Matrix Games Forums

Hi,

I have been working on PacWar for the past 3 or so years, and since things are winding down there (after patch 3.2 there is not much left to fix), I have turned my attention to WIR.

The WIR map had some problems that I have noticed since the game's conception. My primary problem has to do with rivers. Rivers were made with a collection of different land tiles, with some rivers existing only as eye candy (i.e., if you put your cursor over some 'river' hexes you see only a classification as 'clear'). I am in the middle of making all rivers actually all as officially rivers, so they would offer the same benefits to a defender for all visible rivers (even for where it was formerly a phantom river).

The rivers that were not 'real' and offered no protection were usually the horizontal ones:

----

Those that were at an angle ( / or \ ) were all actually rivers, and offered the defender a bonus.

The new map will be 100% compatible with all scenarios, but will probably result in different gameplay as all rivers offer the same effects as boundaries to attackers. So all vertical and horizontal rivers will be real rivers.

Originally posted by Jeremy Pritchard
The WIR map had some problems that I have noticed since the game's conception. My primary problem has to do with rivers. Rivers were made with a collection of different land tiles, with some rivers existing only as eye candy (i.e., if you put your cursor over some 'river' hexes you see only a classification as 'clear'). I am in the middle of making all rivers actually all as officially rivers, so they would offer the same benefits to a defender for all visible rivers (even for where it was formerly a phantom river).

The rivers that were not 'real' and offered no protection were usually the horizontal ones:

----

Those that were at an angle ( / or \ ) were all actually rivers, and offered the defender a bonus.

The new map will be 100% compatible with all scenarios, but will probably result in different gameplay as all rivers offer the same effects as boundaries to attackers. So all vertical and horizontal rivers will be real rivers.

Hey, why not fix at the same time the missing 1/3 of the front - the North

... ah the coding ... yes... I've read about it before...

--Mikko

Yeah, I decided not to mess with the map TOO much. However, if I knew the specific hexes that were fixed, maybe the Northern Front could be slightly increased?

Here's Jeremy's new WIR map.

Go for it!

Here is a slight blurb, as it does not come with a readme.

The files are...

SF.MAP (the map file)
WIRET.SYM (map graphics file 1)
WIRES.SYM (map graphics file 2)

These will overwrite your old SF.MAP, WIRET.SYM and WIRES.SYM files, so PLEASE BACK THEM UP.

They should not affect saved games, or scenarios based on the original map.

The zoomed out map was courtecy of Rich Dionne, and the zoomed in map was a version that was created to match the zoomed out version. This is the first version, and it is slightly crude, but it is very functional. Wherever you see a river, you get river penalties/bonus' (for attack and defense). The original WIR map had horizontal rivers existing only as eye candy, and offered no effects in gameplay for attack/defense.

Also, I did change around the colours of the Axis Corps and Allied Armies. German forces are grey, Italian/Rumanian/Hungarian forces are now brown, Finnish forces are now blue, Russian forces are now red. If demand for the revised Unit colours is high enough I could send out a second version of the graphics that have the 'first revised' set of unit colours that Rich did a while back.

This is a project in continuation. I am working on adding different rail lines and large rivers based off of a historic WW2 Atlas of the Eastern Front. I am also remodelling some of the coastline for aesthetic sake. Hopefully this will not affect any of the original and modded scenarios.

PS. Thanks to Dave for hosting this file!

I love this map ! Great work.

But am I the only one with compatibility problems with this and the Possum v5 ?

If not, would a possum compatible version of the map be asking too much ?

I love the possum upgrade and the new great looking map, wouldn't want to play without other one.