Warcraft II > Cartography & Custom Maps

Xex's map pack

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Xex:
I got nostalgic and went back to playing war2, and what ya know, I ended up dicovering puddraft, which had eluded me all these years! So, I decided to churn some maps, which I'll be posting here.

Maps can be downloaded individually below, or you can download all of them in a single pack at the bottom. I'll update the pack as I add more maps.

These are mostly single player maps for now, but hopefully I'll get to make some multiplayer maps in the future.

You can click on minimap for full view of map (when available).

- Single Player -

Standard Maps

Exorcist

Download

This map is inspired on Death.pud, which used to be my favourite map of the original ToD customs when I was a kid, I always thought the idea of fighting an army of undead instead of conventional orcs vs humans was really creative and interesting. While working on this, I thought, since we're pitted against a large army of undead, I'd make exorcism, a spell often sided, the main theme of this map. Castle upgrade is disabled, and computer attacks mostly with death knights.


Adamant

Download

Nothing much to say about this one. It's based on screenshots of an old map I made back in 2007, but got lost to time. It's inspired on Human 8 campaign. Map has a very tight start, you're under frequent harrassment from both Teal and Purple, and can only scrap by with limited initial resources. Quick expansion is a must. Once you have a firm foothold on your expansion, it becomes a cakewalk though.


Maelstrom

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Since I was a kid, it's been a long dream to see a water map where the computer places mages in transport ships. I'd give the computer mage towers and mages, set them to 'active', but it was all for naught, he didn't use them as I intended. Now, thanks to the wonders of third party editors, my childhood dream has been realized! :D Each color specializes in a particular spell: Blue casts polymorph, Teal uses invisibility (completely useless), Purple uses slow and Orange uses flameshield. They also have a different offensive spells, fireball for Blue/Teal, blizzard for Purple/Orange. Although map is mostly water, sea combat is severely limited, submarines are disabled to balance things. The computer doesn't build ships, so you don''t have to worry about defending your own ships or oil rigs. Blue and Teal both start to produce gryphons later in the game, which works as a soft time limit, you want to either expand or destroy them before that happens, or you'll have a really hard time defending against gryphon attacks.


Thunder Bird

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I've been going through user custom maps, and one thing that struck me is that I haven't seen any good strictly air maps. I wanted to see a scenario where you have to fight off several air opponents, so I came up with this. Originally, it had 3 opponents, but I found that it wasn't as difficult as i had hoped, so I revised everything and after adding one more computer, it's now insane! At some point, you can get like 20+ gryphons at your base at the same time!
If you like getting bombarbed into oblivion by flying chickens, this map will greatly please you.


Chokepoint

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I wanted to try making an XS map, I thought the concept of starting off in a turtled up base under constant attack would work well for a map of this size. Biggest threat here are catapults, and your farm getting destroyed is an instant death in most cases.

If you're wondering why there's a visible spot over the enemy's Fortress, pay it no heed, that's a 0x0 runestone, it's necessary to stop the computer from walking his units into your base. Without it, he won't amass troops, and won't develop properly. It's ugly, but it's the only solution I found to this problem.


Isle of Torment

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This is a rather quick and simplistic map. You start with a group of peasants stranded on an island populated by devils and must develop a settlement to survive. Later on, you have to construct ships to destroy the devils' burning altar in the southwest to rid the isle of the devils for good! Enemy forces consist entirely of daemons and no other enemy types. Towers are disabled, meaning your primary defense will be archers, which are rather frail and die all too easily. Resources are scarce, so it's crucial that you preserve your units as much as possible. You may be attacked by devils very early on, before you have time to build proper defenses, in which case, your only choice will be to sacrifice a worker to lure the devil away, and hope it stays away! Overtime, the devil assaults intensify, so you must develop fast!

To make the map more challenging and engaging, I've made a few minor balance tweaks: daemons damage is switched from its pitiful 9/1 to 5/5, making them more of a threat, they can take down buildings and armored units much more quickly. Archers benefit from armor upgrades, you'll have to opt between a blacksmith to improve your archers durability, or go for the more expensive keep upgrade to get rangers and bonus gold. Destroyers have 0 armor instead of 10, making the ship armor upgrade also worth consideration for the end portion of the game.


Non-standard Maps

Sheep Purge

Download

You run a prosperous kingdom, but the sheep from all the farms are really getting out of hand! So, what you do? You hire a bunch of mages to cull their numbers, but the mages will only work for the duration of their contract, which is only a few seconds since you're paying them peanuts, you have to get in as many shots as possible to make every penny count! Unlike most other maps, this is a highscore game, there are no enemies to fight, and it's impossible to lose, your goal is just to kill as many sheep as possible, then, rescue the Castle in the center to end the game and get your awesome final score. Sounds lame? That's cuz it is, but if murdering sheep is your thing, you can claim a world record here.


My Big Ass Arrow

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A beat'em up style map. You're a lone ranger armed with a bow, and a really, REALLY big arrow! But enemies have theirs too! Skillfully maneuver your way through ever larger waves of enemies and defeat the mohawk punk at the end to win! This is was more of an experimental map, I just fooled around with different projectiles, turns out archers armed with ballista bolts are pretty funny! :D


Catapult Defense

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You have a bunch of catapults, and must survive through 7 exciting waves of incoming enemies that get progressively tougher! Careful aiming, timing, positioning and cursing are crucial to win!

There's a multiplayer version here too.


Devil Maze

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Who doesn't love a good maze map? Specially with war2's wonderful pathfinding! There's a ton of maze maps, but this is my own spin on the genre. You control a peasant, and must work your way through an elaborate maze to the Castle at the top left corner. Since simply solving the maze is kinda dull, I've spiced it as much as I could, the maze is riddled with flying devils, you have to carefully evade them as you explore, so it's also a dodge 'em kind of map. But this is easier said than done, your peasant suffers from severe myopia, and can barely see in front of his nose! Along the way, you can pick dwarves, who function like powerups, they can be used to break through walls, or to distract devils away from the peasant. Just finding your way isn't enough though, the Castle is guarded by an evil ogre, and you'll need to do something about him! There's a time limit too, if you diddle around for too long, a new flying devil will come out and this one won't leave you alone! And lastly, the game also features a score system! Yeah! The quicker you complete the map, the higher your score will be! The highest potential score is 5,000 points, though I'm not sure if it's even possible to achieve that number, with all the stupid devils flying everywhere and everything.


12 Great Challenges (Humans version)

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Inspired by "Random Micro Challenge", one of my favourite maps in SC, I thought of creating something in similar vein for war2. There are 12 different micro oriented scenarios for you to work through, these are usually in the form where your forces are at a disadvantage and you must exploit weaknesses in the AI to win. Some levels are pretty straightforward, while others can be bit trickier to beat. For the full challenge, try to beat all levels in one big marathon, without using save!


12 Great Challenges (Orcs version)

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Same deal as above, but you play as Orcs this time. There are 12 completely new challenges awaiting you! If you thought the human levels were too easy, these are a bit more hardcore.


12 Great Challenges (X version)

Download

I really enjoyed making the first two maps, and there were still a few unit matchups that I didn't get to explore, so I thought, why not have a third iteration to wrap things nicely? Here, you control both human and orc units. The levels are even harder than in the two predecessors!


- Multiplayer -

Standard Maps

Bridge Wars

Download

Bridges were absolutely awesome in war1, unfortunately, they got yeeted out in war2 for whatever insane reason. But, with some tileset manipulation, I've managed to recreate them! They're back in full glory!! :D

The bridges are all guarded by small groups of brigands, this prevents early rush and scouting, and encourages building up. The bridges serve as strategic  bottlenecks, and provide access to expansion areas. They also give humans a good defensive position against BL, healing would be more manageable here too since combat on bridges is limited to fewer units. Since bridges are 3 tiles wide, runes could also see some use as well.

Originally I intended for this to be a 4 players map, but it just didn't work out  as I had hoped, so I figured this would be better as a 1v1 map.


Non-standard Maps

Catapult Defense (multiplayer version)

Download

Same as the single version map, but adapted for 4 players.

~ToRa~:
Actually are very well made maps.
Good work!

DANILIN:
Catapult Defense?

Dragons or griffins will help you win without losses
if you also put a solid wall

and arrange catapults or ballistas in a U-shape
shoot around of area constantly



Catapult Defense ?

Драконы или грифоны помогут победить без потерь
если ещё поставить сплошную стену

и организовать катапульты или баллисты U-образно
стрелять по местности постоянно



Catapult Defense ?

Drakony ili grifony pomogut pobedit' bez poter'
yesli yeshcho postavit' sploshnuyu stenu

i organizovat' katapul'ty ili ballisty U-obrazno
strelyat' po mestnosti postoyanno

all-consuming new worlds WarCraft2 from Russia
http://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=5127.0

dannyldd:
Hey there, bud. This little project from you seems quite fun!

Its always welcome to see new original Single player maps!

For the longest possible time, Warcraft II have been limited to pretty much make maps on the map editor or give some customized AI alongside its shared maps.

But Thanks to Edo gorod, now its possible to add up special triggers to these maps in several ways. In that sense, not every map has to be "kill them all" trigger in order to win... Same as certain hero has to survive and much more.

Would it be possible if I can make an **enhanced** version from this pack of maps from you?

Of course I'd set up credits for you, to add up these original maps.

Cheers

Xex:

--- Quote from: ~ToRa~ on January 06, 2024, 06:40:20 AM ---Actually are very well made maps.
Good work!

--- End quote ---

Thanks. :) I find designing maps always to be the hardest part. I have a bunch of different ideas, but it takes me forever to come up with a visually appealing and fitting design to implement them.

I figure it's a tad late to reply, but I was waiting to see more comments so I could respond to them all in a single post.


--- Quote from: DANILIN on January 21, 2024, 04:45:27 PM ---Catapult Defense?

Dragons or griffins will help you win without losses
if you also put a solid wall
--- End quote ---

There are no gryphons here though? If you wanna see gryphons, try the bird map.


--- Quote from: DANILIN on January 21, 2024, 04:45:27 PM ---and arrange catapults or ballistas in a U-shape
shoot around of area constantly
--- End quote ---

The intended way was for players to hotkey each catapult and adjust their shot as enemies come along, but that was too much of a hassle, and the ground attack command is persistent which can mess things up, so simply aiming at a fixed location is the easiest way to go. I like to leave 2 catapults idle while the others shoot, in case an enemy or two manage to slip by.


--- Quote from: dannyldd on January 26, 2024, 08:48:58 AM ---Hey there, bud. This little project from you seems quite fun!

Its always welcome to see new original Single player maps!

For the longest possible time, Warcraft II have been limited to pretty much make maps on the map editor or give some customized AI alongside its shared maps.

But Thanks to Edo gorod, now its possible to add up special triggers to these maps in several ways. In that sense, not every map has to be "kill them all" trigger in order to win... Same as certain hero has to survive and much more.

Would it be possible if I can make an **enhanced** version from this pack of maps from you?

Of course I'd set up credits for you, to add up these original maps.

Cheers

--- End quote ---

Do as you wish. I like to work within the limitations of the game to come up with map ideas that haven't been done before.

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