A lot of what people remember about the strategy games I grew up on came out of their map editors. Tower defence and hero arena games both started as people messing about with triggers.
The Forge, our map editor, runs in the browser at /map-editor, and it has triggers too. You won't be writing code, though. You build triggers from a fixed set of blocks that read as plain sentences, like "every 200 ticks" or "create 5 goblin brawlers at spawn".
That's a deliberate trade:
- Custom maps work in multiplayer. Real code can give slightly different answers in Chrome, Firefox and Safari, which would split a match in two.
- Maps don't break halfway through. A trigger pointing at a unit that's already dead just carries on, and runaway loops get stopped.
- No slow creep of lag in long games, the way custom maps often get when they leak memory.
- AI assistants can draft maps for you, and the editor checks what you paste in before adding it.
The cost is real too. If the block you need doesn't exist, you can't write it yourself. Tell me when you hit that wall, because that's how the list of blocks grows.
The custom games and mods page has showcase maps you can play straight away, and published community maps are in custom games. The reasoning is in the triggers guide.
Adam