New and lost! – Questions posted

Greetings people.
I just registered on forums and checked the FAQs I found and a few tutorials under tutorial subforum.

First of all, I dont know how I missed this webpage before! I wanted to make w3 maps before but was discouraged by the lack of resources. I must have somehow skipped it in google..

Anyway!
I've a few map ideas. I thought I could check some tutorials for some questions I had.. but then I noticed that I had no idea what to check. I mean, it's my first time and I'm TOTALLY clueless on how things work at w3 mapping. I had made a few basic/easy maps in starcraft and I have basic programming experience too. So I think I can get it working once I start it...

So, is there a tutorial like a step-by-step map making to show some features? I'm lost in sea of ideas and tutorials here!
Or do you have a place to ask simultaneous questions? Becouse I'll probably have many questions initially, before I learn what tutorial to use for a particular situation. And I certainly dont want to pollute forums.

PS: Either my message lagged or, more likely, forum is moderated. I thought I had a problem and re-posted, sorry about double thread!

http://www.wc3c.net/showthread.php?t=74894 basic jass guide

just use this thread to aks your questions

Isn't there some generic "how to get started"-stuff within the World Editor itself, placed by Blizzard? Else, start by looking through this tutorial on working with Triggers.

And welcome to the site, enjoy your stay!

also, feel free to just keep on asking questions in one thread, people tend to do that, and it works pretty well :)

Yeah, the forums are moderated. Once a moderator/admin approves one of your posts the rest are no longer automatically moderated.


If reading tutorials isn't doing it for you or end up with a slew of questions all the time, talk to some people on MSN/AIM/whatever. Most anyone who has his or her screen names listed here on Wc3c will not be averse to giving you some pointers.

Browsing around the forums should give you a good idea of who's who, and I'm sure some of the more friendly users (*cough*Not Griffen*cough*) like Rising_Dusk, darkwulfv, Anitarf, and myself would not mind getting you started. Just don't turn into Flame_Phoenix2...

:P

Greetings again, thanks for all the answers. Had some personal stuff that delayed me but I just decided on a map and have some questions I'd like to ask. I'm pretty sure I may find some answers to them with practice, but I wanted to ask nevertheless, to help me better plan ahead:

1) When creating a custom unit/hero, what are the priorities when you choose a base character? Or.. are there such priorities? How does it matter if you choose hero x or hero y or unit a or unit b?

2) How easy/hard/mundane is it to transfer abilities/heroes or any custom content between mats? That is, is it okay to create a custom hero on a map while you work on the map itself on another file and then transfer the hero to there? So you can test random stuff on the other map for instance.

3) Is it possible to give heroes/units more than 5 abilities? If not, can you give an ability a combination of abilities? For example, for a swashbuckler type character, can you combine crit and evasion into one ability? ..well.. I think panda has that, but I mean any two passive abilities.(maybe auras included too).
I want like, 4 active abilities+1 ability that is active too but also has a passive benefit.

4) What can you save or not in variables? I mean, I dont expect a full list ofc:D But maybe there are some distinctive stuff that I should know "you cant store character levels, but you can store their height!" type of unexpected knowledge or maybe a common know-how.

That's all I can think of now, I'll post them as they come. I hope I wont be much of a leecher, I'm just trying to learn my way around :)

PS: How do I edit thread names? Tried to change it into "New and lost! - questions asked" but only the message title changed.

For units, I usually make sure I pick units with stats that are closer to what I have in mind for my custom unit. For instance if I want to create a custom flying unit it's more likely that I would base the unit off of a Gargoyle or a Flying Machine instead of a Knight or Crypt Fiend, because the Garg/FM already have height and shadow stats set in a good way for flying units. That way it requires less modifications on my part to achieve what I want.

For heroes it doesn't really matter which hero I copy, since I usually make heroes that are different from the base heroes. I guess prioritizing similar stats could also work in this case but it isn't as big of a deal. If I am creating a hero that can morph into other units I will definitely use the same custom hero that I had edited though.

However if one is willing to put enough effort into it, one could copy a unit/hero and turn it into a complete copy of another unit/hero. This is just to say that all the necessary data for creating custom units/heroes is available in the editor.

It can become a problem if you want to copy a large amount of ability data or unit data over. Not sure if issue is already covered by one of the extended editors, but in normal WE one is only able to copy units and abilities one by one to another map, or copy all the ability/unit data from one map and completely replace the ability/unit data in another map.

But regarding the second half of your inquiry, if the map that you are copying to becomes very large, it would be a good idea to test custom data in a separate demo map before copying the data over to the main map. This is so you can test and make changes to the demo map very quickly.

Yes it is possible to give heroes and units more than 5 abilities. However the command card (the 12 spaces on the bottom left of the wc3 screen with ability icons) may not be able to fit all that information. If you want you could use the Spellbook ability to add additional abilities to a unit/hero, or Engineering Upgrade to change the abilities of a unit/hero into some other ability. Spellbook is an ability that can contain up to 11 additional abilities, but a Spellbook ability cannot contain another Spellbook ability, custom or otherwise.

Regarding heroes, from what I've read while it is possible to give a hero more than 5 abilities only the first 5 can get skilled up in the hero's skill window.

Abilities cannot be given new effects, so this has to be compensated by utilizing triggers. You can use triggers so that putting skill points into a certain active ability also adds a special passive ability to a hero, or have an additional effect be triggered off of a unit's attack/ability/action in certain conditions.

Well, usually if you look at the data for a unit or hero it is already filled in with default data, like a string for a name, or a string path for a model, or a decimal number for height or movement speed. If you don't know what kind of data a particular field can take, just play around with it. Maybe if you try putting in alphabetic characters nothing comes up, but numeric characters are accepted. Maybe it'll accept the data you put in there, but if you play around with the custom object in WC3, something strange will happen! Usually it is best that you mess around with the editor on a new map to see what you can do, can't do and can but shouldn't do.

You can in theory base your custom hero on just about any default hero, but in practice it's best to pick one where you don't have to change much, so if your custom hero uses an ingame model or a custom model with ingame animations, it's easiest to base him on the hero that has that model by default so you don't have to update various art fields like cast backswing etc. (of course, if you're using a unit model for a hero or vice versa, this rule of thumb does not apply).

No idea, I tend to work in only one map when making map content.

There's a limit of five hero skills, but no limit on abilities. This tutorial might help you.

I'm not sure I understand the question. You can store pretty much anything in a variable, in vJass you can declare a variable of any type. In GUI, you are limited to the types provided by the variable editor.

Only moderators can change thread titles. When you edit the title of the first post in the thread, it edits the post's title, not the threads.

Based on the posts I see from you in this thread, you seem to be the type of person who truly wishes to learn, and knows how to ask questions. If my assessment is correct, you will be a valued member of the community :) so, Welcome to WC3C!

Come join WC3C's chat room some time. The link is at the top of every page. The #dev channel is a good place to ask questions, and get some real-time help. #wc3c is mostly off-topic bullshit. (Beware: a lot of people are often on IRC, but not actually paying attention or talking. It may take a bit of time before someone actually shows up talking.)

I changed your thread title :P

With the JassNewGenPack (you should get this if you do not already have it) you can merge custom object data between maps, so if you create a lot of abilities, buffs, units, etc., in a separate map from your "main" map, you can then merge the data and import all of your stuff easily.

Thanks for all the answers and comments! I just woke up and wanted to see if there were any answers and I'm shocked:D
Ze work shall start and @Earthfury, if the community values those, I'll be proud and honored to be a part of it! Thanks again:)
Thanks for the title too:P
So,

THANKS.
Hehe.