The AoE2:DE Editor

Structuring work in the Age of Empires II Scenario Editor

Working in the Age of Empires II Scenario Editor is both rewarding and challenging. The core of the system is an event-based trigger workflow, where gameplay is constructed by chaining together conditions and effects. Every trigger can check for certain requirements (conditions) and then perform one or more actions (effects). This setup allows you to script everything from simple reinforcements or tributes to multi-stage mission objectives.

A simple example scenario

Because the editor doesn’t provide a proper comment system, keeping track of dozens or hundreds of triggers can get messy fast. To deal with this, I use a few workflow tricks:

• Tagging and Headline Triggers – I create “empty” triggers that don’t do anything but serve as section headers (e.g. “~ CITY SIEGE ~” for a main section “- Hire Mercenaries -” for a smaller subsection). This keeps the list readable when scenarios grow complex.

  
  

• Consistent Naming – Triggers get prefixed with short tags like [Obj] for objectives, [Dia] for dialogue, or [AI] for interaction with behavior scripts. This makes it easier to scan through the list and debug triggers.

  
  

• Grouping Related Triggers – By default new triggers get added to the end of the list, which can get rather long in more complicated scenarios. To avoid having to manually shift single triggers around a lot a careful pre-planning for the trigger structure and order is helpful. Since the game always goes through the list from the top to the bottom when checking conditions, having the triggers in the correct order is important.

While the editor’s list-based UI can be a bit inconvenient, the flexibility of chaining triggers allows for surprisingly flexible systems. The more complicated they get however and the more it bends the "normal" gameplay, the more tutorialization for the players is required and the more unexpected bugs can appear. Especially in a code base as old as Age of Empires' that has gone through this many different developer studios in its long history.

To push the toolset further, we worked with our engineers to expand it especially on the use of variables and implement new systems that allowed values to be carried over between missions. This made it possible to design interdependent side objectives and branching decisions that spanned across multiple scenarios, creating a stronger sense of progression and replayability for the player.

For me, the challenge is always balancing clarity (keeping the logic organized) with creativity (finding new ways to surprise the player using the rather primitive system of conditions and effects). Working within these constraints has taught me a lot about structuring gameplay logic, documenting my own work, and thinking several steps ahead in mission design.