Water Battle Map for Wesnoth

Do you know Battle for Wesnoth? It is a turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme. You can freely download it from the website and start playing right now. (Really, do it! Then return to read the rest of this article.) There is even more. You can create your own maps, design your own military units, and write your own stories; and then you can share them on the Internet. Let's try it now!

This is my first Wesnoth map. I started playing the game a few years ago, in 2003. Then, there was only one campaign with maybe 5 or 10 scenarios, which were followed by a message saying "To be continued..." or something like this. Yeah, those old times... ;-) Do not worry, today all official campaigns in game are completed and tested. So I was a few years contemplating an idea of making my own campaign, but there was always something else to do (for example translating the game to Slovak language). But now I decided that I am going to learn WML (Wesnoth markup language, this game has its own scripting language) and make a few maps, maybe even a full campaign. And while I am doing this, I will turn all my gained knowledge into web tutorials, so that more people can try it and contribute to the game. So this is the first map, hopefully many more will follow.

When you install the game, a map editor is also installed. You can find it (on Windows) in Start menu, as "Wesnoth | Map Editor". Start it!

The maps in Wesnoth consist of hexagonal pieces of terrain (called hexes). When playing game, the borders of hexagons blend to look nicer, more realistic. But in map editor I prefer them visibly separated. The border between hexes can be emphasised by menu option "Settings | Settings | Show Grid". You can also turn on/off the grid using a toolbar button. Now the edges are clearly visible, but in the game they will look normally. There is a similar option in game settings too.

To change map dimensions, select the menu option "Edit | Change map size". Do not worry about setting them right, you can change the dimensions later.

When you move the mouse cursor above the map, you can see two small hexagonal pictures above the selected hex. These are the selected terrains associated with left and right mouse buttons. On the lower right part of editor you can click on various terrains; when you click with left or right mouse button, you associate the terrain with this button. This means that clicking this button on the map will draw this terrain on the selected hex. The terrains in palette are divided into groups, so you can choose if you want to see all terrains or just water terrains, for example.

Most of battles in Wesnoth happen on the ground; the second most frequent place is underground. There are some flying or swimming units, but most units can only walk, so the maps reflect this. You know what? This is not fair! Let's make a map full of water, where the Merfolk and Nagas can enjoy their great water battles. We can use water villages, and water castles...

(C) 2008 Viliam Búr viliambur.blogspot.com

...and then I added some grassland around the lake, patches of swamp, and bridges across, because the big blue area was kind of boring. There are not many different water terrains. We could add new terrains, but not now. Let's keep it simple. It is the first map.

When the map is finished, the last necessary step is to place starting locations. (There is a toolbar button for this. When you are finished, there is another toolbar button to return the terrain painting mode.) Make one starting position for player 1, and another for player 2. The starting location is a place where the leader of this side will appear at the beginning of the game. It is usually in a keep, otherwise s/he would not be able to recruit units. I decided to give each side two castles and put the leader between them. The reasons for this will be explained in another article; now just consider it a harmless whim.

When everything is ready, we can save the map as "2p_Pool.map" and quit the map editor. The "2p" at the beginning means that it is a multiplayer map for 2 players. By the way, you should sometimes save your map during editing, because you know, bugs exist, and editor may unfortunately crash or freeze, losing your work.

So where is my map saved and how can I play it?

You can play the map by starting Wesnoth, selecting "Multiplayer | Local game" and finding your map in the list of maps. Maps created in map editor are automatically included in the game. You cannot play this map over internet yet, because it does not exist on the opponent's computer. We will get to publishing later. But now you can test the map against the computer, or just let two computer players fight against each other.

All files you create for Wesnoth should be placed in your "userdata" directory. The exact location depends on your operating system and version of Wesnoth; on Windows it is like "C:\Program Files\Wesnoth 1.4.4\userdata". From now on I will just write "userdata" and you will know what I mean. So the maps created in map editor are saved in directory "userdata/editor/maps", unless specified otherwise.

There are some things left to do. For example I want to allow recruiting only Merfolk and Naga units. But these things cannot be done in the map editor, where we can only place terrains and starting positions.

Related articles:

• Water Battle Map for Wesnoth
• Water Battle Map for Wesnoth, Published
• Water Battle Map for Wesnoth, Improved