Making map creation more popular

[Eluo]

No way to fix this, except for official support for modding. And that needed to happen five years ago. Now, there is no way.

I don't even see in the future years official support for modding. The reason is obvious.

And for now you can't simply make map creation more popular. The problems all of you have listed, are nearly nonexistent, as you never will be able to create content for a game, in the fashion of wow, easy content in no time.
You always will have to put in a big part of you time into worldbuilds. Sure there are things that could be better, but it wouldn't speed up the creation process that much.
The major part of your time consumtion lies in the progess of the creation, as terrain shaping and texturing, and planting doodads. To get a compleatly new adt file working in game with modified areatable for example won''t need longer than 3 minutes, if you know what you are doing.

And for me i think videos would be time wasting, as you mostly would have to remember too many details and information. Thats why i think the written form of tutorials are way better. Easy access (copy & paste) to the given information. Pictures are in my guides very evident as i mostly describe every single step very detailed. I did this so, that people can use the knowledge given in the tutorials to solve other problems as well.

For example in my dbc tutorials i mostly start over from the start, explaining the program at every single step that was taken, and sometimes even what the interaction with the program at that point could be also used in other situations. I always used the topics in the tutorial only as an example.

The reason why i think on my side failed,was because i didn't realise that most of the people, don't want read that much.
I mabye should have written everything a bit shorter, or i should have taken more pictures. Who knows?

I on my side decided that it is of no worth to put any effort into people who won't put effort back.
And was my reason for a rather more reatreat of my supporting position, as i saw no end to it.
This is not wisdomland, where knowledge grows on trees. To do things you always needed to pratice and learn. But if you are not willing to pratice neither of it, then you won't be able to perform the task. Simply as that.

[matija168]

As a wise man once said, WoW modding is all about "Try and error"

[Sina]

[...]
Documentation, thus tools and servers being three years behind.
A lot of stuff not documented at all. (i.e. WMOs), a lot of stiff bring wrong, incomplete.
Documentation is on a technical layer, not on end user level.

+ Only way to get something MMO-like online.

Had to fix it.


One thing I never understood about the programs:
First, I have to say, I never really coded/wrote programs. Only what I learned in one year in school, now we're talking about Turing-bulls**t.
But there are programs like Noggit, with own rendering, etc, like FuTa, getting high-information from a picture and putting it on a map.
But there is no function like "Create a new map". To write a new entry in the dbc, copying an adt 30times and renaming them. As I said, I never really wrote a program, but in relation, it doesn't sound that hard to me.
And that was something, which took a lot of time an motivation off me (because it never worked the first time. Not even starting a program).

As matija said: WoW-modding is about try and error.
Many people tried, and found out a lot. But normaly it ends with the knowledge and maybe a tutorial, which is hard to reproduce.
Sometimes, there are programs, but without a real gui. Yeah, somebody who knows about coding hasn't that much problems with it, but "normal" people are used to click on buttons and images. So, there is the knowledge, the program, but the gui is missing. A lot of work, but no big help.
The only really "easy" program is noggit. If you got the maps working (which became a lot easier, since Steff uploaded his empty map. Since then, I couldn't really remember somebody creating adts by himself).

If there is somebody, who can code something that can write in dbcs and copy/rename files and uses a config-file, I feel like having a lot of ideas, how to make the whole modding easier.


Last point: I like tutorial-videos.
First, because you got pictures, of what is happening. Every millisecond.
Second, the "tutor" can't forget things, or write them down a wrong way. If it doesn't work, he'll see it.
Third, it's a lot easier (to me) to listen to somebodys voice, than reading all this.


As I said, i can't code, I just have ideas how to make the process easier and faster.
(yeah, I will learn to code, but until I'm able to, WoW won't become more up-to-date or beautiful)

[iindigo]

Text tutorials can be great but the lack of formatting options here makes it harder to create a polished tutorial with a good flow. But then again, perhaps the power of plain HTML and CSS has spoiled me!

EDIT: Like Sina, I also want to create amazing tools - I have more ideas than I know what to do with. My programming knowledge is a bit further along but not advanced enough to complete these tools right now, though, so progress will be slow until I can dedicate more time to learning.

[Sina]

EDIT: Like Sina, I also want to create amazing tools - I have more ideas than I know what to do with. My programming knowledge is a bit further along but not advanced enough to complete these tools right now, though, so progress will be slow until I can dedicate more time to learning.

I already worked on some concepts. It would be cool to know what you had in mind (:
Maybe on skype ( skypename: gothablutauge).

[Steff]

For the coding point we should make a chat meeting Sina and  iindigo:)

And sina

viewtopic.php?f=59&t=805

But i never use this because I want to knwo hwo the DBCs work so i can not only creat a map but also tweek all teh other values that also modify the work.

Ill write in the moment on an HTML based tutorial series that will show the beginning and use a tool pack with everything in and ready to use. We will see where this will lead to.

[iindigo]

While I can program, where I really shine is in graphics, UI, and usability/user experience (I was an art major in college). I can help with code too but that would be my primary contribution to a joint project.

[Steff]

Dito I am a zero in data stuff. I only did the UI and user intreaction in noggit3

[Sina]

And sina

viewtopic.php?f=59&t=805

Used it, but, as far as I remember, it didn't work well.
The adts didn't work with noggit, and to create big areas, you had to click a looot. Also there were no default settings, so... yeah, I never learned the path for elwynn grass by hearth, so I had to look it up every time, something crashed during map creation :/
Little things like default-settings would have made it easier.
Finally, the maps I worked on were made by DK or the map which you created, Steff.