Not every UMS map or custom campaign is perfect. There are quality UMS maps that are well received by the community, and there are maps that are tedious, boring and dull that you're never gonna play them ever again. I'm going to focus on the worst parts of making them, because these low-effort mapmakers need to learn how to make them.

These are the basic pointers how NOT to make a StarCraft map.

1. Don't preplace too many units. Preplaced units are fine to setup starting conditions, but excessive numbers of preplaced units/structures would make the map messy and unplayable to the point where you'll have to deal with CCMU issues and even worse, break AI scripts. You're giving the player too much to control them and there are not enough Supply Depots/Overlords/Pylons to command them, or the enemy AI player has too many units that AI scripts will cease to function properly. An unmodified StarCraft engine can't handle more than 1.7k units in one map.

2. Don't overuse sound effects. Sounds were played to add dialogue, immersion and feel to the map you're playing, but excessive abuse of them can be irritating or annoying to the player playing. An example is the overabundance of custom music, or playing loud, irritating sounds nonstop with triggers that abuse the preserve trigger action.

3. Don't force-feed the player with heavy exposition. Briefings, intros and outros are fine, as long as they're short, understandable, necessary, and sensible, but making briefings unreasonably long and abusing pause/unpause triggers (especially when combined with preserve trigger action abuse) to play tedious dialogue/in-game cutscenes slows the pacing of gameplay down to a crawl. You're wasting the player's time by putting the mouse and keyboard down too much than playing. An example is in most missions of the infamous, shovelware campaign, Stellar Forces, where the briefings have small dialogue but it bogs you down with a painfully slow, crawling text.

4. Give computer players functioning AI scripts. An enemy base without an AI script will not function at all. Also, town AI scripts must be executed at the first few minutes of the game. It's so wrong when the red Protoss AI in Z10 Full Circle only activates when the Temple is destroyed (maybe Aldaris is too deaf to care). Unfortunately, Blizzard is still lazy to give mapmakers the ability to create/modify AI scripts, so you'll have to get used to Blizzard's outdated AI scripts.

5. The map has to engage the player with fairly challenging gameplay. Make it too easy, you leave the player bored and disappointed. Make it too hard, the player would be frustrated and will skip that map altogether. A bad example of this is displaying "Congratulations! You Are Victorious!" in the first few seconds of playing the map. Another bad example is facing seven active insane campaign AIs at once that you'll be overwhelmed before you establish your economy, army and defenses. If it's a campaign, then your campaign should start with some challenge then ramp it up as the player progresses through the campaign.

6. Make your map/campaign original and distinct. The StarCraft community loves remixed Blizzard campaigns with a twist as long as they're fun, challenging and replayable, but don't RECREATE the exact same campaign without any twist or originality. SC campaign remakes are already done a hundred times, at least do something very unique and original in mind.

7. Make sure Minerals and Gas geysers are placed properly and accessible to mining. Blizzard's SC campaign maps are guilty of this, there are inaccessible minerals, and the Command Center/Hatchery/Lair/Hive/Nexus town halls are placed too far from resources. Competitive mapmakers and Blizzard's SC2 campaign maps place resources properly, and you'll have to do the same to your map as well.

8. And finally, the map must be able to have at least one or more victory and defeat conditions. A map without these game-ending conditions would leave the player confused, not knowing what to do next but to manually quit the mission. You'll have to convey the player clearly if they achieve or fail their objectives, or your map will be booed because the victory/defeat screen didn't appear even though you destroyed all enemy structures and explored so much across the map.

What do you think? Do you agree to my pointers? Have you learned how to make a StarCraft UMS map? Let me know with your replies. Criticism is appreciated.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Oct 13 2022, 5:12 am by razorback9423.

For me it's good advice to have in mind when creating a map, I guess we all made these errors at one point while learning how the game or the editor work.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 7 2022, 7:04 pm by Zergy.

These are all good points to keep in mind. Generally, I'm a bit more flexible when it comes to resources placement: while I think it is imperative to have an optimal placement of minerals and gas in the player's starting base, expansions can be more creative. In my opinion there's nothing bad in having an expansion with a fancy mineral layour and/or a slightly more distant geyser. Of course, inaccessible minerals should always be avoided, unless they are blocked by low-yield mineral patches that will be depleted quickly enough to rapidly remove the obstruction.

I am going to abstract some more notes on this.

"Sleeping" bases that can be slaughtered by a player's force because they fail to activate is a hallmark of poor mapmaking decisions. I laugh so much when I see this happening (sometimes in video reviews where the player discovers some manner of loophole). But it happens even in Blizzard maps (say, Terran 6 in Brood War).

I also hate lazy terraining along these lines:

This post was a little confusing, because it says "Here's what NOT to do", and then lists things like "Don't do X." So it's a double negative. Once I realized that, it became easier to understand.

So for example, "You should NOT 'Don't preplace too many units'" simply just means "You should preplace too many units." I hope this clears things up for people who were confused at first, like me.

Very interesting list! I decided to try to make a map following the guidelines as-written as best I could, and you can check it out here: Dankwater Station

Edit: Oh... oh no. What have I done?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 13 2022, 12:39 pm by Roy.

LOL

The aesthetics in this map are A-M-A-Z-I-N-G

Seriously, if you think that I'm saying "What NOT to do" and I list things like "Don't do X", it sounds like I'm saying "What to do" which is not really my intention for these guidelines. They're not meant to encourage making bad quality maps, it's to encourage map makers to do create something unique, high-quality experiences to these maps. I don't want novice mapmakers to create shovelware maps and campaigns similar to the disaster that is StarCraft: Stellar Forces.

This reply will clear things up and settle this double negative confusion.