The Age of Wonders 3 editor is an easy to use kit that allows users to create their own maps or even entire campaigns with full voice over and artwork support. This guide aims to walk you through the creation of a fully fledged campaign that will be available to download in it's various stages of development for comparison and easy access.
This guide will cover the story writing aspect of a campaign and the various mechanical and graphical skills that need to be developed and used in order to construct a full and fun campaign story line. The guide will cover basic geography to aid in the creation of better looking maps along with recommendations for details and beautification.
The structures and scripting aspect of the process will be covered mostly from a game design aspect as many of them are intertwined with other disciplines and build towards the common goal of complexity and fun while being balanced and easy to understand.
Planning[]
Before starting work on this campaign there is a lot of basic writing work that needs to be done. It doesn't need to be a glourious epic of literature to echo through the ages but it does need to be dynamic, interesting and befitting the Age of Wonders setting, although this last part is somewhat mutable given the large amound of unknown factors in the current cannon.
To start with we'll make up some characters which for now we'll name Prote and Antag. Prote has something he needs to acomplish and Antag needs to achive something else that intertwines with and ultimately contends with the goals of Prote. So we'll look at the currently known facts of the Age of Wonders and draw something up. This means basically playing through Age of Wonders 1, Age of Wonders 2 and then Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. But as I have already played them to death we'll just push forward with the writing.
So we'll need some actual characters, let's go for a higher born individual as that would make more sense given the current social constructions in the game's universe. Maybe someone attached to the empire at a pretty high level but more as a mercantile aspect than a military one as it might intefere with the main story line a little too much.
So we'll extrapolate a little from these borders and try to come up with a basic plot for the first mission and then an over-aching theme for the campaign once we have a secure foundation.
"A sheltered human girl is sent by her distant step mother to the borders of their trading empire's control, supossadely at the behest of her father who is currently managing the bulk of their military trade in the heart of the empire, to inspect and transition into a take-over of her banished uncles operations in the northern Sea of Silence."
Okay that's a good layout for main character, no detail yet and the story could be construed in any direction with different antagonists depending on the view of the writer. It could be the step mother who sends away an unwanted older child, it could be the father pushing war trading onto his daughters shoulders or it could be the uncle who dislikes intrusion into his secluded buisness.
We're going to go with the uncle as it opens up some interesting gameplay early in the campaign as well as some moral issues that can be fun to play against the player. So the player is put on a small frozen island in the middle of nowhere with her uncle who is currently running the colony into the ground and trying to pocket enough money to get him out of this frozen hell and back into the empire.
The player starts out with a simple ambush to repel using her honour guard. Simple stuff that lets the player know that they will have to defend themselves even in this setting of comparent calm. The player is led to one of the minor settlements of the empire by the uncle who apoligises for the bandit activity before swiftly showing his true colors and attacking the player and their new settlement.
He won't be an easy fight given the lack of walls but the player should be able to take him down only to learn that he will return in a short time. This introduses the player to the concept of the throne cities and allows for the first real missions of the campaign to begin: Save The Colony and Capture Your Uncle.
From this we can simply apply a logic that the character of the girl will need to reconcile her family's in-fighting and come to terms with a harsh world where even the people you are meant to love can somtimes be your enemy, but ultimatly this can come from a lack of true caring and it can only be through true connections with those you love can real family be found.
Or some other nonsense, really this is an unformed idea that needs a lot of work but we have enough to rough out a good starting map.
Getting Started[]
Loading up the editor is simple enough, simply open up your launcher and go to the "Miscellanous" tab, then click "Age of Wonders 3 Editor". The "Creator Engine" splash image for the editor should pop up in a moment or two, this shows that the editor is starting up.
 Load Up the Launcher |
 Find and Click the Age of Wonders 3 Editor |
 Wait for this Splash Image to Appear |
Terrain[]
Coming Soon! (Promise!)
Structures[]
Coming Soon! (Promise!)
Details[]
Coming Soon! (Promise!)
Scripting[]
Coming Soon! (Promise!)