My War in the Pacific map is an alternative map for the computer game War in the Pacific. It grew out of my interest in the making the map provided with the game as accurate as possible. The first version was released in November 2004, and the map is now at version 6.2.

I decided to create the map when it became apparent that the game designers were not going to make a revised map of their own, even though many people had pointed out factual innacuracies in the official game map. The main innacuracies I wanted to address were the way that the transport networks were depicted in Australia and North America.

Although it was understandable that the designers were not going to revise the game map, probably due to the large amount of time and effort that would be required to make an updated version, it was still disappointing that it looked like it would not be done, since the game is intended to be a highly detailed simulation of the Pacific theatre of World War Two, and major map innacuracies contrasted greatly with the detailed and accurate representation of the military, air and naval forces and orders of battle.

For me, if the game was to be accurate, the map needed to be accurate as well. This map is my attempt, with the assistance of others, to improve the game map. Besides trying to improve the representation of the transport networks already mentioned, I eventually decided to redo the entire map, and try to improve it in other ways, such as attempting to make the distances between various locations more accurate, and represent terrain more accurately as well.

The first step was to determine whether it was even possible to create a new map. The art was not a problem (apart from time and effort), but I was not sure about the map data. I eventually decoded the map data file and found that it would be possible, although there are some things that are "hard coded" instead of being stored in the file, meaning that not everything would work perfectly.

Items that are "hard coded" include:

• The Soviet border
• Control zones
• Weather zones
• Malaria zones

The map works well for PBEM play, and when playing as the Allies vs Japanese AI. It will work less well when playing as the Japanese vs Allied AI, as the AI does not make any use of the additional bases, which are almost all Allied. It should still be useable when playing Japanese vs Allied AI however. Even though I thought that there may be problems with the AI using the map - especially the Allied AI, I decided to develop the map anyway, because even if the map is only useable for PBEM play, then I would still prefer to use it.

This map ended up taking a lot longer, and involved a great deal more work, than I originally realised! I have made it for my own use, but I hope to find others who are interested in using the map for PBEM play. The map is not entirely proven, but has worked well in many games so far. It is also a work in progress - several revisions have already been made and released, and the potential is there to improve it even further in the future. Having said that I am planning on version 6.x being the last major release of the map, although I will make additional updates if there are any problems with version 6.x.

If you decide to try the map, please contact me and let me know what you think, what problems it creates, and how it can be improved. Any feedback, positive or negative, will be most welcome.

I can be contacted via the Matrix Games forums (www.matrixgames.com/forums), user name "Andrew Brown".