Hey everyone! I've recently started converting (and making more difficult) the original starcraft and BW single player missions to TWO player maps. Essentially, I'm making a 'co-op' Starcraft package -- for my own personal use amongst friends whom all own Starcraft/brood war of course.

Now, before anyone says anything to me -- I have plenty of experiance with programming, I know java, c++, php/mysql, and i'm currently studying to be a CS major. I've got the experiance with coding and programming theory; I just have never physically worked with any Starcraft modding at all. Now I know Starcraft's source has not been released and I'm already aware of that.

Here's what I'd like to do: I'd like to be able to create a small mod -- or if not mod then some sort of client side 'hack' that I can inject into Starcraft -- which would load the NEXT map in the series of Co-op maps i've created AFTER beating the one the players were currently on. I'm really trying to organize something between my friends for the launch of SC2 so we can go through the one player missions and have fun beating them while re-familiarizing ourselves with the story, so i'd really like to create a seamless experiance. Please, don't respond to me if all you're going to say is 'just load the maps it's not worth it.' I've got plenty of time to waste and i'll decide what's worth my time and what's not.

Sorry if that came off as aggressive, but I had to put it out there just in case. Is this possible in any way? If it's not, can anyone think of any creative solutions? This poses a big problem for some of the earlier maps in the game such as the first few 'build 10 marines maps' -- I know this is going to sound silly, but if I have to load the map manually my friends will tell me to just skip it and go to the next level; but if it's a flow of map loading after another and we only 'start the game' once, so to speak, then it won't be a problem. That's just how my friends are.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me!

This isn't possible with the basic modding tools we celebrate around here. I'm guessing that this would take an extensive amount of coding to do.

I wish you luck with this, and I ask that if you do manage to do it, that you share the code with us poor folk here

Drat, that's what I figured.

I've got a creative "local" solution that'll work for me -- I can place a macro on each set of computers that's playing co-op, and through a clever use of programs running client-side on each computer completly separate from SC's application I can get something make shift working. The inspiration for this hit me only after reading your reply, for some reason.

Essentially, I can use a macro to detect when the "victory" or "defeat" screen comes up, and then display the 'planet splash screen' that'd show up anyway in one player through the use of an image viewer application running in the background, and I'll amend each to have the words 'loading' on them or something of that nature. BEHIND the image i'll make it so that the macro moves the mouse and loads the next map/joins the game. To make a long story short, with a lot of hard work and creativity I can get this working for my local computers, which is all I needed. Since my friends know nothing of how computers work they'll think the game is actually 'loading' something. A cheap move, but hey, it keeps the 'experiance' on par with what I wanted!

Any other solutions anyone comes up with though would be appreciated! If only I had some source code to toy with..

That's quite the elaborate solution I hope it works out for you. And by the way, I really hope you post your finished 2-player campaign maps here. I'd be really interested in playing them.

EDIT: I just remembered, I think it was bajadulce, made a harder version of the Blizzard campaign using only an AI modification. I remember seeing it on Broodwarai.com. You might want to check it out.