New race from scratch

Hello all

Altough I'm not new to programming, modelling/skinning and all the rest, I'm completely new to Warcraft 3 modding.

I passed the day looking to several stuff people is doing in this area (tools, new spells, new art, and so on), but saw no sign of anyone trying to create a new race. Is this because it's something impossible?!

It would be interesting if players could select between Humans, Orcs, Undead, Night Elves and Dandrea's New Race From Scratch, for example! As this would be my first interest in modding Warcraft 3, I would like to know if it's ever possible.

Thanks all.

Fernando D'Andrea.

PS: If I ever create a new race, I promise I'll give it an interesting name.

Well, what a possible thing. ;-)
You said you see no one talking about this? Impossible! 'Think too many people are talking about this. And some great maps of this kind have been published, see this one: War of the races It has gotten 12 races!
But if you wanna do something yourself, just play it but don't use WE to open it. Explore the secrets yourself, you'll find this better than any tutorials or samples.

Trust me, people make new races. (I am, 3 of them actually! :D) Look in the Hosted Projects section. Creep Rebellion puts a creep race in certain maps, and some other one (forgot what it was called) completey converts WC3 into a bunch of new races. Good luck anyways, have fun!

On the other hand, I've seen several interesting campaign projects die due to the effort to make new races to them, while it was not needed.

basically, a new race is just a fucking huge pile of work, especially in the art department, if you want to do it right.

In other hand, new race can open new posibilities and gives creator much less limitation than actually complete races

Well, the failure possibilty of your map becuase you can't make that new race you wanted goes up the more you try to MAKE a new race.

If it's just throwing units together from WC3 that already exist and don't need to be changed, easy easy.


If it's putting together unts then chaning them, meh, depends.
But if its a 100% recreation, as in models, sound sets, textures, and other stuff, you better have Erwtenpeller on your team :D

But good luck.

Well, making a new race was my first "modding dream"(what a definition ^_^) too, but as many people said above, I FAILED ~ I was to make a complete race base on Naga called Waterie (well don't blame me I'm not good at naming, haha) I had all my imagination completed perfectly, but when I
launch on doing that, 'found it that annoying. From then on I understood what hard work Blizzard had made ;-)
However, if you're firmly to make that, remember that making a 3-tier town hall isn't that easy; making a tech-tree with no leaks isn't that easy; creating fully customized models, icons, soundsets, as said above, isn't that easy, either. These 3 things, after all, are those who stopped my Waterie dream long ago! ^_^ 'Hope and believe you're better than merciful me.

daelin is working on a new race (high elf) i believe. it should contain new units, buildings, heroes and even a campaign.
you can check his progress at the Revival of the High Elves official site.

You don't need new models and soundsets to make a new race. That's just if you want to take the extra step. Don't get discouraged, just take your time.

To dandrea:

As you can see in my signature, I'm creating a whole race in order to fight against the improved naga race that I have in my map, and I can say something, it's the best and the longest project that you can do. Many people could think "hey, a new race it's not a big deal, just create new units and some tiers with some upgrades, and that's all" no way.

When you create a race you must thing all the units at the same time, including the possibles strategies that can be done with different combinations of your custom units, and the Heroes, and the enemies (balancing the race), and the spells, and the AI.... my godness!!! other things that makes that kind of project really interesting.

if you want to see a good approach of a balanced and well thought race, look at Santorayo's Creep Rebelion. It could help you to see all the variables involved in the creation of a new race.

At the moment, no more to say, I hope my post encourages you in this kind of project. Good luck ;) and welcome to this site (man, I'm talking like an administrator).

Problem is that I haven't been able to hack the MPQs. I think I find some FDF files which can modify a thing here and there, but they crash when I try to import them in the MPQ. Of course, doing it in Creep Rebellion way is very easy. You have a custom MPQ (thing pretty easy to insert) and the whole new race stuff is done via triggers. However, to make a custom UI, which fully makes the new race compatible with Warcraft... Well, that's something very very difficult, I am unable to solve right now and working on it.

Good luck with your project!

~Daelin

And that's why they suck. If you want your mod to have a real impact you will need more than just the material blizzard provides. Ofcourse, it requires more download space, and so, you may prefer for to stick to lower sized material, but in my opinion custom material is also very important if you want your project to be a success. Of course, you must not neglect balance, gameplay and uniqueness. If your race just fuses elements from the other alreayd existant races then you can give up by now, because it is completely useless.

But yes, a successful project means much more than an interesting story and some custom units with cool name and background, but deja-vu abilities, unappropriate appearance and bad playability and interactivity. Whenever I see such a project, I give up almost immediately, if it doesn't look promising from the beginning. You must have mastered the world editor in order to bring a brilliant project with no custom material.

~Daelin

It is bit pretentious (and indelicate) to say someone else his work sucks...

no, not really. Its quite easy and viable. Projects like Wotth, RotHE, ROR(dead?), DoC, Revolution, those are the ones that twist my buttons, becouse of all the custom content. Those are projects with heart put into them. Creep Rebellion is just a lame ripoff with allmost all blizzard units. If you do something like that on RoC, its cuite cool, but its just too easy in TFT.