Somehow ruined your map so you can't open it? Check this!

[Svenski]

Note: I'm not entirely sure if the following information is 100% worthy of a stand-alone thread, but it literally saved me about 20 hours of work a couple weeks ago and could potentially save some people even more than that.

Have you ever broken your map so it won't open? Your computer crashes while saving a map file that you just put countless hours of work and testing into and when you reboot, you can't open it. You might get an error like 'Can't open map file' or 'Can't open map script' or something like that. There may be other scenarios where for whatever reason you accidentally destroy your current working map file.

This happened to me, and I thought all my work since my last backup was lost.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION TO YOUR PROBLEM: Check your WarcraftIII install directory, in your maps folder, there you will find a 'test' subdirectory. Within this folder remains the last working copy of the last tested map using the World Editor. It should be called 'WorldEditTestMap' or something of the like. IF your project of concern was the last map you tested using the WE, this is your golden nugget.

Now you may continue your life in peace and relaxation and learn to backup your files more often .

Regards,
-Svenski

[EDIT]If you know of another solution, please share it here!

 

[Garfield1337]

In case the last tested map wasn't the one that can't be opened - i think restoring system one day back would work...i'm not sure,however.

 

[watermelon_1234]

This has already been mentioned here which more people should read.

Easy backup
If your map has been corrupt, go look in the Maps/Test folder, there is always a backup map (WorldEditTestMap.w3x) from the last time you tested.

JNGP also provides backup of maps.

 

[GhostThruster]

This is kinda obvious. Of course, the beginners would go: 'Ahoy! +rep', but most people already know this, and as said, it has been...said.

 

[MortAr]

There are other methods to retrieve a large partition of information from an broken/corrupted map, but I will not mention them here.

 

[Svenski]

There are other methods to retrieve a large partition of information from an broken/corrupted map, but I will not mention them here.

Why not, that's half the reason to make a thread in the first place.
I've heard you can check your file with an MPQ browser but I haven't tried it myself to see if/how that would work or how you could restore your file even if it worked. Maybe you were thinking of this?