In this section I am going to go over a brief outline of a good way to put together a mission. This will be a step by step look at how you can simultaneously design and evaluate your missions. By all means, this is not the only way to go about your tasks, but I have found it to work quite well, so you might want to give it a try.
First of all, you've got to make a decision as to the size of your mission and the terrain that you are going to use. DO NOT USE 32 x 32! Avoid that size like the plague! It is nearly impossible to get the computer to properly build on a mission so small, so you should not even bother. The 64 x 64 size is almost as bad, but for testing ideas, it just might work. In general, I only use 128 x 128 with a very occasional 96 x 96 put into the mix. Try to use the large maps so that you can provide room to build, room for separations (if necessary), room for battles, and of course, room for traps. With regard to the terrain type, it is all up to you.
The mission begins as nothing but a stretch of flat, useable land as far as the eye can see. Before you can start putting the units down, you need to break the landscape up into definite areas. You can start this process by placing the immovable objects on the map - water bodies and rock formations. You will want place all rivers immediately, so that you can see how attack patterns may form between the color groups. Rocky patches will fill up areas on the perimeter of the map and can form barriers between groups. Once these basic formations are in place, you can begin to fill in some of the larger open areas with forested territory. Now that you have narrowed the landscape into a definite pattern of open space, enclosed areas and corridor stretches, you can begin to consider placement.
By now you should have some strong idea about how this mission should flow, where the major battlegrounds should be, and where the various color groups should operate from. Begin placing all of the applicable starting locations on the map, hopefully in the same area that building will begin for each group.
Once the starting points are determined, you must decide what everyone is going to start with. Of course you are going to want to provide some peasants or peons (unless it is a rescue mission that starts as offense only). Anything beyond that is up to you. Farms are always good to start with to help speed up the initial phases of the game. Lumber mills, barracks, and a town hall or great hall all contribute to a quick advance from building phase to attacking phase.
Now you must take into consideration what type of mission this is going to be for the player, and decide how much starting military each color group is going to need to either defend itself, or start on its way. You must make sure that no one is supplied with such a number of troops that they can immediately make lunch meat out of another player (unless you intended to do so, but don't go overboard). A general rule is that every color group should have a few basic troops to do the early scouting in a mission. Players will appreciate this generous offer by an editor and will usually be grateful, provided that the scouts do not simply set off a series of traps that get them killed.
After you have stationed the initial armies in the main city areas, you should examine the need for defense. If a particular color group seems to have a relatively weak position on the map, you can offset this problem by giving it a few units outside the city as forward scouts. Also, providing free towers helps to bolster a city against early assaults.
Now that the city areas have been set in place, you will be able to look for areas of the map that are still relatively wide open. Sometimes you may wish to use these open areas as major paths in the mission. Other times the blank space may wind up wasted. You should removed wasted areas by placing small groups of scattered units there. While not essential to the overall mission, a brief forest skirmish with hidden troops will give a player something more to think about than the constant build/attack city routine.
Another option is to start thinking about different kinds of traps that you could place. Space that is unused by the necessary items in a mission can be filled with blind traps, barriers, passive linked groups, or even forces to be hidden until a blitz trap can be sprung. Be sure to at least give some thought to tricks and traps at this time.
Another option is to fill the blank space with some units waiting to rescued. Even if used in a non-rescue mission, players generally like the idea of receiving free units, even if they must fight through some troops, traps, or towers to get to them. If you should decide to leave some units needing a rescue in a mission, you should enclose them with walls, towers, and the like to make sure that the player cannot quickly gain these units and greatly upset the balance of power. Certainly, the player should eventually win, but a good, tough mission should not become simple after one tactical move.
If you can possibly find additional room for them, hideouts and outpost areas are perfect ways to add new possibilities for beating a mission. A hideout area is an easily defensible area that the player can retreat forces to when making a desperate stand against opponents. On the other hand, secondary outposts are useful for both offense or defense. The outpost is a clear area with a gold mine, so another entire city could theoretically be built. This allows an offense-minded player (fast aggressive, fearless maniac) a place to stage additional attacks from. It also gives a defense-minded player (defend and horde, slow aggressive) a place to retreat to in case their original city area should become overrun by the enemy. With secondary outposts, your missions can be extended past the life of normal missions, where defeat definitely means defeat.
By now, the mission itself is generally set. At this point, you should quickly look over the map for any blatant problems that may be visible. Then you should picture the game play in your mind and see if it generally corresponds to what you had intended for this mission. If you can visualize the mission development, then you're on the right track. If the mission just does not seem right, keep playing around with the positioning until it does seem right.
Assuming everything checks out in your brief examination of the mission, you can now begin to worry about the aesthetics of the mission. Go back and re-edit the positions of the rocks, water, trees, and structures. Make the landscape look more natural than something that some person just threw together on his or her computer without thought. Once the aesthetic chores are complete, there is only one thing left for you to do...
Now comes the hard part. Playtesting a mission can be a special form of misery in and of itself. Despite the horror stories that you may have heard (or experienced), a good round of testing a mission will allow you to improve your mission much more than merely staring at the mission in the editor.
The first few times you test your mission, just use the ON SCREEN cheat code to view the map, type MAKE IT SO to increase building speed, and then type GLITTERING PRIZES to skip the resource build-up. Just watch the computer build and upgrade, while trying to locate any fundamental problems with gold levels, lumber levels, or the positioning of the color groups on the map.
If the building phases appear to be working well, then play your own level straight through, no cheating, no viewing of the map. If, by some extreme piece of luck, you encounter no problems, then you can begin distributing the mission amongst family, friends, and anyone else in your target WarCraft II audience. If a problem should rear its ugly head, you know what to do: go back, edit, and playtest some more.
