This tutorial will show you how to add new players to a multiplayer game, edit gold mines, and add creeps.

This tutorial will cover:

• New Players
• Gold mine amounts
• Creeps

Right, first to start with a new map. This time, we are creating a Melee Multiplayer map, so we want to leave all the triggers intact. So stay away from the trigger editor for this one.

We will only create a four-player map, any more, and this tutorial will be far too complicated to follow.

Start by adding four ‘Player Start Positions’ in each corner of the map, these are found in the unit palette under buildings. Don’t do anything fancy just yet, just add player 1 in the top left, player 2 in the top right, player 3 in the bottom left, and player 4 in the bottom right.

We now have to add the players, I bet you thought we just did that don’t you? Well no, all we did was add start positions. To add the players, go to ‘Scenario’ – ‘Player Properties’. Here you will be prompted with a screen like this:

To add the other players, select the ‘Controller’ as ‘User’ for the first four players, and also tick the ‘Fixed Start Location’ for these players. So the screen then looks like this:

You can call the players what you want, but I’m just going to leave them.

Now we have added our players, we need to give them resources. Add a gold mine near each player’s start position, not too close though or the start position would be invalid.

If the position for the gold mine is too close, the picture of a town hall will disappear from the centre of the starting position circle:

(–) TOO CLOSE: (–)

(–) NOT TOO CLOSE: (–)

This is a very important factor, as it can seriously affect the start positions, so be careful!

Once you have placed the gold mines, change the amount of gold in each to 25 000. This is how to do it, pretty simple really.

Double click on a gold mine and you will see a screen as follows:

Change the value ‘Gold Amount’ to ‘25000’, and press OK. Like I said – simple, the placement is the hardest thing to master there.

Once you have added the gold mines for each player(don’t go over the top), we will move on to creeps.

Add a few creeps inside a player start like so:

I have added an ogre lord, and two ogre warriors. They are all inside the starting position, which means (due to the Melee triggers already in the map) that they will be deleted if a player occupies slot 2. If there is no player 2, these creeps will appear here to guard the gold mine.

For more on creeps and treasure etc., see my upcoming tutorial: ‘Creeps and Treasure’.

Once you have added creeps (minimum of 12 – 3 for each player start), you’re just about finished!

All you absolutely have to do now, is add trees. To do this, go to the doodad layer (press ‘D’ on your keyboard), and click on the ‘Tree Wall’, this is found in the ‘Trees / Destructibles’ part of the ‘Doodad’ palette.

You can add trees quicker, by increasing the brush size at the bottom of the doodad palette:

That’s really all there is to making a simple Melee map, all you have to do is edit the terrain to make it more realistic, you can add cliffs, rivers, ramps etc. with the terrain palette.

You can add impressive effects with ‘waygates’, ‘mercenary camps’ etc.