Suggestion: Adding project management to the War3 Map Editor?

General Discussion
1

Hello, I would like to make a suggestion that may improve the overall quality of custom games.

It’s no secret that the Warcraft3 map editor is one of the game’s most valuable assets. It is one of the main reasons Warcraft 3 became such an outstandingly successful game. Custom games in Warcraft 3 are in a league of their own. We all have very fond memories of the vast arcade that custom games had to offer.

My concern though with the original Warcraft 3 map editor is that it lacks any form of good Confidentiality and Integrity. I would love to see the implementation of project management tools, built-in symmetric encryption of maps, and a form of Group Policy.

Protecting maps is somewhat of a hassle in the original Warcraft 3 map editor and it would be wonderful if we could have these tools embedded into the map editor with some access controls to separate the duties of fellow map designers.

The staff at blizzard can probably relate to this need. It’s not easy to develop software and games inside a team without great project management and separation of duty.

I would like to see the same type of project management inside the map editor, a project management system that can log changes to maps and connect that to your Battle net identity.

Why would this be great?:
Clans. Many clans in the past were devoted to being dedicated map editors. A team of talented custom map developers who’ve made some very iconic and wonderful games. Entire clans dedicated to developing amazing custom games from Tower Defenses, RPGs, Hero Arenas, and even DotA!

Project management, somewhat similar to the management systems that we see software developers use, would change custom games in ways that I couldn’t begin to describe.

What do you guys think?

4 Likes
2

Sounds great! we need this now!

1 Like
3

Good idea, i approve

4

Great idea. I agree.

5

Map protection hinders the ability of new mappers to get up to speed by studying maps they’ve played and learning from them. The pros of increased map protection are far outweighed by the cons. If it becomes possible for maps to be read only and for everything in them to be exported to a new document, it’d be a different discussion, but even blizzard’s own work has been open source up until very recently with the SC2 DLC.

6

There’s plenty of learning material online to learn map making and there’s ways to already protect your maps in Warcraft 3 now. I’m more concerned for project management.

1 Like
7

By “project management”, you mean version control systems like git? Because project management is something different. It involves having a person (project manager) responsible for assigning different tasks to different team members and making sure everyone does their job on time. Version control just makes sure working like that in a software development environment is possible.

Version control would be amazing to have. Even for a single person working on a custom map. If I feel like a specific feature could potentially break the stability of my map, I could just work on it separately from the stable build.

8

Right. Version control like git and project management for clan based projects. There’s times where I want to share my in-progress map without worrying about losing credit for my map or my project getting hijacked by people.

For example if a fellow mapmaker wants to take a peak at my in-progress map, he shouldn’t be able to leak it before it’s done or take credit of my work. I should be in charge of the final release.

1 Like