Efficient Mapmaking + Using Mods

[BlueBerryWizard]

Any advice you guys can give me on how to develop maps efficiently I would appreciate. I have less time now to work on maps...

I am going to set up a medieval mod which will just have a whole lot of custom models imported with custom buttons and everything which I shall use to start my remake of Fort Wars (from WCIII) for SCII.

I have a whole bunch of WoW models someone converted and although they might not be exactly what I need, they're close enough, and should allow me to start creating my game until I can find a modeler/animator to help out.

My game needs a male and female human villager/peasant who can then be customized by changing the model variation to change appearence and equipping armor/tools/weapons/etc to the unit. I will also be making a whole lot of farm animals which I will use with my agricultural system ingame using a WoW model critter pack, and another pack for plants including trees and other things which players will be able to grow.

I'm not sure if I can use scripts made from within my mod, but if I can, I might do that too.

Should I make multiple mods for different things or should I have just one mod with my physics, medieval stuff, and agricultural stuff all together?

I intend to keep my UI scripts map-specific.

Oh and Hammer might help me with setting up data. I still hate the data manager and still don't undestand actor messages much x.x. I have found many ways to avoid the data manager as much as possible though.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Any advice you guys can give me on how to develop maps efficiently I would appreciate. I have less time now to work on maps...

The same way you develop software. Start of by creating a list of requirements for the map to achieve. Proto-type any that you think might be impossible. Move your way onto designing the actual map, breaking it down into discrete sections. Work a section at a time and, if possible, get help to work on many sections in parallel. Finally merge all sections together to get the full alpha product. Remember that not all sections may be critical so you can still produce playable maps without everything being complete.

You then need to resolve any problems with section interaction and perform initial testing until most features function as intended and fufill the requirements. This is also where rough ballencing should occur. You should then be able to beta test for a while to resolve any remaining problems or while non-critical sections are finished off. Finally your deliverable can be released to public. Obviously some maintanence may be needed to change ballence or add additional features.

The most important part of working efficiently is to fully specify what you aim to achieve and to efficiently break it up into small sections. Doing this can allow you to exploit parallel implementation efficiently that can litteraly double project progression. With enough dedicated workers on a project you may not even need to do much work yourself (you can take a more passive manajorial role).

I am going to set up a medieval mod which will just have a whole lot of custom models imported with custom buttons and everything which I shall use to start my remake of Fort Wars (from WCIII) for SCII.

I have a whole bunch of WoW models someone converted and although they might not be exactly what I need, they're close enough, and should allow me to start creating my game until I can find a modeler/animator to help out.

My game needs a male and female human villager/peasant who can then be customized by changing the model variation to change appearence and equipping armor/tools/weapons/etc to the unit. I will also be making a whole lot of farm animals which I will use with my agricultural system ingame using a WoW model critter pack, and another pack for plants including trees and other things which players will be able to grow.

Bundle all related assets (art) into mods. Asset mods should be large in file size and the lest commonly changed of mods (do not update them for just 1 or 2 minor changes, only big changes). This saves people having to download a lot of data each version.

The other kind of mod is a data mod which are small and can be regually changed. They are used if the same data is to be used in many maps to allow all maps to be updated at once with minal downloads.

I'm not sure if I can use scripts made from within my mod, but if I can, I might do that too.

You should be able to.

 

[BlueBerryWizard]

DrSuperGood does this mean that I have to make all my unit models and buttons in the mod itself?

"One thing you should notice, however, is that you cannot directly access assets like .dds/.m3 files in mods (for now). For example, I cannot create a new button and use my imported file. However, I can duplicate the other button and change all the other values to what I want them to be. This means that when creating a mod, you must create models/buttons/sounds associated with your assets or people will not be able to use them at all."

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/general-editor-mapping-659/creating-using-mods-170915/

Edit: Btw, that tutorial needs to be updated. The beta was over a long time ago.