This guide is made from my personal findings and experience which may not work for every person/hardware. Please feel free to correct me in the comments if something is wrong or gets fixed and I will change things as they need be. Sandbox is still in EA (early access) so things may break and new problems may be found or solved and be added or removed respectively.

For the best experience, please make sure you have finished the main game and have gotten the "good ending" to avoid spoilers or new experiences.

If this is the first time you have made a level in a game, welcome! if not, also welcome! The vertigo 2 sandbox editor has quite a lot to use at your disposal to make some fun levels and games.

Simply, go to Vertigo 2's page in your library and either right click on Vertigo 2 or click on the cog on the right side of page


Click on the properties option, this will open the properties window, from there, go to betas, click on the box next to Beta Participation, which will say none if you haven't entered any betas, then click the option "sandbox - Sandbox open beta"


And done!

Let it install the beta, then hop in VR with me!


Upon entering you'll want to turn right to face a new and spooky gate that looks like this


Walk through it and you'll be taken to the ather, where you can click on the create new level button


After that you need to choose a environment to start with and a name


When you load in, the level will look like this


These are the starter objects that come with every level and is a good idea to keep them around your player start or somewhere you can find them easily. The objects on screen are the Sky-box (not on every level), Ambience, and Directional light or Sun. The grey capsule is the end point and the green capsule with Sonja is the start.

Here is a short overview of the controls (I have vive wands so some may be incorrect)

• Grip - Use one to move around from where you are holding, use both to scale yourself up and down and rotate both to rotate yourself around.
  
  
• Trigger - Used to manipulate objects, Clicking once on an object will allow you to access its properties if it has any, clicking and holding an object allows you to move it around. Clicking and dragging the air allows you to select multiple objects
  
  
• Buttons (A/X) - While holding an object, click this to duplicate it.
  
  
• Buttons (B/Y) - This may be the menu and so may the thumbstick
  
  
• Thumbstick - Pressing this will open the object menu
  
  
• Trackpad (Vive Specific) - Pressing this will open the object menu
  
  
• Menu button (Aka top button (Vive Specific)) - While holding an object, click this to duplicate it.

The object menu features a good range of folders to make levels with, these are going left to right

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Textures - Objects - Props - Logic - Entities

Textures holds, well, textures... These are able to be applied to Objects that you put in. They aren't able to be applied to Props or level geometry.

Texture being applied to an object

Objects are custom geometry that you can shape and form. It also can be textured as shown above.


The shapes available are a square, triangle, cylinder and sphere

Props are (almost) all the assets used in the main game of Vertigo 2. Inside the section contains a list of sorted folders which include things like clutter, health, man-made and rocks.





Most props have a point that allows you to control the size of the object, highlighted by the yellow orb

The main explanation of logic is explained in the following section called "Logic components and explanation" but simply the Logic section holds simple functions that allow you to control events from player actions. These include things like player trigger volumes, music control, death zones and invisible walls.


Logic components are connected by strings, these strings can be deleted by finding the middle point and dragging it to the delete bin under your controller

Entites are non-player characters (NPCs) that can be friends, enemies or neutral towards the player. Inside the entities folder includes aliens, bosses, robots and allies.


You can also designate the players faction and NPCs faction. This allows you to have groups of enemies with the same faction be fighting with or against the player and players faction.

This is just a header to find this section easier. Feel free to jump around to find a component you may be confused on.

There are two ways to give the player guns in the editor.

1. When you click on the player spawn there is an option for weapons. These weapons will spawn with the player.
   
   
2. You can place a Gun Spawn node down in the level that is in the logic folder in the item menu. These can be picked up by the player and do not react to gravity.
   

Currently, there are no Mod Synthesizers, the only way to give upgrades is through the spawn weapon properties field. To give picked up weapons upgrades, simply add the weapon to the player spawn, pick the upgrades you want, then deselect the weapon from the spawn weapon pool.

Normal heath pickups are found in the props folder under "health", there is also a pick up for the character "Brian" who doesn't have regenerating ammo

This section covers the various triggers within the editor. In this guide, the term "trigger" refers to any volume or object that causes an event you designate, to occur (ignoring death volumes). The way triggers work is it will activate the associated event each time the player touches or enters it. The types of triggers are:

• Player Trigger
  - When the player enters an event will happen, in this example, the door will open.
  
  
• Spherical Player Trigger
  - Same as the player trigger but can have the option to only be triggered once.
  
  
• Sight-line Trigger
  - When the player is in the trigger and looking at the eyeball in the center, an event will happen.
  
  
• Buttons
  - Can be clicked by the player, comes in a standing form, and a on-wall form. Act similarly to volumes but when the button is clicked, the event happens.
  

This section covers the various volumes within the editor. In this guide, the term "volume" refers to invisible space that interacts with the player in some way when they touch it or enter it. Volumes are the other set of invisible spaces that are not triggers for (custom) events. Most of these volumes are pretty self explanatory. The types of volumes are:

• Invisible Wall
  - A box that serves as collision for the player but cannot be seen. These still allow vehicles and enemies to pass through them. Try to avoid spamming these everywhere, place them with a fence or other form of geometry.
  
  
• No Teleport
  - While the player is standing in the volume, teleportation will not work.
  
  
• Flashlight
  - While the player is standing in the volume, the flashlight will turn on
  
  
• Death Trigger
  - Kills anything that enters the volume or if Only Kill Player is true, it will only kill the player
  
  
• Checkpoint
  - Saves the current state of the game and reloads the player where the checkpoint is on death. If there is a trigger to save it either saves where the trigger is or where the checkpoint is {CHECK}
  
  
• Gravity Field
  - Allows you to edit the gravity of the player while they are in the volume.
  
  The gravity field has a couple options, -4.0m, -2.0m, 0.0m and 1.0m/s2. To help understand what these mean, the base gravity is -9.8m/s2, meaning for this volume, negative is towards the ground and positive is away. 0m/s2 will be no gravity at all, -4.0m/s2 will be a little less gravity and 1.0m/s2 will accelerate the player upwards.
  

As of the 30th of june there are 8 orbs that are in this category these are from top left to bottom right

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Music - No-repeat - Ally group - Auto Trigger - Timer - And Function - Enemy group - Sounds

The music controller allows you to chose slightly modified versions of the songs found in game. the node features play music and pause music inputs and no outputs. The properties allow you to chose the music, whether it loops and the volume (make sure to turn it down).


Some songs have two states, an action and a calm track. You can also pick dynamic which will switch between the two depending on if the player is in combat

The no repeat node simply does not allow an event to repeat. It has an input and an output.
If you set up your logic correctly, you may not need to use these to much as most things in game have events that only trigger once.

The ally squad controller is used to have a unit of NPCs follow the player around. Form Squad causes all grouped NPCs to form onto the player similarly to Chapter 9. Break up squad causes all NPCs to return to normal states.


The bottom plus icon allows you to assign NPCs as this squad that will be spawned on game load.

Auto trigger will trigger an event on the load of the level

The timer controller is pretty self explanatory. When you trigger it through the timer input, the countdown you set will begin, when it reaches 0, the timer output will occur. It also has a timer cancel at the bottom.

The AND gate takes in as many inputs as you want, and triggers whatever you put at the output once all the triggers have been triggered. The way AND gates work is whenever one input is triggered it stays true no matter if the player is not currently in the trigger or if the trigger is activated again. Keep this in mind while making things around it.

Enemy Groups are controllers that hold enemies. Similarly to Ally Squads they have spawn and on defeated elements. It is recommended to have every character you place down behind one of these unless they are going to follow the player. This is to reduce the amount of unnecessary characters being added on load.


The same as ally squads they have a grouping function to add NPCs to that will spawn when you activate the Spawn all element.

The sound controller doesn't actually appear in the Logic section of the menu, instead it appears in a new section when you import a sound (covered in the next section). This controller allows you to place sounds in space. These sounds can be global or 3D (coming from the point you place the controller) and can be set to only trigger once.

In the vertigo 2 editor, you are able to import a set of custom assets. In this section of the guide I will show you how and what you can import. Starting with...

To import any asset, simply enter the level you want in vr then take off your headset and go to your computer. In the bottom right corner there will be two buttons, a burger menu and an import asset button


Clicking on the import asset button will open your file explorer where you can now add in your custom assets


After adding the asset, the menu should open (if not press the three line button (burger menu)) and you will see this

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The assets you can import are;

• Music and sounds (MP3, WAV)
  
• Textures and images (png, jpg, jpeg)
  
• Objects (OBJ)

To import sounds or music, make sure they are either MP3 or WAV (I have found that currently only MP3 appears to work). After the sound has been added, you can now create a music asset by clicking the create asset button and pressing song.


This music asset has a couple different options; The calm track, the action track and if it is loop-able.


If you add both a calm and action track, you get the option to have dynamic music that behaves exactly like how music explained in the Music section of this guide does. Having only one track will play whatever you put in either track. When you save those changes the song will appear in the music controllers properties all the way at the bottom of the song list.

Sounds do not need to be made into a song asset, all MP3 files you add will be turned into sound assets. Sounds will appear in the import folder on the item menu and will behave as described in the Sounds section in this guide.

To create a material in vertigo 2, you can use a combination of 3 images. A color map, roughness map and normal map.

• A color map is the look of the texture, these may look weird or off until properly added to the object you are wanting.
  
• A roughness map dictates how shiny or dull an objects surface is, this is represented through black and white on the image. (currently broken as there is no toggle for if an object is metallic or not while the map is being used)
  
• A normal map acts as a way to show bumps or grooves in a texture, they are these weird purple looking maps and help textures stand out.

For best results, use PNGs. After importing however many images you would like (I would recommend color and normals), create a material asset


This will open the asset window which has all these lovely settings

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• Color tint - Leave white for the image to stay its normal color, change it to add hues of color to it.
  
  
• Main Texture - The main image you want for the look of the texture, can be an image or a color map or whatever you like.
  
  
• Metallic/Smoothness Texture - Where the roughness/metallic map goes, as stated above this is currently broken at least with the maps I have tested. Currently the map will set the object as metallic which for non metallic objects look very off. My recommendation is to tweak the roughness/smoothness to fit your liking separately.
  
  
• Normal map - Good to have one on every texture you make or else they will look really flat, obviously ignore if you are simply making an image.
  
  
• Custom Model Texture Scale - How scaled up or down the texture will be on custom models. Best to keep the default.
  Default value is 1.
  
  
• Block Texture Scale (meters) - How scaled up of down the texture will be on Blocks. Like before best to keep the default.
  Default value is 5.
  
  
• Block edge Color, size and smoothness - The block edge is an extra addition to make textures edges less pronounced. If you don't care to much about seeing the edge, the bottom slider in the color setting is the opacity. The size controls how large it is on the edge and smoothness is how glossy it looks.

To access your new material, go to the materials folder in the item menu, and swipe to the right.

Creating a custom object is quite simple

1. Get a 3D object that has the .OBJ file extension
   
2. Import in it and any textures along with it
   
3. Make the textures a material
   
4. Go into the object in the import menu and add the material
   
   
5. Go to the Import folder in game to find your object
   
6. Place it down and done!
   
   
   

If the object and material are different/not made for each other the object may look weird, as well as if you tweak any of the settings in the material.

This section is for if you had already made some levels before June 27th or you made some levels and they are no longer appearing

The most common explanation is you entered the names wrong or a clash of some sort in the names themselves. A good way to troubleshoot is to follow these steps

1. Open your sandbox folder which is found in LocalLow in AppData under Zulubo Productions.
   
   For windows first make sure that under the view tab in file explorer make sure that Hidden items is checked
   
   
   the path you'll follow is on your OS drive (usually C:) go to Users > YOURNAME > AppData > LocalLow, scroll down to Zulubo Productions > vertigo2 > Sandbox
   
   
   for Mac and Linux, I am unsure if this game runs or where it will hold its folders but something like AppData is a good starting point to look.
   
   
2. To make sure that everything is working in that directory, make sure that nothing is outside any folders like the image above.
   
   
3. If there is files outside of the folders, make sure they have no space at the end of the name like this
   
   
   Please make sure you save any custom assets added to a separate folder before continuing.
   
   
4. To make the levels appear again, Delete the folder that has the same name as the .vlvl file, and next time you run the game the levels should appear and they will be in their own folder. You know can re-import you assets back over (covered later).

Thank you for reading, if this guide helped you please give it a rating. As stated before, if there is anything I missed please feel free to tell me in the comments.