This contest is about melee gameplay! There has been a lot of buzz about Custom maps themselves that I think everyone has forgotten where we started so many years ago with Warcraft II... The game itself originally began as pure melee and the majority of the players who own SC2 play Ladder. Blizzard also said they would consider using our maps in the official Ladder, so why not take a shot at making a map worthy of pro gamers like Boxer and Huk?
What to do?
Recreate an SC1 Melee Map as you see fit. The goal is to create a balanced SC2 melee map, but must be a replicate of the original map. So that means the map itself must be correct in terms of cliff and player placement, etc.
You can add in things like the Xel'Naga Watch Tower, etc from SC2, or change the amount of resources so things are balanced in terms of SC2.
What you have to give
You have to provide a screenshot of both Minimaps. (SC1 Minimap and SC2 Minimap).
You have to attach your recreated SC2 Map. The original SC1 Map is not required.
You can give an optional description of your map with a little information on what you changed, if anything.
Resources
RodOfNOD recreated Blood Bath. As you can see, everything is the same for the most part, though he also added a Xel'Naga Watch Tower and some Line Of Sight doodads in each base. This is great! It keeps the maps general layout, concept, and play-style the same, with some SC2-esque changes.
In addition, Rod has created a guide to go along with all of this, so you can read it to learn how to properly create a Legacy map in SC2.
Dimfish's SC2 Map Analyzer which gives a lot of cool statistical information about your map that will likely be extremely useful for recreating your map with perfect balance.
If you need an SC1 Map Editor, you can use SCMDraft (and UnknownEdit for Mac users), aside from the default StarEdit that came with the game.
Deadlines
You have 10 days to complete this contest.
End of the submissions: Tuesday, October 19th - Midnight PDT (Los Angeles) [Wednesday, October 20th - 9 AM GMT (Paris)]
A public vote will be held after the end of the submissions to decide who wins.
Reward
The main goal of the contest is to further community development within GalaxyEdit. The rewards can be see as follows:
Question/Suggestion: Could we also try to port WC3 melee maps? Or are we restricted to SC1 for this contest? If we can't, do a WC3 version of this later. =)
Things to consider for that: WC3 is hero centric, meaning much of the strategy for those maps revolves around effectively using heroes and leveling them. So, problem 1) Emulating Creeping: Come up with an alternative to creeping which fits in to the context of SC2. A great idea for this would be adding in "Scrapyards" such as in the campaign where you can periodically pick up a bit of vespene or minerals. Problem 2) Trees in WC3 were not only a resource, they were a destructible pathing blocker. Finding ways to effectively use doodads in this manner will add depth to the strategy in your map.
Here are some obstacles you might run in to in this contest.
-Starcraft melee maps don't use too much cliff variation, finding a balance of mimicking strategy and adding detail will be a challenge.
-Doodad usage in Starcraft was also fairly sparse, and poses a similar challenge as the above.
-Fotunately, the percentage of space on a map which a base occupied was much larger in SC1 compared to SC2, giving you some room for detailing.
-Not all expansions in SC1 maps were a full 8 mineral veins and 2 vespene geysers such as in SC2. Study the economics of each map to determine a proper balance for SC2.
A good idea for approaching this type of conversion would be to grab a piece of paper, outline the general shape of the original, and just work from those shapes. Importing might be more trouble than it's worth.
With that, good luck on your entries! I might try and submit something for this one, but in all likelihood I'll give up after a few hours of fiddling with it. Hope to see some well balanced terrain. =)
Question/Suggestion: Could we also try to port WC3 melee maps? Or are we restricted to SC1 for this contest? If we can't, do a WC3 version of this later. =)
Haha, I actually, just said this in the Staff Forums... "I'm going to stick an SC1 on it so we can do one for War3 later one."
So yeah, just SC1 for this contest, possibly a War3 one in the future depending on how this goes.
Are we allowed to do more than one submission? lol I'm not even sure if I'll have time to get one done, but I had 2 in mind that I would love to recreate, and the second is kinda iffy...
I went and did a few hours of work last night on this right after it was posted, so here's what I've got so far converting Ashrigo. I'm gonna have to change the map up a bit to allow for a destructible back door, as the entry to every base is too much of a choke point. Far from done, but a good start I think. =)
Update 10/12/10: Cliffs adjusted, added back doors, resources properly placed, added textures, some doodads, and adjusted the lighting. Getting pretty close to done, I think. Just needs a lot of play testing for balance and some more polish. Here's a new picture.
Work in progress.
I chose Turnaround Evolution because I thought the map set-up was pretty cool.
Since there was no snow map in SC2 I chose Meinhoff as my map to keep it kind of the same by using white/gray sand layers.
The central expansion has become the High Yield since it's the hardest to control.
The 11 and the 5 o'clock expansions have no more gas since they are easy to defend.
Decision has to be taken to expand to an easy defendable expansion with no gas or the expansion on the cliff with gas, but it's closer to the enemy.
A small amount of ground has been removed close to each base since this could be heavily abused by Reapers.
Update: A ramp with Destructible Rocks has been added to give the possibility to use a shortcut, the ramp is small so it can be dangerous for your opponent to walk up upon.
Map contains fog and wind effects to give it more of a cold and abandoned feeling.
Another tip for you guys: Make sure you turn on the Placement Grid and the Pathing layer under the View menu. This is extremely helpful for figuring out where to place your mineral deposits and vespene geysers.
BTW if you download that map you will find a library routine to test if your minerals/vespene are mining correctly. I havent actually released it with notes but it all works and was used to balance the blood bath map.
I decided I'd try this out. It'd let me have a decent chance at a melee map as well. I decided I'd do Showdown, with a few edits that keep it balanced in my opinion (Adding heightened cliff sides for reapers/colossus/etc to not take a massive advantage over someone too easy), considering it was my favorite map in Starcraft :]
yeah that would be cooler, but this is more original than just, "make a melee map"
but i got a few questions, vespine gas is only 1 per base in sc1, can u change that to 2?
and the terraining is only like 3 different terrain textures. Can u change it a bit?
You can change the amount of minerals as you think it should be balanced for SC2. You want to the map itself to be as close as possible, but balanced for SC2 (Xel'Naga Tower, Gold Minerals, Destructible Rocks, etc, etc).
Are we allowed to do more than one submission? lol I'm not even sure if I'll have time to get one done, but I had 2 in mind that I would love to recreate, and the second is kinda iffy...
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
ModeratorsThis contest is about melee gameplay! There has been a lot of buzz about Custom maps themselves that I think everyone has forgotten where we started so many years ago with Warcraft II... The game itself originally began as pure melee and the majority of the players who own SC2 play Ladder. Blizzard also said they would consider using our maps in the official Ladder, so why not take a shot at making a map worthy of pro gamers like Boxer and Huk?
What to do?
What you have to give
Resources
Deadlines
You have 10 days to complete this contest.
Reward
The main goal of the contest is to further community development within GalaxyEdit. The rewards can be see as follows:
Question/Suggestion: Could we also try to port WC3 melee maps? Or are we restricted to SC1 for this contest? If we can't, do a WC3 version of this later. =)
Things to consider for that: WC3 is hero centric, meaning much of the strategy for those maps revolves around effectively using heroes and leveling them. So, problem 1) Emulating Creeping: Come up with an alternative to creeping which fits in to the context of SC2. A great idea for this would be adding in "Scrapyards" such as in the campaign where you can periodically pick up a bit of vespene or minerals. Problem 2) Trees in WC3 were not only a resource, they were a destructible pathing blocker. Finding ways to effectively use doodads in this manner will add depth to the strategy in your map.
Here are some obstacles you might run in to in this contest.
-Starcraft melee maps don't use too much cliff variation, finding a balance of mimicking strategy and adding detail will be a challenge.
-Doodad usage in Starcraft was also fairly sparse, and poses a similar challenge as the above.
-Fotunately, the percentage of space on a map which a base occupied was much larger in SC1 compared to SC2, giving you some room for detailing.
-Not all expansions in SC1 maps were a full 8 mineral veins and 2 vespene geysers such as in SC2. Study the economics of each map to determine a proper balance for SC2.
A good idea for approaching this type of conversion would be to grab a piece of paper, outline the general shape of the original, and just work from those shapes. Importing might be more trouble than it's worth.
With that, good luck on your entries! I might try and submit something for this one, but in all likelihood I'll give up after a few hours of fiddling with it. Hope to see some well balanced terrain. =)
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
ModeratorsHaha, I actually, just said this in the Staff Forums... "I'm going to stick an SC1 on it so we can do one for War3 later one."
So yeah, just SC1 for this contest, possibly a War3 one in the future depending on how this goes.
This contest sounds more like ''who picked the coolest map''. I think creating your own Melee map would be a better thing.
@Robeezy: Go
yeah that would be cooler, but this is more original than just, "make a melee map"
but i got a few questions, vespine gas is only 1 per base in sc1, can u change that to 2?
and the terraining is only like 3 different terrain textures. Can u change it a bit?
@thommiej: Go
Yeah, you want to balance it in the style of SC2. Note that you can also add mineral lines with no gas in SC2 maps too.
work in progress xp (4) Water Edges
waaa
I've never entered in a contest but I happened to have made 1 already for a friend... so what do I do? Just post pics and a link to DL?
Well here's pics (Border Dispute)...
I did add watchtowers and gold minerals...
(ORIGINAL):
(Perhaps not my best terrain work, but it's so damn hard in big open maps haha).
DL: Link Removed: http://www.mediafire.com/?viv232atp53o0nv
How can you get a big minimap view? (from the SC1 map)
Are we allowed to do more than one submission? lol I'm not even sure if I'll have time to get one done, but I had 2 in mind that I would love to recreate, and the second is kinda iffy...
I might try this, if i have the time this week. I still wonder how to rotate the part of a map i want to copy, or do a diagonal mirror of my map.
I went and did a few hours of work last night on this right after it was posted, so here's what I've got so far converting Ashrigo. I'm gonna have to change the map up a bit to allow for a destructible back door, as the entry to every base is too much of a choke point. Far from done, but a good start I think. =)
Update 10/12/10: Cliffs adjusted, added back doors, resources properly placed, added textures, some doodads, and adjusted the lighting. Getting pretty close to done, I think. Just needs a lot of play testing for balance and some more polish. Here's a new picture.
Work in progress. I chose Turnaround Evolution because I thought the map set-up was pretty cool.
Since there was no snow map in SC2 I chose Meinhoff as my map to keep it kind of the same by using white/gray sand layers.
The central expansion has become the High Yield since it's the hardest to control. The 11 and the 5 o'clock expansions have no more gas since they are easy to defend. Decision has to be taken to expand to an easy defendable expansion with no gas or the expansion on the cliff with gas, but it's closer to the enemy. A small amount of ground has been removed close to each base since this could be heavily abused by Reapers.
Update: A ramp with Destructible Rocks has been added to give the possibility to use a shortcut, the ramp is small so it can be dangerous for your opponent to walk up upon.
Map contains fog and wind effects to give it more of a cold and abandoned feeling.
Another tip for you guys: Make sure you turn on the Placement Grid and the Pathing layer under the View menu. This is extremely helpful for figuring out where to place your mineral deposits and vespene geysers.
I hope someone does blue storm or better yet, araknoid. That'd be toss....
Some great work so far. If you want real snow this might help: http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/niflheim-test-icesnow/
adding textures doesnt change a map from melee so i would highly suggest you use this or make your own snow.
same could apply to the textures for the trees btw.
We are not looking for doodads to be the same except for things like bridges and major things like a the temple parts in lost temple.
As far as mineral/vespene gas balance i would recommned adding another gas like i did in Blood Bath 2010. http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/blood-bath-2010/
BTW if you download that map you will find a library routine to test if your minerals/vespene are mining correctly. I havent actually released it with notes but it all works and was used to balance the blood bath map.
Good luck to all, keep posting your map entries!
I decided I'd try this out. It'd let me have a decent chance at a melee map as well. I decided I'd do Showdown, with a few edits that keep it balanced in my opinion (Adding heightened cliff sides for reapers/colossus/etc to not take a massive advantage over someone too easy), considering it was my favorite map in Starcraft :]
Obviously, this is still a work in progress.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
ModeratorsYou can change the amount of minerals as you think it should be balanced for SC2. You want to the map itself to be as close as possible, but balanced for SC2 (Xel'Naga Tower, Gold Minerals, Destructible Rocks, etc, etc).
Sure!
I think i'll try to do Big Game hunter from SC1, my all time absolute favorite map from sc1 :O !
@XanoX02: Go
BGH has already been done several times and is not part of the original maps but was a web map and thus is not included on the list. :P