Introduction
Want to design a map? You have 3 slots to save your maps. This section will tell you how to make your custom maps the best they can be! I personally have the best out of about 1200 maps at Advance Wars Network, and they grade quite strictly. I'll give you the tips and tricks for making the BEST AW map ever, and still keep it quite playable! Use these Design Maps against your friends!
Design Map Mode Controls
This may be a bit confusing at first, so here we go!
- Control Pad = Move to another square of the map, hence the cursor. Bit like regular gameplay except you're making a map.
- R = Access the terrains. Put mountains, properties, forests, sea, it's all here.
- L = Access the units you can place. Every unit is available.
- Start = This shows a mini map of your design map. It flashes between terrain and units on it if you have units on your design map.
- Select = This access the menu, which in turn have its own categories:
- File = This lets you load, save, or name a map. Note that there's a limit on how many letters you can use to save on a map, and that you can only save three total maps.
- Help = This shows the conditions of your design map that you must follow, like 60 maximum properties and 50 maximum units for each side, and instructions on how to design a map.
- Intel = This tells you how many properties of each kind you have for each army color, as well as neutral properties.
- Fill = This lets you fill the map with plains, mountains, forest, sea, or random terrain. This lets you fill a certain terrain quickly so you don't have to enter everything by hand. The random map option is useful, but not very useful. It's better to fill it with, say, sea, and then add in everything. It looks better that way.
- End = This stops you from making any more Design Maps for now. If you haven't saved, Nell will ask you if you want to save.
Design Map Restrictions
You must have at least two HQs, and at least one unit or one deploying base for each army. You may also put units without a HQ but they won't attack anyone unless you attack them. They're basically Andy without the attacking power or the CO power.
The standard map's dimensions is 30x20, decent for most maps unless you're planning to make like a perfect map of Europe or something I've gotten close, mind you. Make it a mini-map in the middle or in a corner if you want and surround it with sea or mountains or something, it will still work, like making It's War! on DM.
You may not have more than 60 properties on your map at any given time. This is decent for a 30x20 map, depending on how your map goes.
You may not have more than 50 units of any army at once. Besides, if you had 200 units Advance Wars would actually lag. So don't put that much, and besides, it doesn't look good in VS. Battles.
Terrain-wise, you must have roads on maps, or else you'll slow down. Bridges are optional for sea or river maps, as with shoals and reefs. In a sea map, make sure to have enough shoal but not too much. You must have at least a fairly decent percentage, like at least 5%, for mountains and forest. So put about 30 squares each of mountains and forest, cause they look good on maps, like my map Gift River. You need the forest for FOW and or defensive cover anyway, and it looks better than all plains. Just don't have too much of that, that's standard.
Building-wise, put your city to deployment base ratio at 1:1 to 3:1, depending on what the map looks like. Don't have less than 10 properties, cause that's not even a mini-map, but don't go overboard. Look comes first, you can fix the gameplay later.