Question about WC3 Map Editor

[Jane_Smith]

I am trying to make the undead Necropolis and its teirs of upgrades be able to move, slowly, but still move somehow like a unit despite being buildings. I have given them a land speed, a fly-type movement, a minimum and maximum height, etc. My biggest problem is though, once the game starts? It apparently does not wish to move. It sits their and appears to hover slightly and turn in place, but it will not move anywhere i click (i re-checked, and made sure I gave them a speed - it apparantly has no effect).

Please help?

As for why im doing it - Im trying to make a revamped wc3 battleground map in which everything is a little faster, a little tougher, and a little more dangerous for a higher entertainment value. Also its scaled for large-scale battles - 6v6 or 3v3v3v3 with a 300 food cap. :smallbiggrin:

[Winterwind]

I'll start with pointing out that we have a WC3 thread here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110841), with plenty of people loving to help with such problems. :smallwink:

Okay, so firstly, depending on what you intend to do with that thing, it might be easier to just create a new unit based off some actual air unit, and replace its model with the model of the Necropolis.

Other than that... hmmm, not sure myself (though I'm sure The Orange Zergling, LiteYear or some other person more versed in the arcana of the editor will be here in a second to help out, if they haven't ninja's me already)... maybe turning off the Statistics - Is A Building setting would help?

[AgentPaper]

Un-check "is a building" and it should work fine.

As for large scale battles, the problem you'll run into is that it's really hard to control that many units. Once you get above 36 or so per player it just starts to bog you down. There are ways to get around this, fr example by having commands that send all units in a certain direction or to a certain point, or using a squad-system, such as the one I made myself here (http://www.thehelper.net/forums/showthread.php?t=90607). That site, by the way, is a great resource for any questions you might have about anything Wc3 related, especially the editor.

[Saithis Bladewing]

Try basing it off the Tree of Life. Unchecking 'is a building' should work too.

[Emperor Ing]

turning off 'is a building' would make, under standard game settings, that as long as every single other building owned by you is destroyed, you lose. Of course you start with a Haunted Gold Mine so you don't have to worry about that.

I havent used the Editor in AGES, but I would THINK that giving it movement speed would be enough. If not, then look at the Tree of Life and use that as a template.

[Winterwind]

As for large scale battles, the problem you'll run into is that it's really hard to control that many units. Once you get above 36 or so per player it just starts to bog you down. There are ways to get around this, fr example by having commands that send all units in a certain direction or to a certain point, or using a squad-system, such as the one I made myself here (http://www.thehelper.net/forums/showthread.php?t=90607). That site, by the way, is a great resource for any questions you might have about anything Wc3 related, especially the editor.Well, StarCraft does have this many units and the same selection limits as WC3, and it works just fine.

The bigger problem with large-scale battles (apart from older machines potentially not being able to handle them) would be that they run a bit counter to WC3's premise of extremely micro-focused battles where players try to prevent having any losses at all (in games of pros, the armies can clash repeatedly with no unit ever dying because they manage to micro them away) and are using the special abilities of all their units to the best effect (even a really good player will be hard-pressed to use all the abilities on all his units if he has one hundred of them to control).

It would certainly be something new though. :smallsmile:

[Emperor Ing]

*attempts at moving building controls*
Oh hey check it out, I got it to work! And I got screenshots which should make a pretty useful tutorial.

1st pic is me testing it, 2nd pic is how I did it.
NOTE: The pink text is what has been edited. Ignore the highlighted text.
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll246/EmperorIng/movingbuilding.jpg

[Athaniar]

Concerning a similar matter, I made a Naaru hero out of a glyphstone for a Sha'tar vs Fel Horde map I'm making. Not the best match, perhaps, but it's awesome to watch the glyphstone Naaru obliterate enemies of the Light with Chain Lightning (hey, I had to give it some defensive capability).

Also, WC3 Editor: Best Editor Ever, or even better than that?
(the answer is C: all of the above)

[AgentPaper]

Well, StarCraft does have this many units and the same selection limits as WC3, and it works just fine.

The bigger problem with large-scale battles (apart from older machines potentially not being able to handle them) would be that they run a bit counter to WC3's premise of extremely micro-focused battles where players try to prevent having any losses at all (in games of pros, the armies can clash repeatedly with no unit ever dying because they manage to micro them away) and are using the special abilities of all their units to the best effect (even a really good player will be hard-pressed to use all the abilities on all his units if he has one hundred of them to control).

It would certainly be something new though. :smallsmile:

I'm pretty sure you can select more than 12 units at a time in SC...


Concerning a similar matter, I made a Naaru hero out of a glyphstone for a Sha'tar vs Fel Horde map I'm making. Not the best match, perhaps, but it's awesome to watch the glyphstone Naaru obliterate enemies of the Light with Chain Lightning (hey, I had to give it some defensive capability).

Also, WC3 Editor: Best Editor Ever, or even better than that?
(the answer is C: all of the above)

Considering it has been used to make, among other things, a First Person Shooter, yes, I think it deserves it's place as best editor ever. Though the SC2 editor is looking to be even better. :smalleek::smallbiggrin:

[Jane_Smith]

Ah thank you random! The pathing map is what was screwing with it! <3

Well, I -tried- making the necropolis a normal unit with the necropolis skin - but i wanted it to retain all its normal building capabilities - aka, considered a building for lose/win conditions, turn in for lumber, acoloyte-production, etc.

I wanted to make it a powerful offensive unit itself - simular to the mother-ship idea that the protoss have in Starcraft 2 that was in that demo. In world of warcraft necropoli move and spread blight, etc. I wanted that same feel - its slow, but goddamit, if it comes knocking on your door, YOU ARE GOING TO FEEL IT. >.>

And, im making alot of the standard unit powers watered down and more auto-cast stuff available, even some hero powers, so that you wont have to micro-manage every single unit in the game.

[AgentPaper]

If you want it to be even more like the mothership, you can give it a multi-attack ability to hit multiple targets along with it's main turret attack. Just make a custom ability based off of the Barrage ability (siege engine anti-air attack) and customize the looks/targets/damage/number of shots to your liking.

[Douglas]

I'm pretty sure you can select more than 12 units at a time in SC...
No, you can't. I'm partway through playing the SC campaigns again right now, and 12 is definitely the maximum. You can have up to 10 control groups assigned to the number keys, but you can't have more than 12 units actually selected at a time.

[AgentPaper]

No, you can't. I'm partway through playing the SC campaigns again right now, and 12 is definitely the maximum. You can have up to 10 control groups assigned to the number keys, but you can't have more than 12 units actually selected at a time.

Huh, odd, then it really is the same as WC3. I always thought you could select something like 40 at a time in SC for some reason. Still, the point remains that if you do have something like a hundred units on a side, it can get pretty tedious pretty fast if you don't have some way to control them other than selecting them all individually. With my squad system, you can have up to 144 units in a single selection, and with a command-based system (ie: All units move to selected point, or a pre-determined one, when you tell them to) there's really no limit other than how many units your computer can handle.

[Jane_Smith]

Well, this is mostly just a map for me and a small circle of friends who love wc3/large battles to - so far all our computers can handle it and the changes. Plus, im a nub at this ><. Im doing everything i can within my limited scope of expertise.

One question - I had to remove the ground-art for the necropolis (to prevent the 'left behind' building base like the above picture did with that keep) and to remove the aura of blight - as it moves with the necrpolis on a large scale. However, i still want it to have some kinda blight ability.

My idea was to make a spell-like ability of the Sacrifical Skull power to create blight in a specific area, cooldown 120 seconds, large-scale centered on the necropolis? Whatca think?

[Jane_Smith]

New problem - Upgrading the flying necropolis to its next phase crashs the game if it moved at all before then. :x

I suppose i could just save flying for the last, teir 3 stage of the base?

[AgentPaper]

Hmm, are the upgrades also set up to be flying, without any pathing?

And the blight ability would work fine. Just give it a custom ability based off the item ability that the skull has, give it some cooldown, and you're set. You could also have it automatically create blight wherever it goes through triggers, which would be pretty cool I have to admit. (move it around to give your troops an advantage, but be careful because the enemy can follow your base pretty easily as well!)

Edit: If you're still getting errors, you can remove the upgrade ability altogether, and then have the thing able to train a unit which is the upgrade instead. Then, have a trigger detect when that unit is trained, remove the unit, and then replace the old necropolis with an upgraded version.

[Athaniar]

If unit creation is a problem, give it a summoning ability.

[The Orange Zergling]

If you make it a new unit and use the Necropolis model you can give it the Return Lumber ability so that Ghouls still return lumber to it and I believe it can still produce units if you enter the unit in the Tech Tree - Units Trained field, if not then I think it will stop moving while producing the unit.

Though this doesn't fix it not counting towards win/loss conditions, sadly.

[Jothki]

Aren't the win/loss conditions themselves triggers that you can edit, or do you want the map to be able to run under melee settings?

[Khanderas]

Have it automatically create undead off the corpses near it (with a custom ability, no mana cost and a cooldown of 10-20 seconds). It is so unholy the dead starts to walk on their own !
(Pure cool factor, sometimes the ability would be good, and others not so good with the skeleton duration.)

[The Orange Zergling]

Aren't the win/loss conditions themselves triggers that you can edit, or do you want the map to be able to run under melee settings?

Depends; if you use the default melee win/loss conditions (the ones that are there when you start up a brand new map), then no, those are hardcoded and unalterable. The only customization involved is keeping or deleting them.

Alternatively, you can make your own win/loss triggers with their own conditions from scratch and disable the default melee win/loss. In that case, the sky is the limit.

[Athaniar]

Have it automatically create undead off the corpses near it (with a custom ability, no mana cost and a cooldown of 10-20 seconds). It is so unholy the dead starts to walk on their own !
(Pure cool factor, sometimes the ability would be good, and others not so good with the skeleton duration.)

I suggest modifying the necromancer's Raise Dead ability, perhaps to 1 skeleton (or zombie)/corpse.

Also, necropolis hero: Good idea or bad idea?

[Winterwind]

Also, necropolis hero: Good idea or bad idea?As in, making the necropolis itself a hero?

It depends on the paradigm of the game, of course, but in something resembling regular melee, bad idea, I'd say. Firstly, it would have to either move fast to keep up with the army in order to support it, or have spells with infinite range. In the former case, this would lend itself to all kinds of abuse ("Tower Rush, super-boosted neo-Undead style, go!"), in the latter, it would be too difficult for the enemy to disable the hero. Matter of fact, the latter would be a problem anyhow. Being able to pose a danger to the enemy heroes is a central element of WarCraft tactics, a hero with the hit points, armour type and resistances of a building wouldn't fit in. For crying out loud, the Goblin Tinker has just that as his ultimate, and he doesn't even have the hit point amount of a building.

In a game structured around accommodating buildings that are heroes, of course, it would be a different matter entirely.

[Jane_Smith]

Well, i was just trying to make super-units for each army. This is what i got so far;

Undead = Necropolis. Their own base is their giga-unit. It costs no wood, but heavy in gold (505 gold for teir 1 base), and creation time has been nearly doubled. However, the necropolis can move at its teir 3, has a large-radius blight ability with a cooldown of 180 seconds... this thing is so wide that it can completely blight a 8-person map if used 5-6 times. It also has a regen aura around it that regenerates 1/2/3 hp per second of all units near it, in addition to the blight regen. Its special offensive power is Plague Infection - it lets you target a large area of effect and "parasite" all organic enemy units in that radius where they take 1 damage a second for 60 seconds. If they die by any means during that time, they spawn a zombie in their place under your control. Also - necromancers create a single zombie from a corpse per cast of Raise Dead now, not skeletons. Skeleton warriors and archers can be purchased as fodder-like infantry from the Graveyard. Zombies are about the same toughness as a ghoul with a slower attack, but can later become tougher and gain the ability to expload on death (for like 25 damage, but it makes them incredibly good fodder).


Humans = Seige Engine. These units are nowhere near as strong as a necropoli- but they do have massive hp, armor, and splash-on-target damage. I have given them 1,800 base hp, longer creation time, 8 armor, (increased size as well), upped their base damage and also allowed them to attack any land unit/building/etc with a large splash/explosive effect centered on the target. Their barrage ability later has been improved to target up to 4 flying units every 2 seconds for moderate damage. They still move slowly, and i have allowed spells like Entangle, etc, to effect them. Still - with increased attack range, etc? 2-3 seige tanks can make the difference in any battle. Also gave Spellbreaker's the Defend ability.


Orcs = Demolishers. These units, like the seige engine, have been incredibly buffed - but lack the armor and hp of the seige engine. They move slightly slower then the seige engine but do much more damage, and have a longer attack range, making demolishers the perfect base-smashers from afar! :D Course though, their wood cost is 200 per unit... Not very 'spammable'. Also gave shamans, wind riders, raiders, etc, the Berzerk Strength upgrade for bonus hp.


Last, but not least, the Night Elves. I have made a special unit for them - the Ancestor's Spirit. A large, unqiue wisp that has several smaller wisps circling it in all directions. This wisp has only 300 hp - but it has a Divine Armor type and regens hp quickly. It has 3 effects - it automatically burns enemy's mana if they get near it, losing roughly 5 points a second - doing 1 damage to them for every 5 points drained. It also lowers all armor of units near it by 5, as if Faerie Fire as used on them all, passively, and it lasts for 5 seconds even after they leave the area of the Spirit. And lastly - it to has a Expload ability that sacrifices it to do a 2400 foot range mana burn effect that drains all units - even your own, for 500 mana and does 250 damage to summoned units and slows all movement/attack speeds by 50% for 5 seconds (3 for heros). However, it lacks the ability to make buildings, its more or less a really nice thing to have with your army to weaken your enemys. I also slightly buffed the glaive thrower by making it attack faster.

[AgentPaper]

I would think the Kodo Rider would be a better "ultimate" unit for the orcs. Just increase their HP, cost, and the effect and range of their buff, and also give them some kind of special ability or something, perhaps a wide-range mini-bloodlust? (which stacks with normal bloodlust, but isn't as powerful)

[Jane_Smith]

Actually that is basically endurance aura. :P Though the idea does work... maybe i could give them a ground-slam like the dwaf hero's thunderclap? slow your enemys attacks/movement, increase the attack speed/damage of allies?

I was also considering giving trolls headhunters a watered-down Envenomed Spear's upgrade that they get it the same time wind riders do. Like 2 damage a second for 30 seconds, wind-riders up to 4 for 30? I really wanted to make all upgrades kinda overlap multiple units, maybe even have some aid heros.

Berzerk Strength = Peons, Grunts, Raiders, Shamans, Wind Riders, Blade Master-Hero, Shaman-Hero.

Pillage = Peons, Grunts, Raiders, Blade-Master Hero, Tauren-Hero.

Envomed Spears = Troll Headhunters, Troll Berzerkers, Wind Riders.

Pulverize = Tauren Warriors, Tauren-Hero.

Shaman Training = Shamans, and Shaman-Hero.

Witch Docter Training = Witch Docters and Troll-Hero.

Troll Regeneration = Troll Batriders, Troll Headhunters, Troll Berzerkers, Troll Witch Docters, Troll-Hero.

(Overall, each hero only gets access to 2 seperate upgrades at the max)

Was even considering making the Orcish Warlock unit available and giving them access to the shaman training, berzerk strength, armor-upgrades (steel/etc) - like a armored caster that specializes in augmenting on single units and debuffing single enemy units (Cripple and Unholy Frenzy, etc). Only problem is, which i find annoying, is their is no sound file for the orcish warlock and it shares one with the basic shaman. Normally this wouldnt be an issue... but im kinda a sucker for perfection, and this just wont do. >:O

I have also been fiddling with the idea of giving each army a new hero and removing the mercenary heros from the map entirely - Making a "Ranger" hero from the living sylvannas file, wind-walk, critical hit, poison-arrows, and "Feign Death", a form of reincarnate with a different effect-art, giving the Beast Master hero to the horde, making a unqiue beast-master like elf hero from the Stormrage model file that is simular to the beast master, but different animals - spiders, owls, etc, and for the undead i was considering pit lord, or a new undead hero entirely from scratch, like some kinda super-necromancer hero that focuses on raising dead completely.

[Athaniar]

I have suggestions for quite a lot of heroes (including abilities), if anyone's interested.