Warcraft Campaign Postmortem

Finally, it is all wrapped up and has a nice video to go with it. Here are some of my final thoughts when dealing with this project.

What Went Right

Tutorials

One of the best things that could have happened throughout this process is the abundance of tutorials that are available. An entire website, Hive, not only hosts forums for questions, but has many pages dedicated to guides, tips, and tricks that are common to the editor. Couple this with helpful YouTube channels like Turnro and it was incredibly easy to find the answer to most of my questions. Because there is no official location for information regarding the editor, fan-produced content is the only source of information regarding its use. This is why I will also be creating a tutorial, to give back a little to the community that helped me throughout the process! 

Editor

However, tutorials can only take you so far. The other great thing about working on this project was how straightforward the editor itself is. While it wasn’t perfect, so much of it is very click-and-drag. This was great for a designer like myself because I didn’t need to know any of the programming involved. If you needed a unit, you simply placed the unit in the world and set its parameters like team, stats, and inventory. There are layers upon layers of different menus that can be a bit tricky to sort through, but this kind of organization makes it exceedingly easy to track down an issue you are working on once you learn where everything goes.

End Result

When I had thought about what to say that I was happy about with this project, I couldn’t seem to come up with anything. Did I like how the set design turned out? Well, yes, but is that worth being a whole section? Just to say I liked it? How about the mechanics, like the militia and the custom items? Once again, they were very good, but what can I say other than they worked well? In the end, I realized the entire project was what I consider “went right.” There is almost no element of this level that I’m not satisfied with, and I’m thrilled that it feels mine. While the assets and programming are already done for you, how they all came together and worked in harmony was a direct result of how many hours I poured into this, and I can’t help but feel proud.

What Went Wrong

Support

While it is great that much of what I learned came from the community, it would have helped dramatically if the editor was supported by Blizzard. Unfortunately, it’s not. This leads to a host of issues when it comes to bugs that are so inherent in the editor that even the forums don’t have a solution. Often, a tutorial will warn that something doesn’t work and will require a dramatic workaround in order to have a rough similarity to the original function. Also, as of when I’m writing this in July of 2020, Warcraft III: Reforged does not support playing custom campaigns at all. All footage had to be taken from the editor’s map testing. This meant that I was always playing as the “editor” player, not player 2, as well as a whole host of other issues. 

Balance/Playtesting

Because there was no real way to put the level out there, playtesting had to be done completely by myself. I’m a veteran of Blizzard games for nearly two decades, so gauging how hard a map should be to a novice was rather challenging. It felt like if you knew how to micro-manage units, then the map was childishly simple. Whereas if you didn’t, then it was almost impossible. I also had a bit of a hard time determining how often a player should find health items or what kinds of paths they would take, so repeated playtesting had to be done based on different paths they may potentially take and if they chose to look for items or not. Too many items would make it too easy, but too few may immediately punish players for not looking around. That’s hardly the result I wanted.

Learning Curve

Lastly, one of my biggest issues was simply with me. Within the time frame I was going to work on this project, learning and doing had to share the same priority. As such, the editor looks like it is capable of significantly more than I used, but I simply didn’t have the time to learn how. Even elements such as unique models, sounds, and animations would have made my map stand out significantly more, but I just didn’t know how to do that. I’m still happy with how everything turned out, but I think if I had a better understanding of the editor, I may have been able to pull off something even better.

Lessons Learned

Milestone Predictions

With this project, I did realize a few very important things. The first one was understanding the time and place for certain milestones. For example, having an early milestone dedicated to set design was hardly the right time, as it meant that every time something needed to be changed for mechanics’ sake, the set design had to be demolished and moved. It also meant that when I started working on harder elements of the map, such as cinematics and mechanics, there were fewer days to go than there were behind. Losing a potted plant here and there in the map would not have been a significant loss, but had I not pulled a few long days to get the rest of the map implemented, there would not have been enough time to complete it.

Pre-Production Playtest

Another unexpected development was the unique playstyle I was going for came with a few issues. Because I wanted it to feel like an outdoor dungeon-crawler, I didn’t take into account how the camera would be affected. I looked into top-down views of cities and villages, spent hours working on my paper prototype, and got everything organized and ready to go for my initial blockout. The only problem was, I hadn’t realized how poorly that idea would work in a village. As a result, the map needed to be enlarged dramatically, with shorter hallways and bigger throughways so that the player could see. This definitely taught me to play around in the editor with basic ideas in mind first before committing to a project.

Research Examples

One of the best ways that my level flourished was by playing through the Blizzard maps in the editor. I was able to see tricks they used for hiding or displaying certain objects, what kind of scripting they used to achieve desired effects and even good ideas for set design. While I won’t say I was able to perfectly mirror a Blizzard map, I believe the quality of The Fires of Hearthwood stays in tune with that of their original content. Maybe with a bit more learning and a little more time, my map could have been indistinguishable from the professionals just because of how much I learned from dissecting their maps. 

Overall

As I’ve said, I’m very happy with how everything turned out, and there is little I would change overall. It isn’t perfect, but the idea I wanted to get across was accomplished, and I really think I learned a lot throughout this process. My hope is to continue creating Blizzard maps so that I can get a feel for how the masters do it, and potentially advertise my work to them personally. Whether I get to work with them on these games or not, it will always be a blast getting to add a little something to my favorite childhood franchise.