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Map Editor

Jagged Alliance 2 has a full in-game map editor, and 1.13 keeps it alive: every all-in-one release ships the Map Editor as its own executable alongside the game. With it you can edit any of the original tactical sector maps or build entirely new ones — terrain, buildings, items, locks, traps, enemies, civilians and lighting.

This page is an orientation and quickstart distilled from the two official documents. It is not a replacement for them:

Both live in the Docs/Manuals folder of the gamedir repository, which is also the Docs folder inside your 1.13 installation.

Old documents, current editor

Both PDFs predate the GitHub era — you will see C:\TalonSoft\Ja2 paths, ja2beta.bat and other artifacts of much older installs. The editor itself and the workflow they describe are still what current 1.13 ships; read the old paths as "your JA2 folder". Where this page states launch switches or INI settings, they have been verified against the current GitHub source.

Getting the editor

You do not need to download or build anything separately:

  • The all-in-one releases on github.com/1dot13/source/releases include JA2 v1.13, the Map Editor and JA2: Unfinished Business support. See Installation.
  • If you build from source, the editor is its own application target: JA2MAPEDITOR (and JA2UBMAPEDITOR for Unfinished Business), each producing one executable per language. See Building the executable.

The editor executable is technically a beta/debug build of the game with the editor compiled in — which is why launching it needs a command-line switch (below).

Setup and launch

The editor does not start in editor mode when you just double-click it — that only gets you a debug version of the game. You launch it with a command-line argument:

  1. In your JA2 folder, right-click the Map Editor executable and choose Create Shortcut.
  2. Right-click the shortcut, choose Properties.
  3. Append -EDITORAUTO to the Target field, e.g. "C:\Games\Ja2\Map Editor.exe" -EDITORAUTO.
  4. Make a second shortcut the same way with -DOMAPS instead — this one runs the radar map generator (the small sector overviews shown in the bottom-right of the tactical screen) instead of the editor.

Both switches exist in the current source (Ja2/Init.cpp); -EDITOR works as an alternative to -EDITORAUTO, and -DOMAPSCNV is a variant of the radar map utility.

The editor's resolution is set separately from the game's, with EDITOR_SCREEN_RESOLUTION in Ja2.ini (see Configuration).

Folders and map files

Per the manual, before you start editing:

  1. Create a Maps folder and a Radarmaps folder inside your Data folder if they do not exist yet.
  2. To edit the original sectors, extract them from Data\Maps.slf into Data\Maps using an SLF extractor (the manual recommends Dragon UnPacker).
  3. Copy the extracted maps somewhere safe. It is very easy to ruin a sector, and a backup lets you overwrite a botched map with the original.

Map files are named after their sector:

Level File name
Ground A9.DAT, C4.DAT, …
Basement/cave 1 A9_B1.DAT, C4_B1.DAT, …
Basement/cave 2 A9_B2.DAT, …
Basement/cave 3 A9_B3.DAT, …

Save often

The golden rule from both documents: the editor can and does crash. Save (Ctrl+S) constantly — there is nothing worse than losing hours of mapping.

Basic workflow

Load a map or start fresh

On first start the editor has no map data loaded and asks whether to load the default maps — answer y. Press F5 at any time to open the world summary: click a sector on the country map, pick the level with the small A (all), G (ground), B1–B3 (basement) buttons, click Load, then Okay to jump into the editor. F5 takes you back to this screen later.

Basement levels can only be placed at locations that already have basement maps — check your Maps folder for sectors with a _B1/_B2/_B3 companion file.

The Options tab

The Options tab is the general command screen, with buttons for: new ground map, new basement level, new cave level, save, load an existing map, load tileset, exit to game, and exit. Hover over each button for a short description.

The tileset is the visual theme of your map — town, coastal, mine and so on. Select one before you start building, or keep the default (Omerta). You can load a different tileset over an existing map, but the results are mostly unusable without a lot of experimentation.

Terrain

The Terrain tab is where you paint ground textures, water, roads, debris, trees, rocks and cliffs:

  • Ground textures (G): nine terrain types; the last two are shallow and deep water. Set the whole map's base texture, or use Fill. Textures don't always reach the map edges — check with the I overview and hold Shift to paint beyond the edge.
  • Mixed textures: Shift-click several terrain types to load them onto one brush; clicking again raises a weight number, right-click lowers it, Space returns to a single texture.
  • Water: place shallow water first (it forms the land edges), then deepen it further out. To turn water back into land you must erase it first — painting terrain straight over water causes problems in game.
  • Brushes: cycle sizes with A / Z (Small, Medium, Large, XLarge, plus Width and Area modes); Width lines grow/shrink with . / ,. Brush density (the percentage in the panel, adjusted with ] / [) thins out fills — useful for rocks, debris and vegetation.
  • Roads: road tiles fit together like a puzzle. Expect OBJECT COUNT errors when saving — erase the offending tile listed in the error and re-lay it until you get a clean save; lay roads in small sections and save often.
  • Trees (T), debris (D), rocks (R), other junk (O): load a selection onto your brush and scatter them. At 100% density you can create areas mercs cannot enter — think ahead about where players should enter and exit. Shift+T hides treetops while you work.
  • Undo (Backspace) covers only the last 10 changes. Erase (E) removes the selected graphic type under the brush.

Buildings

The Buildings tab (B) offers three methods:

  • Building method — drag a box to place a complete shell. Right-click Add a new room first and pick one wall, one floor and one roof type. Additional boxes touching the building extend it, and the editor matches the tiles.
  • Smart method — draws interior walls that automatically join existing ones (start the drag touching a wall), and places doors, windows and damaged wall sections with the correct orientation. Cycle variants with Page Up / Page Down.
  • Selection method — manual placement of individual wall/roof/shadow pieces, furniture and wall decals (which include switches and lights).

Hide roofs with H and walls with W while working. As a last resort, Del removes everything from the tile under the cursor — but it won't fix the surrounding tiles, so prefer erase or right-click removal.

Two building chores matter for playability:

  • Room numbers: once a building is done, use Draw Room Number (with the Area or Width brush) to number the floor tiles. When a player sees one numbered tile, the roof disappears from all tiles with the same number — number rooms the way a person entering would actually see them. To reuse or set a specific number, type it in the room# box and press Enter.
  • Locks and traps: with the key button pressed, click a door or an "openable" (crate, locker, cupboard…) to assign a lock ID. Each ID has its own picking and smashing difficulty, and corresponds to a key you can place via the Items tab. Locks can also be trapped:
Trap type Effect
0 No trap
1 Explosion
2 Electronic trap
3 Siren
4 Silent alarm
5 Nothing (apparently unused)
6 Super electric trap

Trap level runs 1–20: 10 and above cannot be disarmed by any merc; 4–6 is average.

Items

Left-click an item in the category sub-tabs (weapons, armour, E1–E3 miscellaneous, …), then left-click a tile to place it. Placed items are ringed in green. Per item you can set:

  • Exist chance — percentage chance the item appears in game (100 = always).
  • Status — condition (100 = perfect, 25 = nearly useless), plus quantity for stacks like ammo and grenades, and attachments such as scopes or ceramic plates.
  • Booby trap value — roughly the experience level needed to detect the trap; 11 or higher effectively means it is never detected.
  • Hidden flag — set automatically when you put an item inside an openable (marked H); the item is only found when the container is opened. Any item can be flagged hidden, forcing the player to search the tile.

Triggers and actions live in this tab too. Place a numbered trigger, then place same-numbered action items (explosions, open door, alarms, …) that fire when it is activated. Panic triggers are pulled by the enemy once they notice you — classically a wall switch (a wall-decal graphic) that sounds an alarm; the trigger item goes on the tile behind the switch graphic. General triggers are set off by your own mercs, usually unknowingly — pressure plates, tear-gas switches and the like.

Mercs: enemies, civilians, creatures

Every map must have 32 enemies placed in it. That does not mean 32 appear in game: check the ! box only for placements that must always show up (a rooftop sniper, a gate guard) and leave the rest unchecked so the engine places them at random — it helps replayability.

Click an enemy button, click the map, and edit the placement: Admin/Army/Elite (weakest to strongest), body type, attributes, equipment, facing direction. Right-click a new tile to move a placement; Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V copies one; Del deletes it. To put an enemy on a flat roof, press Page Up and right-click the roof tile (Page Down returns to ground level).

Orders control movement: Stationary, On Guard (stays within 5 tiles), Close Patrol (15), Far Patrol (25, 50 when alerted), On Call (responds to calls for help), Seek Enemy (roams the whole map), and Point Patrol / Random Point Patrol along waypoints you set with the number keys. Attitude (Defensive, Cunning, Brave, Aggressive, Aid, Solo) sets combat behavior.

Under detailed placement you can set experience level (1–9) and attributes (1–100), and equip the inventory slot by slot (right-click a slot to open the item list). Notes from the manual: give grenade launchers and mortars as carried items, not in the hands, with their ammo in the carried slots; enemies never run out of gun ammo but do consume grenades and shells; tick the drop checkbox for items the player should get (unless your INI is set so enemies drop everything).

Bloodcats, creatures and civilians are optional. Named NPCs/RPCs are placed by entering a character ID on the Detailed Placement → Profile tab; the IDs come from the ProEdit utility (Data\BinaryData\Proedit.exe), and each profiled character must also have the map set as their "sector of appearance" in ProEdit or they will not show up.

Map Info: lights, exits and entry points

  • Lights: choose a timer before placing each light — Prime (roughly 8 p.m. to midnight), Night (the whole night cycle) or 24hr (basements and caves). Radius controls brightness, 8 being the brightest. Outdoors the overall light level follows the in-game time of day; the underground light level value is only saved for basement and cave maps.
  • Exit grids are teleporters between levels or sectors — stairs, ladders, mine entrances. Fill in the destination sector, destination level (0 = ground, 1–3 = basements) and destination grid number before placing the red crosses; place at least two next to each other and make sure the destination tile has at least six free tiles around it. For a two-way connection, place matching exit grids in both maps.
  • Entry/exit points: use the N, S, E, W buttons to mark where squads arrive when entering from each map edge, and the C button for a central point on a clear spot. The game needs these for its calculations — they must be present. If you fence off part of the map, mark the interior with an isolated entry point.

Basements and caves

Underground maps invert the building logic: instead of drawing rooms, you remove areas from a solid mass. Click New Basement or New Cave Level on the Options tab before placing anything, and pick a tileset labelled underground/basement (or the cave tileset for caves). Only two of the wall types in a tileset work properly underground. When a basement is finished it must be covered with a matching roof texture (the manual describes the exact procedure) or the player will see the whole map on entry; Alt+H cycles roof-hiding modes so you can preview the result. Caves skip roofs and room numbers entirely — set the underground light level low (3–5) and hide areas with radius lights instead. The manual's "Additional info" section covers all of this step by step.

Saving, radar maps and testing in game

  1. Save with Ctrl+S to Data\Maps, using the sector file names above. Keep the update world info option checked at least when saving the finished map.
  2. Generate a radar map for every new map with your -DOMAPS shortcut. Radar maps are 88×44 single-page STI files and belong in Data\Radarmaps.
  3. Test in game: when you start a new game, the program checks for map files in Data\Maps and uses them instead of the stock sectors, reporting any errors or missing information. You can also load a saved game, as long as it was saved before any of your mercs entered the sector you changed — otherwise the old map is already baked into the save.

To ship maps as part of a mod rather than loose files in Data\Maps, see how 1.13 modding works and the VFS page for packaging them in your own data folder.

Editor hotkeys

The manual's shortcut list, plus a few from the tutorial:

Keys Action
Ctrl+S Save map
Ctrl+L Load map
Esc Exit the editor
F5 World summary (sector/level selection) and back
I Map overview (zoom out)
G Draw ground textures
B Buildings tab
D Select debris
T Select trees & bushes
R Select rocks
O Select other junk
E Erase
A / Z Cycle brush sizes
. / , Increase / decrease line width (Width brush)
] / [ Increase / decrease brush density
Page Up / Page Down Cycle the graphics loaded on the brush
Space Clear the graphics on the brush
Backspace Undo last change (up to 10)
Del Remove everything on the tile / delete selected item or enemy
H Toggle roofs on/off
Alt+H Cycle roof-hiding modes (basements)
W Toggle walls on/off
Shift+T Toggle treetops on/off
Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V Copy / paste a placed enemy
F4 Play JA2 music while editing

Using JA2:UB tilesets

A community add-on by Snap imports the Unfinished Business tilesets (numbers 50–59) into JA2, so 1.13 maps can use UB's terrain themes. The package unpacks into Data-1.13 (or whatever custom data directory you use) and consists of BinaryData\ja2set.dat plus Tilesets\50 … Tilesets\59. Notes from its readme:

  • It only works in 1.13 (or another build modified to accept tileset numbers of 50 and higher). On plain JA2 the UB tilesets can only replace existing tilesets, which requires editing ja2set.dat.
  • Maps created with the UB editor, and the original UB campaign maps, must be converted to JA2 format before use.
  • In tilesets 53–59 the snow-covered graphics (such as sandbags) were replaced with more appropriate JA2 graphics.

Getting help

Mapping questions have been answered at the Bear's Pit forum for two decades, and the Bear's Pit Discord is the fastest way to reach current developers and mapmakers. More community resources are listed on the links page.

Sources