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I can't seem to get it to work now... although I know that it defenitely worked before patch 1.12...

I'd be surprised if it did. I don't play or test melee enough to know, because frankly melee mapping to me is a joke.

The most you have to worry about in making a good melee map is managing terrain obstacles/elevations, start location distances, resource nodes, and a distant MAYBE as far as asthetics. With UMS, you have to coordinate triggers of any variety of complexity, create and balance customized terrain for the intended map you want to make (including unit and location placements, which are absent in melee), and of course, endless hours of planning and testing to get it all working as you intend (unless it's something basic or you already know exactly what you're doing).

The only real "prestige" from melee map making comes by association with their use in pro gaming. There is not much more substance to them beyond that. Thus, for me, the thought of finding ways to rig melee maps does not weigh heavily on my conscious. Even if it became a problem, it would just be a call for people to think past their current perseptions to figure out a solution, or see the bigger picture, which in my book is a good thing. It wouldn't take more than a grand total of 10 minutes to determine whether a map is rigged or not for any serious competition event.

I disagree, making a melee map and making a ums map are two completly diffrent things. Having had experience in both, though more focused on the melee side of starcraft I feel that when making a ums you have to get very technical while when making a melee map you have to introduce something new without imbalancing the delicate "ecosystem" of the races. Believe it or not most of the maps in the melee showcase are unbalanced even though they seem symmetrical or equi distant. I admit, ums maps can take much longer to make but the chances of turning out a melee map people will want to play every time are slim to none. It can take a very long time to determine if a melee map is balanced or not if you tried something new due to the vast complexity of StarCraft.

In short, I think you really have to have played melee competetivly for a long time before you can compare ums map making to melee. Melee map making is just too abstract.

i agree templar, but this is off topic,
Faz, im sure it doesnt work,
Voyager, It never worked, unless it was on like one of the first patches and they changed it. it would have been done before if you could.

Well who says there arn't UMS varieties (tactical, lotrs, diplo, open rpgs, etc.) where managing nuances isn't also an issue? In fact, coupled with triggers and customizable unit stats and abilities, subtleties can theoretically take on a whole order of magnitude of complexity more than any melee map could have. We just generally don't think that way because most of the UMS maps we see are simplified from starcraft's natural non-linearity into things far more specific (or else they just suck).

I have played melee long enough to get what it's about. I can see that it would take lots of tweaking work to balance a map idealy for all races, but few seem to realize that these "subtleties" are all possible with mathematics, where such things as flow control, base/expansion defendability, and resource balancing can all be calculated from variables such as unit sizes, firing ranges, tech and resource requirements, unit speeds, etc. It's not abstract at all, if you think about it.

In fact, that sounds like a cool project idea for me: a system to calculate an ideal layout for a melee map.

i understood 5% of that whole post.

Haha, good luck doing that tuxedo... StarCraft melee expands and new stratgies have to be taken into account frequently, unless you want to list how Terrain affects stratagies in every way... then somehow give them values for everymatch up so people could tally points on a map... which would take and incredibly long time just to become out of date or something you have to update frequently when you don't even play melee anymore (I'm not even sure what you mean by that, but I assume you mean you used to be the kind newb of melee). There is one variable in melee that is difficult to contain (and doesn't generally want to be contained) that rarly shows up in UMS. That is the creativity of the player, I know what you're thinking, "if im not creative in melee games how could anyone else be". Well people are, and telling them they can't be will just get your map tossed into the trash. Yes, it is possible for a UMS to be more difficult to balance and configure than a melee map but seriously who in the right mind would bother. When you can simply make money of your genious or just force the participants in the map to change to suit the map. To be honest I'm getting tired of reading "back when i played i was pretty good", "i dont have my cd now but im really good" etc... Progamers havn't tottaly figured out the game yet (and probably never will) what are the chances someone dedicated to ums could produce a perfect guide to melee map making. Not that ums making isn't a fine aspect of starcraft and one that I occasionally enjoy playing and even making short arcade style ones.

In short, you may be a great ums maker, and I'm not saying that it doesn't take a lot of talent to do so, however you can't expect me to believe you can just make a melee map guide... if you do I dare you to post it on wgtour.com, they're brutal when it comes to mistakes.

OUCH MY EYES, BRIGHT LIGHT. lol next time use paragraphs that huge block of white makes me sshudder before i read it.

Sorry, I got a little lazy... it's to scare off small people >>
<<

EDIT: But then again that's why I put the In short bit...

Well I don't know everything about the nuances of melee strategies (as you said, who does), but I know enough. For one, you cannot accomodate every single possible strategy with tweaking without taking a penalty to other strategies. Idealy, you get a compromise that allows the primary set of race's strats to work, and then live with that. The best maps are the ones that can best compromise.

And yes, you CAN calculate things like flow control, unit proxemics, resource supplies, traveling distances, etc. to tweak a map to a reasonable state of balance. That may or may not include the newest or the subtle strategies that people use infrequently, but remember that even SC itself has some issues with races, tech trees, and unit abilities that arn't completely in balance, which no map could accomodate for. As much as everyone likes to think it, SC isn't a perfectly balanced game.

But anyway, as I said earlier, there isn't much room left for creativity in melee mapping. The fact is almost any possible incarnation of melee style map has been achieved by at least one of the jillions of maps out there, so except for minor tweaking, remaking stuff that's been done ad nausium, or remixing something that exists (like with a new tileset or doodads), the whole notion of creativity with melee maps is just not something that you can compare to a well-achieved UMS.


(and lets not forget UMS-enhanced melee variations, either)

Tux, I'd have to agree that there isnt as much complexity to the nuancise and such in melee map making compared to ums, but that doesnt mean it's simple or that it's all been done. Why do you think i made this topic in the first place, i wasnt actually considering rigging a map for protoss but was seeing if it were possible, pushing the limit to make melee maps more complex then they currently are, like adding another layer. if we found out you could place player 12 units then who knows what else we might find out. for instance, witht eh hallucinationg power ups with life trick, you could make a melee map with this sort of as a premise to create another set of complexities. so for now melee maps are sort of limited but not to the point where people should stop making them oir stop trying to improve them.

The P12 thing doesn't work btw. Just tried it.

Anyway, yeah that's why I posted my ideas for rigging ealier. To see if it could be done. There's not a lot of room in melee maps for new stuff, so my point is simply that people who get a reputation off of it really don't deserve the kind that a good UMS map maker should receive (unless they find a way to add a new dimension of depth to melee-style, or something like that). If only for the popularity of pro gaming, that would probably be the case.

But meh, life ain't fair. I never said melee map making was easy, btw. In theory it could be easy, but without that ability it does take tweaking skills to make a decent melee map.

I just find the bit about making every bit the same, a bit tedius, and hard

Why wouldnt the p12 thing not work? it sounds completely reasonable! that destorys all my ideas... well, its impossible to rig a melee map... unless u have hacks, which r for losers!

ADDITION:
The Perfect Rig
here it is, i just though of it. Its for terran though...
U completely surround the base with a tight ring minerals (tight enuf that they cant build anything, but their starting units are inside the ring of minerals!) So for all teams (cept teran) u cant do anything but mine....which would do nothing if u cant build! the terran just lifts up the building sets it down outside the ring, and builds an SCV.......perfect...

On the contrary, it's incredibly easy to rig a melee map. Here's a general tip for figuring out your ability to see flaws in maps and make them more balanced: if you can't name a bunch of things the players could have done better in a pro match (assuming your opinion of better is correct, some people here can't even manage that) then you probably can't make a decent melee map. As for imbalances in starcraft, it all depends on the map (which is what makes good melee maps so hard to make, when I say good I don't just mean fun because some people think rigged maps are fun, I mean maps that make you think and provide a balanced game). There was a time, believe it or not, when maps favoured protoss players but that's changed... usually to Terran. As far as imbalance goes, the only problem I see is that once you get to the level of progaming (which I doubt anyone here will get to) protoss tend to reach a plateau and it's hard to pass. If you want me to believe you tux (which I doubt you really care) you would have to show me a well balanced map you made (by my opinion, some of the people here just throw out ratings for lack of knowledge).

In short... I would have to disagree with just about everything you guys have said.

i have a few things to say,

first, tuxedo, i tested the player 12 thing a while back, i guess nobody noticed my post about it not working unless your placing resources or critters.

second, warhammer, thats a way to rig a map, but who would play it? if you wanted to make a map that people want to play, but its still rigged, the changes have to be subtle, like extended cliffs so terran can defend easier, or make a bunch of expansions terran can get to easier. stuff like that.

Templar, this is expanding on what you said, when money maps came out, it was almost pointless to be zerg, it was MUCH easier to use protoss, even terran. But if you play a regular map, zerg is a much more qualified race.

IF UMS.

C:
Current player commands at least 1 Nexus.

A:
Move location labled "15x15" on Nexus owned by Current Player.
Set resource amount for all resource sources owned by player 12 at '15x15' to 3000.

There, GG.

lol, if only chu. If only.

In all honesty, very few UMS map makers spend time tweaking terrain after they have made it. It's more about the triggers and the game play and it's rare when people have to go back and change something so that something isn't imbalanced.

You don't really give melee map making enough credit. It's about trying to make an original map setup where players gain a certain amount of diverseness in gameplay and replayability (you can play the map many times many different ways and still win/lose). And of course balance. But all the great melee maps are known for their ability to have many different strategies you can form/use on them. The most well known, of course, being LT. More and more non-symetrical maps are as described, people need to realize that you dont have to have symetrical map for it to be good, and it doesn't have to be 100% balanced for everyone. Doing that just takes out a certain random element in the map.

I can't really name more than a few maps (UMS) where I could see terrain being an issue. And they are all (with the exception of Snipers) melee based maps.

Lotrs, diplos, enhanced melee, snipers... the list goes on. There are lots of UMS types where terrain can be just as much of an issue as with melee.

Sorry tux but I cant agree with this. I think that a melee map doesnt take less effort, if it is well made.
UMS usually centers on unit placement, trigger complexity, etc. Melee maps are usually centered on terrain and doodads. If you look at some of the blizzard maps or 'map of the week' maps of the scc, they are not just places to play melee, they are art works. The doodad placement makes them feel really real. I still have to see a UMS like that. People usually doesn't spend the same amount of time making a the terrain of an UMS map than a melee one, thus melee map terrain is usually better, but it requires more effort. On the other side UMS provide a different gameplay, what requires trigger skills and ingenuity.

So I see it this way:
Melee maps -> Art
UMS maps -> Ingenuity

Chu, its not only triggers, if you want good gameplay, you NEED the correct terrain layout.

Back to the original subject, I htink the player 12 thing worked pre 1.12, but it must have gotten taken out. also, terran plays part a little in games like nexus destoryer, the cliff terran is usefull if you want to hide units from ground units below as well as attacking from above with say siege tanks.

Hmmm, im pretty sure it never worked.

oh, ok, i thought it did, but never tested so i am not exactly sure