Far Cry 2 Map Editor Gone Wild

It took 20 years of forced slave labor to build the Great Pyramid of Giza. Using the map creator in Far Cry 2, it will take only about an hour. Last time we saw this game in action at Ubisoft Montreal, we were introduced to the basics of the map-creator tool, which gives you the ability to create and alter terrain on the fly with the push of a button. This time around, we take a look at several user-created maps from the Montreal team to show just how crazy you can get. Be sure to check out the recent-image pages for even more looks at these maps. The pyramids are just the beginning.

The global icon of France has been painstakingly re-created using steel beams, concrete slabs, and a radio tower. By placing a spawn point at the top of the tower, you can afford yourself a striking view of the virtual Seine River, as well as the soon-to-be corpses of your enemies. But watch yourself: The surrounding trees in the Champs de Mars provide ample cover for ground-based snipers. You could spend hours creating this map yourself, or download a finished version and start from there. The original author will retain credit, however.

The former home of the 1976 Summer Olympics and baseball team Montreal Expos also acts as a well-protected home base in team-based multiplayer matches. Nevertheless, an enemy positioned in the surrounding neighborhood could blow up anyone standing on the baseball diamond with a well-placed mortar strike. For a quick tour of the grounds, hop in one of the beat-up coups on the street. You can add up to six vehicles to every map, including a hang-glider at the top of the stadium.

Reconstructing the necropolis at Giza makes for a great match of king of the hill. One nice feature of the map editor is a playability meter. If it's green, your map is easy to jump into and play. If it's red, you probably got trigger happy with the object tool and the map is so cluttered that you can't tell your right from left. This pyramid map is wide open. Although it doesn't provide much cover, it is green and ready to go. Also take note of the dazzling sunset; you can edit both the weather and time of day for each map you create.

Just when you think you've had enough of World War II, here comes a map of Omaha Beach, or at least an Africanized Omaha Beach. Instead of Higgins landing boats, you can storm the beach with Far Cry 2's finest fishing trawlers. Instead of hunkering down in a cement bunker, you can defend the coast from a tin-roofed shack. You can use the mound tool to instantly create hills or, conversely, dig craters. The rippled sand effect is actually applied using a paint-texture tool that also includes patterns such as dried river bed.

In Far Cry 2, a picturesque boat ride in one of Venice's famous canals is far from romantic. Instead, it's a scene for a bloody battle. The use of bridges may seem like a logical choke point, but players are surprisingly mobile in the water, having the ability to dive down and quickly hide from danger. Just make sure the map plays by the rules. A validation tool will force you to have all the requisite spawn points and multiplayer objectives in place so the map can be played in every mode.

Who said that maps have to be based on reality? This sky castle floats in midair and is linked together by wooden suspension bridges. You could make a mad dash across one such bridge in a round of Capture the Diamond, or you could make a more risky move by running down the pipe in the center of the map. This map was created by adding a giant rock object, then moving to the edit object tool. From there, you can change the orientation and height, and then begin adding other objects on top.

A wilderness-generator tool will start you out with a preset template such as savannah or desert oasis. You will have tools to create each of the environments in the single-player game, which also includes mountain, desert, forest, tropical, swamp, and urban areas. Here, suspension bridges zigzag across a deep, craggy ravine. Don't lose your step; it's a long way down.

A quick and fun way to play with an existing map is to simply flood it. By raising the water level, you can instantly transform a forest village into a swamp village where high ground is a prized possession. To transform a wide-open map into a tense, close-quarters combat zone, try increasing mist and fog. Sniping from a distance will be transformed into a guessing game, at which point players might resort to using shotguns and machetes.

These geological monstrosities were constructed by simply adding giant boulders on top of each other. If you take a look at the village below, you can see just how vertical these maps can get. To perfect your map, you can also set the playable borders and edit the background. This way, the area outside the playing zone will not be a giant gray mass of nothing.

Just because Far Cry 2 is rated mature doesn't mean your map has to be. These cute creatures were assembled from village huts, craggy rocks, drainpipes, and road signs (for the eyes). When finished, you can instantly jump right into the map and start burning it down with the flamethrower. If you're not happy with the firing angles or spawn points or anything else, you can pull back into the editor. Once finished, you name your map and upload to the Far Cry 2 server for all to enjoy.