[Reforged] "Familiar Places" | An aimless Village custom map project

[Altruistic Anduin]

I've began to work on this map project not too long ago. The purpose of this map is still unknown, even to me. But we can go towards RPG, or "Hack-and-Slash", if you want a rough guess on what the map can be. It's a custom Village map because I've added other terrain brush from other tilesets: Lordaeron Summer, and Cityscape. Here are a few, or shall I say all screenshots of what I have done so far.

(Top-left—pathway with some village buildings | Top-right—first human camp | Bottom-left—secluded High Elf refuge | Bottom-right—hostile ogre camp)

The map is still flat as I haven't started raising the level of the terrain areas yet. I have not added villager units and human units, though they are the first faction I am working on implementing to the map whilst adding hostile creep camps here and there. I will make use of the four playable races as well as campaign-exclusive races such as the blood and high elves, the naga, the corrupted ancients, fel/chaos orcs, and more. There will be custom spells, units, items, and doodads, but I will try my best to implement as minimal assets as possible since Reforged assets (textures and models) take up more space than in Classic. I've taken the liberty into adding back "beta" or "old" versions of assets, such as the fixed Gargoyle Spire (functional in the undead tech tree), animated foliage and flora models of static doodads. Lastly, I plan to add in easter eggs referencing other Reforged projects, and so on.

I do need help on the mapmaking as well as feedback if there is any. I'll be happy to welcome them and try my best to conform, but I may also suggest you (your feedback) some of the decisions I've made and explain them why they're made as is. You can message down below if you would like to help. I may also upload the .w3x file here if needed. But do keep in mind that I'm using the current (1.33) PTR version of the World Editor, and so far it's stay there because I no longer am able to open the map with the live version of the WE due to "being recently saved with a more recent version of the editor". On a sort of related note, I can't properly test the map because it crashes when I play via the PTR version of Warcraft III: Reforged, and the map does not appear at all when attempted to play in the live version.

 

[Altruistic Anduin]

Bump! Update was slow in terms of mapmaking, but I've made decent progress with adding custom units, models, spells and abilities... Oh, and special thanks to @Damage for helping me with a couple of abilities dependent to triggers. So far, these two areas have been added in the map.

(Left—small area with a couple of houses and a Fountain of Health | Right—ransacked village overrun by a camp of Undead)

I still have yet to add villager units, but I was thinking of adjusting the terrain levels for a more natural look soon™. The map is 288x256 (276x244 playable); extra large, so I have a lot of grounds to cover. Literally—I'm only about 23% finished in just the making of the terrain alone. Planning on making a city now with the doodads used in the Reforged "The Culling" infamous chapter campaign. Though the map uses the Village tileset, I will try my best to construct the city with Cityscape tiles and doodads. Unfortunately, I'm not be able to make higher tier cliffs within the city as we can only have the two cliff types despite being able to customize tiles and not the cliffs and whatnot.

On that note, the World Editor is finally fixed, sort of. WE no longer crashes when I load up maps with units that have issues with their custom models (i.e. custom popcornFX). I can also test and launch the map in-game, thankfully. I am still unsure of what to do with the map, but perhaps when I finish this little project, I can post it for everyone to use both the map itself and the assets within it, given that you also give credits to the owners of said assets, and permission.

 

[Linaze]

It looks quite decent, I believe. A bit difficult to judge without the shadows though - I'm sure in-game it looks a bit better.

I think you should work a bit on height variation though, map looks rather flat as is.

 

[Altruistic Anduin]

It looks quite decent, I believe. A bit difficult to judge without the shadows though - I'm sure in-game it looks a bit better.

I think you should work a bit on height variation though, map looks rather flat as is.

Thank you! And yes, I have been planning on working on height variations of the terrain. I'm taking a short break for a while, playing Pathfinder: Wrath of Righteous, and looking for inspiration there.

 

[Altruistic Anduin]

I have decided to take a break and formalize it here. I will or may come back when the next update for the game has been released, or when the issues around the World Editor has been resolved. In the meantime, I will be sharing my map here for anyone interested to look over it. By the time I'm writing this, you can only open the map via the PTR version (1.33.0.19019) of the game's World Editor.

By downloading the map file attached to this message, you are obliged not to share the file outside of HIVE Workshop nor upload it within the site and claim it as your own. Assets used in the map belong to their respective owner(s). When, or if, I get back to working on the map, I will start enlisting the assets used and the name of the owners here. For the time being, feel free to check my map firsthand. You can still give me feedback and thoughts about the latest progress. Hopefully.

Peace out!