Hi,

I first met this site a very, very long time ago but never created an account. Now that I'm kinda bored with SC2 modding I decided to come back to SC1, and if everything goes well finally release maps. So I think I'll join up (hope they don't put me in any tight spaces).

I'm mainly an artist but over the years I tried to learn all I can about modding for the games that caught my interest. I'm always up for cooperative projects where I can help with ideas or even artwork sometimes, and that's what I still do for SC2. Hopefully I'll have SC1-related stuff to show soon.

If you're mainly an artist you'll want to look into modding moreso than mapping. The difference is much, much more clearly cut in most games outside of Starcraft 2.

I recommend you get familiar with rendering concepts and Starcraft's palette. It helps to have paint shop pro experience as it is much preferable to photoshop by extent of how it handles palettes. I can send you an example 3ds max scene if you want - I'll have to dig it up out of my old external, which I have intended to do anyways.

How did you get here?

There is a point in life when everyone hits rock bottom. That's how you find SEN.

@IskatuMesk: I did get back to BW in order to work on personal campaign projects, because I can't for the life of me finish a map by myself in SC2. I have awful SC2 terraining skills. So my idea is to create things for these maps.

I'm familiar with the palettes and I have managed to use Photoshop to fix what I needed fixed, so far. It can be a lot of work though. Guess I'm just out of luck with software choices, I'm no good with 3dsmax and for SC2 I use Blender.

@Corbo: Weren't you guys on SC2Mapster as well? Names are familiar.

Sc2mapster is where people go to stare into the hole under the rock. I think nearly everyone's been there, just to look at what awaits them in the afterlife.

At least with BW you don't need to worry about formats. Just make sure not to render with perspective on.

I think good Sc terrain will be significantly more difficult than sc2. I found sc2 really easy to terrain for, but I was always a melee-style terrainer. In either case, it's nice to be able to just make your own doodads and stuff rather than rely on sloppy kitbashing of existing stuff inside the editor.

There's more people working on campaign stuff in BW than Sc2 so I'm sure you'll be able to find help if you need it.

I think it's the first time ever I witnessed someone recommending paint shop over photoshop. It's significant for me because I stumbled on it first as a kid and stuck to paint shop ever since. As such I use a horribly outdated version, but it still gets the job done. I just sometimes wish I have some better image enhancement filters but that's all. I simply struggle with photoshops interface. I'm so used to paint shop that I can't find where I can do stuff in photoshop.

Well, photoshop is a lot more powerful as a tool than PSP but for SC work you rarely need that unless you're already proficient with it. That said, I would never recommend a PSP version higher than 7.

I use PSP 8. What's so bad about it?

That's about the period the program peaked in terms of performance/features. I don't recall 8 being necessarily bad, but unnecessary overall. The rule of thumb for production programs is to not update unless there's a meaningful update. For PSP, the line is particularly drawn when Corel acquires the rights (At version 9) - there's a considerable drop in quality that only increases in severity with every release (much like Adobe acquisitions such as Audition).

Interesting discussion. I kept using 7 for a long time but now I use CS3.