In this section I wish to cover a few quick points on the creation of one-player missions. True enough, the material that we have covered so far does hold a bearing primarily on one-player missions. But there are a few general things to know and a few guidelines to pay attention to when you design your missions. Failure to do so may mean that you wind up with some excellent computer player growth and miserable game play.
The standard one-player mission should involve a clear objective, corresponding to the four basic mission types discussed earlier: rescue, search and destroy, siege, and defend. Remember that the audience for your mission was first exposed to the two, 12-mission campaigns on the WarCraft II CD, so they have a natural predisposition to prefer a mission that seems to carry a background story line with it. Anyone who is anyone can make a mission. Put some meaning behind it, and you've got something worth talking about.
You should always try to make more than one way to beat a mission. Understand that not everyone plays WarCraft the same way, and if you design a mission that requires the same pattern of building and attacking to win every time, many people are not going to enjoy it. Before releasing any mission, try to visualize how each of the four general Play Styles would fare. Any time that it appears only two of the four styles would do well, you may need to modify a few things. Certainly, you're the editor and you're in the driver's seat, but if you can create a mission that offers many different completion methods, you will find that many more people will want to come along for the ride.
With regard to complexity, what is the ideal number of computer-controlled players to put in a one-player mission? Offhand, I would say three or four enemies will offer a well-balanced mission. Of course, this depends highly on the style of mission you are trying to achieve and the starting strengths of the opponents that you are creating. As a fundamental rule, you should try to never have more than one weak computer-controlled color group in a mission. A weak color group should add to the strategy, not simply provide a quick target for bloodthirsty players.
Mix up the attack settings that you place on the computer players. Even though you may be building a land-attack mission, it doesn't mean that an air-attack setting is automatically out of place. Placing different attack settings in the same mission will force players to think out their situation, both on offense and defense, before committing to any major act. One of the ultimate goals of WarCraft II editing is to prevent yourself from ever producing a total "no-brainer".
Sometimes you may just feel the need to get excessive and throw seven computer-controlled color groups into the fray. First and foremost, remind yourself about the computer systems that these missions are going to be played on. If you believe that they are capable of smoothly running this type of mission, then by all means, give it your best shot.
The key to designing a mission with more than four computer-controlled opponents involves something covered in detail earlier: separation. You may hear WarCraft II players bragging that they had easily beaten seven computer players at once. Obviously, they weren't playing WarCraft II, they were off wasting their time with child games. A single player, unless given obscene amounts of starting military support by the editor, will not be able to directly take on seven computer players if they are designed to grow correctly. Never sacrifice the quality of your mission design just to make the victory sound impressive.
At any rate, through segmentation you can actually create some very entertaining and drawn out missions. Pitting the player against the computer's forces in groups of two at a time, with additional sea and air support coming in from various sides, will provide a non-stop battle, where the player must continuously watch every angle. A well-designed mass enemy mission does, however, take enormous amounts of time to playtest if you are truly concerned about quality. If you are still unwavering in your desire to attempt this mission type, don't get frustrated, and I wish you luck.
