Documentation

Map Editor

The editor authors everything the game can load: terrain and elevation, lava, every unit and building with its own health, gear and orders, per-seat rosters, a deterministic trigger system, per-map balance changes, and in-game cutscenes. These pages go through it in the order you would build a map, and each one says what the tool does and why it works that way.

  1. 1IntroductionWhat the map editor can author, what it deliberately cannot, and the shape of the work from an empty grid to a published map.
  2. 2InterfaceThe module bar, the tool palettes, the outliner, the viewports and every keyboard shortcut that matters.
  3. 3Creating a MapSizes, biomes, generated starting layouts, spawn points, the environment block and what a saved map actually contains.
  4. 4Terrain & HeightPainting ground and water, the terrace elevation model, ramps, and the six ways a hand-edited height field goes wrong.
  5. 5Lava & BiomesLava as a terrain type, the one rule it imposes on a map, and how the ten biomes differ from each other.
  6. 6Units & PropertiesPlacing units and buildings, the inspector, authored ids and tags, hero instances, spawners and ground items.
  7. 7Players & TeamsThe per-seat roster, controllers, teams, starting resources, AI settings, map rules, and how to make a one-player map boot.
  8. 8TriggersEvents, conditions and actions; why there is no scripting language; and how Tower Defense and DOTA maps are built from the same node set.
  9. 9Data OverridesPer-map changes to units, buildings, items and spells: patching a definition, cloning a new one, and why a map is always self-contained.
  10. 10CutscenesBuilding an in-game scene from camera keyframes and timed lines, and the one rule that keeps a skipped cutscene from breaking a match.
  11. 11TestingLaunching the map in the real engine, what to check before you call it done, and how to test a map that only misbehaves in multiplayer.
  12. 12PublishingEvery validation rule and what it prevents, why the same check runs on the server, and what happens to your map after you publish it.