Terrain
The Terrain module (Ctrl 1) is where you shape the ground. The panel on the right has four sections: Tool, Ground tiles, Brush and Light. A floating History panel sits at the bottom left of the view.
The editor remembers your tool, tile, brush size, brush shape and tile category between sessions. That memory is shared by all your maps.
Tools
The Tool section has four buttons.
| Tool | What a stroke does |
|---|---|
| Texture | Paints the selected ground tile. |
| Raise | Lifts the ground under the brush by one cliff level. |
| Lower | Drops it by one level. |
| Bush | Paints the brush layer: tiles where units hide from the enemy (see Bush below). |
You use a tool with the left mouse button. Hold the button and drag to make a stroke. Under the buttons a line tells you what is selected, for example Painting with Grass.
The map is a grid of tiles, and each tile has a ground type and a cliff level. A stroke changes every tile under the brush once. If you drag back over the same tile in the same stroke, nothing more happens. To go up two levels, make two strokes.
Bush
Bush is a second layer over the ground. A unit standing in bush is hidden from the enemy team unless the enemy has a unit or ward inside the same patch; bush tiles that touch each other form one patch. Pick the Bush tool, choose Paint or Erase in its section, and drag; the brush size and shape are the ones under Brush. Bush shows as a green wash over the ground (stronger while the tool is in hand), and the section counts the tiles and patches. A stroke goes into the History like any other and can be undone. The layer is saved in terrain/brush.bin, and a map with no bush has no such file. The command palette has Bush tool, Paint bush and Erase bush while the Terrain module is open.
Cliffs
Cliff levels run from 0 to 3, so there are four. A new map starts at level 1, which leaves one level below and two above. Raise does nothing on a level 3 tile, and Lower does nothing on level 0.
Where two neighbouring tiles differ in level, the view draws a stone cliff wall between them, with an outline. In the game, cliffs block movement.
Ground tiles
The Ground tiles section holds a drop-down, a search field and a grid of picture cards.
Categories
Click the drop-down to open the list of categories:
- In this map shows the tiles the map holds right now.
- Under it are the eighteen Warcraft III tilesets, such as Ashenvale, Barrens, Icecrown and Lordaeron Summer. Each row shows how many tiles the set has and previews five of them.
The list has its own search field. Click a row to pick the category. Click the drop-down again, or click outside it, to close it without picking.
Cards
Each card is a picture of a tile. Hover a card to see its name. Click it to select it, which also switches the tool to Texture. The search field above the cards filters them by name, and every word you type must match.
- A green dot on a card means the map already has that tile.
- An x on a card removes the tile from the map. This is refused with a message if the tile is painted anywhere, and you cannot remove the last tile. Paint over the tile first, then remove it. Removing a tile clears the Terrain undo history, because the old entries refer to tile numbers that just moved.
- A line under the cards shows how many tiles the map holds, out of the limit of 32.
Painting with a tile from a Warcraft III tileset
You can pick a tile from any of the eighteen tilesets, on any map. If the map does not have it yet, the editor copies it into the map when you click it, and the view rebuilds for a moment. A map can hold 32 tiles. After that the editor tells you the map is full, and you have to remove a tile you do not use.
The tile pictures are the one thing from the game that W4 ships, and only these ground pictures. Nothing else of the game's comes with the editor.
Your own images
To use your own picture as ground, open Imports, import the image, select it and press Add as ground tile. It must be a WebP, PNG or BLP file. The tile then appears under In this map, named after the file.
Brush
The Brush section sets how big the stroke is.
- Size has five buttons: 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8 tiles.
- Shape is a circle or a square.
- Tile grid draws the tile grid over the ground. It is the same switch as in Settings and in the command palette.
- Animate units is the same setting as in Settings too. Switch it off if the view feels slow with many units.
Light
The Light section has Morning, Noon and Evening. They move the sun: noon is the highest, evening the lowest and longest-shadowed. Flip shadows lights the map from the opposite side instead.
The light is saved in the map. The game uses the same light and the same shadows, and a map shader can read them. You can also set it in the Map tab of Settings.
History
Every stroke is one entry in the floating History panel, newest first, with a name like Painted 12 tiles with Grass or Raised 8 tiles. At the bottom there is an Opened entry, which is the map as it was when you opened it.
- Click an entry to jump the terrain to that moment, back or forward.
- Entries after the one you jumped to are dimmed. They are still there until you make a new stroke.
- Use the search field to find an entry by name.
- The history keeps the last 500 strokes.
Undo and Redo in the top bar (and Ctrl Z) walk through the same list. The history is not saved with the map. It starts fresh each time you open it.
Not built yet
Ramps, water, creep, regions and cameras.