Need help opening a large map in HD in World Editor

Before Reforged I made a map that was basically a mini campaign with tons of different playable races. It’s the max size with hundreds of custom units, spells, triggers, etc. After Reforged I starting updating it with all new HD models, but a year ago before I could finish my laptop malfunctioned. I couldn’t open it in HD to finish it on a spare laptop, but now I have a powerhouse PC that should handle it just fine, yet when I try it closes out of editor and says “This application encountered an unexpected error”. Any tips, maybe settings changes that can help with this?
On the spare laptop I was able to open it in HD a few times after delelting units/doodads in SD, but now it can’t. However the laptop I started the map on ran it just fine, so my new PC should be able to handle loading it as well.

its because all HD models are broken from the updated popcorn FX. You cant use any HD models right now or it crash. Sorry about this.

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Please post a link to the map.

On August 17th, 2022 the Warcraft 3 game was updated to a new version that was sitting in a back room in a Blizzard office, made by the previous Classic Games team who created Reforged. But they have all been laid off. So the people or persons publishing the new game patch(es) since this date are not the creators of the incomplete changes that they themselves pushed into production release, overwriting the previous version of the Reforged game that you had.

The newer editor ever since August 17th, 2022 has generally always been less stable according to reports on the forums. It might have recently gotten slightly better with last week’s patch, but I would be honestly surprised if the editor was as well supported as it was a year ago.

So, if it feels like your game was sabotaged so that you can no longer open your map, there is a substantial possibility that essentially it was. Sabotage may not have been the original intention of the new people pushing out the patch(es), but the fact remains that they are indifferent to your troubles and will not help you.

So, your choice is going to be either to open the map with a backup of your 2021 version of Reforged World Editor from a backup drive, or else if you don’t have a backup then you need third party programs or tools to open the map file and remove incompatible components with the new patch. Any file with “.pkb” extension is patch specific and not supported ever since the August 17th, 2022 patch. In addition, some imported textures with certain DDS encodings that were previously accepted by the game might have some issue or something in the new patch. I have finally gotten tired of the live client so I am a little behind on the exact details there.

But that’s pretty much what you gotta do. There probably will not be a World Editor patch to fix it back to where you could magically open your map again.

P.S.: Activision Blizzard King is a WoW dealership and mobile games publisher. If you want better help from Warcraft 3 enthusiasts who care and are facing the same issues as you, I suggest posting on a 3rd party modding website like the Hive Workshop instead of here on the Activision Blizzard King forum.

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Will do, I read after posting this that at some point they halved the max file size a map can be. Must’ve been when I was in between computers. I remember during classic W3 I had to download something from a 3rd party site that increased the max file size when I started this map. Maybe something like that will come along. Thank you for the comprehensive reply.

I still can’t believe how badly Blizzard dropped the ball on this game. Even if they had just retextured the game and nothing else it would’ve been great, but they couldn’t help infecting it with their BS.

I have been trying to recreate an open source simulation of generally the same game experience without knowing the code of the original, and just from the experience of how I want my game simulation to go.

Warcraft III is not based on some other game engine, and basically has its own game engine (i.e. not Unreal Engine, not Unity, etc) but this engine that it uses is in-office handmade for that specific purpose and is not well documented. So, it is a social media thing for you to look and think some other game made some other way proves that updating Warcraft III should be easy, because those other games are created from reusable components that everyone is experienced with and not from specific-case, custom designed components from the year 1999-2002. Because of this, it won’t get better, so whatever the media tells you about some great new version of Warcraft III will not happen, because Activision has no reason to hire hardware enthusiasts who would study how to make the custom components instead of “game developers” who are accustomed to the reusable components of 2015 and onward, or whatever. So, I’m just warning you, on Warcraft III this problem will not get better unless they rewrite it, and if they rewrite it then your old map will not work. If you look at this way, Reforged was actually a bizarre and fascinating thing that they managed to create because it would still play the pre-Reforged maps from the Frozen Throne. They probably will not make the same “mistake” again, so a new game would be like a simulation of Warcraft 3 melee that runs on some existing game engine made from reusable components, such as the Starcraft 2/HotS engine or maybe something else.

This is also why now if they try to promise new things or “fix” things, in the process they will break other things because of their lack of knowledge. But it is by necessity that hiring the people who would have the Warcraft 3 specific knowledge, if any exist, is considered a waste by a modern company.

So, if you want to get your map going again, I do not think the World Editor has a maximum map size, but instead there may be some imported files in your map that are no longer supported and it may be up to you to remove those files with a third party program. Remember to keep backups of your map as much as possible.

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