Hey all, so I’ve been here coming up on a year, and since then I’ve gotten MUCH better at Scenario Design and creating scenarios. This guide will hopefully contain tutorials on how to make several different kinds of multiplayer games that you can play LAN or online.
Table of contents:
Part 1-Genres(discusses types of MP games)
Part 2-Balance
Part 3-Making a Very Basic CBA Tutorial
Part 1: Genres
Scenarios can have many different genres(types) of gameplay. Some are easier to make, while the more fun kind require more work. Everyone is different and has their own taste for scenarios. Below is a few of the different genres for AoK scenarios:
Build and Destroy-The easiest to make, the only necessary triggers for it are the win and lose triggers(like Destroy the Enemy Castle to win, and if your king dies, you lose).
Role Playing Game- One of the most time consuming types of scenarios. RPG’s tend to be free roam(meaning all/most of the map is accessible) and normally have quite a few miniquests and maybe a few games etc… RPG’s normally find the player in control of a single unit in a land where he must complete sub objectives to complete Primary objectives, and to get kills to upgrade his current unit. For more info on Sp and MP RPGs, check outthis thread by Tanks_Fst.
Bloods- Just about everyone who has ever played on Gameranger has seen/played a blood at some point. Bloods are games where you get around 40 respawning units and have to kill another players’ tower/castle/building. As you get kills you get better units and get gold/units to buy upgrades and spells.
Hunter and Prey: Normally these types of games support up to eight players and are played at a 3:1 ratio(OH NO, Not math class again!) meaning there is one hunter for every 3 players. The humans in vamp ress get a head start and must find a defensive location to defend from the vampire players. Vampire players get tons of gold from kills and can have units with 1000+ attack and several thousand hp. They then have to find and kill the human players’ main villager within X amount of time to win. There are several scenarios with this genre, though not too many have been made and become popular.
These are the main types of MP games.
Part 2: Balance
In Multiplayer, balance is a MUST. Players DO NOT like it when another player has an advantage over them(such as the host *somehow* starts with better units or position on the map). People have wondered, “what is balance?”, and how do I make it. Well, a basic definition of Balance for Multiplayer is “Balance is that when players fight against an enemy(comp or human) there must be a stalemate.”
That’s about it. When the game is played, both players bust have the same units and choices(other than control of the booter). Now I’ve made Mp games where people have complained about it being unbalanced when I bought a unit in a store that they can buy but didn’t want to and I massacre their troops. This does affect the balance somewhat, I have a four player blood I have in the making that everyone gets the same units though there is a mercenary store in the top of the map where you can buy groups or single units(such as you could buy a group of sabs or hire an Expert Assassin for 500 gold. This is fine, as long as you keep it so that everyone can have the same choices.
Stores-If you have/ want to have a store in your MP scenario, keep it properly balanced. On an archer map don’t make paladins super cheap for example. Sometimes it’s good to have a section in the store where you can buy counter units such as:
Skirmishers-Anti-Ranged
Spear Line-Anti Cavalry
These can be for a gold cost, or what ever currency method you use. I’ll talk about this later on, and how to make a basic store.
Tutorials:
(This section will have tutorials to make a basic CBA, a basic blood, different store systems, and spawning methods.)
How to make a Very Basic CBA:
In this tutorial I won’t be making an eight player CBA, but rather, a basic two player one. You can use this tutorial to expand and make other players if want to later. In this CBA I’ll make a two player CBA with Britons vs. Teutons. You can change the civs if you want it different. So let’s get started, I’m using Aok:TC to make this scenario:
1.Start up Age of Kings: the Conquerors and open the Map Editor. The go to map andgenerate a Tiny Shallow Water map.
2.Go to the Players tab, and make it two players if it isn’t. Then make Player 1 Britons, and Player 2 Teutons, and set both players to start in the Feudal Age.
3.Now, go to the terrain tab, and select grass 1. We’ll use Grass 1 as our base terrain for this scenario. Change the brush size to Huge, and draw a moderate sized square, this will be the center area in between the two bases.
4.Now draw two equal peninsulas on opposite sides of the center square, this will be the players bases. Make sure that they are THE SAME IN SIZE. If one is bigger it could become unbalanced.
5.Now that we have the base terrain for this CBA, SAVE. Call it what you like, but for this tutorial I’ll call it “My CBA”.
6.Now go to the Units tab, and go to buildings. For this tutorial, as it’s only a two player CBA, I’ll use only One Castle.Place a castle in your base, switch to player 2(by pressing 2, it’s quicker) and place it inside his base. Place a Flag 2 on each side of the castle as these flags will mark our spawn points.
7.Now let’s get some walls up. Use the regular Stone walls(don’t use Fortified Walls as I’ll make that an upgrade later) and place it completely around the castle, with 2-3 gates at the front. Do the same for player 2.
~SAVE NOW~
Now you have the basic look for the scenario. Time to get to the long parts, the trigger work, but since this is a small CBA, with only a few kinds of units, it shouldn’t be hard at all.
If you aren’t experienced with triggers yet, then please check this article out first.
Alright, let’s continue:
Go to the triggers tab. Now everyone may have their own style for organizing and labeling triggers, since I’m making the tutorial, I’ll stick to my method, but feel free to name your triggers as you like, though make sure you call it something,DO NOT LEAVE TRIGGERS UNNAMED as it makes debugging very difficult on more complex scenarios.
Step 1:Make three new triggers. I’ll name the first Renaming Effects as this is where we will place any effect that renames a unit. Make a condition and add a timer for say, three seconds. Start the trigger on, no objective, and no looping(looping can cause lag, and you mainly only need to loop if your renaming villagers.)
Name the second trigger Beginning Effects, this is where we will out our Change Object Attack and Hp effects etc…Add a condition timer and set it for 5 seconds(keep them different so if you ever experience a beginning crash you can look at the in game timer and place where a faulty trigger might be). Start this trigger On, Loof-Off, Objective-No.
The third trigger will act as a divider to make our trigger look more neat, turn the trigger to start off and delete the name.
Let’s rename and change the hit points of the castles now. Go to the Renaming Trigger and add a renaming effect. Type “Player 1’s Castle” and select player 1’s castle. Do the same for player 2’s castle, only make a new renaming effect and have it say ”Player 2’s Castle”.
Go to the Beginning Effects trigger and make two new effects, both Change Objects HP effects. Type 200 in each of them and hook one up to player 1’s castle and the other to Player 2’s castle.
~SAVE NOW~
(If you want to, feel free to Test the map to see if it works correctly. When you test place any unit on the map for both players so you don’t lose when you start. Once in game, type “marco polo” and check player 2’s effects as well.
All working, excellent, let’s move on. We haven’t done much yet.
Before we get some units on the field, lets make some game logic first. Make two new triggers. Name the first “Plr1-Lose” and make an effect like the one below.
Plr1-Lose
Objective-No
Start-On
Loop-No
Condition-Destroy Object(set as player 1’s castle)
Effect-Remove Object(set area so it covers the entire grass area on the map, and set it to player 1)
Make the other new trigger the same way only make it for player 2’s castle and units.
~SAVE NOW~
These two triggers, will make a player lose when his castle is destroyed. I use this method as it is simple but only use it with small maps. Do not try this for more than four players(or if a player has more than 300 units) as it can crash the game when the trigger fires.
With that done, test it out by starting the game and deleting your own castle, if you lose, GREAT!. Now to test out player 2’s castle, go to the units tab and place about 5-6 unpacked trebuchets by his castle(not to close) and retest the game. Use the trebs to kill his castle, if he loses when ts destroyed, good for you .
Now, time to get some units on the field. Since player 1 is Britons, and player 2 is Teutons, the triggers are not exactly the same.
Player 1’s Unique Unit(UU) is the Longbowman, whereas the Teutons is the Teutonic knight. Follow the below trigger to make each side spawn troops.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name------Plr1-Units(or Plr2-Units for Player 2)
Start--------On
Loop--------Yes
Objective—No
Condition 1-Own Fewer Objects(set as player 1, Units, Military, like the below picture), and set the number to fourty.
Condition 2-Timer=3
Effect-1-Create Object-Longbowman(create on one side of castle on flag)
Effect-2-CreateObject- Longbowman(create on other side of castle on flag)
Effect-3-Task Object- Set Player to player 1 and set Area so it covers ONLY 1 spawn point.
Effect-2-Task Object-Set it to player 1 and set area so it covers the other spawn point
Set locations in front of the castle.
Create the same trigger for Player 2, only instead of Creating Longbowmen, set it to create Teutonic Knights, and set all the player 1’s to Player 2’s.
For an extra feature, if you want it, add two Remove Objects effects to each trigger and set it to remove all of the other players units on your spawn points, this will prevent blocking a players spawn points.
~SAVE NOW~
Now, if you want to, test out the scenario to see if your spawn points work.
Possible Troubleshooting:
If only two guys come out, make sure the trigger is looping.
If two guys appear and just stand there, add/fix your Task Object effect.
If they keep coming and you have more than fourty units, make sure that your ”Fewer Objects is Set to 40 military units.
If all is well with you and Player 2, then Great, the main part of the game is done. You could now go on Voobly or GameRanger and play your new CBA as it has working spawns, Lose Conditions etc…
But face it, it won’t be much fun after awhile. Why not go further and make some upgrade when you get kills, , add a Kill counter, and make it better.
Yes? Well then, let’s get to it.
============Advancing the Scenario============
First lets add a few upgrades for kills. Since this scenario doesn’t have a store or stuff like that, We’ll use the easy method, the Accumulate Attribute-Kills” Condition. In bloods, like I may discuss later below, you can make much more complex kill counter systems, which I normally use in the scenarios I make, but since this is a basic tutorial, I’ll stick to the easier way.
How about our first upgrade once we get, say? 50 kills will be an upgrade from L-Bow to Elite L-bow(or TK to Elite TK for player 2)
Add two new triggers, this is SUPER easy trigger work, so it should only take a minute to make.
Name one Plr1-EliteUpgrade(Plr2-EliteUpgrade for Player 2)
Start-On
Loop-No
Objective-No
Condition-Accumulate Attribute/Player 1/Kills=50
Effect-Research Technology(Elite Longbowman-Player1)
For player 2, make it Research Elite Teutonic Knight.
~SAVE NOW~
And that’s your first upgrade, Congratulations.
Let’s add another upgrade. Say? At 100 kills, we’ll get Fortified Wall. Okay then, make two new triggers and do something like this for both of them:
Start-On
Loop-Off
Objective-No
Condition-Accumulate Attribute/Player1/Kills=100
Effect-Research Technology-Fortified Wall/Player 1
Comp this for player 2’s trigger as well.
Congrats again on making another trigger. You can go on and on with this if you want, simply follow the above trigger, and make new upgrades to research Forging, Armor etc…
That’s the end for the upgrade part.
~SAVE NOW~
If you want a Kill Counter for this, it wont be hard. Add a piece of Road terrain some way behind your castle, and place an outpost there. GO to the Renaming Effects trigger, and rename both player 1’s and player 2’s outpost to Player 1’s Kills and Player 2’s Kills.
Now, whenever you get an upgrade, simply change the Outposts name to the number of kills.
For instance, you get the Elite upgrade at 50 kills, in the Elite upgrade trigger, add a Renaming Effect to “Player 1’s Kills (50 Kills)”. With the Fortified wall upgrade, add a new effect to Change to outposts name and make it “Player 1’s Kills (100 Kills) and so on. Make sure that you do this for both players.
~SAVE NOW~
Okay, let’ do some typing. Go to the messages tab, and in the Hints tab Type in the list of upgrades. Like this:
50 Kills-Elite Upgrade
100 Kills-Fortified Walls
150 Kills-Forging
200 Kills etc…
Keep doing this till you are done with all of your upgrades.
In the Scenario Instructions area, type something like “Destroy all enemy castles on the map to win while protecting your own castle. If your castle is destroyed, you will lose”.
And that’s pretty much it to make a basic CBA. YAY!!! Of course, there are other things that you could add like Razings=Villagers etc… But this tutorial has explained the basics for making a CBA, and is the groundwork for more complex MP Games.
Here is my copy of the scenario if you want to download and look at it. This is nowhere near my best work, it's simple for this tutorial.
>>-Download This CBA Tutorial Scenario Here-<<
Anyway, here is the first of several tutorials, when I finish the rest, I'll make a thread in the SD&M forum with the FAQ and link ti the tutorials in the University.
Hope it you liked my first of many tutorials. :)
joshua4missions :)
--~Cherub at Age of Empires Online Heaven~--.
Proud member of Stormwind Studios since 2010!
Part 1-Genres(discusses types of MP games)
Part 2-Balance
Part 3-Making a Very Basic CBA Tutorial
Part 1: Genres
Scenarios can have many different genres(types) of gameplay. Some are easier to make, while the more fun kind require more work. Everyone is different and has their own taste for scenarios. Below is a few of the different genres for AoK scenarios:
Build and Destroy-The easiest to make, the only necessary triggers for it are the win and lose triggers(like Destroy the Enemy Castle to win, and if your king dies, you lose).
Role Playing Game- One of the most time consuming types of scenarios. RPG’s tend to be free roam(meaning all/most of the map is accessible) and normally have quite a few miniquests and maybe a few games etc… RPG’s normally find the player in control of a single unit in a land where he must complete sub objectives to complete Primary objectives, and to get kills to upgrade his current unit. For more info on Sp and MP RPGs, check out
Bloods- Just about everyone who has ever played on Gameranger has seen/played a blood at some point. Bloods are games where you get around 40 respawning units and have to kill another players’ tower/castle/building. As you get kills you get better units and get gold/units to buy upgrades and spells.
Hunter and Prey: Normally these types of games support up to eight players and are played at a 3:1 ratio(OH NO, Not math class again!) meaning there is one hunter for every 3 players. The humans in vamp ress get a head start and must find a defensive location to defend from the vampire players. Vampire players get tons of gold from kills and can have units with 1000+ attack and several thousand hp. They then have to find and kill the human players’ main villager within X amount of time to win. There are several scenarios with this genre, though not too many have been made and become popular.
These are the main types of MP games.
In Multiplayer, balance is a MUST. Players DO NOT like it when another player has an advantage over them(such as the host *somehow* starts with better units or position on the map). People have wondered, “what is balance?”, and how do I make it. Well, a basic definition of Balance for Multiplayer is “
That’s about it. When the game is played, both players bust have the same units and choices(other than control of the booter
Stores-If you have/ want to have a store in your MP scenario, keep it properly balanced. On an archer map don’t make paladins super cheap for example. Sometimes it’s good to have a section in the store where you can buy counter units such as:
Skirmishers-Anti-Ranged
Spear Line-Anti Cavalry
These can be for a gold cost, or what ever currency method you use. I’ll talk about this later on, and how to make a basic store.
(This section will have tutorials to make a basic CBA, a basic blood, different store systems, and spawning methods.)
In this tutorial I won’t be making an eight player CBA, but rather, a basic two player one. You can use this tutorial to expand and make other players if want to later. In this CBA I’ll make a two player CBA with Britons vs. Teutons. You can change the civs if you want it different. So let’s get started, I’m using Aok:TC to make this scenario:
1.Start up Age of Kings: the Conquerors and open the Map Editor. The go to map and
2.Go to the Players tab, and make it two players if it isn’t. Then make Player 1 Britons, and Player 2 Teutons, and set both players to start in the Feudal Age.
3.Now, go to the terrain tab, and select grass 1. We’ll use Grass 1 as our base terrain for this scenario. Change the brush size to Huge, and draw a moderate sized square, this will be the center area in between the two bases.
4.Now draw two equal peninsulas on opposite sides of the center square, this will be the players bases. Make sure that they are THE SAME IN SIZE. If one is bigger it could become unbalanced.
5.Now that we have the base terrain for this CBA, SAVE. Call it what you like, but for this tutorial I’ll call it “My CBA”.
6.Now go to the Units tab, and go to buildings. For this tutorial, as it’s only a two player CBA, I’ll use only One Castle.
7.Now let’s get some walls up. Use the regular Stone walls(don’t use Fortified Walls as I’ll make that an upgrade later) and place it completely around the castle, with 2-3 gates at the front. Do the same for player 2.
Now you have the basic look for the scenario. Time to get to the long parts, the trigger work, but since this is a small CBA, with only a few kinds of units, it shouldn’t be hard at all.
If you aren’t experienced with triggers yet, then please check this article out first.
Alright, let’s continue:
Go to the triggers tab. Now everyone may have their own style for organizing and labeling triggers, since I’m making the tutorial, I’ll stick to my method, but feel free to name your triggers as you like, though make sure you call it something,
Step 1:
Name the second trigger Beginning Effects, this is where we will out our Change Object Attack and Hp effects etc…Add a condition timer and set it for 5 seconds(keep them different so if you ever experience a beginning crash you can look at the in game timer and place where a faulty trigger might be). Start this trigger On, Loof-Off, Objective-No.
The third trigger will act as a divider to make our trigger look more neat, turn the trigger to start off and delete the name.
Let’s rename and change the hit points of the castles now. Go to the Renaming Trigger and add a renaming effect. Type “Player 1’s Castle” and select player 1’s castle. Do the same for player 2’s castle, only make a new renaming effect and have it say ”Player 2’s Castle”.
Go to the Beginning Effects trigger and make two new effects, both Change Objects HP effects. Type 200 in each of them and hook one up to player 1’s castle and the other to Player 2’s castle.
(If you want to, feel free to Test the map to see if it works correctly. When you test place any unit on the map for both players so you don’t lose when you start. Once in game, type “marco polo” and check player 2’s effects as well.
All working, excellent, let’s move on. We haven’t done much yet.
Before we get some units on the field, lets make some game logic first. Make two new triggers. Name the first “Plr1-Lose” and make an effect like the one below.
Plr1-Lose
Objective-No
Start-On
Loop-No
Condition-Destroy Object(set as player 1’s castle)
Effect-Remove Object(set area so it covers the entire grass area on the map, and set it to player 1)
Make the other new trigger the same way only make it for player 2’s castle and units.
These two triggers, will make a player lose when his castle is destroyed. I use this method as it is simple but only use it with small maps. Do not try this for more than four players(or if a player has more than 300 units) as it can crash the game when the trigger fires.
With that done, test it out by starting the game and deleting your own castle, if you lose, GREAT!
Now, time to get some units on the field. Since player 1 is Britons, and player 2 is Teutons, the triggers are not exactly the same.
Player 1’s Unique Unit(UU) is the Longbowman, whereas the Teutons is the Teutonic knight. Follow the below trigger to make each side spawn troops.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name------Plr1-Units(or Plr2-Units for Player 2)
Start--------On
Loop--------Yes
Objective—No
Condition 1-Own Fewer Objects(set as player 1, Units, Military, like the below picture), and set the number to fourty.
Condition 2-Timer=3
Effect-1-Create Object-Longbowman(create on one side of castle on flag)
Effect-2-CreateObject- Longbowman(create on other side of castle on flag)
Effect-3-Task Object- Set Player to player 1 and set Area so it covers ONLY 1 spawn point.
Effect-2-Task Object-Set it to player 1 and set area so it covers the other spawn point
Set locations in front of the castle.
Create the same trigger for Player 2, only instead of Creating Longbowmen, set it to create Teutonic Knights, and set all the player 1’s to Player 2’s.
For an extra feature, if you want it, add two Remove Objects effects to each trigger and set it to remove all of the other players units on your spawn points, this will prevent blocking a players spawn points.
Now, if you want to, test out the scenario to see if your spawn points work.
Possible Troubleshooting:
If only two guys come out, make sure the trigger is looping.
If two guys appear and just stand there, add/fix your Task Object effect.
If they keep coming and you have more than fourty units, make sure that your ”Fewer Objects is Set to 40 military units.
If all is well with you and Player 2, then Great, the main part of the game is done. You could now go on Voobly or GameRanger and play your new CBA as it has working spawns, Lose Conditions etc…
But face it, it won’t be much fun after awhile. Why not go further and make some upgrade when you get kills, , add a Kill counter, and make it better.
Yes? Well then, let’s get to it.
============Advancing the Scenario============
First lets add a few upgrades for kills. Since this scenario doesn’t have a store or stuff like that, We’ll use the easy method, the Accumulate Attribute-Kills” Condition. In bloods, like I may discuss later below, you can make much more complex kill counter systems, which I normally use in the scenarios I make, but since this is a basic tutorial, I’ll stick to the easier way.
How about our first upgrade once we get, say? 50 kills will be an upgrade from L-Bow to Elite L-bow(or TK to Elite TK for player 2)
Add two new triggers, this is SUPER easy trigger work, so it should only take a minute to make.
Name one Plr1-EliteUpgrade(Plr2-EliteUpgrade for Player 2)
Start-On
Loop-No
Objective-No
Condition-Accumulate Attribute/Player 1/Kills=50
Effect-Research Technology(Elite Longbowman-Player1)
For player 2, make it Research Elite Teutonic Knight.
And that’s your first upgrade, Congratulations.
Let’s add another upgrade. Say? At 100 kills, we’ll get Fortified Wall. Okay then, make two new triggers and do something like this for both of them:
Start-On
Loop-Off
Objective-No
Condition-Accumulate Attribute/Player1/Kills=100
Effect-Research Technology-Fortified Wall/Player 1
Comp this for player 2’s trigger as well.
Congrats again on making another trigger. You can go on and on with this if you want, simply follow the above trigger, and make new upgrades to research Forging, Armor etc…
That’s the end for the upgrade part.
If you want a Kill Counter for this, it wont be hard. Add a piece of Road terrain some way behind your castle, and place an outpost there. GO to the Renaming Effects trigger, and rename both player 1’s and player 2’s outpost to Player 1’s Kills and Player 2’s Kills.
Now, whenever you get an upgrade, simply change the Outposts name to the number of kills.
For instance, you get the Elite upgrade at 50 kills, in the Elite upgrade trigger, add a Renaming Effect to “Player 1’s Kills (50 Kills)”. With the Fortified wall upgrade, add a new effect to Change to outposts name and make it “Player 1’s Kills (100 Kills) and so on. Make sure that you do this for both players.
Okay, let’ do some typing. Go to the messages tab, and in the Hints tab Type in the list of upgrades. Like this:
50 Kills-Elite Upgrade
100 Kills-Fortified Walls
150 Kills-Forging
200 Kills etc…
Keep doing this till you are done with all of your upgrades.
In the Scenario Instructions area, type something like “Destroy all enemy castles on the map to win while protecting your own castle. If your castle is destroyed, you will lose”.
And that’s pretty much it to make a basic CBA. YAY!!! Of course, there are other things that you could add like Razings=Villagers etc… But this tutorial has explained the basics for making a CBA, and is the groundwork for more complex MP Games.
Here is my copy of the scenario if you want to download and look at it. This is nowhere near my best work, it's simple for this tutorial.
Anyway, here is the first of several tutorials, when I finish the rest, I'll make a thread in the SD&M forum with the FAQ and link ti the tutorials in the University.
Hope it you liked my first of many tutorials. :)
joshua4missions :)
Proud member of Stormwind Studios since 2010!
[This message has been edited by joshua4missions (edited 11-05-2010 @ 03:45 PM).]