I use a lot of custom soundtracks in my maps. However, a lot of my maps reuse the same few tracks as a theme for a certain location or type of level. Some have only one, some have as many as three or four. Even with compression efforts, file sizes sometimes climb to the triple digits in MB and the full pack of 15-20-ish maps could easily take up a gig, but there's no reason it has to be that big, because I recycle music so often that I'd estimate only about 20 or so actually unique soundtracks are used in the whole set. Is there any way to have two maps use the same .wav file without adding that .wav file to both maps and doubling the amount of space taken up by a single download? Also audio compression in general, if anyone knows any tips for getting these file sizes down, especially if I'm going to have to repeat a lot of these, that'd be nice.

In terms of reducing size of files this thread helped me a lot:
http://www.staredit.net/topic/13276/

I will quote the important things:



So TLDR: you want mono, 16 bit, and then i personally used 12000hz or so, but the HZ part is really where you maek your own personal decision as to what you think is a trade off between quality and file size.


As for SCMDraft itself I know of no way to have audio stored in some separate area and then loaded onto the map. If you have multiple maps with the same music they will just have to bear that file size cost.

The only way I can think of to reuse sound files between maps is with a mod. It doesn't have to actually edit/mod anything, you'd just put all of your sounds in a single MPQ and load that as a mod and have the maps reference those files directly ("Virtual Sounds" in SCMDraft's sound manager). Other than that, your only hope is with compression.

Why do you need to reduce the map size? Nobody cares how big your map is these days. That's how I get away with having 500mb+ maps in my campaigns.

Unless you plan on having Multiplayer. Some people just can't be bothered with downloading a map on a website these days. (Also I've noticed maps take a lot longer to save as the file size goes up, so there's that as well.)

They only take a long while to save if you have a very old computer, at least in my experience. I haven't had performance problems with larger maps at all.

Multiplayer is a little silly since the game's this old, but yeah in that case I can see why you'd prefer lower map sizes. I just wouldn't allow something that trivial to impact the quality of my project. People play it or they don't - it doesn't matter to me.

There ought to be a way to install custom sounds into the starcraft install (like virtual sounds) and use them that way. It would be a pretty simple mod coming from a non-modder's perspective.

That way if you want to play the map without the mod, you just don't have any music.