Hedgewars is played on maps. Maps define the shape and design of the terrain. Maps can either be pre-defined, hand-drawn in a simple map editor, or a randomly generated level which corresponds with a selected theme.

Map types

Image maps

Image maps are maps based on an image file (hence the name). They are always the same. Hedgewars won't place girders or land objects. Examples for image maps are Hogville, Lonely_Island and HedgeFortress (shown above).

Image maps can be very simple (only normal terrain) or be very sophisticated with icy, bouncy or even fully indestructible terrain or a combination thereof. See Terrain to learn more.

A special case of image maps are mission maps (→Missions), which are basically just image maps with a special mission, game mode, challenge, etc. attached to it.

Themed maps

This includes random maps, scripted maps and hand-drawn maps. All these maps have in common that the terrain appearance comes from the theme. All themed map types are actually made in two steps: First the “naked” terrain is created, then optional land girders (bridges) and theme objects are automtically added by Hedgewars. Land girders and theme objects but these can be disabled in the game modifiers.

In themes with “icy” mode (Snow and Christmas), the land girders and girders placed by the construction utility will be slippery.

Randomly generated maps

This is by far the most popular map type.

These maps are different whenever you generate them with a new seed. Random maps includes the map types “Randomly created”, “Random perlin” and “Random maze”.

Those maps are not really random (“pseudorandom” would be a more correct term), they are actually calculated, but in a very sophisiticated way that makes them seem very random. Note that if you use the same seed, you can reproduce a particular random map with ease.

Scripted maps

Scripted maps are maps created by styles. As of 0.9.22, there are 3 styles which create more unique random maps: ShoppaMap, DiagonalMaze, Tunnels.

Finally, the TechRacer style features its own maps (which are not random at all, just randomly selected).

Hand-drawn maps

You can draw these in a simple map editor which is included in Hedgewars. It is very simple, you can only decide between normal terrain and air.

Creating maps

See the PresetMaps entry on the Hedgewars Knowledge Base.