Creating Fog of War Areas – Age of Empires Support

Overview

The Content Editor allows you to create special fog of war areas in a Crafted Map.

These areas dictate how the fog of war behaves in a designated area, either acting as unexplored, explored, or completely visible. This allows you to control what parts of your map players see when the game is loaded.

There are two main steps for creating fog of war areas:

Create a Metadata Map for fog of war. This is a special layer that adds a generation pass onto the map that will add fog of war to the map.
Use a Palette to "paint" fog of war areas onto the terrain using a brush.

This guide covers how to create fog of war areas using the steps listed above.

Creating a Fog of War Metadata Map

The first step to adding fog of war metadata to your map is to create a metadata layer tied to a fog of war type. Each one created is added to your library of fog of war brushes, allowing you to pain them onto your map.

To add fog of war metadata areas to a map, perform the following steps:

Right-Click on Metadata Map in the Scenario Tree and select +Add.
A new Layer will then appear beneath Metadata Map. This new Layer will serve to hold your selected type of fog of war metadata.
Select the new Layer and use the Properties panel to give it a name.
Right-Click your Re-Named Layer and select +Add.
The Add Blueprint panel will then appear. Using this panel, find and select fow_visibility_type Metadata and press OK.
A Family Manager Enum entity will appear beneath your layer. This is the brush that will hold your new fog of war type.
Select your new Family Manager Enum and use Value field in the Property Panel to select a fog of war type.
You may also select a Colour to associate the metadata brush with.
The name of your Family Manager Enum will then switch to whichever fog of war type you chose. You may now select this brush and use it to paint the selected metadata tree type onto your map.
You may then select this layer to use it as a paintbrush to draw the associated fog of war type onto the map. This fog of war area will also be added to your painter tool palette. See the next section for a complete guide on using the painter tool palette to create fog of war areas.
You may continue to repeat Steps 4 to 7 to add additional metadata brushes as needed.

Painting Fog of War Metadata with a Palette

After you have created a metadata layer for fog of war, you can use the Palette to paint fog of war areas onto your map.

Painting Intro

To paint trees onto a crafted map onto your map using the Palette, perform the following steps.

Select Metadata Map in the Scenario Tree.
Go to the Painter panel and using the Layer drop-down, select the fog of war option. The metadata layer you created in the previous section will appear in this list.
Use the Metadata ;drop-down to choose the type of fog you want to paint. The options within the metadata layer you created in the previous section will appear in this list.
If you wish, you can use the Shape and Size options to control the shape and size of your brush.
You can now paint the selected type of fog onto the map. The painter has two brushes that you can set, keyed to your Left Mouse Button and your Right Mouse Button.