Baking Me A Bridge

I have been looking into designing another area close to where the first module of the campaign begins. I always find starting areas difficult, but once they begin to take shape, things get a little easier. However, in this area, I had the need to place a small bridge crossing over a stream. This appeared straight forward at first, but I soon found that because of the way the game handles the z-axis, creating a walkpath that crosses over an elevated area is not as straight forward as I first thought. At least it was, but I did not realise I had to bake the area for the process to work fully. I knew at some stage that "baking" an area was important, but only now do I realise what impact it has in these sorts of situations. When I first placed my bridge and I tried to walk over it, the PC simply walked through the bridge and into the water beneath, before coming back up the other side! In the end, after consulting the forums, I learned the best method to sort this was to:

1. Turn all my "bridge pieces" (planks of wood in this case) into "Environment Objects". Right click on the placeable and choose the option from the menu.



2. Add a "Walkmesh Helper". I found one that fitted the description of what I needed: A wooden one that gives the sound of footsteps on a wooden surface. This could then be rescaled to fit over the surface of my bridge as an invisible object that would help determine where the walkmesh would go.



3. BAKE the area! This is where I did not know it would make a difference, as I was struggling with the first two stages for quite some time before I decided to actually do the baking. After I did the baking, the desired effect was achieved.