Brief Guide to Multiplayer Scenario Design - Part 1

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murdilator
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Brief Guide to Multiplayer Scenario Design - Part 1

Post by murdilator »

Welcome!


I thought of writing a small guide to scenario design for onlookers and people curious to find just what it is about. Let us start with a series of questions.

So, is it hard? Not really, unless you attempt to make a single player campaign.

What do I do about multiplayer maps? It really is not way too hard. As the Official Strategy Guide puts it, "place two town centers, resources beside them, with an explorer. Create a river dividing the map using the river tool. Use waypoints to align the river as you want, and widen it to a moderate degree. Then hit place" (paraphrased). Continue to press build river. Create a shallows with the shallows tool, make sure it is at least seven units long. Make three crossing points. And voila, you have made your first map. However, this is the first stage and just an example. I will give true direction in a little bit.

What are triggers? How do I use them? Triggers work like math proof problems. They are simple, powerful, and occasionally annoying. However, in the scenario editor, they are more like Algebra II problems, since you literally plug and chug. Since coders and engineers made this game and its coding, we take them for their word. Triggers are to be used as their name implies. Not every trigger works as we want them to, but just make do with what you got. Age of Wiki describes many of these in detail.

How do I name triggers? Simply select the trigger, highlight the trigger name's text, press the text in you want, like "Fade To Color ON" and press the enter or return key. You can also name Conditions and Effects in the same way, if you want to be really specific, but in my opinion this is quite cluttery and can lead to mixing up in triggers. The trigger "Fade To Color ON" is used to give the loading some lagg time and give you a chance to present your scenario, with credit to yourself. "Fade To Color OFF" takes away the black screen to see the map. "Fade to Color ON" trigger also allows other key triggers, like placing town centers and explorers, a chance to take place before anyone can see them. Otherwise, generally people complain of why there is no town center yet and you have to explain for five minutes every time that it will appear in a second. This is a professional way to construct your scenario, and encourages others and yourself into making a custom Random Map, or RM.


!!! A Quick Tip !!!

Before we start talking about triggers, I have to tell you that the Scenario does not automatically place camera positions for players. Moshe_Levi, in his Tip's and Tricks Guide, explains a complicated way to do camera positions, but it has problems in team games. For this reason, I place the Camera Cut, which is in the far top right corner of the Scenario Editor in Cinematics, in the middle of the map, and place three gold mines there. I also place a Revealer To All, or a Revealer To Player for each player so they have that LOS. Only one per player is necessary to see all three fine. For this case, I have had no players complain of this one limitation of the Scenario Editor. It seems the gold made them seemingly forget and think it cool. In fact they don't ask questions when bribed like that. But be sure to make it equally good for every player. This three gold mines trick always works and is always valid.

Triple Gold Mine Trick:

Image

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For non lame scenarios and multiplayer RMs, there are seven mandatory triggers:

1st trigger: (IMPORTANT TO MAKE THIS THE FIRST, otherwise you will have a split second with a person seeing the map and saying something. It also makes it look professional)

Trigger Name: Fade To Color ON (Active, HIGH PRIORITY)

Conditions: Always

Effects:

- Fade To Color On --> all parameters set to zero;

- Overlay Text --> ScenarioTitle, created by (USERPROFILE%, or your online name) --> put 3.75 for timer to fade out text.


2nd trigger:

Trigger Name: Fade to color OFF (Active, HIGH PRIORITY)

Conditions: Timer, 4.0 (seconds).

Effects: Fade To Color Off, all parameters set to zero.


3rd trigger:

Trigger Name: MusicStart (Active, Medium Priority - this is what the bar starts on)

Conditions: Always.

Effects: Music Filename --> Music (folder) --> (not battle or special music) --> Muptop (beginning song). (MUPTOP GIVES SENSE OF A REGULAR GAME).


4th trigger:

Trigger Name: FadeOutMusic (Active, Loop, Medium High Priority)

Conditions: Timer, 251 (seconds). This is enough for Muptop and most music to fade out well.

Effects:

- Fade Out Music, with fade at 4.0, not 3.0 on which it starts. These are seconds.

- Fire Event: PlayNextMusicTrack (leave this blank until you create the 5th trigger).


5th trigger:

Trigger Name: PlayNextMusicTrack (NOT ACTIVE, (uncheck mark by active), Medium High Priority.)

Conditions: timer, 4.0 (seconds).

Effects: PlayNextMusicTrack.


We're almost done!


6th trigger:

Trigger Name: SetPlayer1Defeated (Active, HIGH PRIORITY)

Conditions:

- Player Unit Count --> Town Center = 0;

- All Units Dead: Player 1, Timer 15.0 (to make sure you don't get defeated before your town centers are placed).

Effects: Set Player Defeated: 1.


Copy this trigger and name it SetPlayer2Defeated, changing the player numbers to 2.

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SAVE SCENARIO HERE. SAVE BEFORE YOU LOAD NICETERIUM, THE WINNING THEME MUSIC. IT ALWAYS BUGS THE FIRST TIME YOU LOAD THIS. SAVE RIGHT BEFORE YOU LOAD IT INTO A TRIGGER.
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8th trigger:

Trigger Name: EndGame1

Conditions: Player Defeated: 2 or player 2's entire team.

Effects:

- Render Fog Black Map: Both OFF;

- End Game;

- Win Message: (Victory is Yours!);

- Music Filename: --> music --> win music? --> Niceterium.


Copy this trigger for EndGame2, and reverse the teams. These are written out for 1v1. Be sure to save before you load Niceterium, as it will fail to load most of the first times. These are the nine mandatory triggers.

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Steps to design a map:

1. Get a circular object like a cup saucer, get a sheet of scrap paper, and draw two circles. These are two beginning sketches of your map. I made my Wilderness Road like this. Draw a river or two where you want one, and put a little bush thing for a forest, and whatnot. Make x's for treasures, etc.

2. Go Into scenario editor, then press new scenario. Make it large size (not small), which will start the map at 400x400 meters. For a 1v1 map, you want it probably 324 by 324, so, go to map size and downsize it by subtracting about 12 or 16 for each of the four slots every time. When it comes close, you should be fine, and can use 9 and stuff like that.

However, if you want to build a bigger map, make it positive numbers. You will see a small bug with the elevation, as if there is a hill. Go find Smooth (it is on the left side of the toolbar), and click the small box with the paint brush. Change the bottom brush to large so that the smooth effect is large. Do your job of smoothing out the buggy corners of elevation. I warn you that water and smooth have some problems with one another that get things buggy. If you want water, I give you the hint of not letting go of the mouse and going all over the place. If you run into trouble, try and use cliffs, and afterwards erase the cliffs with water. I will also warn you that you must increase your map size in the beginning stages of your scenario, or else you might run into serious bugs, such as a trade route not working.


3. Put in the nine key triggers.

4. Start building your map, leaving treasures until later.

5. Select World up on the toolbar, then select map types, and select the types of maps you think your map fits to allow what type of treasurers are chosen and how the AI plays the map. Check the boxes and press OK. Then Save you scenario.

6. Place Town Centers using the UNIT CREATE and selecting your designated spot for a town center. You could also put a cinematic block in the town center location, and simply use "Change Unit Type" to town center. Be sure to make the cinematic block the same player's tone center. Use HIGH Priority with a timer of 1 or 1.3, differing slightly with each player. If you already placed a town center, delete it. There is a bug with already stationed buildings with population bonus in scenario editor, so delete it so that you do not get negative 10 population when it dies. Place an AI start on all the Town Centers of all the players except player 1, which is the scenario host, and as a matter of fact, you. Place a cinematic block by each Town Center, equivalent to where an explorer would be. You can also use the unit create effect for different explorers.

Repeatedly save your scenario. When you have finished the map, save a new version named "ScenarioTitle" V1. When you get the rest of the steps done, save a new version with a V2 ending.

This is the basic rubric to make a non lame multiplayer scenario/map. People will be IMPRESSED with your ability to create scenarios. In the future, you will make the explorer triggers, in which I hope to show in a bit about change unit type triggers with unit create. Change unit type triggers work faster and are not as laggy, but are more dependent. Use a combination of these to create monks and explorers. Copy these first and study them a little bit, then put your own spin on it.


Have Fun!




This is the end of part one of my Guide. I am done writing for the a day. I have edited it a bit. Latest Edit on Monday, July 12th, 2010.



Regards,




murdilator
"Feel the Might of the Sioux!" - Gall, when fighting and defeating your army at his own base.

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Scenario Design Competition Participant 2009:

3v3 WildernessRoad: https://aoe3.heavengames.com/downloads/ ... ileid=2521
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