[Discussion] The Home of Custom RTS Games

[UraZ]

Hi everybody.

My team and I are working on a project that will be focused and built only for the purpose of creating custom RTS games. The project includes a very versatile editor and a publishing platform. Here's a little (could talk about it for 10 hours but I do want people to read it so..) explanation about the two.
The editor will not be depended on any game like all the editors up until now (W3, Starcraft, DOTA 2 etc..) and much of the content using to create the games (character models, terrain, functions and more) will be user generated and open. We aim for endless possibilities and games that vary in appearance as well as gameplay.
The platform will provide every game created in our editor its own leader-boards, ranking system, matchmaking, rating and more so that every game will be treated as such and less like a "map" created inside a game. It will also provide our game creators a place to publish their games and a chance to actually gain profit from their creations, an incentive we believe will bring a lot of game creators to create quality and unique custom games.

I'd love to here your thoughts and comments about the idea, giving that a lot of the people here are our target audience, but that's not exactly the purpose of this post.
We're currently developing the editor, and while we can't create it with you holding our hand, we do like to get some knowledge about pain points, good features and basically anything you have to give us about current editors that you worked with. With emphasis on anything.
Here are some questions just to get your mind kicking (you can answer all, some, none or just say what's on your mind)

1. What functions do you build the most? or spending the most time building for your map? (for example if it were a TD, one of the answers would probably be waves)
2. Do you rather build maps via code or via visual scripting (trigger based)?
3. What process or feature is bugging you in current editors (it can just be WE)? what would you improve there?
4. What do you think is the most helpful tool in WE?
5. How much time does it take you to create a custom map? (on average if multiple. If you got some sort of time breakdown by maps that’ll be amazing
6. If we were open source, would you be participating or offering features to make our editor better?
7. If there were a chance for you to make money from your maps, would you work harder/create more maps?
8. How much, if at all, would you charge for your map? (depends on the map we know... average or a cost range would be great)
9. What is the most time consuming part of creating maps? what would you have done to make it less so?
10. Have you ever collaborated with another person in a map creation? in what way - everyone doing everything or each person has it’s role? was it difficult? was it easy? what made it easy/difficult?
11. Has any limitation in the map editor or game engine prevented you from building your dream map? If so, what was the limitation?
12. Rank the following in terms of importance (personal preference) when building a map: Visuals, Gameplay, Story, Difficulty, Sound and Cinematics and Ease of play. (you can add to that list ofcourse)
13. If someone offered you a full-time job creating custom maps, would you take it? what would be your considerations?
14. What do you think makes the WC3 custom maps community alive and kicking after 13 years of the game being out?
15. Would you share mods for free (let people use them in their games) you created for your own games if you knew you could use someone else’s mods while creating your own game? (keep in mind that the games are sold and are not free)

MAP CREATORS - The editor's usability and quality will depend a lot on your opinions, as well as it should, whether its this post or later on in beta testing, right now its this post so please take some time to help the editor get better for your usage. It will be a lot harder without your thoughts.
Thank you for your time, the project will get better with every post written here.

 

[Xonok]

This is an interesting project. I hope you produce something worth using. (I'll post a longer reply later)

 

[GhostWolf]

Text isn't interesting.

 

[UraZ]

This is an interesting project. I hope you produce something worth using. (I'll post a longer reply later)

I look forward to that post.

Text isn't interesting.

I will post some of the work in progress as we go along, right now its extremely raw and it wont give you much insights to what this project is about. At the moment, a picture is not worth a thousand words.

 

[blancfaye7]

1. What functions do you build the most? or spending the most time building for your map? (for example if it were a TD, one of the answers would probably be waves)
2. Do you rather build maps via code or via visual scripting (trigger based)?
3. What process or feature is bugging you in current editors (it can just be WE)? what would you improve there?
4. What do you think is the most helpful tool in WE?
5. How much time does it take you to create a custom map? (on average if multiple, if you got some sort of time breakdown by maps that’ll be amazing
6. If WE were open source, would you be participating or offering features to make it better?
7. If there were a chance for you to make money from your maps, would you work harder/create more maps?
8. How much, if at all, would you charge for your map?
9. What is the most time consuming part of creating maps? what would you have done to make it less so?
10. Have you ever collaborated with another person in a map creation? in what way - everyone doing everything or each person has it’s role? was it difficult? was it easy? what made it easy/difficult?
11. Has any limitation in the map editor or game engine prevented you from building your dream map? If so, what was the limitation?
12. Rank the following in terms of importance (personal preference) when building a map: Visuals, Gameplay, Story, Difficulty, Sound and Cinematics, Ease of play, PvP/PvE
13. If someone offered you a full-time job creating custom maps, would you take it? what would be your considerations?
14. What do you think makes the warcraft 3 custom maps community alive and kicking after 13 years of the game being out?
15. Would you create and share mods if you knew you could use someone else’s while creating your own map?

THANK YOU - This project will be very hard without your knowledge..

1. You have to consider checking every map. I believe all functions must available for the user for every type of custom map.
2. I believe you need to create a visual scripting and raw coding. We are different people after all.
3. SAVING. UNITS. IN OBJECT EDITOR. It takes a lot of time. I would also make an auto-removal of leaks.
4. It is noob friendly. This.
omg I'll answer more later. I HAVE TO GO SOMEWHERE. Damn it my luck is stupid.

 

[rulerofiron99]

Awesome sounding project, the idea of an "open warcraft 3" is something I dream of.

1. Content, probably. It would be nice if you could edit objects in plain text, so that I could e.g. make some generator that would create all 100 creeps for my TD, saving many hours.

2. Visual, with about 10% text. It would be awesome if your editor could convert between the two on a per-line basis.

3. Testing is very time consuming, especially if you don't add debug messages (which you have to clean up later). Dota 2's editor has a nice thing: a console on the side full of debug messages. Something else that would be really cool would be the ability to pause the map during testing, make code adjustments, and then resume the game using the new changes.

4. Object editor.

5. Really hard to say since I don't time it, but something like 100 hours.

6. Definitely. I often make trigger systems for others' maps, adding them to some greater repository would be cool.

7. Yes, it could well become my main job.

8. 1 - 5 USD, but it really varies greater based on the map type. Here's a monetization idea: a player can choose to pay some monthly membership fee (5-10 USD), and that money is distributed to the makers of the maps that the player has played that month.

9. Making content. I'm dealing with this by generating randomised content using code.

10. Yes. Every person had their own role. It always failed since I lost interest.

11. Ability to use and manipulate the mouse position and/or other controls. With mouse coordinates, you could make an FPS. With custom control input, you could make your RPG use a gamepad/controller.

12. Gameplay (fun!), Ease of play, Difficulty, PvP/PvE, Visuals, Sound and Cinematics, Story.

13. Yes, but not full-time as in a 40 hour work week.

14. Great editor, good distribution platform (battle.net), LAN capability, low system requirements, piracy (much bigger playerbase than it otherwise would have had)

15. Yes.

 

[Wietlol]

Text isn't interesting.

It is... if you read.

@UraZ
1. Don't make things that people can use.
When creating stuff like this, you go down to 0. and make it to 1.
Make everything possible. When that is done, you can create things like templates to let the user make things that can be used for every map in the same genre... or for every map with the same feature.
(One of the big mistakes when creating things... even in large companies.)

2. Code... because it is basically impossible to make everything you want in a GUI editor.
Make a GUI editor to let new people learn about the basics.
When they grow up, they know how to use everything.

3. In the WC WE...
Having to put functions above the call.
It would save so many time and work.

4. The brush list!
Everyone that has disabled it doesnt know what they are missing.

5. 12 hours to 1 year... depending on what map it is.

6. Definately.

7. I would put a higher priority on it.
Meaning it would be finished faster.

9. Is 2 million acceptable?
(I can assume from 5 euros to 50 is pretty much both limits.
Above 50, go buy Triple-A games, below 5... yea... you figure.)

10. People who do the same thing work together and put up a chat when working on it.
People who do different things... just do... different things.
The size of the project and available resources determine how many people for each role are needed to make everything work equal as fast and on equal scale.

11. well... uhm... In WE, the biggest limitation is restricted object data, no access to UI, no access to inner game mechanics.
About the other editors... you dont even want to know.

12. "Visuals, Gameplay, Story, Difficulty, Sound and Cinematics, Ease of play, PvP/PvE"
0.o
What does PvP/PvE in that list?
Gameplay -> Ease of Play -> Visuals+Sounds -> (bonus features like Cinematics, difficulty.)
Story... is done from beginning to end.

13. Meh, wouldnt earn enough.
If I could earn enough money on making maps... then gladly.

14. Possibilities in WE... no mind blowing new RTS games.
(Try to make the same editor for a FPS game or RPG game... it can be from RTS to FPS or RPG but not the other way around.)

15. Depends... I make things because I need things that others made but they forgot some features, it bugs or I just want to know exaclty what happens, for which you make your own.
If it is done properly and I dont want to spent big time of making things that other people already made... why would I make it myself?
(We try to reduce redundancy as long as we are here.)

16. Just no.
The big question is not IF you do it, but WHEN you do it.

17. As mentioned before, make everything possible. Then people will stick to your editor and that makes other people play the maps made in your editor.

18. Yes the platform must be really well coded so you might indeed ask for experienced game developers.

19. Yes putting up updates and developer blogs help people to stick with you and help you with your problems.
It also keeps people from asking "Is this already released?".

I will asnwer the other questions later.

 

[UraZ]

the idea of an "open warcraft 3" is something I dream of

Although our project is a lot different than WC3, I'm glad you said that, that is pretty much how i want people, especially our target users, to perceive and think about this project.

1. Don't make things that people can use.
When creating stuff like this, you go down to 0. and make it to 1.
Make everything possible. When that is done, you can create things like templates to let the user make things that can be used for every map in the same genre... or for every map with the same feature.
(One of the big mistakes when creating things... even in large companies.)

Really like your take on this. This is exactly what we're going for. BUT when everything is possible, game creation takes longer. Our vision is that the community will create functions and share those using a common library. That will significantly reduce the time it takes to create maps when everything is possible. (its already happening here on some level just not inside the editor and with not enough ease)

because it is basically impossible to make everything you want in a GUI editor.

Just for the sake of discussion - I think that a GUI built well can be very powerful and reduce time coding on some instances, even for advanced users. We are ofcourse creating the two options.

11. well... uhm... In WE, the biggest limitation is restricted object data, no access to UI, no access to inner game mechanics.
About the other editors... you dont even want to know.

Actually that is exactly what I want to know, so if you feel like elaborating on this point, this will be fantastic.

15. Depends... I make things because I need things that others made but they forgot some features, it bugs or I just want to know exaclty what happens, for which you make your own.
If it is done properly and I dont want to spent big time of making things that other people already made... why would I make it myself?
(We try to reduce redundancy as long as we are here.)

I'm afraid I didn't present the question well enough, I just edited it. so again, if you feel like answering, that'll be great.

@rulerofiron99 & @Wietlol - Thank you for your time guys. I really hope more will follow.

 

[Wietlol]

Really like your take on this. This is exactly what we're going for. BUT when everything is possible, game creation takes longer. Our vision is that the community will create functions and share those using a common library. That will significantly reduce the time it takes to create maps when everything is possible. (its already happening here on some level just not inside the editor and with not enough ease)

Nope.
That is the big mistake that many people make.
You create an engine (the editor) and an engine must be able to do as much as possible. If there is something that it can't do, then it is a bad engine in that perspective.
As soon as everything is possible, then you make stuff like we have systems for wc3. Then you make templates/systems to make everything easy to use so everything that you want to use can be done by simple configuration.
The systems reduce the time to make a map. The engine makes the possibilities of the game. Together, they make something nice.

Just for the sake of discussion - I think that a GUI built well can be very powerful and reduce time coding on some instances, even for advanced users. We are ofcourse creating the two options.

I wouldn't stop you from making it... however, I see something similar to the difference between GUI and JASS in WC WE.
Writing > clicking. So after a while, you will not be using GUI that much any more.
But yes you should definately make it and it might even be very usefull for the greatest of coders under us if it is made like you say now.

Actually that is exactly what I want to know, so if you feel like elaborating on this point, this will be fantastic.

Lets say that those editors were only terrain editors.
Except for the EA editor (BFME, Generals, etc) and WC WE, there are no editors that I have worked with that are relevant enough.
I did create some stuff in SH2 map editor which was also pretty nice to a certain level... I will take a look again what it had to offer.

I'm afraid I didn't present the question well enough, I just edited it. so again, if you feel like answering, that'll be great.

New answer:
Yes. To a certain level of how people will be willingly and able to use your systems, it is worth to at least share it. If others dont feel like using it, then no hard feelings.
There is not really much competing in stuff while everything is free... so yes the price on maps does make a difference in that.
In that case, you will put up a price tag if the systems are used in maps that will be sold.

@rulerofiron99 & @Wietlol - Thank you for your time guys. I really hope more will follow.

... completely disrespected rulerofiron99's post did ya?
equal as blancfaye7's post.

 

[UraZ]

Nope.
That is the big mistake that many people make.
You create an engine (the editor) and an engine must be able to do as much as possible. If there is something that it can't do, then it is a bad engine in that perspective.
As soon as everything is possible, then you make stuff like we have systems for wc3. Then you make templates/systems to make everything easy to use so everything that you want to use can be done by simple configuration.
The systems reduce the time to make a map. The engine makes the possibilities of the game. Together, they make something nice.

I agree 100%. Again, endless possibilities is what we're after. There is no doubt in my mind that as long as the community can create systems and share them efficiently, then map creation will be much easier and less time consuming.
Thanks for all of your points. Everything will be taken into consideration.

... completely disrespected rulerofiron99's post did ya?
equal as blancfaye7's post.

I really don't see how I disrespected any of them. rulerofiron99's points are all written down and he's a HUGE help. I thanked him and sent a PM regarding further discussions about this community...
As for blancfaye7, he said he's gonna answer more questions soon so I'm waiting for his more detailed post in order to reply. I hope this cleared things out. Sorry if it came out disrespectful, I'm grateful for every post I can get here.

 

[rulerofiron99]

No disrespect detected.

Do you have a site/blog where I could perhaps follow development? I would be keen to take a look at the weekly/monthly test build and provide feedback.

 

[Wietlol]

I really don't see how I disrespected any of them. rulerofiron99's points are all written down and he's a HUGE help. I thanked him and sent a PM regarding further discussions about this community...
As for blancfaye7, he said he's gonna answer more questions soon so I'm waiting for his more detailed post in order to reply. I hope this cleared things out. Sorry if it came out disrespectful, I'm grateful for every post I can get here.

Just no quote or comment on them

 

[Xonok]

I tried to write the reply, but my computer crashed when I was around the 8th point and I lost it all(had been writing in notepad). I'll try again some time.

 

[UraZ]

Do you have a site/blog where I could perhaps follow development? I would be keen to take a look at the weekly/monthly test build and provide feedback.

We'll definitely make one, once we'll see there's enough demand for it. In the meantime I'll update this thread for changes. I hope more people would like that, we'd love some feedback.

I tried to write the reply, but my computer crashed when I was around the 8th point and I lost it all(had been writing in notepad). I'll try again some time.

C'mon man! =] let me steal 15 mins from your time! it would mean a lot more for me than it will for you. and buy a PC.

 

[Wietlol]

Even though this is the right place to put this thread... the people that want to read this thread never come here...

Is there nothing that can be done about that?

 

[UraZ]

Even though this is the right place to put this thread... the people that want to read this thread never come here...

Is there nothing that can be done about that?

You're spot on, I've been thinking the same thing for the past 2 days and I'm trying to get my head around a solution. Suggestions will ofcourse be very helpful...

EDIT: Already put on a thread in the Admin Contact forums. maybe they'll have a solution.

 

[JaysProjex]

Spoiler

Hidden

 

[Xonok]

1. What functions do you build the most? or spending the most time building for your map? (for example if it were a TD, one of the answers would probably be waves)
2. Do you rather build maps via code or via visual scripting (trigger based)?
3. What process or feature is bugging you in current editors (it can just be WE)? what would you improve there?
4. What do you think is the most helpful tool in WE?
5. How much time does it take you to create a custom map? (on average if multiple. If you got some sort of time breakdown by maps that’ll be amazing
6. If we were open source, would you be participating or offering features to make our editor better?
7. If there were a chance for you to make money from your maps, would you work harder/create more maps?
8. How much, if at all, would you charge for your map? (depends on the map we know... average or a cost range would be great)
9. What is the most time consuming part of creating maps? what would you have done to make it less so?
10. Have you ever collaborated with another person in a map creation? in what way - everyone doing everything or each person has it’s role? was it difficult? was it easy? what made it easy/difficult?
11. Has any limitation in the map editor or game engine prevented you from building your dream map? If so, what was the limitation?
12. Rank the following in terms of importance (personal preference) when building a map: Visuals, Gameplay, Story, Difficulty, Sound and Cinematics and Ease of play. (you can add to that list ofcourse)
13. If someone offered you a full-time job creating custom maps, would you take it? what would be your considerations?
14. What do you think makes the WC3 custom maps community alive and kicking after 13 years of the game being out?
15. Would you share mods for free (let people use them in their games) you created for your own games if you knew you could use someone else’s mods while creating your own game? (keep in mind that the games are sold and are not free)

How would the leaderboard system work? I think it would be best to just allocate some space for this and let people do whatever they want with it(through scripting, I suppose).

1. There are 2 main things that take time for me - core features and content. Although content takes more time, it is actually not a problem, because creating content is a lot about figuring out what's fun, which is a fun activity by itself. Well, the only way to optimize this kind of stuff would be having a highly capable scripting language, such as lua, embedded in the game.
2. Depends. I prefer to do everything systematic via scripting, but for some things it's better to work through object editor.
For instance, in a tower defense map I would configure the creeps' appearance manually, but use some kind of scripted way of generating their stats so I could change them at any point.
3. The lack of any scripting possibility in object editor and also not being able to group object however I want. For instance, in several projects I have had several variations of the same abilities in order to be able to place them in any hotkey.
Also I dislike the rawcode system. It would be best if each unit and its stats(object editor and current) could be retrieved through code.
Probably the best way would be having a separate object editor field where you can define an alias of the object for use in triggers.(Autogenerated by default, even when copying objects)
4. The trigger editor, as it allows me to create things that weren't anticipated by the editor's creators.
Also, I use JNGP and sometimes create my own tools to ease mapmaping.
5. Depends a lot on the map. Simple maps, such as minigames, take perhaps a week if there are no elaborate features.
Then again, I've put several weeks of workdays into a project of mine that is still not completed yet(far from it).
For a breakdown I'd say that the first week or so was for creating the core functionality(ability handling, base units, etc). After that I spent half my time on creating content(scripted abilities mainly) and on extending possibilities(base systems).
6. I might. The deciding factor for me is whether I would be able to fiddle around with features in a reasonable manner. If so, then creating something useful would be likely and I don't mind sharing.
7. A little bit harder, because I would have less concerns about allocating time to real-world concerns. However, from a designer's standpoint I do not see a way to make this kind of engine monetizable for mappers without making it too serious. In any case, monetization is one of the last things that matter for me as a mapper.
8. For the rights to a map it would be from 10 dollars to possibly hundreds. It really depends a lot on the map.
For playing a map I would charge nothing, but probably provide cosmetic customization that costs a few dollars at most. This is because having a large playerbase is a prerequisite to making money and thus, it makes no sense to lock out potential customers in an attempt to make money.
9. Probably the content, but that is not a concern for me. What I would like a lot would be having a large set of highly modular systems to reduce the boring part of creating the core of the game.
Currently I have needed to remake many things due to design issues and in order to thoroughly understand the code that runs my map.
10. Yes, but I have not worked on a successful shared project. Every project needs a strong vision and it's best to keep that vision in one person's head. For this reason, most of the people that have helped me have done so on a case-per-case basis.
11. The low amount of control over how the core functionality of the game works. For instance, it's complicated to replace the damage reduction formula for armor.
Also, recently I wrote a buff management system, because the game's own ways are monolithic. For instance, it's not possible to reasonably create a buff that lasts a variable amount of time or grants a variable amount of stats.
12. Ease of play, gameplay, difficulty, visuals, sound, cinematics
13. Depends on the kind of maps. Mostly what I would consider is whether the project is personally rewarding to me in skills or simply by being fun.
14. The simplicity of learning advanced programming through simple techniques(GUI to JASS conversion). Also, a big part of why the game still has a fanbase is that the editor allows extending the game far beyond what it originally was. The engine is more important for this kind of game than the game itself.
15. If someone is going to make money off of my work, then I should be paid for that.
However, for non-profit projects I am very willing to share.

For me, the most important thing in modding games is that I could mess around with things without having any prior knowledge of how the engine works. This is how I learned to mod WC3, which eventually taught me enough about programming to move on to other environments.

 

[Napoqe]

Guy, I enjoyed a lot reading this post and know that project / idea is being developed, with similar ideas of my expectations, that I would like that in the editor of DotA 2 and Starcraft 2, is good up have.

1 - Map Arena style, type Anime Fight (buying attributes, and having an item that leaves the movement speed to maximum). With adjustment in balance, creating new heroes, etc. The part that caused me stress was the Multiboard (kill, deaths, etc.).

2 - Via visual script. Because I do not know jass, and other programming languages. I think good quality the triggers (visual script) of the World Editor, you can make to maps cools.

3 - Jass, I think can make exclusive functions on the map. Up to moment I think I can not improve it. For lack of knowledge.

4 - Object Editor. Is the tool that exposes the visual parts (units, abilities, etc.) more useful of map.

6 -I think the software can be paid, but with open source code. So developers would earn money to pay their expenses and focus on the project, same. And with open source, the possibility of having more content is higher, I think.

I at least, think I'd buy the software, depending of price (maximum R$ 80.00 and no monthly fees), and also if have a quality that pleases me.

11 - Importation of the content of Community Hive Workshop for Editor of Warcraft 3, it's bad to put a map already with content, from what I know, the importer replaces triggers or data of all objects of content of current map by the map that was caught content (imported) (some maps are for show or export systems and skills done by some Hive Workshop people and others site.

To copy the contents of systems and / or of abilities of another map, with such content of your map, without losing data. You need to copy triggers and data objects, which can give depending, problems that needs to be repaired on the map that you are editing (no functioning equally).

12 - I enjoyed preferences.

14 - I think cool Warcraft 3 yet by cause of the campaigns (made by Blizzard and by community people that make the Lord of the Clans). Play multiplayer, not being PG, this stressful because of bots, which pollutes the screen of matches of Battle.net and of Systems of Lan Online.

 

[Dr Super Good]

1. What functions do you build the most? or spending the most time building for your map? (for example if it were a TD, one of the answers would probably be waves)

Data storage triggers such as used by save/load systems. This could be greatly simplified by having some form of byte buffer support with appropriate methods to mutate it.

4. What do you think is the most helpful tool in WE?

Probably the object editor as it is like the only tool in it which does practically everything one expects it to. Too bad the object editor data structure itself was kind of rubbish.

5. How much time does it take you to create a custom map? (on average if multiple. If you got some sort of time breakdown by maps that’ll be amazing

Although I never have made one by myself, from experience helping on them it could probably take a year or two if one puts in several hours a day. These are quality maps such as the various RPGs that came out towards the end of WC3's life.

6. If we were open source, would you be participating or offering features to make our editor better?

If I used such a tool and it was open source then yes I would submit bug fixes and any features I possibly develop. I am sure many other programmers would to. However it all depends on if they use it or want to be involved so it is not something you can expect to work from the beginning.

7. If there were a chance for you to make money from your maps, would you work harder/create more maps?

Obviously people would. They might even think of it as an investment and spend considerable money making it. However as soon as money is involved it opens up room for scammers and liability. I think the main reason SC2 does not have paid maps is because of these problems.

10. Have you ever collaborated with another person in a map creation? in what way - everyone doing everything or each person has it’s role? was it difficult? was it easy? what made it easy/difficult?

Both WC3 and SC2 lack features for cooperative development. In the case of WC3 it was the 1 person at a time limit to editing the map. In the case of SC2 it is that the map gets linked to only 1 publisher who might eventually not be available for updates.

14. What do you think makes the WC3 custom maps community alive and kicking after 13 years of the game being out?

It is? For the last 3 years BattleNet has been a ghost town of robots with empty lobbies and no one playing. Only maps with few players even get started and event then it is usually not a full house.

15. Would you share mods for free (let people use them in their games) you created for your own games if you knew you could use someone else’s mods while creating your own game? (keep in mind that the games are sold and are not free)

It would all come down to licences on the assets inside the mods. Especially if money is involved it is possible that the licence on "paid" assets does not permit use outside of the intended commercial project.

 

[aple]

If you haven't already, I'd take a look at SC2's Data Editor. It's extremely versatile.

A run-down of how it's data is structured is:

Models and sounds are objects with adjustable fields such as scaling, coloring, and volume, sound weight (random chance out of however many sound-files are useable in the sound).

Actors are a separate object that control animation, attachments, physics, wireframe/shieldframe, UI-related objects, and numerous other things.

Units are the base where everything comes together. They have their general stats. Units have a couple unit parts to them. Buildings, Missiles, and Air units. Naval units should be introduced. Units have several useful fields, but they're hard-coded fields. You should allow people to add additional fields. Base fields are Light, Armored, Mechanical, Biological, Hover, etc. But new fields should be able to be added, like Small, Medium, Flying, Fire/Poison/Ice, Vehicle, Infantry, as just some examples. Units can also have Shields, a separate type of health. If Health reaches 0, it doesn't matter how many shields are remaining. The unit still dies. But Shields can be a buffer for their base health. It is separate from armor. They are visually shown as a graphic around the unit's normal wireframe and numerically right next to their actual health in the UI.

Weapons are a simple thing that have a few misc fields, they can have a turret, and they have effects. They have a "Period" to determine the wait-time before they fire again, backswing and damage point for lining up with animations or making a unit's attack feel sluggish, and they have random attack delays and their own UI controls.

Turrets are a separate piece of a unit's body that can rotate. Turrets in the data editor should have the option to track nearby targets. They can also be restricted to only a certain degree, like 180 degrees (Based on the unit's facing). Turrets can have an "Idle" state that determines what they do when they aren't doing anything else. They can reset to the same facing as the unit, fidget, or spin.

Effects are one of the more important fields. They are extremely versatile tools for creating numerous things. Persistent effects, Search Area, Add/Remove Behavior, Launch Missile Effects, Set effects to make a weapon or ability have multiple effects at the same time, but probably most importantly Damage effects.

Behaviors provide the means to modify virtually anything about a unit, ability, weapon, effect, other behaviors, Items, or Actors, they can stack, they have periods, they can have their own effects, and they can be checked by requirements. It can also make these changes ON THE FLY, and all changes are reverted if the Behavior is removed unless stated otherwise.

Requirements are very self-explanatory. When applied to a Requirements field in anything that has it, they will make that thing use the requirements before it can be built/used/bought/whatever. Several things can be requirements. Units, Abilities, Behaviors, and Upgrades. All of which can be required "At Unit" which makes the requirement unique to each individual unit. So if one unit has something that requires an ability and that unit gets that ability, only that unit will have that thing with the requirement unlocked instead of every unit including those that may not have the ability.

Validators are kind of like requirements, but they still function differently. They can check for far more things but there are some things it can't check for that requirements can.

Abilities function similarly to weapons. They can be effected by turrets, and use effects, and have misc fields, but they also have several adjustable stages such as Approach, Channel, Casting, Interrupt, and Cancel.

Movers are an important thing too. They can provide unique ways for anything to move with numerous controls to create anything from a snake pattern to a parabola.

Upgrades are a useful feature as well. They can change any value on Units, Effects, Abilities, or Behaviors, can have requirements, can change MULTIPLE things at one time (Such as every unit for a single race's damage all at once). This includes changing an Ability's or Behavior's EFFECT or even values in an actor.

Items and Footprints are the last things to talk about. Items are pretty much the same as in WC3 with a couple differences. Footprints are for buildings or units that act like buildings. They have a resolution, can block building placement, unit pathing, and are prevented by unbuildable areas and creep. Footprints should be made a bit more versatile to provide the option to be blocked by creep, be allowed on creep, block the growth of creep, water and deep water pathing, cliff pathing, be allowed to be placed on other buildings, or require to be placed on other buildings.

A bit more info, Weapons, certain effects such as Periodic or Search effects, Abilities, and Behaviors, can have an "Effect - Start" , "Effect - Periodic" , and "Effect - Final" field to determine what they do when they're first created, periodically, or when they are destroyed, cancelled, or removed from the game.

Finally, an addition should be the "Creep" Editor. Basically, you can add and customize however many types of "Creep" you want like a unit or ability. Creep should have their own graphics, textures, spreading methods, whether they recede or not and if they do how, they should be able to have effects, behaviors, how they effect doodads and what doodads specifically they effect and how, and some basic stock effects they can have on units like movement speed bonus, life regeneration rate bonus, armor bonus, damage bonus, attack speed bonus, whether they damage units and if so can they damage friendly, hostile, neutral and a period for this damage, and cosmetic effects on units like changing color or size or transparency or UI.

Some other things you should do is allow both methods of damage to be possible. Whether there's armor damage scaling, like in WC3 and SC1, or flat bonuses to unit types with certain attributes, like in SC2. XML editing should be an option. There should also be several different ways to arrange the data, like in the SC2 editor, such as an "Advanced" view, or a Tree view. The Editor should be 100% customizable. This means modders, if they may need to, can create a COMPLETELY CUSTOMIZED object that is NOTHING like the rest stated above, they should be able to add new fields to anything above, they should be able to remove fields they don't want, and there should be UI editors out the asshole.

Even though I've said a lot here, you should still aim to put as many things under 1 thing as possible while still providing lots of customization. Be very careful on this, however. And if you're not sure which one you should take, (Like say you think you want the Unit to control it's Wireframe and other UI aspects instead of the Actor) just go with both and structure everything with the Unit and Actor being the bottom-most data. So if anything ontop of the Unit wants to overwrites it's UI it has the ability to do so. There should be a flag on the unit for this, checking this flag will allow NOTHING to overwrite it. (As an example on how to settle a problem like this)

 

[UraZ]

@JaysProjex & @Napoqe & @Dr Super Good - Thank you for your insights and time guys, you've been a great help and I'd love some more from you.

How would the leaderboard system work? I think it would be best to just allocate some space for this and let people do whatever they want with it(through scripting, I suppose).

We'll create some sort of system for creating leaderboards outside the game, which will indeed, like almost everything in this project, involve creating custom ones (if it depends on game variables eg levels, gold, diamonds etc..) but we will provide some basics especially for PVP base maps (win/lose base: ELO and such)

11. The low amount of control over how the core functionality of the game works. For instance, it's complicated to replace the damage reduction formula for armor.
Also, recently I wrote a buff management system, because the game's own ways are monolithic. For instance, it's not possible to reasonably create a buff that lasts a variable amount of time or grants a variable amount of stats.

Agree with you there. Furthermore, I think there should be hardly any instances where you can't use your game variables.

If you haven't already, I'd take a look at SC2's Data Editor. It's extremely versatile.

I did, It is a great editor. But as all game depended editors, there are not nearly enough possibilities in it (they are not aiming there, which is understandable). Thank you for that breakdown and insights.

 

[aple]

Okay, I was going to edit my original post but you might (Might?) miss it that way if I do. Here are my answers to your questions:

1. What functions do you build the most? or spending the most time building for your map? (for example if it were a TD, one of the answers would probably be waves)

I build things at a pace to my liking. The only thing I ever have issues with is load-times.

2. Do you rather build maps via code or via visual scripting (trigger based)?

I'd definitely like to have a bunch of pre-set scripts (Ala Trigger) to make things super ez and quick to build. But I definitely still need custom scripting when the base triggers just don't quite provide what I need.

3. What process or feature is bugging you in current editors (it can just be WE)? what would you improve there?

For WE, the restrictiveness. There are ridiculous amounts of hard-coded features that I'd just love to get my hands on.

4. What do you think is the most helpful tool in WE?

Trigger Editor, of course. Because almost everything can be done via triggers.

5. How much time does it take you to create a custom map? (on average if multiple. If you got some sort of time breakdown by maps that’ll be amazing

I'd say for a small to medium-sized project, a couple weeks. For something big, a couple months.

6. If we were open source, would you be participating or offering features to make our editor better?

I would most-certainly do what I can. I love open-source (Also Freeware) things. Though I am not particularly skilled in doing code myself just yet, I plan to make it hobby down the road.

7. If there were a chance for you to make money from your maps, would you work harder/create more maps?

I would only charge if it were completely stand-alone, and even then I might have a hard time thinking on how I want to go about charging.

8. How much, if at all, would you charge for your map? (depends on the map we know... average or a cost range would be great)

At most, probably 20 USD. At the least a dollar. If we're talking about a stand-alone game, that is completely dependent on factors. At most, probably 100 dollars. At least, probably 5.

9. What is the most time consuming part of creating maps? what would you have done to make it less so?

Waiting for maps to load... Making them load faster. Hell, in-game Editor so changes can be seen immediately! (I can dream, can't I?)

10. Have you ever collaborated with another person in a map creation? in what way - everyone doing everything or each person has it’s role? was it difficult? was it easy? what made it easy/difficult?

A couple times I have worked with a team now. Usually we kinda just all say what we're good at and try to use the best of our skills and help each other out if we're stuck. We all compile what we set out to do, test, bugfix, then do it all over again with new things.

11. Has any limitation in the map editor or game engine prevented you from building your dream map? If so, what was the limitation?

Not yet. I haven't seen something that I couldn't make with some clever scripting yet other then UI editing.

12. Rank the following in terms of importance (personal preference) when building a map: Visuals, Gameplay, Story, Difficulty, Sound and Cinematics and Ease of play. (you can add to that list ofcourse)

1. Gameplay. 2. Difficulty. 3. Visuals. 4. Sounds. 5. Ease of play. 6. Story. 7. Cinematics.

For anything horror-related, Sounds and Visuals are a #1 priority. For everything else, Gameplay is #1.

13. If someone offered you a full-time job creating custom maps, would you take it? what would be your considerations?

I would definitely consider it but it's not quite what I want to do.

14. What do you think makes the WC3 custom maps community alive and kicking after 13 years of the game being out?

Simply-put? People with nothing better to do and stubbornness to move on to things with better accessibility and editability like SC2.

15. Would you share mods for free (let people use them in their games) you created for your own games if you knew you could use someone else’s mods while creating your own game? (keep in mind that the games are sold and are not free)

Any mod I make is allowed to be used by anyone unless stated otherwise. They will have to provide credit. If they are charging for it, they will have to abide to my conditions and terms before selling. (Whatever that may be, and it would most-definitely be subject to change at any time).

If it's for free, you can use it as long as you provide credit and you can change it in any way you want as long as you provide exact-details of what you changed.

 

[Napoqe]

I think the structures more efficient (that i know). And also nice to the editor, I think that is Event, Condition, and Action for visual scripts. But why? Because I think with these structures, you can mix the contents (preprogrammed scripts) of editor that have, in a simples way than other ways for developers (not counting programming) put in the game, using them to try to make a cool map.

If the team not have a store and want sell the software, I think recommend the Steam by cause of comfort it offers to the consumer (interface, ...). But respect the decisions of wanting to charge money for acess the software and have own store!