Some basic help for a newbie?

Hi everyone

I come to you all as a complete neophyte in the world of Warcraft III map/mod making. I did not use Staredit or anything else associated with editing any Blizzard game, so I really am starting from scratch here. For what it's worth I am somewhat familiar with Q3 Radiant (lot of good that does me).

I'm making a map/mod for my young daughter who is four years old. She's not old enough to see the scary creatures in WC3, but she does show a lot of interest in the game. I'm going to make a little something for her so she can take one unit around in an environment I make for her and explore without getting attacked by anything or having to deal with seeing stuff like heads on sticks and so forth.

My first problem is that I'd like to spawn just a single unit (I think I'll be using that elfish mage from the human group, as it looks like a little magical princess, which is right up her tree)... and I don't want a town hall or five little workers ready to work. Just the one character. That's it, that's all.

The second thing is that I'd like the camera to follow this single unit around. Rather than having my kid both move the main unit and also control the camera, I'd simply like it to follow her.

If you're thinking that this sounds like a mod which is somewhat like WarHunters, you're quite correct. Obviously the violence thing isn't part of the picture, but the camera control and unit spawning would be very similar.

I apolgize if these questions are answered elsewhere on this forum. Forgive me for not having the energy to search thoroughally. Anyone who could help me out sure would get my appreciation.

Thanks again,
Corey Tamas
http://www.macgamer.com/

What you want to do can be done with the World Editor (WE).

Load up the WE and set up your landscape, placing units and changing terrain to your liking. The WE uses 'brushes' to add to a map.

You start out with a fairly blank map. It's just dirt. Add some grass or other terrain types by going to Window>New Pallette>Terrain and picking the terrain type that you'd like to paint with. Click and drag on the map to add the new terrain. You can add hills and valleys by using the apply height brushes.

Next, you'll want to get some trees and rocks and such out there. Change to the Doodad Pallette using the pulldown box at the top of the Terrain Pallette. You'll see some new pulldowns and brushes appear. All of these are placeable items on the map. Selecting a brush and then clicking once on the map will add one of these units or you can click and drag to paint a row of them. You can even add things like butterflies and birds into the scene through the doodad pallette. Check through all the pulldown lists to see what you can add to the scene. I've listed some kid-friendly doodads below (Mostly under props).

-Bats
-Birds
-Hay/Hay Cart/Hay Clump
-Hitching Post
-Human/Orc Banners
-Lantern Post
-Pile of Treasure
-Sign Post
-Trough
-Wheelbarrow
-Fence pieces
-Windmill
-Whale

Next, add units to your map. Switch to the Units Pallette. You can add units in the same way you add doodads. I've listed some kid-friendly units below for you.

NEUTRAL PASSIVE
(NEUTRAL, LORDAERON SUMMER, ANY LEVEL)
-Child (2 kinds)
-Man (2 kinds)
-Woman
-Sheep
-Pig
-Flying Sheep
(NORTHREND)
-Seal
(VILLAGE)
-Dog
-Stag

None of these units has an attack, so don't worry about them going after your daughter's character. They'll just wander around and add flavor.

Now, you want to add the character that your daughter will play. Go to Player 1 and find a character you think she'll like (i recommend High Elf [female] from the human race.) Place that unit on the map where you want her to start. From the buildings section, pick the start location and add that on top of the character.

Now for the tricky part--setting up the triggers (the framework of the game). From the module window, go to the Trigger Module. You'll see a bunch of melee triggers to start out.

Get rid of them by highlighting each one and hitting delete. None of these actions will accomplish what you want.

Now you want to add some new ones. Right click on "Actions" and select "Create New Action". From the first pulldown, select "Camera-Lock Camera to Unit". This action will make the camera follow her. Configure the action by clicking the blue words.

Configuring Lock Camera:
-Player 1: Keep this the same.
-(Triggering Unit): Change this. A new dialog shows up. You want to use a variable as the unit so click "Variable" and then "Select a Unit". You go to the map. Find your daughter's character and select her. Click OK.
-Offset 0,0: Leave these. You can adjust the offset to be slightly to the side of the character if you want.
-Default Rotation: Change this to the unit's rotation.

The camera's now locked to your character.

You may want to add some other commands, like Select-Select Unit or Game-Time of Day. I advise browsing through the list and playing a little.

The map is now ready for testing. Go to File>Test Map. It gives you a silly message about it not being a melee map any more, just click OK. If everything looks good, go ahead and exit Warcraft 3. (Leave the World Editor open).

Close up the Trigger Editor. Go to Scenario>Map Description. Change the name of the map and whatever else you like. If you go to Scenario>Player Properties, you can change your player's color and the name of the player. In fact, if you go to Modules>Unit Editor, you can even change the names of individual units (so High Elf [female] could become Cindy.)

Now save the map. You can edit a map at any time, so I recommend saving your progress as you go along. In Warcraft, play a custom map and load yours and you're ready to go.

I hope you have fun!

Your reply was extremely helpful. It not only got me going on the things I wanted to do, but also gave me a good foothold from which to develop my first understanding of how the World Editor works. One thing that was different, mind you: I could not delete the actions... I could only modify them. I set some of them to the parameters you gave me, and the rest I set for "do nothing". Also, I cannot change the player color. Other than that, however, I must
say that everything is going along great and I'll post what I do when I'm done. Thanks again... this is something I really wanted to do and your reply made it possible.

Corey

Here is another simple tip, if you want the people you placed to wander around you can use the ability Wander. It'll make the charachters not just sit there but at random start walking in a direction, however not every single one of them has the ability to have abilities (bad wording I know). So you'll have to create a custom unit off another unit which has abilities. (Like the sheep). This will make the your city,town, village or whatever your designing have a bit more realism to it.

Also if you want to change the color of units I would suggest using world edit enhanced. But it is a PC program (being you have www.macgamer.com as your signature i'm assuming your using a mac.) Also not every one of the units have a transparency (the layer which is effected when you change owner of the unit). There is also a trigger to change color of unit. And there is also change color the unit via vertex coloring (not just the transparency section but the whole unit).

To delete an action, select it and hit the delete key on your keyboard or right click and select the delete option. Whoops on the player colors :-)

I did try that delete key thing... no dice. Still, it's all good because I set the stubborn, invulnerable actions to "do nothing", so I'm ok.

Thanks again for all this. It was the first step I needed to get started!

C

Would someone please help me on how to make ramps, i click on the button in the terrain palette but nothing comes up when i put my mouse over in the work area and click.

Any help would be appreciated.

My experience (and this should come across as funny seeing as I just started, myself) is that ramps can't just be placed anywhere, but only in appropriate areas. For instance, I put ramps along a riverbank, or between two distinctly different ground levels (one higher, one lower), but I don't believe you can just plop one anywhere. The computer balks at creating Escher-esque ramps that start and end at the same height :)

Experiment a bit. I'm new at this so I may be wrong.

C