Is the map editor easy to use for new players?

General Discussion
1

I really cannot wait to play Warcraft 3, the campaign and custom games look fun!
But what really peaked my interest for this game is the map editor. I really cannot wait to play around with it! =D

Is it difficult to use the map editor for new players though? I wanna to try and build Stormwind City in Warcraft 3 lol

2

well, I played with war II editor a lot. That one was easy. I didnt even know English back then. It very much depends what you consider as easy. If you know how to code and utilize more advanced features, I heard it is relatively simple. Not like SC II. Recreating the city in W III ? Maybe reforg would help.

3

… Probably going to be difficult for me haha :frowning: Going to at least try though.
But yeah maybe reforged will make things more simple, we’ll just have to wait and see
Thanks :slight_smile:

4

building a map shouldnt be all that hard, I did a bit of WIII editor like 12+ years ago, achieved some little things here and there. But to fully utilize it, you better know - or search for some guides - but for rather simple things like terrain and so on, it is simple.

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5

I see, I’ll be searching up some tutorials on YouTube on making terrain etc… thanks again =D

6

It’s easy overall to make melee maps and the like, a bit tougher if you’re looking to do campaign or story creation, and then triggers are kind of where you roll up your sleeves. As far as I know you don’t necessarily NEED to do the JASS stuff to get good trigger work but there’s no denying it’s a huge boon.

7

WorldEdit is actually a pretty simple and very powerful map editor. I like it very much.
As previous posters have said the World Edit is not particularly difficult if you just wish to make fun melee maps and build cities :smile:.
All the tools to raise/lower terrain or put a different texture (grass/dirt/snow) are extremely easy to understand and utilize - it’s a simple list from which you choose the tiles and objects to place. That’s it.

Creating custom units/spells/abitilies and story scripts seems more difficult… at first. But scripting is actually very intuitive. It runs on very simple If sth->then sth formulas (for instance If[5 night elf archers]created by player->then[give player 1000 gold]and[show text - GOOD JOB]) and once you get the hang of it, it’s smooth sailing from there. All the formulas are pre-written for you, so you just pick what interests you from the extendable list and customize/specify the details - like for what unit this script should apply. No need to manually write scripts, it’s all done for you.

I was able to make complex maps with animated cutscenes, dialogues, sidemissions and custom units after maybe two weeks of intense messing around with WorldEdit.

And trust me, it’s ridiculously satysfying when you finally create your own properly animated opening cutscene to a story map.

If you are really interested in how maps, scripting and unit creation works, try downloading some campaign map from Hiveworkshop, or open some custom map from the game folder like War Chasers and try to “reverse engineer” it. It’s usually a good way to understand how it works.

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8

Hello! Editor can be confusing at first, but once you learn basics of every aspect of editor (terrain editor, trigger editor, object editor and so on), it becomes really easy to breeze through map creation.

Realistically, you could learn enough to make a really decent map in a month of 2 hours a day practice (and by decent, I mean DotA-style or basic RPG, etc. If you want to make a melee map, you could learn how to do that in 3-5 hours). Tutorials can further help you in that regard.

Since Reforged is coming out, I decided to start creating updated tutorial series, and I’ll try to get a new video every few days if you enjoy it. Here, try them and tell me what you think!

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9

I mean…
I was like… 12 or so when I discovered map editor and quite soon I started editing maps so it would be just me there playing around with various races…
It is not really that hard when a kiddo manages to do it through trial and error.

10

It is probably the easiest editor ever made for a game, that said it still depends on what you’re trying to achieve. There’s a learning curve for everything.

11

Warcraft 3 Editor is the best map editor I’ve ever seen for a videogame in terms of simplicity vs possibilities. I think SC2’s editor is even more powerful, but it is also much tougher to use. It helps a lot that warcraft 3 had so much content (with the so many varied creeps and races) and a hero system integrated with the basic rules, thus the editor feels like it has more to offer from the get-go.

12

Warcraft 3’s map editor is the best Blizzard ever made because it actually balances versatility with the intuitive factor. It is very user friendly without turning it into some sort of baby toy.

13

Compared to SC2 editor, it’s super easy

The only tricky part would be triggers, and once you understand conditionals, that’s not so bad either.

It’s not like SC2 where even making a single unit is a nightmare.

Process for making units in WC3 editor:

  1. Open unit editor
  2. Select a unit that is similar and press ctrl C
  3. Press ctrl V, you’re done, you now have a working unit. You can edit other stuff if you want, but it’s a fully functional unit now

Process in SC2 editor

  1. Open unit editor
  2. Select a unit that is similar and press ctrl C
  3. Press ctrl V
  4. Spend 4 hours reconnecting all the actors, abilities, etc.