Hardened warriors have graced this page since 8/14/97
I thought long and hard about making a War2 page. At first I decided not to because there were hundreds already out there. Granted, many of them just plain blow, but again no need to reinvent the wheel. Then I came accross some absolutley wonderful War2 pages and two packages of killer puds. These rare gems changed my mind! This page will highlight the best multi-player PUD's, PUD packages, and eventually have links to the very best War2 Home Pages. There are hundreds of War2 Pages out there, so if a great page escapes me please let me know so I can add a link to it. Please. . . please, do not send me just any War2 Page. If you send me something it must be of superior quality/content. With that all said and done, please enjoy what I have to offer on this page.
The first collection I came accross was by this group that has made a home for itself at The Warcraft II KPUD Home Page. The idea of this page is a place to develop the best multi-player puds on the net. To this end they are unequalled. They are the primary reason I am doing this page at all. They have the best multi-player puds in existance and they need the exposure. Heck, I am tired of waiting around 15-20 minutes so I can play one of these great puds. The current collection of 54 puds is called kpuds1.zip (1039KB). Do yourself a favor and download this collection.
The second collection was suggested to me by some players. Now I am not a fan of leagues or clans of any types (ask the owners of Pudlands their view of clans), occassionally something good does come out of their existence. In this case there is a nice collection of 11 puds at the National Warcraft II League Home Page. The file is called nwlpuds.zip (179KB). Again, do yourself a favor and download this collection as well.
You will not find cheat programs here, saved game editors, or neat little programs to change the inner workings of War2. You will find programs that have universal appeal and are the very best.
PUD Browser: I remember when this program first came out ages ago. I liked the graphical interfacing, but it lacked any type of printing feature so I scrapped it. Recently I came accross it again and behold, it now has a printing feature. In fact it makes the best printouts of maps I have seen. Pud Browser v1.1 (197KB) is a must have for making a library of maps for multi-player gaming on Kali. In fact it is well supported and has its own page, Bill Wright's PUD Browser Page.
WarCraft IIx: I came accross this for the first time on the 'net somewhere and thought it was a kewl program. Then the very next week I bought "Level Master III: Warcraft II" and much to my surprise this shareware program was on the CD-ROM as well. High praise indeed I figured. After using it a few times I came to the conclusion it is the greatest map-maker/editor in existance. . . period! End of story! Daniel Lemburg, the developer of War2xEd (620KB) was offered a job with Blizzard after they saw that this utility did things they thought couldn't be done with War2. I am not sure if he is working for them now or not. On his WarCraft IIx Page he describes War2xEd as "The best PUD editor, bar none! Give mages dragon breath, make bridges that both land units and sea units can cross, make caves that flying units can't enter, use the swamp terrain and all the 2x heroes, and select among nearly a hundred AI types!" The only drawback is that the interface is different enough from the editor that comes with War2 that it will take time to get used to.
PUDDraft v0.96 beta: is an editor strongly based on the one that comes with War2, but is does a great many things that the original editor does not. I haven't had much time to mess with this, but it looks great for map-editing and appears to have adequate support. In fact you can find the latest version of this utility v0.96beta (226KB) at The Wardraft Page. The one thing about this utility that I am most excited is the ability to add plugins (i.e. versatility). There are currently 3 plugins available:
PUDRest 1.2b: is a wonderful utility for authoring puds. You can add spells to mages, limit buildings, units, etc. You run this program after you have generated a PUD. If you wish to re-edit that PUD though, you need to run the utility again and remove these changes as no map utility is compatible with this yet . . . maybe soon though. The current version is v1.2b.
For all those people out there who think Dragons & Griffins are the best thing since the invention of the thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missle, I think this little bit of wisdom from an ancient sage sums it up nicely. To hear the words of the sage click (HERE )