Every so often, we hear news reports of a beached whale. They usually get in to this predicament by coming too close to the shore and then being washed up o­n to the beach by the waves and also they sometimes get a little too eager trying to catch seals, etc. In a giant leap of evolution, this tutorial shows you how to put aquatic creatures o­n all types of dry land as well as in to your fresh water rivers!

Submitted by WitchHazel and Aubergine

The majority of this tutorial focusses o­n dolphins as they are much more visible in the game and have far fewer glitches than their friends, whales.

Putting Dolphins o­n Dry Land

The process for getting a dolphin o­n to dry land is pretty straight forward...

Choose the area of land, sand dunes in this case, where you want a dolphin and then paint a single tile of sea terrain:

Place a dolphin in to the tile of sea terrain:

Note: Whales often require several tiles of sea terrain before you can place them.

Now, paint over the top of the dolphin with land terrain, usually the same terrain as the surrounding area which in our case is sand dune terrain:

And the result is a dolphin swimming around o­n dry land:

Putting Dolphins in Rivers

Normally you cannot put dolphins in rivers, but using the same technique as above now we can!

Place a tile of sea water in a river and then place your dolphin in the sea.  Paint over the sea tile with river terrain and you end up with a perfect dolphin in your river!

Here are some awesome examples....

The land above is made from mountain floor terrain with a scattering of shrubs and stones.  The river bed was made from heath crack terrain.

In case you are wondering how: Paint the river then paint over the river with the desired land terrain to customise the river bed.

The land and riverbed above uses a mixture of stoney sand and heath hill terrain, with a scattering of plants and rocks.  Note how the two terrain types merge in the river!

The land above is made from sand edge with a scattering of plants and rocks and the river bed is made from mud edge terrain.  Some ripples have also been added to the river to give it character!

Problems with Whales!

Dolphins work just great using these tricks, but whales are a lot more tricky and not really that useful:

The biggest problem with whales is that when they submerge they tend to get rather confused about the distinct lack of sea water under your land terrain!  As such, they will submerge and then you might not see them again and even if you do they can be in a totally different part of the map because they are programmed to swim under water (or under land in our case) for a while before resurfacing!

Here's an example of how far a whale moved before it resurfaced:

The whale started where the red "X" is and moved to the other side of our little sea pond before coming up for air.

Minimum Height is Required

Now, another problem with both dolphins and whales is that the highes height they can appear o­n is minimum height, ie. sea level.  If your land is any higher they will simply not be visible.

This is the main reason why whales aren't much use - unlike dolphins which tend to stay in o­ne place, beached whales will happily swim underground and you may never see them again other than a strange white dot moving around o­n your minimap and occasionally that strange blak hole that appears just in front of them!

More Land Samples

WitchHazel went crazy in the map editor and created what have to be the best pictures we've ever seen o­n this website.  Here is a gallery of some of the amazing things she came up with:

A dolphin o­n cracked mud terrain

A dolphin o­n cracked mud with some rocks and plants

A dolphin o­n sand edge terrain

A dolphin o­n mountain terrain

A dolphin swimming in some shrubs o­n forest floor terrain

Two dolphins showing off

A dolphin in a little pond where some water was added o­n top of the forest floor terrain

A dolphin swimming in heath mud terrain with lots of nice shrubs and a few rocks

A dolphin swimming o­n heath terrain - the swirly nature of heath terrainmakes it look like an underwater scene,
especially with the coral-like dead tree, stones and seaweed-like shrubes, etc.

Well, we hope this has given you some great new eye candy to play with and hope that someone will create a map that looks like it's udnerwater!

I have to say a HUGE "Thank you!" to WitchHazel - I had originally started a tutorial but abandonned it when I realised my method o­nly worked in the map editor.  WitchHazel solved the problem and took all of these amazing pictures (and indeed most of the other pictures for SH2 tutorials)! -- Aubergine

Have fun!