Welcome back to the devblogs for Space Hulk: Tactics, today we’ll be talking about the Map Editor. Far from a tool for only the most creative portion of the playerbase, we consider this a core pillar of the Space Hulk experience, and we’ve designed it in such a way to be easy to use for everyone.
The reason for this is how influential the ease of making your own missions was on the Space Hulk boardgame. It is still played by a dedicated fanbase today, after almost 30 years since the 1989 release, in part because of the clip-together nature of the terrain pieces that came with it. Creating your own missions is as easy as adding an objective to your idea for a map, and we’ve embraced that completely with the Mission Editor.
First you pick an environment, Imperial, Ork, or Eldar. Each of these comes with its own unique interactive elements - gun turrets on Imperial maps, for example, or explosive barrels on Ork ships - so choose wisely based on what you wish to create. However, if you decide to change, you can do so at any time, without losing any features of your map. Any unique elements from another tileset are simply flagged as needing to be removed or replace.
Then you can start building, snapping rooms together quickly and easily from our huge selection. There is a near-infinite number of combinations of rooms, doors, consoles, interactive elements, dozens of objectives, spawn points, and so on. Each room also has several different tilesets per environment, so you can perfect the look of your map as well as the design.
Applying objectives to a map is as simple as selecting one and then placing the required interactables - extraction points, key consoles, collectable servo skulls, to name a few. There are twenty objectives to choose from, which combined with map layouts and how they change the playstyle of the map (sometimes, for example, the Genestealers may be on the defensive) it opens up a ridiculously large number of options.
Once you have a prototype, you can jump into playing it against the AI right from within the editor, and once you quit you’ll be right back on the edit screen, able to tweak elements quickly and easily. First-person mode is also supported within the editor, so you can examine your map on a more personal level, and pick the perfect tileset.
Once your map is ready to go it can be shared online and downloaded by other players. They can rate maps after a match, as well as search for maps by name, creator name, or use filters to sort through official and unofficial maps.
During the pre-order beta we’re running a mapping competition, which you can read about the details for here. Included in the prize is a copy of the latest edition of the Space Hulk boardgame, as well as various other goodies. We’re always on the lookout for particularly amazing maps to highlight as well, and it’s possible some of the best from the beta will be integrated into the official map pool for release.
The Space Hulk: Tactics release is just a couple of weeks away on October 9th. You can play in the pre-order beta right now by grabbing the game on Steam.
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