Design Maps

Design Maps is a game mode that has been featured in every Advance Wars title since the first game.

Overview

Design Maps allows players to design their own maps and possibly share them with others. In order to play on a map created in this mode, it must have at least two armies that each have one Headquarters and at least either one deployment property such as a Factory or one unit such as an Infantry.

Game Boy Wars 3

Players are able to save 10 maps each ranging anywhere from 20x20 to 50x50. Any units except Mercenary Units and any terrain in the game other than Communication Towers may be placed.

A patch exists to allow the placement of Mercenary Units and Communication Towers, although the latter will serve minimal purpose outside the PALBal patch itself.

Advance Wars

The Design Maps mode in the original Advance Wars is very simplistic. The absence of Pipelines makes it impossible to create maps based around air combat less than 30 x 20. Players can only save up to 3 maps.

Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising

Design Maps is part of the Design Room in Black Hole Rising. The addition of Pipelines, Seams, and Missile Silos allows for much greater flexibility when designing maps. Players are still only able to save up to 3 maps.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike

Oozium 238 can be purchased in Battle Maps for usage in Design Maps after beating the normal campaign. Map flexibility is enhanced even further with the presence of the Piperunner. The maximum number of maps that can be saved are 3.

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

The design maps mode has been heavily revamped for this game, as map settings such as the weather or the terrain look can be adjusted while designing the map. Furthermore, up to 50 maps can be designed and saved in this mode and the size of the map can be altered from as small as 5 x 5 to as enormous as 30 x 30. Additionally, an army does not need to have a Headquarters in order for them to be playable.

Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp

Black Hole is now a selectable faction in Design Maps. Special Black Hole properties such as the Mini Cannon along with the special Volcano terrain can be placed in Design Maps.

Trivia

• In the original Advance Wars, Black Hole Rising, and Re-Boot Camp, if the player constantly tries to place units on invalid terrain, Nell will appear to chastise the player. In Re-Boot Camp, Nell gets increasingly annoyed if the player continues and eventually leaves; an Orange Star soldier takes over her place for any dialogue. In Dual Strike and Days of Ruin, nobody will appear to chastise the player no matter how many times they try to place units on invalid terrain.
• In the original Advance Wars and Black Hole Rising, if one were to hold both the Left and Right shoulder triggers on the Game Boy Advance when entering Design Maps, a map will be generated with the Kanji characters "任天堂" (Nintendo) formed out of mountain terrain. In Re-Boot Camp, this can be done holding the minus (-) button on the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con when entering Design Maps in the Design Room.
• In Dual Strike, if one holds both the L and R buttons on the DS when entering Design Maps, a special map with the words "Advance" will be spelled out in Forest terrain while "Wars" is spelled out of Plains and Shoals terrain.

Bug

Demonstration of the Design Maps bug

In the original Advance Wars, there is a bug that can allow players to use Design Maps to edit Campaign mission maps. If the player were to fail the Naval Forces mission in Field Training (by losing either the Transport Helicopter or Lander) and then go to Design Maps to place an Infantry and then delete it, this somehow causes the game to act like the player is both in battle and in Design Maps at the same time. Max's Theme will play and the interface will glitch out. From this point, the player can navigate to a glitched main menu and select the Campaign, where they can use the Design Maps editor options to modify the map. Any modifications to the mission map can be saved, and the game can be reset to return things back to normal but with the map changes.