How to create a Hero Tavern

This tutorial will teach you how to create taverns and heroes. It will also show the basic triggers of a tavern.

To create a tavern we will use 3 tools of the world editor:
-Object Editor
-Map Editor
-Trigger Editor

This tutorial is Divided into sections:
1- Creating a place for your tavern, using terrain editor;
2- Creating the Tavern, The Hero, and the Hero Chooser using the Object Editor;
3- Creating the regions for the Hero and the Hero Chooser;
4- Managing the triggers;
5- Placing Map Starting Location, end of the tutorial;
6- Optional Section. It will teach you about how to use Path Blockers and it will tell you what they are.
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To start open world editor and create a new map (press Ctlr+N), I want a small map so; I will use grass and 64 for both Width and Height of the Map Size.
This is very easy to do. Now, where shall I place my tavern??? Well, Taverns normally are in isolated areas of the map. I will choose the left down corner to create my tavern, but before I create it, I will create a nice area for it. Go to Layer – Terrain. Now you have the Terrain Palette opened, it is time to use your imagination and create a nice area. I created a cliff so than ground units can’t reach the tavern by cutting tress. You can add trees by going to Layer – Doodads. To help you with the terrain you can also use the View Menu and change the Grid options, turn on the Pathing – Ground or other things.

This is how my scenario looks:



This is the View Menu and the Layers:



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Good, now that we have the place for our tavern, I will create a Tavern, a Hero Chooser and a Hero.
To create a Tavern Press F6 (Object Editor) and select the Unit - section. Now we are going to create our Tavern, to do this press Ctrl+Shift+N (New Custom Unit), select Neutral and create a tavern. I gave an original name to my tavern as you can see .



Before placing our tavern in the map, it is important that we change it. Now it is time to delete all heroes this tavern sells.



Now is time to create a new hero. Heroes are special units that can be only created by using other heroes. I will use the human Paladin to create my hero.



I want my hero to have other spells, a different model and voice.To do so I will change all these settings. Just take a look at the pictures. This part is very easy to do.

I will start by changing the abilities. This hero of mine will be very good at stunning enemies and killing them. I start by deleting all previous powers and I will add the ones I want. Always add three Lv3 spells and one Lv6 spell (when considering a hero with lv10 max).



Now I will change the Hero's model, icon and voice.



In good maps the sound of the unit matches the model.



Now all the other settings that need to be changed:









Now that our hero is done, we have to add him to the Gameplay Constants in order to make the computer accept this new created unit as a Hero one.
To do this quit the object editor and enter the Map editor. In there select Advanced – Gameplay Constants. This step is very important.



Now it is time to make our tavern sell our hero. Go into the object editor and select the Tavern. Select the field that says Techtree – Units Sold and place your hero there.

Now that we have our tavern and our hero done, it is time to create our Hero chooser.
To do this, enter the Object Editor and press Ctrl+Shift+N. I will create a circle; most players use it in their maps so I think it is a good idea to use one as well.



Because our Hero costs 5 units of food, we can do 2 things now:
-Reduce the hero’s food cost to 0
-Make the circle produce food
Both options are available in the section Stats of each unit when opening the object editor.

The Object Editor it’s not as difficult to use as you may think. If you have any problems using it, or any question put them in the forum or talk to the creator of this tutorial.

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Now that we have our Tavern, Hero and Hero Chooser done it is time to move to the next stage! Quit the Object Editor (or close it, we won’t need it anymore!!!!). Move the Map to the corner you made before and place there your Tavern there.



Your map now looks like this.

Before we can move on to the final stage we need to create two regions. The first region will be the place of our Hero Chooser and the second the place where our bought Hero goes. This is very important; we don’t want our hero to be stuck between the trees and the cliffs we made before. To do this use the Region Palette ( Layers – Region Palettle )
In the Regions Palette select the Add Region command and draw a square in the place you want your Hero Chooser to be when the game starts. When you create a region the Tool Palette shows the region and you can edit it by Right-Clicking on it. I edited the name of my region to Hero Chooser.



Now create another Region to where you want your Hero to go, after you buy him.
I just want my hero to cross the cliff so I will draw a region close to it.



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Now It is time to advance to the most difficult part – the trigger Editor.
To open the Trigger Editor press F4. There you will find a trigger called Melee initialization, because our map is not a melee map, we will need to delete some of those triggers:
-Melee Game - Limit Heroes to 1 per Hero-type (for all players)
-Melee Game - Give trained Heroes a Scroll of Town Portal (for all players)
-Melee Game - Remove creeps and critters from used start locations (for all players)
-Melee Game - Create starting units (for all players)
-Melee Game - Run melee AI scripts (for computer players)
-Melee Game - Enforce victory/defeat conditions (for all players)
These triggers must be deleted.

Now we will create a folder for our new triggers. Create a new folder by pressing Ctrl+G and name it Tavern. Select the folder and create a new trigger (Ctrl+T). Name the new trigger with the name “Start Game”.

You have something like this now.



Now we will make our new trigger create the circle, for player 1 (red) in the “Hero Chooser Region”. To do this, we need an event and an action. Conditions are not always necessary.
To create an Event, select the new trigger and press Ctlr+E. Units cannot be create at map initialization, so we will create our Circle when the game time is 0.01 seconds.



We have our event so now, we will create the action. The action is the main part of any trigger. Our action is to create a Circle for Player 1 Red when the Event happens in the proper region.



Now we have our first trigger made. Your screen will look like these.


Now it is time to move to the next trigger.
In this trigger the objective will be once the tavern sold the hero, the computer will remove the Hero Chooser from the Game and make the hero move to the second region. This trigger will also move the Camera to the hero region.

To do this create a new trigger Named “Hero Sell”.
The event will be a generic one, “Unit - A unit Sells a unit”. However there is a small problem: this event includes all units in the game, and we don’t want that. We want to make this trigger work only with the tavern we created. To solve this problem we have to create a condition “(Unit-type of (Selling unit)) Equal to My Tavern".

To create the event:



And now the condition:





With the Event and the Conditions made it is now time to make the Actions.
The main purpose of this action is to “Unit - Remove (Buying unit) from the game” and after that do “Unit - Move (Sold unit) instantly to (Center of Place of hero <gen>)” and “Camera - Pan camera for (Owner of (Buying unit)) to (Center of Place of hero <gen>) over 2.00 seconds”. This means that when you buy a hero, The Hero chooser will be removed and both camera and unit sold will be moved to the second area.

Remove buying unit:





Move the sold unit to the “Hero region”:







Move Camera to region over 2 seconds:







Ok now that you made all these, your screen will be something like this:


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Now before the Job is 100% complete we must put the starting locations in the Taverns Area. You can do this by using the Units Palette.



Tavern and hero DONE !!! I hope this tutorial helped you, if you experience any difficulty, find any bugs, or have any suggestions, please post them in our forum.

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Your map is now done, but sometimes adding path blockers is not a bad idea. Path Blockers are invisible units that don’t allow normal game units to cross certain areas, regions, or that take away the vision of a certain area for the players.
This section of the tutorial is optional, it is not 100% needed but it will help you to reach perfection, increase your WE (World Editor) knowledge and make better maps.
To use path blocker go to Layer – Doodads.



Good, now go to the Doodads Palette and change the third field to Pathing Blockers:



Now will use the Pathing Blocker (Both) (Large) to block both air and ground units that try to cross this cliff. The process is very easy to do. You may want to turn on the Pathing – Ground and the Grid ( and select Medium) options in the View Menu. As I already explained, these options are very helpful in ground pathing. Now I will put as much blocker as I can in the cliff. I am using the “Both” Blocker because it will work in ground and air units.



Well done, however, if you prefer you can use instead of these blockers, the Line of Sight Blocker (Large). The Line of sight blocker prevents players from seeing what is next to the cliff we created. However there is a small problem – we can’t have 2 types of blockers in the same square so you will have to choose which one you want to use in your map.



Personally I think the Unit blockers (have a look in image 37) are better, so I decided to use them in the cliff instead of the line of sight blockers. However this blockers can have other applications in your map, it is only a question of utility.

Half of this tutorial is totally unnecessarily , plus doesn't get to the point (such as the terrain the creation of an hero)and also the fact tht you can use trigger tags. It hurts my head. But it is an nice tut though

-Av3n

-_- I second that.

What's the point of going through all this trigger stuffs? Doesn't a normal tavern auto-select a unit when it comes close. Correct me if it goes deeper than that.

Well, as creator of the tutorial, i don't think that half of it is unnecessary. As it is written in the introduction, people who never opened world editor will have several problems using it and this tutorial was made to help them. About trigger tags, i think that trigger tags are not useful, it's like having all triggers in a piece of paper, but you still don't know how to create them and how to do them... Where shall i go to make my camera move ??? or to make a region ?? What do i have to do ?? Which buttons ?? ... Trigger tags do NOT explain that to people... and my tutorial does.
About the "point" i don't understand what do you really mean when you say it doesn't get to the point ... the goal of this tutorial is to teach people about how to create heroes, terrain and triggers for Tavern Systems only, and i think it does that, it explains every little thing you have to do, explains how to create the hero and triggers. The map terrain, it explains how to open it ... I decided not to loose lots of time with the terrain because i think people will just know how to use it.... It is very easy to create a green path in the ground.... I mean who needs help for that ??? People are not that retarded ...
Anyway, if you think i have to change some stuff please tell me what is wrong with the tutorial so than I can correct it.

About taverns, let me correct you, taverns are not as simple as you think they are. If taverns were like you say (select a unit, move the unit close to the tavern, buy hero and then run away) most of the today best maps would have never been created. Without this system DOTA, hero wars and other maps would have never been created.
This tutorial explains how to create the basic concept of a DOTA tavern system, and several hero wars maps. With this system you can use -repick, -swap and other options.

Yeah but almost everyone else ignores the tavern and uses Vexorian's Hero Select System 7.0, which is totally better, since you can view a hero's stats and skills before you pick.

But the tutorial is good for beginners.

OMG location leakage.

This system also allows to see the heroes stats and abilities. It is even better than your system because you can add more than just the abilities, you can add a story, per example, and also allows you to give color codes to the text and others. By the way, Dota 6.43b uses this system. You choose a hero by using a tavern just like i in map. Of course there are also some modifications that my map doesn't have, after all it is just a tutorial to teach people. Te research must be done by those who want to create their own maps.
Feel free to tell me wrong stuff about my tutorial, i want it to be perfect so than i can post it in the main page of the forum.
However i confess i am not very familiar with the system you just revered. It would be nice to explain your system better please. Now i am interested.

first you dd... You can also add stories with vex's system by modifying the code or making simple GUI triggers showing the story upon selecting the unit. Heres the systom toink was talking about http://www.wc3campaigns.net/showthread.php?t=78562 its in JASS as well. Oh your concept of tarverns... Many maps used their own hero selection system b4 tarverns were invented

-Av3n

Amen! One of the oldest version of AoM, uses dialogs( I think ) it was quite cool but it's now pretty old. ToB uses clicks(?) Just click on a hero and you get him.


When I said "You can see the hero's stats" I meant you can "actually" see them as if they were your own hero. The selection system works like this..

You click on a hero, the hero becomes yours. It has abilities called Choose this Hero and Random hero. Use the Choos this Hero ability to pick that hero. But you can view every single detail on the hero before you choose.

Just checkout that system to understand it better.

It is in deed a good system. However it is not perfect. As I said before, you can't write a story for your hero, nor use colour codes either. Another thing is that the system you talked about takes a lot of space in a map, 11 heroes will take 10 times more space than 1 tavern, which can have 11 heroes too. The only thing that makes the system good is the fact that you can see the model and the icons of the abilities. All the other things can be written in hero's information in 1 tavern.
Besides players that are not familiar with warcraft will not understand how the system works (trust me, my first time was a complete disaster and I know I wasn't the only one). They will have to learn how to use it first; again the taverns system has an advantage, players that are not familiar with the game can easily understand how it works. Another point for using the taverns system is that young players, using world editor don't know hot to use JASS and they will not know how to change the settings of the triggers to use in their maps, therefore making that system a complete waste of time. That system is good for "dota, hero wars and hero arenas style" maps but it becomes unnecessary when using other maps. By the way, how do you repick a hero with that system?...

Vexorian is a great programmer and is is one of the best (if not the best) in warcraft editing world , but he misses some important points when creating master pieces.

Other maps were doing fine without taverns system, that may be truth, but, if they were doing so fine, why were all those system replaced by the taverns system ? If Vexiorian's system is so good, what are maps still doing with taverns system ???

Again, I must remind you that the main reason of my tutorial is not to create masters in warcraft editing world, but yes to help those who have great difficulties in it and that need help. Vexorian's system is very good, but it also is bad in it's complex JASS way, that keeps people away from using it.

Because ppl don't like JASS duh unlike most ppl here...

-Av3n

He never does.

As a matter of fact, almost everything you said about his system's disadvantages and your tavern's advantages were completely wrong.

No story eh? Go play AotZ, Rising_Dusk easily modified the system and take a look, each hero has got a long story. There are even warnings like "Disclaimer: Greel does not attack, but he has Consume which drains life from a target."

So what if it takes space? Couldn't you make space?


'Twas your first time. However, the more bright people understand it perfectly. If they notice that they see heroes standing in an isolated place, they'll know they have to click it. Why? They think and use their brain for instance.


That's because Dota and some other maps were crappily made. They never took the time with their projects. Take a look at Age of Myths, vile spent 2 weeks for each hero and finished the whole map in a year. His selection system was pretty good too. Vexorian's system is pretty good actually, other map makers just don't take the time to understand JASS programming so they go and use taverns.


Then I am sorry for going way off topic, but I had to tell you that what you were saying was wrong. But here I go again..


It is not that complex. It's complex for you maybe because you don't understand JASS. Is that it? What it does is detect if you select a hero, then give that hero for you and prevent it from using spells, movement etc,. Then detects whether a hero is chosen via the Choose Hero spell, then creates that hero and removes the chosen hero from the gallery.

I am done discussing the sex of angels with you two. Just because you are pros in editing world, it doesn't mean everyone is ! If my tutorial sux, why is this the only site where you two are saying bad stuff about it ??? Ok you don't need my tutorial but face the fact that OTHER PEOPLE NEED IT ,accept it. I understand you may not need it but it is wrong to take the privilege from other people.
I suggest that if you have no suggestions at all, to stop posting in this forum about my tutorial and go destroy someone else's tutorial.

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EDIT:
Tip: This tutorial is not complete yet !!
I have to change the size of all images.
Have to add links.
Have to add lines.

dn't double post as well...

-Av3n

sry about that didn't noted .... Anyway just read my first post and do what it says...
I double posted to prevent people from saying that "vexorian system is better, your sux, so remove it".