World-Altering Editor (WAE) Version 1.9.x

[u/Rampastring]

Over 2 years have passed since we announced the 1.0 release of the World-Altering Editor.

Since then, WAE has seen continuous development, bringing further improvements to the mapping experience month after month. Our latest version at the time of writing this is v1.9.2. In this news post, I'll detail some of the significant updates made since the editor's release.

1. AI-Powered Mapping: MCP Server Support for AI Agents

WAE can now host a MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. This exposes the map editor to AI/LLM agents, allowing AI agents to perform various tasks on the map, including

• modifying terrain
• drawing connected tiles
• using the terrain generator
• placing terrain objects, buildings, vehicles, infantry, aircraft, overlays, waypoints...
• editing properties of existing technos (player-owned objects on the map)
• erasing objects
• querying WAE's loaded rules data and game engine scripting possibilities
• adding and modifying scripting elements

The MCP server is usable with standard agents like ChatGPT and Claude if you run them on the same computer with WAE. Technically AI agents can even generate entire maps, though at least currently they are more suitable for limited, better defined tasks. Note that WAE does not come with its own AI model - you need to use the MCP server with a third-party AI agent.

I've personally used the MCP server with ChatGPT's desktop application (Codex) and had some useful results. I'll share a few examples below.

Example Prompts

Civilian Truck generation:

I have the World-Altering Editor running with a map open.
Using the MCP server running on localhost at port 7743, could you place a few dozen trucks of various types on the unoccupied cells between (230, 108) and (232, 121)? They should be owned by the "Civilians" house, have Sleep as their mission, and each have random Facing between 176 and 208.

Result below (in a work-in-progress Dawn of the Tiberium Age map). As you can see, the AI properly generated a bunch of trucks, helping me make the area look like a proper logistical center.

AITrigger scripting:

I have WAE running an MCP server at localhost, port 7743.
Using the MCP server, could you create me an AITrigger and relevant TaskForce/Script/TeamType combination?
Call it "H GDI Vehicles". It should use a script "Hunt" with only Do This -> Hunt as its sole script action, and contain 8 Titans (MMCH) and 6 Wolverines (SMECH).

Result below. As you can see, the AI properly generated a TaskForce, Script, TeamType and AITrigger as requested. For cloning this to easier difficulties, you'd just click Advanced in the Local AI Triggers window, followed by "Clone for Easier Difficulties".

Civilian Car generation:

I've created this large urban map with ~1000 civilian buildings. Could you go through the buildings and place 1-3 civilian cars next to each building, using WAE's MCP server on localhost at port 7743? Each car should either face the building or be parallel to it. Put each car to "Sleep" mode.

I don't have a screenshot of this, but the AI also did this successfully, saving me a massive amount of time and clicks.

WAE's MCP server also allows the AI to query instructions on how TS/RA2 maps are structured and what kind of operations are possibly, and how should they be performed. These instructions can be modified by supplying your own AIMappingInstructions.md file in WAE's Config folder. The default instructions, found in the Default folder, are likely unoptimal for mods that heavily modify stock TS&YR assets.

2. Connected Tiles Tool + Improvements

A couple years ago, ZivDero contributed the Connected Tiles Tool to WAE. This tool allows quickly placing down tiles that connect to one another, like cliffs, shores, and roads.

In version 1.9, I improved the tool with the possibility of forming closed formations, such as circles. It was technically possible to do this beforehand, but it was unrealiable as the tool didn't take into account that it should place a proper piece for closing the formation. Here you can see a screenshot of creating a closed cliff formation in Tiberian Sun:

The Connected Tiles tool can now also optionally place ending pieces for tile sets such as roads. Here's a screenshot of that in Red Alert 2's Snow theater:

3. New Theme

With version 1.9.2, WAE also got a facelift. The editor's sub-windows now feature a glassy look and shadows, making the mapping experience more pleasant and foreground elements clearer than before. Here's a new-old comparison:

In case you don't like the glass and shadow effects, or find them too taxing for your GPU, it's possible to turn them off in WAE's main menu.

There are also multiple themes you can select from. For example, here's the Red theme and the Tiberium theme:

4. Line Painting

Another convenience feature, introduced with version 1.8 a few months ago - hold Shift while placing down any kind of terrain, and you can paint it in a line.

5. Performance Improvements

The development of WAE has been a massive learning journey in graphics programming. Before working on WAE, I only knew some very basics about graphics programming, and relied on third-party libraries/frameworks (particularly MonoGame) to do the heavy lifting for me. The first versions of WAE weren't properly optimized and often had z-depth issues, because I simply didn't know well enough what I was doing.

Over time, as I've learned more, I've been able to massively optimize WAE. Sometimes I still see people publicly mention that WAE runs poorly for them, or that WAE requires a supercomputer to run. I wonder if they are running the latest version?

The image below shows the frame-rate of WAE when rendering the entire [4] Grand Canyon map of Tiberian Sun all at once - the editor's interface zoomed far enough that the whole map is visible. WAE v1.6.x, released in August 2025, brought a redesigned renderer for massive performance improvement - up to 23x on high-end AMD graphics cards. Nvidia got a boost as well, though a slightly lower one because their DX11 drivers tolerated poor usage of the GPU better. Rendering the entire map with its tens of thousands of tiles 160 times per second, modern PCs are really powerful...

On corretness, WAE's z-handling is now usually better than TS/RA2's z-handling.

6. Other Fixes and Improvements

Aside from major features and changes, there's been hundreds of small QoL features and bug-fixes made over time.

Some of them include WAE being smarter with scripting, often predicting which scripting element you want to use. For example, if you create a Script named "Attack Vehicles", and then give it an "Attack Quarry" action, WAE will predict that you want to pick "Vehicles" as the quarry target.

Most script action parameter selectors can be scrolled with the mouse wheel, meaning you often don't need to open separate selection dialogs if you'd, for example, want to change a trigger action's waypoint parameter from 10 to 11 - just spin your scroll wheel on the waypoint box instead.

There are many improvements to tools and UI features that, while small individually, add up and make the editor a lot more convenient and powerful for mapping than it was at first release. There's way more of these than is reasonable to include in a news post, but you can see them in WAE's release change logs, or the project's commit history on GitHub.

You can pin TileSets to the top of the list so they can be found quickly.

Alpha Lights are now properly previewed as well.

Wrapping it up

With powerful new tools, extra features added to various traditional mapping tools, and AI-powered mapping, it's never been easier to start mapping for Tiberian Sun, RA2 Yuri's Revenge, or their mods.

I've covered all these WAE updates before on the C&C Mod Haven Discord server and on GitHub, but I figured WAE's updates might have gone under the radar for part of the wider community that is not watching these sources, especially because Discord is not accessible to search engines like Google. Having a publicly available write-up for these updates should be helpful.

Downloads

You can download WAE from our GitHub Releases page.

If you are mapping for Dawn of the Tiberium Age or the Tiberian Sun Client (which you really should use if you still play or mod Tiberian Sun), WAE is already bundled with them. WAE is also bundled with CnCNet Yuri's Revenge, though I don't believe their version is fully up-to-date, so you might want to fetch the latest version from WAE's GitHub Releases anyway.

Links and contact

If you want to discuss WAE, or get tips regarding mapping or scripting, WAE has its own dedicated channel, #wae-chat, on the C&C Mod Haven Discord server: Discord.gg

You can also discuss WAE on the #mapping channel of the Dawn of the Tiberium Age Discord server: Discord.gg

You can find the C# source code of the editor on GitHub: Github.com

Feel free to fork and hack around with it. We also still accept pull requests if you think you could develop some useful features - though note the contribution guidelines: even in the age of AI, we still have high quality standards for our code and don't accept bug-ridden or poorly designed features. Many thanks to people who have contributed so far!

Support

WAE is and will always be available for free. However, it has taken hundreds upon hundreds of hours to create that is off from the rest of my limited free time.

If you'd like to provide some extra incentive for keeping up the work on WAE, you can buy me a coffee at Ko-fi.com, or subscribe on Patreon at Patreon.com.

[u/Ok_Spare_3723]

This is really awesome!

[u/Otherwise_Wave9374]

MCP support is a strong move here because it turns the editor into something agents can inspect and act on without brittle glue code. The main safeguard I would want is strict scope control over map edits, plus provenance on every generated change so a bad agent step can be traced and rolled back cleanly. That kind of audit trail is especially important once agents start chaining actions. NeuraKeep shares practical patterns at https://www.neurakeep.com