5.8 it should be fixed. In the screenshot you can see a bridge with two water blockers on the side, the bridge itself has the tag FluxHide which hides it from water and can be added by activating the "-" icon in section 2 by clicking on the mesh.

Before uploading your map to the Workshop, use the tools under 1 to save the pre-simulated water state and capture the minimap.

You can upload a new Workshop submission or update one of your existing submissions through 7.

For help and feedback, Discord is still the fastest place, as always.Adding custom PAK content to your levels

PAK files need a specific file structure. You will need Unreal Engine 5.6 to create this structure.

1. Download Unreal Engine 5.6 through the Epic Games Launcher.

2. Create a new project of any kind and call it DrainSim

3. Create a folder with the name you want to use for your PAK. In this example, we will call it AdvancedVillagePack.

4. Add your content to this folder.

5. Go to Edit > Plugins.

6. Click Add.

7. Select Content Only.

8. Use the same name you used for the folder, for example AdvancedVillagePack. Add your name as the author and add a short description.

9. Click Create Plugin.

10. Drag and drop your AdvancedVillagePack folder onto the new plugin.

11. right click the plugin folder and select update redirector references

12. Save everything and close Unreal Engine.

13. Open your DrainSim installation directory and go to:

    \\DrainSim\\Content\\ModdingTools

14. Unpack the ZIP file and run the BAT file.

15. Enter your plugin name, for example AdvancedVillagePack.

16. The PowerShell script will now create a PAK file with the required file structure.

17. When it is finished, move the PAK file to:

\\Documents\\DrainSim\\SaveScenes

1. Open DrainSim and launch the Level Editor.

2. Go to File > Load Pak.

3. The content from the PAK should now appear in the Content Browser. You can drag and drop anything you want into your scene.

Controls for the Level editor are the same es in Unreal, Q select, W move gizmo, E rotate gizmo, R scale gizmoWhile holding right mouse button you can move around using WASD

More Infos and future update patch notes can be found on Discord.