Basics to GUI Triggering + Editing

Alright newbies and pros alike, here are some basic info and tips that you will need to know in order to become a great and better mapper. I will start off with the very rough basics, and go along into harder basic mechanics of triggering and loops/variables/gameplay.

Before I do any of the above, let's go over some of the basic tools and scroll-down menus.

File: This is where you can go create a new map, open a map, close the current map's window (still keeps WE open however), save the map or calculate the shadows in the map. Some more important things are: Preferences and Test Map.

Preferences - You can control many things in the preferences... Preferably for terrainers. You can control the sky, the time, how you want to view the world editor, how to tell things apart... Check it out, there are many useful things, especially the "Allow Negative Real Numbers In Object Editor" checkbox.

Test Map - Ok, WarCraft III/TFT has to be closed in order for you to use this feature. If it's running, click out of it. Now hit Test Map, and the WE will automatically start War3 up, and load the map up for your testing purposes.

Edit: The edit feature allows you to change or modify. You can do this by first selecting an object in the World Editor, and then click the Edit Menu, and select what you want to do. You can change the object's rotation, name, unit/hero items, items, lots others too.

Undo - Undo does exactly what you think. It "rolls back" a step everytime you click this command. A hotkey to remember is Ctrl+Z You can change the amount of undos possible in preferences.

Redo - Opposite of Undo. Ctrl+Y

Clear - Delete the selected object. Delete key

View: Here you can choose to view the preceeding sub-commands in this drop-down menu. I think everything is almost self-explanatory. But here goes...

Grid - The Yellow lines
Camera Bounds - The Blue Lines
Camera Ojbects - Cameras you created in the Camera palette
Lock to gameview settings - Lets you see the sky, and none of that doodad box crap
Letterbox Mode - Goes in... Letterbox mode! (Like cinematic mode, just has black frames instead)

Layer: Allows you to choose with palette to view.

Scenario: Ok, here are some major things you'll be editing.

Map Description - Where you can change the loading screen type, the name of the map to be displayed when playing this, how many players, and the author.

Map Options - Mostly visualization. Check further down for info on Map Options. This is basically where you can make fog and change/modify the appearance of the map.

Map Size + Camera Bounds - Pretty obvious... This is where you can extend the map's size to the maximum possible... (128x128 goes to 116x116 I believe... You can change the size to max at 128x128) You can also down-size it as well. (For testing purposes and to reduce size of map)

Map Loading Screen - Same as Description.

Map Preferences - Choose the sky for ingame view. Also to choose the time of day. I have no clue what the external thing is - please don't ask me. I will try to find out.

Everything beyond Preferences should be obvious... Just ask me if you need help on any of that however.

Tools: Ok, this menu has the options of how you want to place objects. I think it's all obvious from here other than the selection brush.

Selection Brush - Allows you to toggle from placing objects to not placing objects... I.e. - Yer placing some grunts down on the map... You placed a lot and undoing will remove 50 grunts when you want to remove just one. Press spacebar and then just click that grunt and hit delete.

Advanced: I'll probably go over most of this again later on... So I won't even get into this. Basically this is where some good and cool stuff happen >;P (Most of you won't even use half of these... Like Replace Doodads/Units... like 1/500 people use that feature)

Module: Another place where some good and cool stuff happen >;P Basically everything is done in these modules for your map... From triggers to items.

Terrain Editor - ...If you don't know what this does, I think you deserve a slap.

Trigger Editor - Another slap thing... The place where you make the building blocks of your map. From creating units to creating insanely advanced spells. Also where you place your JASS scripts.

Sound Editor - The module that allows you to import, export, and listen to the sounds of WC3. This allows you to place sounds from external places and put them in your map. (I'm not to good at sound editing - I will look into this)

Object Editor - The most important thing for a terrainer... The object editor. This is where you can feel some power. You can change a unit's model file (What it base character looks like), skin (what it's external character looks like), damage, hitpoints, size, almost everything... You can even change if a doodad is walkable, overwalkable, it's color, etc... Info on abilities and units will be posted further below.

Campaign Editor - I have no clue what to do in the campaign editor... Someone please help me on this section.

AI Editor - This is where you can basically command computer behavior. What they get first, what to do in what situations, etc... I won't go into this because there are like 500 tutorials on AI Editing in the AI/JASS forum.

Object Manager - Not really important, just an overview of everything you've placed/done.

Import Manager - Will get into this further down... Basically this is the place where you put the files of custom models/skins/textures/etc... for your map.

I think the Window and the Help menu is very very self-explanatory, if not... Please learn more about computers before you try map making >;P (Well, not really, but just ask if you need help on these.......... sigh)

That's it for the scroll-down menu... I gotta go so I'll update this in about 2-4 hours with the section of the palettes.

This is probably the most helpful topic since my Spell Assistance Thread that died... :( Anyways, I will sticky it eventally.

Palettes

As I was saying... hehe. Palettes is where you control everything you want to do within the Terrain Module. From placing units, doodads, or even items, it's all done here.

We'll start at the first list you see when you first open a map. Which is the Terrain Palette. But first, you should know about the...

Size + Shape Selection - This allows you to choose what size/amount of the object to come out in. If you selected the square, everything that you place will be in a square form, same for the circle.

Terrain Palette: The terrain palette has many different option. These options include placing down tiles, editing tiles, changing the cliff height, adding water, and applying height.

Apply Texture - This means... Placing down some tiles in my book. Pretend you're a carpenter, you got 50000000 tiles, and you can arrange it any fancy you please. This is the world editor too, you basically have unlimited tile useasge, and can place them anyway you like... Preferrably a nice and pretty look >;P

Apply Cliff - Want to add a 2nd level to your map? Maybe a third? Fourth? Well, you can do it here by clicking the little terrain tile with the arrow going upward (I hope you knew that ;x) And vice versa for terrain to go down a level or a few. To add a 3rd or fourth level, just place tiles on the already heightened terrain, and set the cliff to one of the upper arrows.

Apply Height - Alright, this is a bit different than Apply Cliff. Apply Cliff, you have to add a ramp in order for people to go onto that next level. The ramp is under the doodad section, but don't worry about that now. Now applying height allows you to raise the terrain in a different manner. It "deforms" the terrain into being higher or lower... As shown in those little pictures. The one with the meniscus obviously de-lowers the terrain. And the one with the hat looking one obviously shapes the terrain into... a hat. Well, you should get the general idea. But for higher levels (let's say you raise it to a substantial height) you can still walk on that terrain without a ramp.

Doodad Palette: The doodad palette is another important thing for you terrainers out there. This is needed for you to allow other players to walk onto higher cliffs, make your terrain pretty with more realistic features and to give a nice environment feeling.

The First Scroll Down Menu - This lets you choose what tileset you want to use. For example, if you are under "Lordaeron Summer" you will be able to use only Lordaeron Summer's doodads. I know, all the doodads look the same in e very tileset... But they aren't. Look around.

The Second Scroll Down Menu - Allows you to choose what type of doodad you want to set and place down.

The First Weird Button - This is that circle recycling bin arrow thinger... errr, you know, the green button under the 2nd scroll down menu. You can turn this on or off. When Random Rotation is on, all doodads that are placed while active, will rotate to a random degree.

Random Scale - This randomly scales the size of the doodads that are placed while active. Example... If you have it on, and you place a tree, and another tree and wonder why they're a different size... It's because this is on.

Unit Palette - Most of it's self-explanatory... I hope, but I will talk about the more weirder parts of this. All items can be placed when you are in the Unit Palette. Do place down items, where it says "Player X" (where x is a number), click that menu and scroll down to items. Ba-da-boom. Same for creeps and such... Just scroll down to Neutral Hostile. Same for merchant buildings and taverns... Just scroll down to Neutral Passive. When under the Neutral department, you'll get that Tileset racial thinger (Lordaeron Summer, Loraderon Winter, etc...) Again, some tilesets have this, and some have that, while others might have this and that, but not have that... Get it?

Region Palette - Let's see, how can I best put this... For those of you who played StarCraft, just call these Locations with the ability to put a weather effect on them... For those of you who haven't, this is what a region is. A region is a marked place made by you. You can name it whatever you want (for easy access and memory) and then make triggers that do certain actions only in this region. An example will be defined below later on. You can make a region as big, and small as you want.

Camera Palette - For you terrainers again (and cinematic artists), this is where you'll be going if you want to make a demo map of your skill. When creating a new camera, you have to remember this camera doesn't take effect until you tell it to take effect in a trigger. On the camera properties, there are some options that you are able to edit. I think this is pretty self-explanatory, if not, just ask.

And that's it for the Palette basics. Tomorrow I'll be introducing some advanced tileset options and the Object Module. Peace for now >;P

Sticky this immidately, it's an excellent tutorial.

I'd like to help out, can i do something on triggers? or how to make good code that works good? or is this a one-person project?

I don't know, ask Msystic

I'd like to help too, I'm quite good at customizing WE like creating your own WE config, like you did in the good old RoC times with spells and such.

If you guys would like to help on this, please give me suggestions on what to edit, and some help on what I've asked above. If I miss out on anything that's important, you can tell me and I'll add it asap. I'm going to work on the Object Editor part now.

Well you missed the most important tool of them all!!! the GEM tool, you know the green or purple button in the right corner wich enables units speech set and animation set in the editor, indeed very important if you got nothing to do while your editing and your getting bored at a trigger or something that just wont work, it could be very refreshing to place some innocent peasents in a line and kill(delete) them one by one with the GEM tool activated and se them die with sound and all in the editor.

I just had to write that... :P

And no I can't think of anything you realy missed in these 2 first posts good job with this thread. Its a great start for newbies at WE. One thing I'd like would be if you could add things like good commands, like this one I didn't know of until I read it in a post, you know that you can't change a value in the object editor to whatever you want unless you press shift + enter to alter a value then you can go over / bellow the blizzards limits.

Object Module/Editor

You can open the object editor either by going to the Scroll-Down Menu "Module" and click the command "Object Editor". A faster way is to simply hit F6.

Let's get some QA's down into your head first.

Q: Can a hero unit become a regular unit by checking or unchecking a box in the object editor?
A: No, in order to use a base unit's look on a hero is to find out that regular unit's model path. I will explain below

Q: Can a regular unit become a hero unit?
A: Same as above.

Q: How do I give more than 5 abilities to a unit?
A: You can't. Not unless it's done by advanced triggering or JASS, there's only 1 way. To remove some of the icons like patrol.

Q: Can heroes grow beyond level 10?
A: Yes, they can.

Q: Can heroes gain experience from creeps after level 5?
A: Yes, they can.

Q: Can I detect when bash/critical strike/evasion happens?
A: No, not unless the skill is made by triggers, you cannot.

Q: If you can't make hero units regular units, can you make hero abilities regular abilities?
A: Yes, you can do it! You can do vice versa as well.

Q: Will you add more questions?
A: Definitely, just ask away and I'll take into consideration if it belongs here!

Assuming you never messed with the object editor in the current map, I'll show how to make the peasant a different unit, have abilities, and build different buildings. First, press F6 if the object editor isn't already open and click on Human --> Peasant.

Now, you'll notice on the right there are SOOO many places that you can edit. I'll start from top to bottom on non-obvious things. You'll notice that the peasant's first thing on the right says "Default active ability". That means, whatever ability you put in this will be on auto-cast without someone having to right click the ability. This ability has to be in the "Abilities Normal" field in order for it too work. Also, the ability must be an auto-cast ability...

I won't get into the really technical stuff like the art - animations and Art - Projectile and all that order humbug, because that isn't very basic and this is a tutorial on basics. >;P

The most important fields will be "Art - Icon - Game Interface" and "Art - Model File". The game interface is the icon that you would see for the unit. Like the peasants is a peasant... (duh) so you would end up seeing a peasant in the town hall as a build button. The model file is a peasant as well. The model file is what the unit is based off of. Since it's a peasant, it'll look like a peasant. Scroll through the list, find what you like better that suits this new builder we're creating. Change his icon as needed as well. To make him bigger, find the field that says "Art - Scaling Value" where "1.00" means 100% of actual size. 1.10 means 110% and so on and so on. Find the field "Art - Special" and replace that with the specified model/icon as well. I really don't know what the hell this is, but I like to match...

Now that you have his looks, do you want him to be a ranged type of builder? A builder with no attack? A builder with a melee attack? etc... etc... Well, we're going to make this builder a ranged one with a short cooldown and small damage. In "Combat - Acquisition range" change 500 to 800. Please note that if a unit's range is higher than his acquisition range, he will not be able to attack as far as his range! Now change "Art - Attack 1 - Cooldown" to 1.5. This means that every 1 and a half seconds, he'll make another attack on the acquired unit. Find "Combat - Attack 1 - Range" and change it from 90 to 700. Now the builder has 700 attack range. Let's change his damage, I think in the game his damage is 4-6 as default... We'll make it say... 5-10. In order to increase one unit's attack, there is a formula you must follow. The formula is given below.

Base * Dice = Minimum
Base + (Dice * Sides) = Maximum

The builder's base is set as 4. So find a field that says "Combat - Attack 1 - Damage..." and 4 as the number next to it. Change the 4 to a 5. Leave "Combat - Attack 1 - Number of Dice" to 1. So far the minimum damage is now 5 * 1, which is 5. Now change "Combat - Attack 1 - Sides Per Die" to 5. Now we got the formula for the maximum... Which is "5 + (1 * 5)" which is equal to 10. So now we have 5 - 10! Write down the formula somewhere or something.

If you want him to have 2 attack types, under "Combat - Attacks Enabled" put in both, or if you want just 1, change it to attack 1/2 only. For now, put it at "Attack 1 only".

If you want this builder available after he gets something else or upgrades something else, you'll have to go to "Techtree - Requirements" field and add what's needed in order to get him. That's for unit/building specific, if you want it to be available after he gets an upgrade, find that field again, and under the "Units" scroll-down menu, click upgrades, and so on. Don't forget to check off "Techtree - Check Dependacies" else the requirements won't take effect. Give the builder the buildings he can build as appropriate. It's under "Techtree - Structures Built".

Want to give a unit some abilities? Go to "Abilities - Normal" field and add the abilities as needed. On to the hero editing!

This isn't much different except for the life/mana editing. You have to take into account for more things as well. Now a hero has 2 types of abilities, Hero and Normal. Normal abilities aren't "level up" abilities, but rather just stay on him forever (unless removed by trigger). A hero ability is something that can't be removed by triggers and can be leveled up unless you give him some tome of retraining. Anywho's... You can edit this guy anyway you like, except allowing him to build stuff. Change his model file, interface icon, whatever works mah man. Click the Paladin. Find "Stats - Hitpoints Maximum" it says 100... Now yer going, yeah... So what? But a paladin doesn't have 100 life! He'd die like nothing! Well, that's because he has stats now. The world editor has 1 strength point converted into 25 life as a default. So every strength (The paladin has 22) he has, he'll gain 25 extra life. So he has 22, that's 550 life + 100 from his base/maximum. So that's a total of 650 life. Same with mana.

Fool around with the unit part of the object editor before continuing on the Ability part.

Ability Editing in the Object Editor.

Alright guys, this is where you're going to have to let common sense to kick in because there are so many different fields, it's crazy. Basically, if you want more than 3 levels on a hero ability, find the field that says "Stats - Levels" and change the number to how many levels you want! The rest is pretty damn obvious, and if you need help with anything, you REALLY do need help... But if you do really, just ask on this thread. The "Art - XXXXXX" means what animation will come up on that unit/caster/targets when you cast this ability. Buff editing is not too basic, but basically buffs are those little icons you see on a unit after you cast some spells on that target.

Attach Point List:
Chest
Body
Head
origin
foot
overhead
weapon
sprite
medium
large
mounted
between others
many more (<--- Not an attachment point!)

Fool around with the object editor. Doodad editing is the same, just with not so many fields. Item and upgrade editing should be fairly easy, but upgrade editing isn't too basic either.

Check back later for further tutorials. Advanced Tilesets is coming up.

A more complete list of the attachment points you may want to edit in the post above: (by draco i believe),

Attachment Point Names:
overhead (floats over the unit's head, but doesn't sway with
the head as it animates)
head (sways with the unit's animation)
chest
origin (usually at the base of a unit's feet)
hand
foot
weapon (for heroes)
sprite (for buildings)
medium (for buildings)
large (for buildings)

Attachment Point Modifiers:
left
right
mount (for mounted units)
rear (for quadrupeds)
first (for buildings)
second (for buildings)
third (for buildings)
fourth (for buildings)
fifth (for buildings)
sixth (for buildings)
rallypoint (for buildings)


Edit: Oh yeah, and nice tutorial btw... no more noobs will bother me in aim asking how to use WE ;)

yeah i didnt even read a word of it and i think its great :D

Maybe you should >;P There's lots of great info there. It'll reduce how many questions you ask here.

Yea, maybe it will make you stop posting all together. What a day THAT would be.

Trigger Editing

I dunno where to start, there is so much to talk about. I know...

A trigger is composed of 3 main parts. The Events, Conditions, and Actions. I'll discuss what each one is and it's purpose.

Events

An event is simple. Whenever you make events, like let's say you put 6 events. Player 1 leaves game, player 2 leaves game, player 3 leaves game, etc.. etc.. all the way to player 6 leaves game. All those events don't have to fire in order for the "Actions" part of the trigger to go off.

In english, any one of those events that you made will start the trigger.

Conditions

Conditions, are like conditions in SC. Whenever a trigger is fired (through the events) it goes to the conditions. It checks if all the conditions are met, and if they are, then it'll do the "Actions".

~Later on when you get real good at triggering, you won't even be using conditions, rather be doing a lot of If/Then/Elses.

An example of a trigger is this...


That's a quick thing you could do, of course there's an easier way to do this but, bah, giving you a general idea.

Let me break down the trigger.

A unit dies, this is our event, so now that this happened, it's going to check the conditions

Owner of triggering unit is equal to player 1 red... Now if the unit that died isn't player 1, then it won't do anything. But if it is, it'll do the action.

Actions

If you don't know what these are, you're in for some trouble. An action is... an action? What the trigger will do....

Some triggers that are in actions that are also important, but not used often due to misunderstanding are the following: For Loop A, For Loop B, For Loop Variable, If/Then/Else Multiple Actions, and many others, but I will not explain.

For Loop A

For Loop Integer A, is it's full name I believe. This runs a loop that will be executed until it reaches the definition. Where the definition is the point you told it to stop. Here's a fast example.

For Loop Integer A from 1 to 5
Display Text Integer A (You can find Integer A by going to "Convert Integer to String --> Integer A")

That action will display 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on the players screen.

For Loop B does the same thing, but if you need to run another loop under a loop, then this is your call.

For Loop Variable, if you have more than 2 loops going on at once, then well, you'll need a variable loop. If you're going this far, I suggest you learn Jass instead. (usually maps dun need to go as far as For Loop Integer Variable)

If/Then/Else Multiple Actions

pretty simple, just like the If/Then/Else action, just you can define more conditions and actions, rather than just 1. Basically a mini-trigger inside a trigger.


Lol, hope you get it.

There are many actions in a trigger, many conditions, and a few amount of events. Try combining events + conditions together, to get a better result, or a faster one. Try combining Conditions + Actions together to get a better result or a faster one, and again, actions + events.

What most people don't know is that the For Loop A is very handy, especially when you want to crack down on Copy and Pasting. Let's say you want to create 1 unit for every player, and you have 12 players, but don't want to copy and paste 12 damn triggers, here's a way you can do it.

For Loop Integer A from 1 to 12
Create 1 Footman for Player(IntegerA) facing deblahblahblah.

See that integer A? The A starts from 1, so it'll create 1 footman for Player(1), then it goes back at the starting of the loop, now it's 2. So it's gonna create a unit for Player(2), etc... etc... It keeps running back and forth.

I think that's it, experiment with weird actions, or actions yer not familiar with to get a better knowledge of the world editor.