The admin over at HOMM fan-site Elrath.com found a leaked beta of the HOMM5 Map Editor on a torrent site a few days ago, and has made the files available on his site. I downloaded it and it works if you merge the editor /bin folder into the main HOMM5 /bin folder.

Frankly, I’m not so sure how “leaked” this is. Elrath has had it on his site for a week, and has provided a link to the files from the official Ubi HOMM5 forums. Ubi has done nothing about either. They have also been consistently releasing betas of their products for testing and feedback. So have at it I say. But to maintain that feeling of being l33t hax0rz, I’ve provided a shaddy cell phone screen capture below. ZOMG!

The editor isn’t too cumbersome to use, but for most will take some getting used to before you can turn out anything good. It also allows you to modify existing maps as a teaching tool or template for your own. I only monkeyed around with it for a few minutes, but it seemed to give you control over everything from AI behaviour to which “days of the week” can pop-up. I expect some truly great player-made maps will begin appearing within the next few weeks.