May 15^th, 2006 (7:24pm) - LucasArts and Petroglyph today announced the immediate availability of a Map Editor and Update 1.04 for Star Wars: Empire at War, the award-winning real-time strategy game and the #1 PC title in February/March 2006. Now players have even more control in their bid to dominate the galaxy, with the ability to create both custom battle grounds and unique units to fight in their armies.

The Map Editor enables players to create both ground- and space-based skirmish maps from scratch, and also allows them to modify any of the existing game maps. All of the terrain, space features, buildings, vehicles and characters from Star Wars: Empire at War are available in the Map Editor for players to develop custom maps. In addition, the download includes a bonus plug-in for 3D Studio Max that allows players to design their own unit models and import them for use on the maps.

The Map Editor is available now for download at FilePlanet.com. Please note that this is an unsupported tool and players will need to first download and install Update 1.04 before using custom maps created with the Map Editor.

Update 1.04 not only enables the optional Map Editor download and the use of custom maps, but also adds support for auto-downloading of maps. Players who need to download a custom map to play a particular multiplayer game will do so automatically when joining that game. In addition, Update 1.04 implements numerous balance changes for both Rebel and Imperial units, and also corrects several issues, most notably one where capital ships would be invisible during space combat. Update 1.04 is available at http://support.lucasarts.com/patches/EAW1_4.htm.