You are about to leave Starcraft2Maps.net!

Please understand that the staff of Starcraft2Maps.net is unable monitor the contents of websites submitted by the users of Starcraft2Maps.net, such as the one you're about to visit!

What would you like to do?

Continue to

Cancel - Return to Starcraft2Maps.net

Report Inappropriate Link

Maps List - Map Tags - Melee - Altered Melee - Campaigns - Cinematics - Tower Games - Hero Games - Mini Games - Role Playing

Mods List - Mod Tags - Skins - Icons - Textures - Models - Tools - Audio - Map Editor Code - Map Packs - Other

Browse - Search

Maps Charts - Mods Charts - Members Charts

News - Search - Polls - Referrals - Redeem Code - Tell A Friend - Link To Us - Newsletters - Staff - Rules - Terms - Privacy Policy - Login

Submit Map - Submit Mod

Forum - Active Topics - Search

Help & FAQ - Contact Us

Quick Map Picks

Map Creation and Tutorials - Starcraft2Maps.net Forum

Back to Forum Add Post

Topic: [Request] Map Editor Tutorials

Displaying 1 to 7 of 7 Posts

: Ascending

: 30

Joe says:

29th June 2010 at 12:01pm

Hey, if anyone is experienced with the Starcraft II Map Editor and has some free time, we'd love it if you would write up/add your tutorials to the forum!

Tutorial Ideas:
(feel free to submit your ideas and i'll add them to this list)

- Getting Started / The Basics
- Creating Beatiful Landscapes/Terrain
- Working With Triggers
- Custom Coding (Galaxy Code)
- Working With Cameras
- Modifying Units
- Creating Custom Units
- Creating Heroe-Type Units
- Cloning Units
- Creating Custom Textures
- Creating Weapons
- Working With Actors
- Custom Actor Animations
- Custom Models
- Working With Audio / Adding Sound Effects
- Using The Importer / Importing Custom Models, Audio, Etc.
- Useful Shortcuts
- Building a Tower Defence Map / Step By Step Tutorials
- Other, Advanced Tutorials
- Your Tutorial Idea Here!

We appreciate all the effort that goes into creating tutorials. Note: At some stage I'll add the functionality so you will be able to add images directly to your forum post however, for now please use a free image hosting website and link to those images.

Alternatively, submit your tutorial as a Map under "Tutorials" or a Mod under "Map Editor Code" in a .zip file which will give you the freedom to include all the images, documentation and map/mod files you like! - Be sure to tag it as a tutorial and add a topic about it on the forum!

ArminTamzarian says:

18th September 2010 at 3:08pm

There's a series of videos on youtube from the user 'onetwosc' that cover a lot of these things. Dunno if that helps, but yeah.

wolf_of_darkness007 says:

5th November 2010 at 8:24am

Aw. I'll add my two cents in. It'll be brief but sweet for those of us who want to dabble with actual bridges like that of the original Starcraft and Brood War's bridges. I made excellent usage of four short Mar Sara bridges in my recent map addition, Bridge Too Near. The way I did this was to open the third Terran mission map. Yes, the Campaign map. Anyways, I didn't change anything in the map, just looked around for bridge help. Which is where I found out that for the Mar Sara short bridge Doodad, if you disable the Placement Requirements your units will walk over the bridge as if it were ground. Since I found this out on my own, it's opened a whole new can of worms for me for map making possibilities seeing using the ground for a bridge gets rather stale quickly enough.

Also, Blizzard, this time around doesn't shun the idea of using their own Campaign maps as teaching tools like Blizzard did for Starcraft and Brood War. When you click on the "Campaign Map" tab in SC2 Editor when opening a map, the Editor will warn you about not doing it as it can spoil your gaming experience. Which is why I suggest you play through the Campaign first. Anyways, once you "OK" the warning window away, you'll find all of the game's Campaign's maps. Open any of them, and you'll see just how the maps were created in every detail. So I deeply thank Blizzard for being really nice in this area. Seeing as the best source to learn from is from the maps made by the map masters themselves, Blizzard. This isn't to put anyone else down about helping others about this stuff. Starcraft 2 is alot more in depth and complext than the original game was. So good luck to us all to learn as much as we can about the Editor for it's in's and out's.

wolf_of_darkness007 says:

23rd November 2010 at 10:02am

I'll try this bit. I found some Youtube videos that are video tutorials. Some involve giving buildings different abilities, while others deal with Triggers. So far just basics but basics is always essential to one's path to learn the advanced stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMqcHrybei0&feature=related

I don't think I have to post every link to each tutorial video on Youtube seeing Youtube does a pretty good job at giving you options at seeing other related videos. If the link doesn't work, I figure copying and pasting into your browser's address bar and pressing Enter will solve that issue. I believe this link above deals with giving unit's abilities. The guy gives a Command Center the ability to spawn Ultralisks. So that gives me an awesome idea to either make a map or mod to get the Terrans a majority of stuff from the Campaign into MP side of things. I know I read an article on Blizzard's site a long time ago that Blizzard doesn't want to put in too many upgrades because that'd deduct from gameplay. I figure this is because Blizzard's focusing on the smaller elite Starcraft 2 players instead of the larger "for fun" crowd. Hopefully things improve soon enough.

wolf_of_darkness007 says:

30th November 2010 at 8:38am

Ok, I'm making this post real quick specifically because of my Island Hop 2.0 (Campaign Style) map. I was initially building the map and whatnot. I never tested it out till I was nearly done with the thing which was five or six hours later. It took me about three hours of trial and error to figure out what I did wrong or right or something. Anyways, I honestly don't know at the time of posting this post, but when I created the map to build Island Hop 2.0 on I created it with two extra Dependencies. Which were the Campaign Dependencies. How to do this is just this:

Step 1: Open Editor by either the Start Menu method or open a map in Editor. Once it's finished loading itself, click on New Document. It'll be the first icon on the extreme left. It's icon is that of a piece of paper with it's upper right corner folded down.

Step 2: Instead of willy nilly clicking OK with the dialog box click on the Modify... button on the right side of the Dependencies option. There you'll have the option to add or deduct Dependencies. Dependencies are the mods that Editor requires to make maps with. They have the various information for buildings, and for example Doodads.

Step 3: Here, you'll want to click on Add Standards... button. Once the new dialog box opens click on all four boxes. The first two are defaulted regardless. The two bottom Mods are the Campaign mods. They contain the data for including virtually anything from the Wings of Liberty Campaign mode. Once all four boxes are checked, click OK. Click on OK in this dialog box, and OK again once you have decided on the tileset you want to use. It doesn't matter what tileset you want to use. The mods don't have tileset requirements.

Step 4: Once your new tileset has loaded up, congratulations! All you need for absolute basics is putting down at least two Starting Locations for you and an AI/Player slot. Click the test document and you'll be able to see how wild the changes are from the Campaign and Melee settings are.

Now for my opinions about this thing. I truly don't know as of current if it was Blizzard's intent for this to be a hidden feature or what, but I think Blizzard is on the right path for this mode. Seeing that Melee doesn't always make the map awesome, and want the Campaign stuff back, especially as the Terrans, feel free to try out a map like this. Playing as the Terrans is kinda overpowered for them seeing that you can have the Mercenary building from the Campaign. But it's just as limited as it is in the Campaign as well. At least the Pirate Battlecruiser is the only one that doesn't have any of it's abilities, even if you purchase the Yamato Cannon from the Fusion Core building. For the Protoss, the Void Prism's speed upgrade doesn't work. Instead it's an ironic upgrade. It's as infinite as the Void is. And yes, to repeatedly purchase the upgrade requires the 150 Minerals, 150 Vespene Gas units. What a racket, eh?

I figure if Blizzard did intend for this to happen, they'll fix this over time with patches. I also figure that we the players can help Blizzard to fix this Campaign mode Melee maps with mods as well. I have one idea where Drones and Probes would go into a "turbo" mode and die out in roughly the same time frame the MULE would for the Terrans. I wouldn't make this an automatic/right clickable ability. Instead it'd be a purchasable ability which this ability would spawn from such as the Terran's Orbital Command to spawn the MULEs. Unfortuantly after the "turbo" feature expires, the Drone/Probe would join the likes of the MULEs... death, but the Drone/Probe would have increased gathering rates similar, or exactly the same that of the MULE. That way all three species would be equal on gathering rates.

For the Zerg, since the Zerg haven't a new powerful "massive" unit like the Terrans and Protoss got, I was thinking perhaps the Omegalisk or Brutalisk can serve that purpose. That'd help restore balance between the three species on the "massive" unit issue. That and bringing back the Guardian and Devourers in place of the Corruptor would be awesome. I remember the Devourers being really terrorifying in their capacity in getting their acid spray on ALL of your ariel units in a hurry, making your air units that much more suspictable to damage. I believe for the Corruptor to be able to inflict more damage, 20% more, it has to use an ability that costs 75 energy units. The Devourer's acid spray was free, and had the splash effect FOR FREE! In combination with some Hydralisks for ground support and or Mutalisk air support most or all enemy air units would suffer great amounts of damage or be obliterated in a hurry. I also miss the Scourage as they really were appropriately named. How to kill of capital ships in a major hurry, AND kill smaller ships in two or three hits. I believe Blizzard did mess the Zerg up considerably, but long as Blizzard is willing to fix that major issue, it's all good.

For the Protoss, I'd like for the Scout to be back at least. They helped make the Protoss air units very strong. Especially used in conjection of the Arbiters and Carriers. The Dragoons I hope can be brought back through story and physically so.

The Terrans, are massively overpowered but if someone can create a mod to include my described ideas before Blizzard fixes the Zerg, and other issues, it'll help give me, and everyone else a preview to if my ideas really do make things more equal or crappy. I'm sticking with more equal though till proven wrong.

shadowshane123 says:

3rd January 2011 at 3:02am

Well i need those walkthroughs I have this really god campaignmap and i dont know how to make because all of them need to have a name and custom stuff and i dont know how to do it like custom atacks and damage and life so I need walkthroughs srry noob map maker just found the map editor.

wolf_of_darkness007 says:

4th January 2011 at 8:47am

Finally! Someone else made a post here. You mean "god" map or good map, shane? I know on Battle.net I managed to play on a "God" map that someone else made. It was effectively "Simon Says" type of thing, but I also remember reading some other players' disgust with such map types mainly as it was more like "hax0r" types, and from what I last heard Blizzard's been doing it's best to keep the hackers off their service which is a very good sign.

As for naming your map, it can be literally anything that doesn't disagree with Windows' naming scheme. Like it can't have any of the special characters that Windows adamantly says you can't use part of a file name.

The custom "stuff" is created by the Data Editor within Starcraft 2's Editor. It's best to get your basics down. It's like ***. It's best to do the basics awesomely than to do the advanced stuff horribly. From what I've seen in Editor it seems to be actually possible to import another game's or studio program's character/object model. I've not seen this happen so I'm figuring it's just possible, a theory, or noone's done it yet. I know if I could, I'd absolutely love to make a Skirmish type of mod remake of Age of Empires 3 down to the Asian expansion pack.

As for custom map making, try here and other Starcraft 2 sites on getting your basics down first on map making. Here's some tips that should help you, shane.

Tip 1: Envision the shape of your map. If it helps also it's history and location. Such as my recently added, as of now, (8) New Holsom's Redemption map I thought of it's general shape, I was going to make it a hellhole of a map but I figured make it an eight player map in place of more players and less resources. I just flipped that idea so there'd be more resources to fight over. I figured it'd be a team based ordeal. Two players backing each other up. I think it's history should give it a more intriguing feel to it.

Tip 2: Do NOT rush to beautify your map. This being until you can solidify your map's ground design first don't bother with anything else that could pertify it. Otherwise you'd spend alot more time moving around Doodads and other stuff that could be better spent fixing design flaws. In my said map above, my primary flaw in that map is I didn't put down the No Movement thingie inside of the walls and other places to help prevent lost units.

Tip 3: Once things are solid for your map, such as the ground works, use Doodads that makes sense for the map. The Doodads don't have to be specific for the tileset you're using. Also try to put giant Doodads, if you use any, in the lowest parts of the map to prevent vision obscurity. Nothing sucks more when in the heat of battle you can't see your own army and it's crushed because you couldn't see your own army and respond appropriately.

Tip 4: When it comes to putting resources wherever, eight Mineral patches and two Vespene Geysers seems to be the norm for normal expansion areas. Six Rich Mineral patches and two Rich Vespene Geysers seem to be the norm for the Rich expansions. Try for a balance of the normal resources over the Rich expansions. Such as the Rich expansions being in risky locations and the normal expansions being in less risky areas. By risky I mean players having to fight more often to protect their collection at that area.

Also feel free to try out my Campaign map making scheme. I'm not sure if it works for others, but it certainly works for me. The way to make a map use the Campaign units for all three species... consult an earlier post of mine in this thread. I think it's here. Yea, it's the post above your's, shane.

Have fun.

Add Post

Network: Ork Games | The Game | Funny Games

Starcraft, Starcraft II and Blizzard Entertainment are registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment. This site is in no way associated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment.
Artwork Copyright © 1998-2012 Blizzard Entertainment and Starcraft2Maps.net. All other trademarks and/or contents of this website are property of their respective owners.
Copyright © Starcraft2Maps.net 2010-2012. All Rights Reserved.