WarCraft III World Editor Tutorials Ep.1 - Terrain Edit

[BeatMySkill]

Warcraft 3 World Editor Tutorials Ep. 1 - Terrain edit


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlyGl8_rsWE&feature=g-upl


Here is the first episode of the Snowman World Editor Tutorials, hope you like it!

The tutorials will be every week, Monday, with the detailed steps on how to do it..

The map will also be able to download and on every new episode ill upload that map that I edited..

If you have something to complain about, you can comment, and I will try to fix that...

Don't forget to like, favorite and subscribe!

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Map download link: http://adf.ly/A35Om
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Music used: http://adf.ly/A36iu
"I do not own the music in this video!"

 

[Chaosy]

good tutorial

 

[BeatMySkill]

Thanks, If you like my videos and work, please subscirbe

 

[defskull]

The awkward moment when modding site becomes an advertising site.

You could at least put them at your page or signature, no need to create a thread for it to advertise and link it to another website.

This section is used to ask/discuss general question about World Editor (some trigger perhaps) but not mainly advertise and link it to another website and such.

But all in all, good work on the tutorial

 

[-Kobas-]

It's simple, even people who first time open WE can see those panels and shape terrain like that.

 

[defskull]

Kobas, I think you should give him support.
Perhaps, it's a start with something simple, and later it will become more advance as more tutorials are created (I hope it will improve)

 

[Nichilus]

I don't like this tutorial to be honest.
What you did (mainly at the start) was pointing out changeable values and saying: "You can change them" ... really, who would've thought you can change them.
The same with the water - "You can make 'deeper water'" doesn't tell much.

If I were noob in mapping, I wouldn't need this tutorial, as it explains the very basic things everyone understands and knows.

If I were completely new and were to use WE for one of my first tries, I would expect more information from your tutorial.

I think you can make good tutorials, but the issue I have with it is, that you show stuff without explaining... and that's no tutorial then.
If you want to make a tutorial about all the basic functions WE has, then you need to explain them more in detail (like the difference between shallow and deep water, what is initial cliff level and why can anyone want to change it, etc.)
However if you were to make a tutorial about making a good-looking terrain (which I thought this would be about - to show new mappers how to make a good looking terrain), I wouldn't need to know the difference between shallow and deep water, I wouldn't even need to know there are 2 types of "water depth".
What I would want to know is your thought process - why do you put cages there, what made you choose that point where you put the cage, why did you put at the top of the ruins the eye of sargeras, why choose shallow water over deep water, etc.

 

[-Kobas-]

Kobas, I think you should give him support.
Perhaps, it's a start with something simple, and later it will become more advance as more tutorials are created (I hope it will improve)

But why, everything he shown was simple and easy.

Even idea is really bad.

But just so people don't say I won't help or give advice I suggest next:

- Video 1 ->
Speak about WE in general, show and explain shortcuts, terrain geometry, what are regions, what are triggers, jass, vjass, MUI, MPI etc, explain what is terrain mirroring, what are doodads scales, rotation etc, explain how sound works, how imports works and so on. And finally explain basic idea of map creating, map info, settings, player properties.
In 1 word all things people constantly ask about wc3.

- Video 2 ->
Give example and suggest you together work on some RPG map (the best choice if you ask me to cover most of WE options easily).
Start with explaining idea, what is important what is not, work on importing resources, crafting terrain and finish this video with basic/advanced terrain work (dunno how skilled you are, but I expect to see explained doodads, custom cliffs, special and lightning doodads etc).

- Video 3 ->
Start working with units and abilities, create items and work with object editor in general, import new resources, work with sounds and so on, work on story and create quest related resources.

- Video 4 ->
Triggers create hero pick system, hero revive system, experience bounty system and so on.
Create few custom spells, create few custom item recipes or level ups.
Create few quests.
Boss fight ?
Victory/Defeat conditions.

- Video 5 ->
Polishing (floating texts, multiboards, special effects, game modes, settings etc etc).

Damn I lost myself somewhere between 1st and 2nd video but point is that you have huge work to do, if you focus 2 much on simple things you will never finish your work.

 

[PurgeandFire]

A bit too simple. It is just pretty much using the terrain tools which are already pretty much intuitive.

 

[Nestharus]

You gotta start from somewhere. It's better to assume that the reader has absolutely 0 knowledge than assume they already know something. Having 0 assumptions on the reader ensures that nobody will get lost later on. Assuming is a bad thing.

I know in my tutorials I do assume things, but the only thing I assume is that the reader has been working with the GUI. Mine also go over the absolute basics, including converting to JASS and clicking Function List to view functions. You'd be surprised ; ).

Consider the target audience ;\.

A long time ago, when I was trying to learn programming, I took various lessons, followed many tutorials, and even did 2 summer camps (while in elementary, middle, and start of high school). After all of that, I still didn't understand programming in the slightest. This was because all of them pretty much assumed that you already knew about programming. It was extremely frustrating, I wanted something that started from step 0 and went at a slow and steady pace. The main problem was them surrounding code with functions when you didn't even know what functions were >.<.

It's a good thing to assume absolutely nothing in a tutorial. If you do assume something, then you should say outright that your tutorial is targeted for people with w/e background (like my vjass series being targeted to people with a GUI background).

When going over the very simple tools, you should only briefly highlight them. Spending too much time on something simple is frustrating. For example, saying "this'll change water height, this'll change water color) and just putting the mouse over it and perhaps demonstrating it (a couple of seconds per tool) is pretty good. With that simple knowledge, creating a basic terrain that actually looks good in a few minutes will be a great start and motivate readers to continue the tutorial series. Always try to make good looking terrain in a short amount of time with each tutorial (covering specific techniques or w/e). This'll keep the tutorials interested and make people want to go through the next tutorials ; ). For example, a Cry Engine tutorial I was following on terraining had the reader make a decent looking island with minimal knowledge. Make the reader feel like they are accomplishing something cool ; P.

One problem with c++ tutorials is that they are bland, you don't accomplish anything cool in them. Who the hell cares about the cmd prompt and displaying hello world or doing this or that? You need to get people excited to do the tutorials. This is the reason why some college programming courses are moving to games and more and more textbooks on programming use simple game engines to create 2D games (although I've yet to see a good one).

Get people excited about what they are learning. If you can do that, they will learn it more easily and retain the information more easily, thus making your tutorial series better =).

The problem with this tutorial right now is that it's boring and nobody is going to want to go through it. Furthermore, this tells the reader what your future tutorials are going to be like. I wouldn't be surprised if people stopped watching your tutorial 30 seconds in and moved on to an entirely different tutorial series on terraining.