Timing a Trap Fire and Making a Map for Loading Screen

[Agnivir]

For my cinematic, I need to get a Trap Fire to flare up at exactly the right time, because I'm timing it with the music. The problem is it looks like whenever a Trap Fire is created, it's created during a random point in its flare-up-die-down cycle. Any ideas on how I can do this?

So far I've gotten one suggestion....I've been told the Fire coming out is the stand animation, the one without fire is death. I tried creating the trap fires on map initialization and hiding them until the time with this trigger:

Animation - Play (doodad)'s death animation

Didn't work. How can I keep them "dead" until the right time? There's only the option to hide items, units, and destructibles, and WE calls these special effects.

So basically I need new ideas or a way to make this one work.

One last thing....I don't expect to get a level of quality similar to Blizzard's watercolor maps, but what programs/tools/etc. are there that people have used to make maps for their loading screens? My campaign takes place in its own universe, not the WarCraft universe, so I can't use the ones created by Blizzard.

 

[Kaitech[SanD]]

Here's your Loading Screen thing http://world-editor-tutorials.thehelper.net/loadscreen.php

And about your problem with the fire, ask someone to remove the death animation?

 

[Agnivir]

Well, the thing is I don't want the fire coming out constantly, I need it to flare up out of the ground to be dramatic.

For the loading screen, I know how to put the loading screen into the game once I make it, I'm talking about actually making the image for the loading screen. I tried googling around and couldn't find anything good, so I decided to ask here, I figure I'm not the first one to want to make my own map for my own world, so there's got to be some map-making program a lot of people use for their maps.

 

[Kaitech[SanD]]

So tell us what it needs in it?

 

[Agnivir]

A better version of this.

In the west is a lake in a swamp and a system of rivers in a forest, the middle is a mountain range with a hidden valley in the north and a network of tunnels and caves in the south, etc. There's a lot that's supposed to be in there, but this is just a rough sketch of it all.

Best case scenario I'd like to create something similar to 18th century navigation charts, but I know that's pushing my luck....any ideas?

 

[wd40bomber7]

What exactly do you need our help for? I mean what do you expect us to tell you how to do? Draw??

 

[Agnivir]

No, I'll do that myself....just tell me what program to use. Seriously, I can't be the first person to want to make custom maps for my campaign, WC III's been out for years and the mapping community must have found some great programs that they'd recommend to newcomers. Trust me, I'm working on it myself too, I've been googling around....but I haven't been able to find what I'm looking for, so now I'm asking people who have experience with this.

And I'm sure I read somewhere here to wait 24 hours before making a double-post, which is what I did....but anyway, I won't do that again.