[4ian]

Adds expanded versions of four more 3D starters: the same game, on a map made with the 3D terrain extension, modeled on the 3D GTA Expanded. The original starters are unchanged.

The expanded starters are named starting-expanded-<starter> and " Expanded": they are more than starters (a map for now, maybe more later), and their slug tells them apart from the starters.

Uses the theme support for custom objects, the terrain.* slots and the model slots for scattered models of #1082 (merged). Based on the latest main. Same approach as #1086 and #1087.

The starters

Starter	Map
starting-expanded-3d-flight-sim — "3D Flight Simulator Expanded"	16384 px with a low resolution (64 px cells): mountains with snowy tops, valleys, a lake, forests and farms.
starting-expanded-first-person-survival-crafting — "3D First Person Survival Crafting Expanded"	6144 px: an open forest on hills around a camp in a clearing, with trees and boulders to gather.
starting-expanded-3d-top-down-rpg — "3D RPG Expanded"	4096 px: a village by a river, paths between hills, forests and a bridge on a ford.
starting-expanded-3d-rts-unit-selection — "Top-down RTS (unit selection) Expanded"	4096 px: a valley with hills, the base of the starter in the middle crossed by a stream, farms, a mine, an outpost and forests.

Each variant is built from the starter as it is on main. What changed in the events is only what the map needs:

• Flight: the plane was kept above a flat ground; it is now kept above the terrain under it (Terrain.GroundZ(PlayerAircraft.X(), PlayerAircraft.Y()) + 20), and inside the map (a new event clamps its position, with a comment). The lake is a hollow dug in a flat shore; its water (a Water3D object, rotated along the lake) is as high as the hollow holds it, and all its edges are under the shore, so the shore draws the outline of the lake (no straight edge, no water above the ground).
• Survival: the terrain is added to RaycastSurface, so that items are placed on it. The trees and boulders to gather stay objects; the bushes, berry bushes, plants and flowers are scattered models.
• RPG: the events are those of the starter. The player is a 3D physics character instead of a top-down movement: the 3D physics behavior, the 3D character behavior, and the keyboard (arrow keys, like the starter) and joystick mappers (Platformer3DKeyboardMapper, Platformer3DMultitouchMapper). It walks on the terrain and on the planks of the bridge (a static body with the shape of its model), and is stopped by static bodies: the buildings, the obstacle of the starter, the trunk collisions of the trees and rocks, the walls at the limits of the map, and invisible walls along the river banks and the sides of the bridge (RiverBank, 10 boxes): the bridge is the only way across. The only changes in the events: the dialog deactivates the two mappers instead of the top-down movement, and the player is no longer separated from the obstacle (its body stops the player). The dialog box keeps the button variants of the starter (OptionButton) through the update of PanelSpriteButton. The 5 grass models of the starter are now a scattered models object (GrassTufts), as Grass is the terrain grass in the expanded starters. The camera instance is moved above the village.
• RTS: the units walk with navmesh pathfinding (NavMeshPathfinding), instead of the grid pathfinding of the starter with invisible obstacles over the hills and at each tree. The navmesh is built from the terrain (slopes over 22° can't be walked on, so the units go around the hills and stay in the valley), the trunks of the scattered trees and rocks, and the buildings, and it follows the terrain and the forests when they are changed. The units avoid each other (crowd). The destinations are put on the ground (Terrain.GroundZ): the navmesh keeps the units on it. The map being bigger than the screen, the arrow keys (or WASD) move the camera object, clamped above the valley, and the layers look from it every frame. On touch screens, dragging with two fingers moves the camera, in a "Two-finger camera drag" group: with the "Touch is pinching" condition of the pinching gesture extension (1.2.2, [Pinching gesture] Fix converting positions to the scene on a 3D layer (v1.2.2) GDevelop-extensions#2330), the point of the ground at the center of the pinch (PinchGesture::CurrentCenterX/Y) stays between the fingers; the touch controls of the starter (tap to move, hold and drag to select) wait until the fingers are lifted. The buildings are Fantasy RTS models where the starter has its impassable boxes. The water boxes of the starter are replaced by a Water3D object like the river of the RPG, as high as the shallow stream (the units walk across it), with its edges under the banks.

The events of these starters are unfolded, except the groups (which can stay folded).

Each variant has its forests, bushes, rocks and plants as scattered models (Terrain3D::ScatteredModels, GPU instancing, their Model mapped to the nature.* model slots, in a Nature folder), mountains around the playable area (and walls at the limits where the player could climb), its shape in the Edits property of the terrain (generated by a script running the terrain and scatter code of the extension), ambientCG ground textures with normal maps, CC0 asset-store models credited in its README, a new project UUID, a preview.png from a 1280×720 screenshot, the latest version of every extension it uses (including GDevelopApp/GDevelop-extensions#2310), and its objects mapped to theme slots.

The survival and the RPG have grass on the whole terrain (one Grass instance: it only grows where its layer is painted and on gentle slopes, drawn in chunks of 500 px, the far ones hidden). The flight and the RTS, seen from far away, have none.

The water of the flight, the RPG and the RTS is a Water3D with an opacity of 120, wave crests 231;248;255, foam 0.05, ripples from assets/WaterNormalMap with a size of 600, wave height 2, wave length 150 and wave speed 1.8. Each keeps its color.

Tests

The tests of the starters are kept and run on the map, with tests added for the gameplay the map changes (in bold; the flight and RPG starters had none):

• Flight: the plane flies forward above the ground; it stays inside the map.
• Survival: walking and strafing; harvesting a tree fills the inventory.
• RPG: talking to a villager opens the dialog.
• RTS: selecting a unit and ordering it to move; selecting every unit at once; dragging with two fingers moves the camera, without selecting or moving units; the arrow keys move the camera, which stops at the edge of the valley.

Removed, because they check how the map is made, which a game made from the starter will change (they would break as soon as the map is edited):

• Flight: "The plane cannot fly into a mountain", "The scattered trees and plants grow on the ground".
• Survival: "The player and the resources start on the ground", "The player walks up a hill of the forest", "The scattered trees and plants grow on the ground".
• RPG: "The player and the NPCs stand on the ground", "The player walks up a hill and stays on the ground", "The river stops the player, the bridge lets it cross", "The houses stop the player", "A tree stops the player", "The scattered trees and plants grow on the ground".
• RTS: "The units start on the ground", "A unit sent behind a hill walks around it", "The scattered trees and plants grow on the ground".

The tests render at 160×90 without shadows, with the grass and the scattered models hidden, and with a 60 s timeout. All 9 tests pass with node scripts/run-gameplay-tests.js and the latest build of GDevelop's master (the one the CI uses). Checked apart for the RPG with its 3D physics character, with tests not kept: the arrow keys move the player and it walks up a hill; the river stops it; it crosses the bridge walking on its planks (1 to 5 px above the deck), and the walls along the bridge keep it on the planks; a house, the well, the obstacle of the starter and a tree trunk stop it.

Events compared to the starters

What changed in the events of each starter, compared to the starter it expands:

Starter	Instructions (starter → expanded)	Changes in the events
Flight	28 → 30 (+4, −2)	The plane is kept above the terrain under it (Terrain.GroundZ(...) + 20) instead of above the ground box, and inside the map (a new event clamps its position).
Survival	149 → 149	None. The terrain replaces the ground in the RaycastSurface group.
RPG	26 → 27 (+4, −3)	The dialog deactivates the keyboard and joystick mappers (2 actions) instead of the top-down movement, and the separation from the obstacle is removed: the 3D physics stops the player. The movement itself changes (3D physics character instead of the top-down movement, static bodies), but not in the events.
RTS	50 → 86 (+38, −2)	The units walk with navmesh pathfinding: MoveTo with the destination on the ground, instead of the grid pathfinding (twice: touch and mouse). The camera: the arrow keys (or WASD) move it (4 events), the "Two-finger camera drag" group (while pinching, the camera keeps the point of the ground at the center of the pinch between the fingers: 2 events), and an event keeping it above the valley, the layers looking from it. The touch controls of the starter wait while two fingers drag (a condition).

Screenshots

Views of the maps (1280×720, scaled down):

3D Flight Simulator Expanded

3D First Person Survival Crafting Expanded

3D RPG Expanded

Top-down RTS (unit selection) Expanded

With themes applied (built from GDevelopApp/GDevelop-assets#704), first view and overview. These were taken before the grass covered the whole terrain and before the new water settings:

Flight: winter, pirate	Survival: forest, winter

RPG: castle, pirate	RTS: medieval, winter

Not done / to check

• RTS: on slopes, the navmesh is up to ~5 px above the terrain (5 px navmesh cells, built in ~0.3 s at the start). The cursor is projected on the plane at z=0, so clicking on the slopes of a hill sends units a bit off; the base and the paths are at z=0.
• The starters are not added to the AI prompts (GDevelop-ai-prompts).
• npm run build (database) stops in this sandbox when fetching the deployed themes (proxy). The theme slots were checked with checkStarterThemeSlots, and every theme was applied to every new starter with applyThemeToStarter.
• Performance was not measured on a phone.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wa8uKpYuQrYqGYnqGCsquj

[github-actions]

Preview the game(s) changed or added in this Pull Request

• https://editor.gdevelop.io?project=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GDevelopApp/GDevelop-examples/claude/awesome-knuth-vaoj1s-more-maps/examples/starting-expanded-3d-flight-sim/starting-expanded-3d-flight-sim.json
• https://editor.gdevelop.io?project=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GDevelopApp/GDevelop-examples/claude/awesome-knuth-vaoj1s-more-maps/examples/starting-expanded-3d-rts-unit-selection/starting-expanded-3d-rts-unit-selection.json
• https://editor.gdevelop.io?project=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GDevelopApp/GDevelop-examples/claude/awesome-knuth-vaoj1s-more-maps/examples/starting-expanded-3d-top-down-rpg/starting-expanded-3d-top-down-rpg.json
• https://editor.gdevelop.io?project=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GDevelopApp/GDevelop-examples/claude/awesome-knuth-vaoj1s-more-maps/examples/starting-expanded-first-person-survival-crafting/starting-expanded-first-person-survival-crafting.json

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