StarCraft Maps

StarCraft maps are about as 2D as RTS gets. They're made from 2D tilesets, and thus make for very small files. A game server can disseminate them to all players in a netgame in moments. They come in two formats: .scm for the original game's maps, and .scx for the Brood War expansion's. StarCraft maps are utterly undeformable and completely flat. That is, the physics of a StarCraft map is identical to that of a tabletop board game; there's nothing to differentiate between different levels of terrain other than some arbitrary rules used in the game engine. There's about four or five altitudes you can use, but there's no virtual environment or nothing remotely three dimensional about them. While the map looks diagonally isometric, there's really only a primitve grid defining its foundations. Layers, ramps and bridges don't overlap. Bridges are basically bits of land; they can't be demolished and you can't go under them. Water is impassable and an obstacle to all ground traffic, and apart from that, strictly decorative. Any discrete objects, like trees, rocks or fossilised skeletons - collectively known as Doodads - found in the map are also decorative, indestructible obstacles. Doodads are simply there to make a map interesting and provide props that force units to walk around them - or more accurately, trip each other up on.

StarEdit

This is StarCraft's own bundled campaign editor. Its intuitive, colourful, and makes good use of windows and icons. There's a huge swag of features, but hard core mappers and campaigners always rail at its perceived lack of them. Actually, I think I had more fun cobbling together my own "mad maps" that played themselves instead of actually playing the game. StarEdit can produce all types of StarCraft maps and campaigns, provided you stick entirely to the existing game elements and limitations. However, StarEdit does not give you access to all areas of the game mechanics. Some of the triggers and tricks found in the official single player campaigns rely on hidden features unavailable in the editor - hence the frustrations by many seasoned modders. StarCraft doesn't seem to use an all-purpose, standalone thinking AI like many other strategy games; it relies entirely on a script that choregraphs the computer players into looking like they know what they're doing. Some custom maps simply have the AI running on rails, acting out a string of little "cut scenes"; many are used to pre-place units around the map or conjure up an ambush while an AI base goes through its shopping list of builds (based on how "hard" you set the AI script in your map.) While you can allocate AI scripts to a computer player in a trigger driven map, you cannot edit the actual AI profiles themselves.

While it won't let you stray outside Blizzard's branding, StarEdit is nonetheless an excellent editor. Its fairly easy to use, letting you delve into the guts of the game to manipulate triggers and map zones to produce a wide variety of effects and game responses. There's no internal testing mechanism; you have to load the map into the game and see how it plays - something that can become time consuming for a big map. Producing map terrain is a snap, and detailed multiplayer maps can be easily produced without too much fuss. You can change all the unit names and stats and add your own sounds, but editing the graphics and deeper structure of the game engine and AI are strictly off limits.

Check out some single player action in the Scenario section of your Starcraft Maps folder for some trigger maps that completely change StarCraft. StarCraft just uses a straight up system of simple triggers - while the types of triggers are fairly extensive, there's no structured programming; and triggers can go off in the game at any time in any order when you play it. If you want to produce a sophisticated scenario, you'll best be served splitting it up into a string of small campaign maps.

Map Types

StarCraft maps come in three major forms. Scenarios, Campaigns and Multiplayer maps. The most basic map is the Multiplayer map, which is literally just an inert map with some starting positions, all carefully arranged to give a balanced netgame. Unit stats and behaviour are unmodified, and everything you may have read about unit stats and rules on fan sites and Blizzard's StarCraft Compendium will hold true. The game plays with "standard" rules, and players pit themselves against other humans or computer players, either singly or as teams.

The single player version of all this is a Melee game, where its you versus a number of computer opponents, or a slight variation, Free For All (FFA) where you and all the computer players fight each other. Both single player melees, FFA's and regular netgames all use the same basic map type.

Scenarios on the other hand, are maps with predefined locations, triggers, dialogue and special rules and objectives. Quite often they follow a very linear plot path peppered wth small skirmishes or a series of objectives that have to be achieved whilst dealing with several AI players. Some Scenarios have been reworked into very un-RTS variations, and most usually try to tell a story. Stringing a series of related Scenarios together produces a Campaign. (e.g. the original single player Missions that shipped with the game). To run a scenario as its author intended, you have to set the game to Use Map Settings (UMS) to enable the special triggers and unit mods, dropping the standard AI unless the map expressly triggers it. UMS triggers are hardcoded into the map file and not seperable from it. Keep an eye out for UMS Maps out there - they can sometimes be surprising and quite original, although many seem to be used to produce a sort of bastardised form of the Role Playing Game.

Often, a UMS Scenario is a single player game, but on rare occasions you can come across multiplayer versions. Its difficult to find enough players online who are willing to participate. Examples would be StarCraft Fortress, Paintball and Capture the Flag. There's a less frequent and more frivolous map type that's appeared in recent years: the Movie Map. These aren't played so much as watched - its an automatic scenario run entirely by its own triggers from beginning to end, often staging a giant battle or running a "cut scene".