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Mapmaker's Guidebook
Welcome to the mapmaker's guidebook! This handy document is meant to serve as a reference to those who wish to add to Cosmonarchy's bounty of custom maps. This page assumes you already have an SCMDraft 2 profile set up for Cosmonarchy mapping, but if you don't, you can follow the mapping starter guide to get set up.
Because Cosmonarchy deviates so radically from stock Starcraft, it should be noted that many "old world" melee mapmaking techniques are either surplus to requirements, neutral and thus totally optional, or actively deleterious to general play. Use them at your own risk!
Click the box below for a reference of units and structures of interest that can be placed for player 12.
- Assets with auras: When provided by neutral assets, auras which effect allies apply for all players
- Applies for: Shaman, Ancile, Azazel, Crucible, Clarion, Matraleth
- Refineries: Can be harvested by any player; cannot self-destruct
- Addons: Can be claimed by any player; cannot self-destruct
- Anchor, Tencendur: Can be garrisoned by any player; cannot lift off
- Power nodes: Power fields provided by neutral Protoss structures can be used by any Protoss player
- Cagra spreaders: Cagra spread by neutral Zerg structures can be built on by any race and player
- Nydus Cesiant: Allows entry by any player; does not regress
There will eventually be more information on general map design and other techniques to look out for, in its own unique section of this guidebook.
Map Classifications
We use the following classifications as a way to categorize our competitive maps:
- Empire-class: Actively considered for premiere tournaments
- Uprising-class: Quality battlegrounds that are 'played out' or otherwise a cut below the cream of the crop
- Bloodbath-class: Dated creations that still give acceptable matches, but have already served in premiere tournaments
- Jester class: Maps which have been deemed unfit for competitive play for one reason or another
Pre-Submission Checklist
Say you've made a map, and you want it to be added to the project's maps directory. There are distinct functional and aesthetic requirements maps must have in order to be accepted into the pool - though in the case of missing the proper custom tiles to do the job, aesthetics can be temporarily overlooked until new tiles are created.
Functional:
- Make sure all Start Locations are placed in their own bases - including Start Locations for witness (observer) players!
- Place Town Center Markers (Units -> Neutral -> Special) wherever AI should place town centers. You can place more than one per base if needed.
- In 'Overlay Settings' below the minimap, untick 'Use Defaults', and tick 'AI Town Locations' to preview resource areas. Ensure that all resource areas are correct to avoid worker wandering and AI expansion issues.
- To use custom resarea overrides, first draw a location around all resources in a desired resarea.
- Name the locations RESAREA#, where # is a number between 1 and 249.
- You can use multiple locations with the same name for the same resarea id if needed.
- When using multiple locations, append + at the end of the location you intend to use for the resarea's center. If not appended, the game will choose the earliest-created location as the center.
- Make sure you have something like this example trigger for computer players to run correctly. You can import this in Triggers dropdown -> Trigger Editor.
- The following tips assume a competitive context, and are best practices for well-functioning resource areas.
- Gas nodes should never be fully diagonal (i.e. primarily horizontal or vertical angles).
- The majority of mineral nodes should be as close to the town center as possible.
- All bases with resources to the right of town center placement should have their mining tested with a Terran addon.
- See the image below for a before & after, following these rules!
Aesthetic:
- Place Mineral Fields without having excessive repeats.
- Avoid this example.
- Place tiles without having excessive repeats.
- Here's a bad example, and here's a better example.
- Provide some indication as to where town centers should be placed in all expansions.
- Conventionally, it looks like this. Here's a less conventional example.
- Make sure your map is adequately-decorated. Do not sacrifice function for aesthetics by placing too many unpathable or unbuildable tiles and doodads around the map.
- The special witness character ‚ (copy and paste this!) should be used for the spectator force name.
- Your map description can contain anything you like as the first line. This blurb should be followed by an empty new line and text that reads by [your username]. Please ensure that the authorship line is visible in the map selector!